An Open Letter (4)

To My Newly Ex- Coworkers,

Thank you for the lunch, and the cake, and the card - they were nice - and for the cash. The cash was really nice.

Thank you for understanding that I'm generally ravenous and need to eat lunch by 11am.

Thank you for not turning me in when you pop up over the cube wall and see that I'm blatantly reading the entire archives of dooce.com.

Thank you for foreseeing the happiness that would accompany my departure from this place, and not holding it against me. (I know you're jealous, and I think you should probably quit too.)

I know you all meant well.
I won't miss you.
But know - you'll totally be in The Movie.

Job Skills for the Modern Day Workplace

Having come to this position as a temp – and stayed here as a temp, technically, for nearly seven months now – I was never given an actual job description, per se. I was told to dress appropriately and to show up. Now I’ve been here for a while and have taken on a definite role within the department. A lot of that role seems to be about dressing appropriately and showing up, walking around the office with my iPod on, and solving simple computer problems for people who can’t figure them out themselves. But there’s more to it than just that, and since I’ll be leaving soon I thought perhaps I should begin drafting my own job description such as might appear in a future edition of my resumé:

• mauling envelopes
• transferring to voicemail
• making small, circular confetti
• manually re-entering the same information
• humoring/ignoring crazy, demanding, incompetent, or just plain irritating people
• attempting to refuse cheap birthday cake
• destroying many small forests, or maybe one large one
• stapling
• avoiding filing
• looking busy

Considering all the skills I’ve been developing, I can’t imagine I’ll ever have difficulty finding a job in the future. (Maybe next time I’ll show you my best cover letter, if you haven’t seen it already…..)

Ways to spend a quiet Friday in the office

• Watch videos of people you know doing stupid things. (Hot sauce, anyone?)
• Read online articles that are actually interesting but would probably get you in trouble for looking at inappropriate web pages. (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/04/mary_roach/)
• Read John Mayer's blog. (He is both intelligent and self-deprecating. <3)
• Play Scrabulous until the internet breaks and you have to restart your computer.
• Check the weather reports in all the cities you'd rather be in than the one where you are.
• Browse Craigslist for apartments you won't rent, jobs you won't apply for, and stuff you won't buy .... and think about how great it would be if you had those jobs with the attendant salaries, which would let you buy that stuff and live in one of those apartments.
• Change your AIM/gchat status message at least once an hour.
• Take off your boot and fix your sock that's scrunched up, then take off your other boot and adjust your other sock just for the sake of symmetry.
• Eat a delicious PBJ on rye at 10am and think bitterly of your friend who is probably just waking up and thinking about maybe going to work... or maybe not....
• Write blog entries.