When your home is a couch and your future is uncertain at best, it�s difficult to be phased by any of the normal stress-inducing issues inherent to the middle-class. The bourgeoisie problems quickly shrink in perspective, showing the distance between the stress of starting a new job and failing at life in general.
Up until this point, I�d lived my life bouncing about the financial safety net afforded by my mother, a trampoline ride between air-buoyed independence and gravity�s clutching grip. I had thrived, grown and withered under the shadow of middle-class blas�, existing as a guest in the house of semi-wealthy disinterest. My independence, a paradox financed by her money.
But soft, I wear the pauper�s clothes, I call the beggar�s needs:
Feed me. Pay me. Employ me pleas.
Be this spade a spade, then truly I am poor.
Desperate for comfort, for security, for a Nike in the door.
I am but a peasant surf bereft of my maternal patron saint. Her back hath borne me thus far, but my feet had been long due the path and the journey. With the iron standing lukewarm, I readied my hammer and strolled into work on September 3, 2001.
Cue opening credits, Laverne and I were going to make it on our own.
The Administrative Director seemed pleasant enough, and our greeting was marked by smiles and paperwork. Time would show the paperwork to be fleeting, but even a year later, the smiles continue in insincere perpetuity.
In retrospect, so few things ever change.
There was some rushed sense of frenetic urgency that marked my arrival, as if I were some minor celebrity on a lecture circuit, Elaine Boozeler on a college tour. Flesh was pressed and people I�d never met before were feigning both interest and familiarity as I shuffled through the small array of staff members. Soon I came to understand that the sense of rushed urgency was actually authentic urgency as a class upstairs was eagerly awaiting my arrival.
It seemed that the previous occupant of my office had a history of tardiness, and a Straw on the Camel�s back had formally requested his termination. As I was intended to be his backup, the class had been waiting idle for nearly two hours and the natives were growing restless.
With false pleasantries aside, I rushed up to the room and jumped headfirst into a rat�s nest of cable. My on-the-job-training, previously planned for a leisurely two weeks, had shrunk to a simple statement.
�Here are the machines, we�d like to start in fifteen minutes.�
I rewired every piece of equipment in the room, traced every cable, and re-routed every connection until I understood exactly how everything was ordered. I did this in ten minutes, all the while thinking to myself how vastly overqualified I was.
Time would only prove what a dramatic understatement that was.
I quickly taught myself the ins and outs of the job, then spent my lunch half-hour eating tax forms and fine details with the administrative staff. I took note of the equal termination clause attached to my employment forms while they discussed what I should expect in terms of weekly hours.
Twenty. Woo hoo.
They�d hired someone they intended to be my supervisor, but she couldn�t start until Friday. She would receive the bulk of the work and I would maintain my part-time status until things picked up. I would also be eligible for health insurance if I started working full-time, but my cost out-of-paycheck would be slightly over $200 per month.
It apparently the benefits package comes postage due.
Sucking it up, I kept telling myself that it was a start. I told myself that I was being a good worker, a team player, that they�d notice how I started a week before my new supervisor. They�d notice how I trained myself and worked independently without any hand-holding along the way. They�d realize that I bent over backwards to help them out of a jam by covering all the classes of the guy they just fired.
I�d be rewarded. Right?
As I write this, I�ve just recently passed my one-year anniversary with a complete and total absence of fanfare. I�m also getting exactly the same wage I was this time last year.
In retrospect, so few things ever change.
My new supervisor would be arriving Friday at 11, at which point we were to discuss the schedule together and inventory the contents of our room. When Friday finally came, Scarface (as I shall call her) finally made it up to the room at a little after noon. Things went downhill from there.
I was quick to notice how one side of her face was divided by a long horizontal scar, starting just below her nose, and when you added the color-coordinated jiggy sweatsuit and the sunglasses that seemed to be glued to her face, she appeared to be more puppet then person.
In short, inarticulate yet commanding words, she gave me the cliff notes of her work history and then began to break down the schedule for the fall semester. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up almost immediately, but they completely jumped off my body when we started to inventory our resources.
I realized instantly that she was clueless when she began to misidentify items commonly used in our field. A choral condenser microphone was dubbed �a bendable mic�, while the associated phantom power supply was called �some kind of light switch�.
My mind was officially blown when she claimed that a small light bulb was �some sort of fuse�. I suppose in an odd twist of technical semantics, the common light bulb is a fuse, but that certainly is not it�s primary intended purpose. They also generate heat, but you wouldn�t bake cookies with them.
Or...I suppose you could actually. Damn you, Easybake Oven.
Anyway. At this point I was well aware that this woman was my intellectual and professional inferior, but when she claimed to have previously held the job of Broadcast Video Engineer, I knew her to also be a liar.
Her ignorance of simple electronics embarrassed me, and my mind was already racing to find ways to get her fired. Stupidity I can handle, but outright lies must be punished. I will not be subservient to an inferior who has lied in order to be my superior.
The natural order must be enforced.
I knew that Monday morning was the first day we were expected to work together, but I�d already decided I was going to come in late with a plausible excuse. I realized that with her total technical ineptitude, she wouldn�t be able to operate the equipment on her own, much less figure out how to turn everything on.
Without me there to cover her ass, she would most certainly sink under the pressure, and I felt it was important that the administrators discover her glaring absence of skill on their own.
In our conversations about the future of the position, the head administrator mentioned that one of the most important aspects would be the complete upgrade of the production inventory. They expected to be making many purchases soon, and they wanted a complete forecast of expected needs.
With that in mind, I put on my smile Monday morning, stepped on the train at 8:30 and headed off to the largest supply store in Manhattan. I took a gamble and didn�t call work ahead of time, but any frustration over me not calling would be mitigated by the evidence of off-site work. Scarface should certainly be expected to handle thing on her own, even if I personally new that wasn�t the case.
So for the next two hours, I strolled around the store collecting pamphlets on every item and piece of equipment that we might be interested in purchasing. Price sheets, model options, catalogues, etc. Once I had everything covered, I made my way back to work with a small library of product information.
When I strolled in at slightly after eleven, a familiar rushed sense of urgency seemed to meet my arrival. The head administrator perked up when she saw me and quickly rushed out to question me.
�What happened, I thought you were supposed to be here at nine?�
I sheepishly held the stack of brochures in front of me and told her that I was at the store all morning, doing product research for our expected purchases.
Perhaps she�d just become so used to crappy excuses and rampant tardiness, but I swear she sighed relief when she saw the evidence of my work.
�[Scarface] never showed up this morning.�
That, I was not prepared for. I told her I had no idea why she wouldn�t have come in, since we�d discussed the schedule last week. I was hoping she would screw everything up without me and then I�d just come in and save the day, but it seems that my careful planning was thwarted by tardiness.
The administrator thanked me several times for all my hard work and then I rushed upstairs to begin the class.
At lunch I learned that they�d been calling her all morning without any sort of response, and until they got a good explanation, I�d be covering the classes full-time until further notice.
