Portraits of Enigmatic Characters: Installment #1

By sheer luck and happenstance, I have had the fortune to come across some pretty wonky figures in my lifetime, and we’re not talking your average run-of-the-mill crazies either! Having spent my formative years in the counterculture corners of Portland, and my educative years in the hippie-rich environs of Eugene, I have met my fair share of interesting, intriguing, and downright offbeat individuals.  From the topless woman defiantly roaming about Eugene’s frigid winter to the anti-patriotic veteran freestyling about his dislike of police on 37th and Hawthorne, I name many of these figures as friends, and count myself among them depending on the day. They are part of what keeps Portland “weird,” and put the “spring” in Springfield.

Or, my favorite alternative, "Keep Portland Brewed"

That being said, there are some figures that are tougher to make out. People who are so obscene they are borderline socially-uncouth and their mere existence begs the question: Why are you the way you are, and how did you come to be this way?

In mentally browsing through my examples, I realize it is not so much that these individuals are crass, walking-apocalypses, so much as they masquerade under the façade of normalcy. As if in concealing their outlier properties, they come bubbling to the surface in frighteningly grotesque ways.

Thesis Tie-In: (since basically, similar to Gus in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who finds a Greek root to every word, I can tie my thesis into anything): stereotypes exist to exaggerate certain tropes of character that we see in day-to-day life, such that we can recognize them for what they are, and avoid getting caught up in their conventional trappings. Perhaps I am falling into the conventional trappings  in forming my impressions from limited exposures, but hopefully the exaggerations will recall similar figures in your own experience of wackos. (Woah, unnecessary thesis flashbacks…).

Disclaimer: Please understand that Amber Beyer is a lover of all creatures, great and small, and merely wishes to practice the art of character sketch.

Ms. Snowden

When you are a child, everyone seems weird.  This is partly because you are not used to how weird people truly are, but mostly because they get right down in your face, talk in an exaggeratedly slow rhythm, and over-emphasize their gestures.

This is ok from grade school ages 6 to 11. It is just downright annoying thereafter. And yet Ms. Snowden, our 7th and 8th grade music teacher, seemed to think that such childlike behavior was appropriate for her pubescent class of such “good little boys and girls!”  Naturally, we would just love to learn a 3-note version of Horse with No Name on the xylophone, and dance around with a white paper plate to Enya’s Sail Away (Orinoco Flow). Not kidding. This happened.

Allow me to give you a visual. A woman, barely 5’ in height, always wearing some awful color-coordinated turtleneck and long-skirt combination with sweat stains, and major nippage, forcing us to DANCE AROUND WITH A WHITE PAPER PLATE TO ENYA.  These activities are something that I now feel I would enjoy with great pleasure. But not when I am an awkwardly hormonal pre-teen, barely able to show my acne-ridden face in class due to the latest outbreak of pock-marks.

Please appreciate the humiliation of this.

As you can imagine, mockery of the entire situation was imminent.  And just as Ms. Snowden could delight in the good behavior of her “good little boys and girls,” she could also turn a 180, become a complete PSYCHO-BITCH.  She would even punish her “bad little boys and girls,” with methods far worse than dancing to Enya.  Almost like the world became a cartoon, Ms. Snowden’s eyes, bulging and bloodshot, would pop out of their sockets and take over as the predominant feature on her face.   Beyond the eyes, a vague electric field would manifest above her hair, crackling and sparking, ready to shock at a single touch. And she was not afraid of touch. Grabbing students behind the necks, she would wrench them across the room, or worse, into the hall for a “private talk.”

And yet, as though she could smell it coming, the moment the principal would round the corner, on her routine monitor of the halls, those terrifying eyes would rescind into the hollow sockets of her skull, the sweet falsetto voice would return, “Principal Brooown, welcome to music class!”  The transformation was spectacular.  Principal Brown, unaware that she was the acting Betty Ross to Ms. Snowden’s “Hulk ANGRY!” inquired as to our progress in the class. “I hope these older ones aren’t giving you too much trouble!”

“No no.” Her lilting laugh now packed an iron punch. Rounding one bulging eye upon a classroom of shaking students, “They’ve been such good little boys and girls…”

Next Installment: Rosie and Amber get verbally accosted for using the controversial phrase: “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”!

On Seeing a Movie

Now, typically I’m more of a words n’ language kind of gal, but I thought I’d deviate from the ole ball and chain to pay tribute to arguably the most popular, and certainly highest grossing, of all artforms: the motion picture.

Specifically, I refer to the experience of the movie theater.  Why do we even have these?  At its harshest, the movie theater requires you to pay $9.50 plus popcorn to sit before a screen for two hours while things flash across it and loud noises accost you from every angle.  Certainly, this is what some grandparents may tell you, ear plugs nestled deep into the bowels of their eardrums (?!).  Far better to run down to the nearest Blockbuster, rent the latest new release, and watch it from the privacy of your own home.

But this would be a tragedy.  Actually, it would be a tragi-comedy, because while you sit before your industry-standard TV trying to enjoy the film, (now that I’m ranting I feel pretentious enough to call it film. Yes, film-viewing is the prescribed pleasure for the evening), millions of movie-goers will be laughing at the mitigated nature of your experience.  Before heading off to the real thing.

The real thing is an experience in and of itself.  It is first, watching the movie, and second, the sensation of being in a theater, sitting before a digitally remastered screen, allowing the magnitude of it to wash over you and transport you elsewhere.

The movie-goer walks in, half-distracted, not quite sure what they are doing there (movies are rarely social, but rather a shared experience), to sit facing a single direction and wait.

Darkness descends, at once rendering anonymous, yet uniting–if only for a time–a  community of individuals who may share nothing outside of a shared desire for distraction, displacement, unadultered entertainment.  Perhaps you even came with someone; they are no longer there.  Attention is shifted from whatever is going on in the theater–beeps of cell phones being switched to silent, the dying down of murmurs–to the screen, the ethereal light, drawing its audience likes moths to a flame.

Thank you, Franz Ferdinand, for providing the perfect musical tie-in!

Under this cloak of darkness, the movie-goer falls into a well of profound loss.  All is forgotten in this brief charade when the viewer is open, receptive, and reverent.

And then you leave.  The credits roll, the lights up come up, shattering that safety blanket of darkness, bringing its audience to whatever harsh reality they momentarily escaped and depositing them back to the smell of popcorn and stickiness of spilled coke.

Roland Barthes, favorite critic who I probably constantly misquote, describes his experience with leaving the movie theater:

There is something to confess: your speaker likes to leave a movie theater.  Back out on the more or less empty, more or less brightly lit sidewalk, and heading uncertainly for some cafe or other, he walks in silence (he doesn’t like discussing the film he’s just seen), a little dazed, wrapped up in himself, feeling the cold–he’s sleepy, that’s what he’s thinking, his body has become something sopitive, soft, limp, and he feels a little disjointed, even irresponsible.  In other words, obviously, he’s coming out of hypnosis.

This hypnosis upon leaving the cinematic experience, dazed and blinded, rings true for several recent films, including Where the Wild Things Are, where I was poignantly reminded what childhood is like, and Inglorious Basterds, when I left the theater feeling wholly satisfied and like I wanted to scalp some Naaatzis, and, more unfortunately, the latest Indiana Jones, where I left just wanting my money back.  Yet all these experiences arose from the synergy of cinema in a way that merely watching them at home could not have.  It was the sum of the parts–the audience, the darkness, the screen, the sound–that allowed for a level of satiation typically not expected from guitless entertainment.

Now, after I have spent this post fetishizing the sensations of the cinematic experience, who wants to go see a movie?

Yurt-ing [yoort-ing]

–noun

1. From the Russian root yurta, meaning “home,” yurts were the traditional dwelling on the Mongolian steppes. For the city-tired youth, yurts provide refuge and a good time in the state parks along the Oregon coast. Ex. Let’s go stay in a yurt.
2. These portable homes accommodated the nomadic lifestyle of the Asian horse herders, as well as that of the noise-producing celebrant, who must make a stealthy getaway from cranky, safety-vest wearing camp hosts, often with a half-concealed bottle of Pendleton whiskey in hand while dodging the same.  Ex. We must not be loud after 10 p.m. in or around the yurt.
   

–adjective

1. Of or pertaining to the qualities of the yurt, including but not limited to:

• an unsealed wooden floor that soaks in beer among various other liquids;
• canvas encasement that makes only the allusion of containing sound; and
• topped with a nipple-resembling window whose magical qualities turn apparent trees into the Milky Way Galaxy.
• Ex.  That structure is very yurt-like in nature.

–verb

1. The act of staying in a yurt, and all subsequent activities related thereto. These include:

• swimming in various states of undress across a lake;
• rolling haphazardly down all sides of a sand dune;
• informing an entire campground of Cosmo’s “in the bedroom” tips;
• concocting creamsicle-tasting poison cups.
• Ex. Let’s go yurting every weekend.

Etymology:  Originally from the Turkic word referring to the imprint left on the ground by a removed yurt.  It’s safe to say that whether through an entire recycling bin of glass bottles, two bundles of firewood burned, hundreds of footprints left in the sand, or various stains on the yurt floor, nine city-dwellers left their mark on Florence, Oregon. And had a damn good time in the process.

Also see:  backpacking, overnight camping, drinking.

Stranger than Friendship

Greg Mortensen, international humanitarian and Nobel Prize hopeful, used a unique kind of friendship in his mission to build schools in the Eastern reaches of Pakistan.  His book Three Cups of Tea describes a process of coming to know someone that may seem a bit accelerated.

As the village chief of the Karakoram Mountains states:

Here, we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything–even die.

While the concept of taking a bullet for someone after your third coffee date comes off as a bit strong, it has the appeal of fierce loyalty, and one wonders how our multi-billion dollar business transactions would fare if we operated under the same principle.  Hem…corporate bailout…hem.

The circumstances that bring people together are so wide and varied that it’s a wonder we use such a blanket term: friendship, to encompass its many manifestations.  In some ways, it’s nice that the idea of friendship is non-discriminating, but it also homogenizes such a subtly intricate idea.  Certain friendships allow for a level of intimacy otherwise unwarranted, an intimacy brought about by circumstantial rarity.

One such friendship that comes to mind is the passing traveler.  The spontaneity, yet syncopation of this encounter is enough to make one open up, even share “deep shit” with a complete stranger.  My first experience with this particular brand of friendship was when I was 15, and took a Greyhound bus from Bend to Portland.  Being an angsty, anti-social teen, I deliberately placed my backpack in the seat next to me.  I never thought I would meet anyone not drunk or high on a Greyhound, but miracles can happen, and did when a 23-year-old fella from Minnesota pointedly stood above me, forcing me to clear the seat.  While the first few minutes passed in disgruntled silence and every attempt to ignore each other, the gods of friendship were at play, for the bus lurched just as he snapped open a coke, causing a wave of it to spill onto my lap. A wonderful friendship began.  I don’t recall what exactly we discussed nonstop for six hours, but I do recall, as I left the bus and climbed into my mom’s car, feeling sad that I would never see this individual ever again.

The traveler friend is a circumstantial gift.  It defies age, race, sex, and any other demographic. I met this type of friend last year while throwing back pints with Aussie adventurers, dining top dollar with over-protective couples, and hiking alongside talkative English blokes.  Like the cowboys of the spaghetti Westerns, the traveler friend appears only when he is needed. He saves the day, along with debilitating bouts of homesickness, and rides off into the sunset, never to be seen again, usually with some trite one-liner like, “Keep yourself dry, kid.”

I recall, after my first few lonely days in Spain, nervously inquiring of a Kiwi if he wanted to see flamenco at the Alhambra with me.  His response was so perfect, I remember it verbatim: “I mean, we probably should, right? We’re in fucking Granada.”  Thus, a night of pathetically moping in my bunk turned into a night of clashing heels, red flowers, cante jondo, shooting stars, and yummy sangria. We tripped down the uneven streets on our way home, exchanging life stories. The night ended anticlimactically with an awkward: “Well, nice knowing ya!  Happy travels!”  when what I really wanted to say was “Thank you for staving off my loneliness. I feel like I know you better than many of my friends.”

It is these brief snatches of intimacy, which arise more from a need within the self coinciding spontaneously with another, that allow us to drop our guard in a way we normally wouldn’t. As unsettling as these friendships end, they are proof that any two people can connect in a place if the circumstances are right. Unless, you’re like..an asshole.

Another interesting friendship that comes to mind defies all human logic and genetic predisposition. That’s right, folks, I am talking about the platonic friendship between a fully-functioning heterosexual male and female.  Some question whether this can even exist.  Some flush it out into to witty, award-winning movie screenplays, as is the case with my favorite chick flick When Harry Met Sally.

oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit

Harry, loveable man that he is, maintains that men and women can never be friends because “the sex part always gets in the way.”  What Harry is saying is not that men and women can’t be friends, but that it is an invalid question. It’s like asking what time the Universe was created.  It just doesn’t work because the answer negates the original intent of the question.

And I would wager that some part of it is true for most of us.  Who hasn’t had fleeting mini-crushes on their opposite-sexed friends at one time or another? It’s because they exhibit all the qualities of a good friend i.e. supportive, trustworthy, etc., but also have a different chromosomal pairing.  Fortunately, for most of us, the louder voice cannot even fathom going there, leaving us in a strangely platonic, but not entirely asexual limbo, that in some ways, is more comforting because it will never go away. At least not in its original context.

Finally, since I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, I’ll just say: Shout-out to friendships, YEAH!, and do a real ending later.

Scene One. Take Two.

Having now been at a new job for two weeks, I have begun to notice some differences between a positive work environment and a miserable one.  True, I am probably still wrapped up in the idealism of a new beginning, but these differences are so blaring (i.e. people are actually happy), that it is impossible to not take notice.  Here are some of the reasons why:

• Now, I don’t know about you, but I respond very well to positive reinforcement. Give me a compliment and I will follow you around like a love-sick puppy.  I fully recognize what is going on here: like a Pavlovian dog, I am being conditioned to drool at the possibility of positive recognition for a job well done.  It is the easiest form of behavior control; parents have been employing it for ages, and really it’s so effective, I don’t know why more companies don’t give their employees a big “You’re Swell!” memo on a daily basis.  So when the bosses pass my desk, stop, and tell me what a great job I’m doing and how happy they are to have me there, I walk around with a dumb smile on my face. Not only that, but I try all that much harder with the next task. It’s a little something I would call “mutually-beneficial.”

• Another major component of a positive working environment is office humor.  Never again will I underestimate the value of a good prank to make the day go faster.  Yesterday saw a co-worker running down the hall wielding two staplers as guns, shooting at random with a take-no-prisoners intensity. I am still just new enough to feel uncomfortable with unleashing the full force of my personality, which can be the equivalent of a social suicide, but give me a couple more weeks and it is on. I have in my arsenal a very ironic sense of humor and five seasons of The Office to get material.  I may laugh politely now, but I am ready to bring it.

• The best part of a happy office are the perks.  Casual Fridays, muffins in the morning, all things that seem relatively minor, but put a little extra bounce in the step when entering the building. Oh, and did I mention, FREE DOWNTOWN PARKING!  Now, not only do I drive a gas-guzzling, war-initiating clunker (tho I love my car!), but I drive it all the way to work and back, along a route positively teeming with public transportation options.  I am the least “green” Oregonian out there. But it cuts my commute in half, and I get to rock out to whatever music I want along the way, so I’ll take it.

Nooooo! Don't take away our perkssss!

From this, you may surmise that I am very happy at my present situation, and you would be correct.  As cliche as it is, I am aware my main message here is that sometimes the little things are what counts, but in this case, it also hits the hammer on the proverbial head.

The Underwood 2000 (Not unlike the Nimbus 2000)

You know that heady rush of excitement you feel after a good purchase? That feeling that the stars are aligned and everything in the world will be alright simply because you have made, if not shrewd or economic, a very sound investment?  (Beginning to realize I may have a problem…)

Some people feel this way about cars. Others get it over clothes, or accessories, or even food. I apparently feel it about vintage typewriters.

That being said, there is someone I would like you to meet… His name is Underwood. 11” tall and 25 lbs.  Like a proud mother, I clasp my typewriter unto me, boxy shape and all, proud to show off my latest acquisition.

Isn't he beautiful?

Nobody better mess with my typewriter on the playground.  My typewriter will always have the best paper-bagged lunches, and someday, I hope to be known as a MILF among my typewriter’s little typewriter friends.

(Step back.) Don’t worry. I am just as disturbed as you (hopefully) are by this upwelling of maternal instinct concerning my latest purchase.  And yet it asks a question I am sure pertains to more than just myself:  What’s the appeal of old things?

I suppose, in a pre-fallen Rome sort of way, it appeals to the glory of the not-forgotten past.  Composed as it is of nobs and levers poking out at awkward angles,  I find myself associating my typewriter with the “good ole days” of industrialism.  With a time of steam engines and locomotives and the Rooooooaring 20’s!

For a reading/writing person, the typewriter must be the object through which I can idealize about the past.  For with each satisfying click as the type bar strikes the paper or the ding as the reel reaches the end, I hear the noises of a time when things worked well (until October 24, 1929 that is).

If I may get all philosophical on your asses for a moment, critic/philosopher/genius dude Roland Barthes dubs this sound “the rustling.”  And although he applies it specifically to language, the idea of a sound working well, positing meaning, and generating happiness is sort of what the noise of the typewriter does to me.  I can think back before the laptop sounds of monitors whirring, fans cooling, and hard-drives clicking to the harsher, and yet in some ways endearing, sounds of its predecessor.  As the “listener” I cannot evaluate the sound itself, but merely self-reflect on my reaction to the experience.*

*These ideas appear in “The Rustle of Language” by the late great Roland Barthes, and without the dedicated tutelage of UO’s very own Professor Forest Pile (misspelling intentional), I would not have been able to understand them.

In addition to the sounds, I am drawn to the physical immediacy of my typewriter.  What confidential documents, love letters, or important briefs saw their way through its reel? In all likelihood, my typewriter sat in an office producing mundane file memos all day, but that’s beside the point. For all I know, it drafted the repeal to prohibition.

Or better yet, is a movie star!  I can just picture the news people from His Girl Friday typing away, threatening the speed they can talk with their pre-carpal tunnel hands.

Skip forward to 2:15 for best effect.

Whatever feats, great or mundane, my typewriter witnessed, I give it the unconditional affection of any doting parent.  And once I replace the ribbon and trouble-shoot for other errors, I shall post its first steps (typed pages) for you all to see.

(Trouble-shoot, error, post…? I am hopelessly a product of the digital age.)

The Joy of Cooking (How very Julie Powell of me, I know)

I have fallen into a frenzy of weekend cooking.  Last week was boef borgognone and peach and raspberry cobbler, this week is clam chowder with a crusty rustic bread and orange pound cake for dessert. Next week: beer-battered beef briscuit and chocolate mousse torte.

I would like to say that this rash of Betty Crocker syndrome has come totally unbidden… I cannot. Indeed, after an entire summer of Tour d’ Happy Hours and mom n’ pop cooking, I am ashamed to say I have not opened an oven door unless in an irrational attempt to find my keys. I was, in fact, inspired by the movie Julie & Julia.  Whatever your thoughts may be about the movie and the actors, no one can deny that the delicious concoctions pulled out of that oven were enough to make the mouth water and taste buds dance.

So I decided to try a recipe or two. While I’ve always enjoyed cooking for myself, it was more as a necessary alternative to T.V. dinners, fast food and starving. After class, I’d pull together a pasta or fry up some vegetables, but more as a means to an end rather than reveling in the act itself.

Not so with my latest obsession. Half the time, I don’t even finish whatever concoction I have boiled up. By the time the roast is served, I am not even hungry, because for every carrot chopped one goes in my mouth.  For every stir of a stew, the spoon touches my lips for a taste test. This time, I am cooking for the feeling it gives me.

Have you ever noticed how violent cooking is? Chopping alone has to be the equivalent of a vegetable triple homicide. The knife tears through the onion, cleaving it in twain with that satisfying thud as it meets the chopping block.  The onion cries out, emitting its foul sting as its last defense, but tears may pool in these merciless eyes before I ever accept defeat. Consider this onion officially diced.

And that is only the beginning. There is slicing, quartering, sauteing, filleting, pureeing, searing, steaming, poking to check tenderness, browning to singe the outsides. Activities all, that if applied to any human would land you a court date without pinole.

I don’t know why they don’t teach murderers how to cook. It is the perfect way to work out one’s frustrations. So I didn’t get that job I interviewed for? No biggie. I’ll go home and zest an orange. Or… Ah, I see that you have cut me off in 5 o’clock traffic.  Your face will be forefront in my mind when I drop a shivering crab into a pot of boiling water.  I hope I have effectively constructed an image of myself as the overzealous and vindictive cook from The Little Mermaid.

In addition to the release, is the sense of accomplishment.  While anyone with half an hour and a teaspoon can cook, few do. And for someone who is fast approaching her limit of blissful unemployment, I can at least look back on a day spent in the kitchen as a day spent well. If I can’t say I’ve filed a brief or eased a client’s fears, I can at least say I’ve made bread rise.  Which can be a damn tricky thing to do.

The beauty of cooking is the physicality of it. In a time when most education and work (ironically) is focused on the use and elevation of the mind, we tend to lose touch with our bodies. Cooking is manual, and half the time I come away from it with flour in my hair, something spilled down the front of my shirt, and sore arms from kneading dough or squeezing juice from limes. It satisfies that visceral pull to do something tiring and physical.

Olivia Newton John ALSO wants to get physical.

Finally, I’ll give a nod to the domestic pleasure of cooking.  Raised as I was in the third wave of feminism, I have no qualms about admitting that I enjoy putting food on the table before friends and family. I thank my fore-mothers for fighting as vehemently as they did (some cooking to excess; others cooking not at all) to make it possible for this little pastime to bring me enjoyment without tying me down. For should this (as all my little phases seem to do) pass whimsically by, I can wave it a fond farewell without any sense of duty to be the dilligent housewife.  I cook as something I enjoy, and that, rather than any obligation or necessity, is what makes it fulfilling.

Columbia 150, Cafe Yumm, and Bob FM: A Trip Back to Track Town

Fall is a time of excitement. Much like Obama’s 2008 campaign, a spirit of change is in the air. In the natural world, this change predicates harvest time. Things get crisper, become enflamed, fall down. For many youngsters, it also signifies the start of school.

I’ve been aware of the change for a few weeks. It begins around the time aisles of school supplies replace picnic baskets and barbecue tongs in the grocery store, gathers speed when ads for “back to school” shopping splatter the TV, until the culminating moment when it’s time to pack up the car with mini-refrigerator and dry erase board to make the move down to college.

Only this year, it wasn’t me. I engaged in the standard ritual as a bystander. Support staff for my brother as he returns to the dorms.  We rolled into Eugene with half a tank of gas and two hours of Bob Marley easy-skanking behind us, and all the nostalgia of the previous four years hit me.  Little things like walking past the graveyard, a walk I took hundreds of times in pouring rain or the middle of the night, or seeing all the fresh duck gear in the UO Bookstore, which made me more of a football fan than I ever was while a justified student. The campus is in its transitional phase between Summer and Fall, gearing up for the Inundation, which is really the best time to visit. We were in the first wave.

I wonder at my reaction to being here. I do love school, and while it’s true that it is all I’ve ever known, I can’t help but be a little sad about what awesome things I won’t be learning in a few weeks, and what random outdoorsy skill I will not acquire. Walking around or lounging on the quad, I can totally pass for any other student, and yet I am not. I am a poser. While other students are asking questions like Where is my next class?, When is the final? and What party should I go to tonight?, I am asking questions like When is my next job interview?, What career path should I follow? and What party should I go to tonight?

But youthful escapades aside, these next questions are so much more indefinite and long-term than before. In school, if you don’t like a class, no big deal. It’ll be over in a matter of weeks and until then you can just slouch in the back, maybe even take a nap, until the 50-minute period is up. If you do this at work, chances are you’ll get fired.

I realize what a horrible complainer I must sound like: Poor thing, actually has to work for a living… And while I am excited to float around for a while, trying different fields as I find a niche or the best applicability of my major, I can’t help but think that reading Beowulf while lounging in the sun would be so much easier. I even find myself humming the song from Avenue Q: “I wish I could go back to college, In college you know who you are; You sit in the quad and think Oh my god, I am totally gonna go faaaaaar!” Such was the state of things when I left Eugene, a rather reluctant adult.

Back in Portland, I have returned to embodying the cliche of the Portland young adult. Sitting in cafe’s, writing angsty blog posts, and searching, applying, interviewing like mad for the next great thing.  While I cringe at the idea of signing my soul away to a permanent job, I am eagerly anticipating the next low-paying, but in some way exciting opportunity to contribute. I am much less frantic than the last time.  It’s now down to weeding through the muck until I something that sticks.

“So What Next?”: A Poll

Calling all (or soon to be) post-collegiates at large!

I’ve been interested lately in what people are doing, and what their priorities are in making these next steps.

Please help answer these questions by responding to my poll. All you have to do is mark the option that bears the most weight in your decision to be on your current path/job/opportunity. While it’s probable that multiple factors play in, please select the option that most influenced where you are today.  Please vote only once.

Thank you for voting, citizen.

Now this is an uneducated voter.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way; or The Little Temp that Could

“Amber, do you have a minute to step inside my office.”

“Uhh sure,” I respond to my director, a little flustered. Half-thinking, I confess, that I may be offered a permanent job.

“I want to talk to you about your blog.”

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.  And there it was, lying on the table.  And there it was, so plainly written across her face: my slanderous thoughts, my horrible black humor, taken seriously.

You probably will not recall (as posts were promptly deleted) that I posted two very irreverent, degrading posts about my place of employment.  Using vivid associations to Soviet Russia and neglectful parenting, they highlighted certain aspects of my job that I will not miss, questioned the entire leadership, and did not reflect well upon myself either.

Unfortunately these entries, which were intended as sarcastic creative pieces to entertain my friends, were taken as my exact thoughts and feelings toward place of employment (which will remain anonymous). No salt added.  As it would seem, several attorneys and a fair number of the management have read my little blog due to a tracker that picks up the firm’s name where it is mentioned on the internet.  It went so far as to spark a meeting between the managing partner and COO over whether I would be directly terminated or allowed to finish my last week.

I was called to a meeting. I tried to explain as well as I could that the blog had a target audience of 20-something graduates who would appreciate a little humorous work-bashing. That, in fact, I do not think my place of employment bears any resemblance to a totalitarian dictatorship.

And it’s true. Overall I have had a great summer at work. The secretaries have been very supportive and patient. The attorneys have been kind and encouraging, curious about me and eager to share their own stories. I have felt completely welcomed into a strong, supportive community. I could write an entirely different blog on this alone.

After apologies and explanations were made, it was understood that this would be a learning experience for me and I would finish my last week of work.

Naturally, I was still horrified. I rode the max home in a dazed stupor and completely broke down when I got home. As melodramatic as it sounds, I wanted to flee the country and adopt a false identity. Or, if I couldn’t manage that, at least bury my head in the sand and slip around unnoticed for my remaining week.

But that’s not how to handle tough situations anymore, if it ever was. And in trying professional times, it becomes helpful to look to good mentors. So I called my aunt.  Aunt X is a manager at Company Y. (Sorry for this–I am never using proper names on the internet again). And after I spilled the entire story in one shaky breath, rather than telling me I was shit outta luck, we came up with a comeback, a plan of attack so to speak… for damage control.

You see, setting aside the irreverent tone and far-fetched metaphors, there were some basic observations and truths that I have noticed at my work. I think it is pretty unanimously understood that this is a hard time for both individuals and businesses. As a recent college graduate, no one knows this more acutely than myself, and as leaders of a large company, I am sure they do too on an entirely different scale.  With these financial difficulties, it is a given that certain infrastructural changes need to be made, yet oftentimes what goes unaccounted for are the consequences of such change.  And why not, while I’ve got the attention of the top leadership, communicate those observations in a respectful and positive light?

Because the truth, even when its tough, can be an ok thing. And even the bottom-rung temp who is just passing through can make a constructive contribution to a place that gave her a rare second chance.

While I would have given my face to never show it round there again, I met with the leaders individually. I discussed,  conscious not to over-step my bounds, some of the fear and areas of communication-breakdown I have noticed, and even went so far as to offer some suggestions for improvement.

They listened to me very earnestly and eagerly. This, more than anything, speaks to good management that will take the time to listen to someone in my position and have an open mind to look outside the box to search for solutions. They discussed with me in-depth the difficulties of being a manager, the financial troubles the company is facing, and how hard it is to keep a team intact amidst infrastructural change.

The problem is so much bigger than my post gave credit to, and at the same time, I am glad I didn’t just take it all back and roll over belly-up. I asserted myself, hoping to help my place of employment just as they helped me.

This experience, which has taken me to a sough of despondence and back again, has been enlightening not only to different styles of management, but also how unique and trying this time is at a corporate level. The least of the lessons learned: “be careful what you say on the Internet,” I have already learned several times the hard way. Somehow, I think it will stick this time.