Good enough for government work

The cubicle work environment is a unique one, in that you can not know the person next to you at all, never even say hello to each other in the hallway, and simultaneously know every possible detail about their personal life and daily routine. Our office here at the VA DCR has a pretty random smattering of characters. I seem to have picked the cubicle corner most likely to be avoided by seasoned employees. In the cubicle in front of me is a woman, let’s call her – Polly. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, not to her customers, and certainly not to any of the other people she seems to call during the course of the work day, but certainly, at least, to her cats. Who, by all accounts she cherishes, and enjoys looking at potential new adoptees online during her down time, and reading their descriptions aloud for those of us in the vicinity. In fact, my other two cube neighbors, Omar and Flo, are currently discussing Polly, who is in the manager’s office trying to get the day off due to her alleged poison ivy, an ailment which she has been on the phone discussing with the free clinic all morning – sometimes in tears - , and from which she feels she could imminently die, since no one will help her. Flo says she’s a “hippo-chondriac.” Flo is hands down my favorite person in the office. She’s got to be at least mid to late 60’s, she’s partially deaf and blind in one eye. She probably weighs about 89 lbs, but she knows how to cuss out a difficult customer the second she’s off the line with them. When I was training with her and listening in on her calls one customer called in to make a reservation and asked -
“How are you?”.
Flo freaked out “Excuse me! What did you just say to me?”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what the hell am I’”
“Um….? I said ‘How are you?’”
“Oh, ok, I thought you said something else.”
I could only just shake my head and try not to laugh.
She also has no problem telling Omar, who fancies himself to be quite the pimp/ thug, exactly how it is. My favorite Flo/ Omar exchanges occurred while Flo was training Omar. Omar has a rubber neck, the kind that can snap around at absurd angles if a young female happens to be around, so he can ‘holla’ at them. Flo asked him if he was in school. “Yeah,” he responded. “What are you studying, womanizing?” “Nah, nah, Flo. It’s called pimpology.” “Well then, you must be flunking out, huh?”
Another time Omar was amazed to discover that one of the girls in the office didn’t know who James Brown was. Because Flo is old and Caucasian Omar presumed she didn’t know who James Brown was either. Flo proceeded to school him on James Brown’s life, music, and career. She even added that she now enjoys watching Chris Brown when he’s on the MTV. Once, when Omar was giving Flo a hard time in the hallway she put up her fists and danced around him, telling him she could fight him. Omar just laughed and told her to go back to her cubicle because he wasn’t handicapped accessible. But in reality they’re good, if unlikely, friends. Flo watches out for all of Omar’s (numerous) mistakes on the reservations phone line, and tries to impart the occasional tidbit of life advice. Omar even declared the other day that the reason Flo is called Flo is because of the wisdom that flows across the cubicle wall to him. Omar for his part tries to introduce to Flo to pop culture expressions and hip hop dance moves.
But I am still moved to wonder about the efficacy of my co-workers. Omar doesn’t have the memory banks for all of the necessary state park reservations policy and info. I routinely hear him telling people that no, that’s not a state park and he can’t make a reservation for it, and I have to lean across the cubicle wall and whisper “Pssssst, yes that is a state park and you can make reservations for it.” Or other such mix-ups about prices, policies and locations. Omar also specializes in mouth percussion when he gets bored, sometimes it’s quite talented and other times it just sounds like intermittent sucking and farting noises. Or sometimes he just makes animal noises, like howling, money screams. That’s government work for you.
Polly for her part is just generally unhelpful to her customers. She claims she gets all the difficult people, but she seems to find a way to get into an argument with practically every customer that calls. I sometimes wonder about the random actions of the universe that direct a specific person to Polly’s line instead of mine. Little do they know how easy the process could have been… She has the most ridiculous southern, trailer park accent. The letter ‘R’ is pronounced “r-ah’ or “r-oh” when she spells things out, and she always says “minium” instead of “minimum”. This particularly bugs me because I know she can hear all the rest of us around her saying “minimum” and I know it’s printed on her computer screen and call script as “minimum,” but still everyone who gets Polly gets informed of the 2 nt “mineeum” stay. A pedestal grill is also a “pedestrian” grill for Polly. Polly is by far the loudest talker in the office. You can hear her from anywhere on the floor. Sometimes I can’t even hear the person on my phone line. But I can always hear her perfectly. This is why we are all intimately acquainted with her boyfriend troubles, cat’s ailments, health insurance issues, vacation plans, and every creditor she has occasion to talk to during the course of the day. She seems to always be arguing with these people. My favorite is when she says “I’m not arguing with you, trust me, I’m not, but…” Or when the person on the other end of the line starts to get snippy back, then she’ll say, “ I wasn’t being smart with you why you gotta start being smart with me. I wasn’t rude, but you was rude…” Oh well, I hope she gets a break sometime soon.

Trying to get started

So, James inspired me to start a blog. That and the fact that I work 8 hours a day answering phones in a cubicle, in front of a computer with high speed internet. At home we only have dial-up. It’s the stone age.

I guess I have to come up with some stuff to write about. Which is hard because I basically have no life. I came to Richmond two years ago to visit home for a couple of months. I’m still here. Despite having worked at at least 5 different places and taking classes at VCU I know pretty much no one. I have no friends. If I was stranded in town somewhere or I needed a favor, I’d only have my mother or sisters to call. I guess this says something pretty big about me as a person. I don’t know, I’ve just never been terribly outgoing, or the type to impose myself on people. It’s not that I dislike people, it’s just that it doesn’t always occur to me to try to include them in my life if I don’t know them already. This ensures a sufficiently small social circle and the ability to feel lonely and moderately sorry for myself on any given day. It’s not that I love people either. I find most people to be disappointing in one way or another. And by that I mean totally unlike myself, and generally subscribing to the whole mainstream selfish consumer driven life-style. The kind of people who have nothing to talk about except what they thought about last night’s American Idol and which chain restaurant they’ll be drinking at tonight; about how they have no money, but when they get some they are definitely buying an iphone or a flat screen tv. But when I do find a kindred spirit I do my best to keep in touch. A good sense of humor and at least a basic awareness of current events is imperative. I’m a snob, but not really. It’s not that I think I’m better than any of these people, just utterly unrelated to them.

I might find people I could relate to better if I didn’t keep selling myself short and taking any menial, hourly job that comes my way.

This is really turning into a self-pitying “dear diary” entry here…

What the whole 9-5 cubicle experience is teaching me though, is that it’s really not set up for you to get ahead. Fewer and fewer companies, even the government, are offering benefits these days. Wages are going down, hours are being cut and the length of employment is usually limited such that you have to reapply for a “temporary” position to keep your job. All so that they can get out of having you on the benefits role, and having to give you labor and mediation rights. Once you’ve finished your 8 hours a day and commute and paid your bills you have practically no time or money to do anything else. I got along better waitressing part time, I still didn’t have benefits but there was more going into my pockets, I got to be on my feet doing something different everyday, and could take time off whenever I wanted. And I got free food.

I read an interesting article recently about the death of the “American Dream.” http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/generationdebt/88236
The article itself was alright, it made some good points, but what was really interesting was the response to the article. There were over 300 comments posted - some in high praise of the article, but a lot of them tearing it down and insisting that our generation just doesn’t know how to work hard, or balance their budgets. As a soon to be single mother working three jobs, with no credit cards or debt, I have to disagree. The fact is the baby boomers did have a better deal. At the same time, most of our generation does live beyond their means and have a certain sense of entitlement. I blame predatory lending and advertising. The other thing that amazed me was the response that by implying that there were other things of value than working and money and consumer goods, aka free time and quality of life, the author was clearly a hippie , a dirty liberal , and further a communist/ socialist. When she observed that more people were living closer to the city and riding their bikes – and that this may actually be enjoyable, or a good thing – people responded that she was “catering to liberals who want us all to have to live close to the dirty, crime ridden city, have to ride bikes, and have the government tell us where to work, where to live and how to live our lives…” I still don’t understand the correlation between bike riding and a hostile socialist takeover… I don’t think people understand what socializing something really means. After all, education, some healthcare, fire fighters, police, and EMS are all socialized services, and the only thing dictating my lifestyle to me is the evils of capitalism and the greed of corporations.

Several of these types of articles suggest that the way to stay ahead is to invest your money in stocks. That is - if you can’t learn how to operate in today’s American economy and have a financial investment plan than you deserve to work to death and live in the gutter. But have you read the news lately? Not only do I have no desire to contribute to most of the huge, greedy, corrupt and immoral companies, who shift jobs to other countries, pay slave wages and destroy the environment, while lobbying our government for corporate welfare, but I have no desire to make a profit off of the disenfranchisement of other people or be forced into funding these companies just to get by. Even if I did, recent news has done quite the smash job on investor confidence levels. My money is as likely to be lost as it is increased.

That’s something a hippie liberal would say.