Question<\/b>
\nDoes it count as “nesting” if your house is untidy and you feel no desire to clean it but you are set to drooling when you smell cleaning products? Or is that a late-stage craving?<\/p>\n
I seriously want to lick someone’s clean laundry right now. It’s sick.<\/p>\n
Good bye, Norma Jean<\/b>
\nAfter completing my longest straight stretch in one office job – 27 months – I am delighted to announce that I no longer have to see other people on a daily basis unless I choose to. Much as I have grown to either at most love or at least, er, appreciate the eccentricities of those I worked with, (past tense!!) I don’t need to see most of them every day. There are very few people, in fact, that I need to see every day. I married one of them. I’m about to give birth to another one. <\/p>\n
I worked in retail and customer service for 10 years. I really think this kind of work should be required for everyone who plans to live within society as a human. Nothing will prepare you better for the world than being trapped behind a counter, with all of humanity flying at you in all its crazy, non-sequiturial, mean, loving glory. It’s my experience that people who have experience serving other people, whether it’s at McDonald’s, The Gap or a small, strange cheese shop in a public market, are kinder to and more respectful of others and less likely to shove past a pregnant woman to get on to the bus first FIRST FIRST! Because It’s Important To Be First! <\/p>\n
Ahem. Did I mention that not going to work again for a year means not taking public transit at rush hour? Can I get a hallelujah, please. Thank you.<\/p>\n
That being said, customer service jobs pay really poorly unless you are a 6’2″ blonde, volleyball-playing waitress at a pub in Surrey. So eventually you might want to move on to the office job, which follows a lot of the same rules of a retail job but with slightly better pay and you get to sit down all day instead of stand up. <\/p>\n
Rule 1: People are fascinating! Isn’t it amazing how everyone started out the same size, little mini cells in our mothers’ bellies and we’ve all turned out so Different! Vive la difference!
\nRule 2: Sometimes differences display as apparent psychopathy.
\nRule 3: Don’t argue with someone who isn’t listening to you or who doesn’t see you because you’re at a lower level. That person probably never worked in retail and will never see it your way.
\nRule 4: The customer\/co-worker may or may not be right. You are probably more right. But the sooner she believes that you<\/b> think she is right, the sooner she will go away and you can get on with your day.
\nRule 5: Suck it up. You can be right everywhere else. Just not here.
\nRule 6: (There is no….oh, wait, yes there is.) Yes, sometimes it’s impossible to suck it up. In this case, pick your battles. Don’t fight the one about “no one ever replaces the water on the cooler except me.” You’ll just go thirsty. Fight the one about your boss misappropriating funds.
\nRule 7: Eventually, something marvellous will happen – like a much wished-for layoff or another much wished-for layoff or a well-timed pregnancy – and you’ll get a change of scene. Or – you could always quit. Once you have experience, jobs like this are easy peasy to get.
\nRule 8: Keep your job-hunting pants clean.<\/p>\n
Hello Alien!<\/b>
\nMy new phase is starting! At 37 weeks along, I could give birth at any moment and start my new job. You know what’s crazzy? The job I just left took a year to get (and I still don’t have it!) The one I’m about to start only took 9 months to get and I didn’t have to write any stupid exams or participate in any role-play or do the job for 2 years and then apply for it again<\/i> or ANYTHING!<\/p>\n
Ways in which motherhood will not resemble my previous work experience<\/b><\/p>\n Ways in which motherhood might resemble my previous work experience<\/b><\/p>\n However, I do look forward to having the power to – baby excluded – turn off whatever it is that is annoying me; be that the radio, the television or the internet. (Sadly, this is a trick which just doesn’t work with other people. I have taken SO MANY customers and co-workers apart, looking for the “off” switch, to no avail.)<\/p>\n Which brings me to the point of this entry: What’s up with “North by Northwest”?<\/a> We got up early-ish this morning and now I have another good reason to add to my list of “Sleeping in on Sundays: An Extensive List of Good Reasons.” Because CBC radio on Sunday mornings before 9 am PST? Shittttt-ayyyyyyy. First there was this annoying pseudo-jazz-folk band (Dr. Fishy? I think?) from Prince Rupert and the annoying pseudo-Shelagh Rogers host was IN Prince Rupert and it’s all about the local content. Then she made some on-dragging small talk with her weather guy or co-producer about the relay race one or both of them had run the day before. It made Rick Cluff’s pre-show banter sound like Garrison Keillor.<\/p>\n “Hmm, so you just put on those sneakers and ran, eh?” Then she interviewed an artist from Haida Gwaii.<\/a><\/p>\n “So, it’s pretty rainy up there in Haida Gwaii?” Then some more mournful folk music where a man with a guitar reminisced about growing up on a certain street and then going back when he was 37 and seeing life still going on and thinking, “wow, life goes on. even when I leave.” Not a poor sentiment or discovery, mind you, just one I’ve heard 4 billion times with the same guitar chords. As Saint Aardvark put it: “…it would be different if he went back to the house where he grew up and dug up all the bodies of the people he’d murdered as a teenager. That would make for a more interesting song.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question Does it count as “nesting” if your house is untidy and you feel no desire to clean it but you are set to drooling when you smell cleaning products? Or is that a late-stage craving? I seriously want to … Continue reading \n
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\n“Yep, I sure did. Boy it was hard at first but then it got easier.”
\n“Yes, I’ve heard that that’s what happens in a race.”
\n“Right.”<\/p>\n
\n“Mmm hmm.”
\n“And it’s raining in Prince Rupert too! But it was sunny in Vancouver!”
\n“No!”
\n“Yes!”
\n“Well, there’s irony for you!”
\n“Yes!”<\/p>\n