Would You Like Some W(h)ine with Your LJ?

[dawn_felagund]

Lately, I've begun to wonder if the people around me are really as big of asshats as they seem or if I am just thin-skinned and hypersensitive. It just seems like the people around me are so unbelievably rude, and I am no longer able to tolerate it. Oh, I used to be good at tolerating rudeness: I "worked in food" for six years. Hungry people are crabby people; you get used to it or you get out. Lately, though ...

Take today. I had to file a detainer, so I called the detention center to confirm and, lo, their number had changed! So I took down the new Records number and new fax number, sent off my detainer, and then emailed the supervisor of the unit that puts our warrants into the computer to let her know that she could remove this one; that it had been served via detainer. Since I know that she also calls detention centers a lot to verify incarceration and file detainers, I thought I'd save her the trouble of having to figure out the new numbers, as I'd done, and sent them with my email.

She writes back: "We had their new numbers on file for some time now."

Wouldn't it have been enough to simply type back, "Thanks!" or even to say nothing at all? Why the effort to make me feel stupid just for trying to be nice and save her a little work? (And furthermore, why didn't she inform me of the change when it occurred, since it apparently has been "some time now" since they changed the numbers?)

Yes, I know how petty and stupid this is, which is why I wonder if it's me and not the world. In truth, I have been very crabby lately. It comes with the time of the year: I'm stressed because of the holidays, I'm exhausted, and I'm cold pretty much every moment that I'm awake. Right now, I'm dealing with a terrible glare from the setting sun on my monitor, but I won't get up to close the blinds because this is the first time that I've felt warm for more than a few minutes in ... well, weeks, probably. Ever since "winter" started (and yes, I know full well that winter doesn't actually start for a week yet, which is even more depressing). So I'll lean at an awkward angle whenever the cursor gets to the far right half of the monitor and deal.

Anyway. These little things just annoy me more and more the older that I get. And I'm not old! I'm 26! That's far too early to be jaded by humanity. Believe it or not, I used to actually like people. I chose to change from studying biology to psychology because I found the people that I worked with--customers and coworkers--so fascinating, back in my day at The Piece. If I hadn't graduated in the worst year for unemployment (and, therefore, by association, grad school admissions) and ended up stuck here, then I probably would be getting ready to graduate into a life of listening to and treating people all day. Now I think: Ick. Maybe it wasn't wholly bad that Bush fucked up the economy and cut funding for higher education, eh? (And there you have the misanthropic optimist! Weird, eh?)

These days, I think that I would be perfectly happy as a hermit, save my husband and my Goldens and maybe (occasionally) a friend or family member who also counts as a friend.

Well, that's all the time I have to whine today. It's almost time to go home, and I have to shut down all of the equipment in my office and unplug it because they're messing with the electricity tomorrow and are afraid of power surges. Crawling on the floor under my panel furniture: joy. Anyway, I suppose that this post officially marks the start of winter for me, in the emotional sense, soon to be followed by depression, profound lack of inspiration, and regret that the least-busy time of the year for me, when I could be über-productive, is about to be squandered on moping and self-pity.

I love winter.

Comments

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

I bet it's part you and part the rest of the world. You strike me as an incredibly idealist sort of person who holds the world to admirably high standards. As you grow up and become more sure of yourself and your values, your expectations for other people grow stricter. You're bound to notice more rudeness and be more disappointed at what you see. Kind of poetic in a way -- your best qualities are what cause you the most frustration in your daily life.

I think that part of it has to do with being 26, too. It doesn't matter that you're married and a two-Golden mommy; people keep seeing you as still a junior member of society. You've got the brains and enough wisdom to see people's pettiness for what it is, but you don't yet have the authority or the rest of the wisdom to do anything about it. One of the nicest things about coming into your prime is that there will come a moment when you realize that you have the personal gravitas to say, "I can't be having with this sort of thing," and you'll be able to put that into effect.

For me, a lot of it came with my M.A. Suddenly, I had a master's degree! I was a Master, and I had the (slightly) grand(er) title of "Ph.D. student." I was advanced enough in the world that most people stopped seeing me as some sort of dilettante and my words began to carry more weight. Of course, my face, for some bizarre reason, still looks about 25, so I should amend that to say that my words carry weight everywhere except the liquor store, where they still card me.

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you for your comment here--and my apologies for taking so long to reply. :) I think you hit the proverbial nail on the head in a lot of regards, as often you do.

I am an idealist. (Duh, right? ;) And rudeness irks the hell out of me because, for the same amount of effort as it takes to behave rudely, a person could behave considerately and yet, maybe, have a positive effect on the world instead of the opposite. So people like the upstair's supervisor drive me batty for the misery that their mere existence seems to bring.

I'm also "blessed" to look young for my age, and I am already the youngest person at the new office. When I was introduced around, I got comments like, "Oh, we hire interns now?" and "She looks like she's still in high school!" which I know people didn't mean nastily--both people to make these comments have been two of the nicer coworkers at this new place--but I'm sure reflects the attitude that a lot of people have: a young female employee who looks like she's still in high school must be 1) really dumb and 2) not to be taken seriously.

Oh, and some people still insist on referring to me as "Mr. F____'s secretary," despite the fact that 1) we have an office secretary already, 2) Johnny the Boss has corrected people on this numerous times and publicly introduced me as "Dawn the research analyst" on several occasions to put a stop to it, and 3) my duties in no way lend the impression that I am a secretary. Yet I suppose young, blond, female, what else could I be, right?

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

I have a RL friend who also looks incredibly young for her age -- when this friend got married, she and her wife both wore matching gowns, which would have been lovely except that they both looked like they were twelve years old. You look at the picture, and you don't see two lovely brides, you see what looks like two flower girls. This does not help my friend in her quest to become either a mother or a clinical psychologist.

Yet I suppose young, blond, female, what else could I be, right?

I wonder if it's that no one really understands what a "research analyst" does, and their minds edit it to "secretary?"

a young female employee who looks like she's still in high school must be 1) really dumb and 2) not to be taken seriously.

And that is why I did not hesitate to throw my weight around on my job at The TV House from Day One. If you're 25, look 21, and have a weird title like "librarian," you just gotta step up and let those "producers" and "associate producers" know that the technical definition of "library" is "fiefdom," and that the "librarian" is "liege lady of the realm," one who is not afraid to throw around "scare quotes."

Gotta go. Little Sister Pony is begging for attention. (She's 26, acts 5.)

[dawn_felagund]

This does not help my friend in her quest to become either a mother or a clinical psychologist.

That's one of the crappy things about being female, I think. Even if you're a male with a baby face, you can grow a beard and people understand, "Oh, okay, he's at least hit puberty." Short getting gray highlights, I don't see a similar solution for a woman.

My cousin (a year older than me) once went to her daughter's elementary school to pick up an order from a fundraiser. The woman who was handing out orders gave my cousin a simpering smile and said, "Sorry, honey, but your mom needs to come and get your sister's order," and she had a helluva time convincing them that she was "mom!"

I wonder if it's that no one really understands what a "research analyst" does, and their minds edit it to "secretary?"

In an era where every "menial" job title gets edited to some kind of engineer, I could understand this if I didn't work for the State. But State jobs (in Maryland anyway) only come with a limited number of titles that are then numerically defined as to how far one has progressed in that particular title, and each title (and numerical designation) has pre-determined job duties and requirements. So secretaries are "Office Secretary X" and it's a matter of office etiquette that one is very careful to call a person by that proper, official title because it often designates who answers to whom. So it's not like a normal office where a boss wants to make a secretary's job look nicer so calls it a "research analyst," but the person is still responsible for answering the phones, making copies, and keeping the coffeepot filled.

A Research Analyst for the State of Maryland does statistical analyses and interprets research and requires a bachelor's degree with at least nine credits in stats and research methodology. This is true of every Research Analyst in the State of Maryland, and every Research Analyst makes the same amount of money too. But having such a rigid system (though a pain in the ass when debating the finer points of whether So-and-So is an Office Secretary 2 or 3) does mean that there's really no way for a person to say, "Oh, 'research analyst' must be a 2007 way of saying 'secretary.'"

And that is why I did not hesitate to throw my weight around on my job at The TV House from Day One.

Yeah, being buddies with the now Assistant Executive Director has certainly kept me from being abused to a great deal. Everyone had in their minds when I started at the new office that I would fill in for the Office Secretary when she was out, and that notion was corrected right away without me having to say a word. I am careful in setting boundaries. I do not mind helping people; I do mind doing for people. (I had to be careful to remember the "for" in that last part there! :^P) So if someone comes in and needs copies and the OS isn't there ... sure, I'm happy to show them how to use the copier. No, I am not going to do it for them. It's not my job, and I'm not going to do menial work for people with the same educational background as me just because I'm young and female. Somehow I doubt that if Bobby was sitting at my desk (and he's the same age as me) that they would expect that of him.

I've been abused plenty in jobs in the past. In fact, part of the reason that my job now is becoming so overwhelming is that I am too helpful to the Warrant Officers ... but it's usually a matter of doing something for them or expecting that it won't get done at all. If I'm suffering from a 100% increase in the warrants we receive from when I started there four years ago, and all I do is the background research, then I know they're overwhelmed doing the full investigations and driving all over Maryland to check addresses.

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

Even back when I was a wee receptionist, I threw weight around. One of the editors, years after the fact, remembered his first encounter with me. He'd come in for his job interview, and had to fill out some form and leave it with me. He kind of filled it out half-assed and tried to wander away. I would have none of that, and reached out and grabbed his wrist to make him come back and finish the form. He was impressed, and said that he'd never met a receptionist with quite so much of a spine before.

This is probably why I was receptionist for only six months before being transferred to the library, where I could go about building my queendom in peace and quiet.

[dawn_felagund]

That's awesome. :^D That was one of the things I loved about being a kitchen manager: It was "Dawn's Kitchen," and I got to have things done how I liked them done. I used to leave "love notes" for the other cooks about what needed to be done. Everyone's favorite was the time that I left them a reminder that knives needed to be cleaned and sanitized every night so that when I opened the kitchen the next morning, I could see my smiling face in them. Sometimes, I think that but for the fact that I was friends outside of work with many of the other cooks, they all would have hated me.

And I got to be evol to the servers. That, of course, meant ensuring that the servers did their jobs in such a way that they didn't make the kitchen staff's job any harder, which was immensely satisfying after years of putting up with their BS, first in making desserts, then as a cook.