A recap of my gig

My assignment is done! Finished! Over!

I did not enjoy it. Here's why:

The office was quiet. Too quiet. There were about 12 people total on staff and we all sat in our offices, huddled over our computers and papers, barely talking to each other about anything--even work. The young woman who was in the office next to me was very sweet and she came into my office one day and chatted for about 10 or 15 minutes. The uber-boss, a guy named Joe, walked by my door as we were talking and without looking at us, walked into his office and closed his door loudly. My coworker turned and looked at the door, then looked back at me with a nervous expression and said, "Uh.. I'd better go." What message did Joe send to her with his loud door? What happened in the past that a door slam without so much as a look in our direction could make her jump? I can only imagine.

I hardly ever interacted with Joe, but I could hear him on the phone yelling at a family member fairly often. I don't know if it was a wife or an ex-wife. I get the feeling that Joe has a few ex-wives out there. When he wasn't yelling at a family member, he had big fights with another coworker--a woman named Sally who has worked there for a long time. The way these two fight with each other leads me to believe that they were at one time romantically involved. They swear, they talk over each other, they bring up past problems and use them against each other. They were clearly in love once.

One time, Sally walked into Joe's office as he was getting off the phone with his wife/ex-wife. Here's their conversation:

Sally: What was that about?
Joe: I don't know. She wants to get Jamba Juice.
Sally: Well, great, fuck her. I'd love to get Jamba Juice, you know? Some people have to work. I'd love to go get Jamba Juice in the middle of the day.
Joe: I know. She wants Jamba Juice. What are you gonna do?
Sally: Well, whatever. I just want to show you these pages.

Is this a normal conversation between two coworkers in an office setting? I do not think so. And that was the atmosphere of the office. Deathly silence peppered with profanity-filled fights.

Me, I kept my head down and tried to do the work. But even that was annoying, thanks to one editor in the office who apparently was taught that the way to make a sentence the most grammatically correct is to make it the most awkward. He puts all adverbs toward the beginning of the sentence. He has a deep and abiding love of the phrase "that is" and he inserts it everywhere he possibly can. He believes that a whole range of words have one and only one meaning and you must always use that one word to convey that one meaning. He takes perfectly good articles written by perfectly good writers and he dutifully crushes every last bit of life out of them. He is the embodiment of why writers hate editors.

Take this sentence:

You can play on the swing and you can also play on the slide.

He would change it to:

You can play on the swing and you also can play on the slide.

Why would he change a natural-sounding sentence that is perfectly grammatically correct? WHY??? It probably learned that you shouldn't split an infinitive (which isn't correct but some people think it is) only he got it into his head that if you shouldn't split an infinitive then you shouldn't split any compound verbs even though it's perfectly fine to split compound verbs THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT AND IT SOUNDS A WHOLE LOT BETTER. But he is so concerned with following some arcane rules that aren't even rules that he forgot that he's editing for people.

If you'd like to read another rant about splitting compound verbs, check out this blog post written by a former president of the American Copy Editors Society:

http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2009/06/damn-you-ap-stylebook.html

And in case you're still with me (because clearly I'm just ranting for myself at this point), let's look at another example. Let's take this sentence:

John Smith, vice president of Acme Group, tells his clients to read the fine print in a contract.

He would change it to:

John Smith, who is vice president of Acme Group, tells his clients that they should read the fine print that is in a contract.

When I read the first sentence, I feel like I am on top of it, like I've got the information I need and I am ready to find out what the next sentence will bring. When I read the second sentence, I feel autistic.

Okay, I'm done ranting. It wasn't all bad, but I am happy to be done. I'm back home just in time for spring break, though, so I won't have much time to myself for another week.

But I hope I'll have much more time to blog!

Bad word! Bad, bad word!

Greg called from Iowa and we were talking logistics, like when he's heading back, what work he's finishing up, etc. Greg said that Lee told him he was going to run to the bathroom and soon after that he was going to leave. "I wonder if he already left, though," Greg said, "because he's been in the bathroom a long time."

So we chatted and Greg wanted to talk with Ellie. Ellie hates talking on the phone to anyone, but she's slightly better about talking when the phone is on speaker and she doesn't have to put it up to her ear. So I put it on speaker and Greg said hi, I miss you, how was your day while Ellie grunted and gave a few monosyllabic answers. We gave up in about two minutes and then Greg and I chatted some more.

Then Greg said to me and also to Ellie because he was still on speaker phone, "Well, either a muskrat died inside his ass or he left." And I paused for a minute and said, "You're still on speaker phone." And he said, "oh."

And then I lost my mind and laughed hysterically for about five minutes while Ellie watched me in bewilderment because she didn't even hear what he said. After Greg and I said goodbye, Ellie was desperate to know what he said and wouldn't let me off the hook. I didn't want to be crude, but I also didn't want to lie, so I said, "Well, daddy said a bad word. I don't know if you know it. It's ass. Don't say it. It's a bad word. But that's what he said."

"Yeah, I know that word. Someone wrote it on the bathroom wall at school," she said.

"You're kidding!" I said. "That's terrible!"

"I told the teacher. They wrote the word asshole," Ellie said. "They wrote a-s-s-h-o-l-l."

"It's spelled h-o-l-e," I said.

A new post!

Well, I didn't think I'd be able to write too many posts while I was working, but I didn't expect to write NONE. But the last few weeks have felt pretty relentless. I think if I enjoyed the job more, the whole process would be easier. But this job is quite draining. I am glad I only have one more week of it. Plus I'm still trying to help my dad get set up with doctors and all, so that's how I spend my lunch hour (lunch half hour, actually). Then there's dinner and getting Ellie to bed and laundry and whatever else there is to do before I pass out on the couch. Greg has been an amazing help, but he has a lot of work to do, too, so let's just say I'm tired.

In happier news, Ellie is well on her way to becoming a communist. When she was little, she used to point to buildings and parks and places and call them "the people's." We would drive along in the car, and she would pipe up from the back seat, "Look! It's the people's store! Look! It's the people's house!" And Greg and I would answer, "Yes, comrade, it is The People's store."

Well, now she's become obsessed with learning Russian. She answers all yes or no questions with da or nyet. She's recently expanded it by answering all requests with da spasibo or nyet spasibo (spasibo means thank you). And Greg is teaching her goodbye (poka) and hello (privet), along with a few other words. We expect that any day she'll start ranting about the rise of the proletariat.