Lights Out

Today at work the weirdest thing happened. (for those of you more up to date on my personal life, no, it was not the incident involving me falling down in the middle of the cafeteria at breakfast or me being asked out by the beady-eyed 30-something who runs the security desk and me promptly rejecting… ) It happened just a few hours ago. I was diligently working on.. oh who am I kidding, I was reading Eonline.com’s fascinating article about Lindsay Lohan’s recent break-up and the massive, world-wide repercussions it might have, and right when I was scrolling past the picture of her and saying to myself “I SO do not look like her!” all of the lights in the building went out. I immediately freaked out, but I seemed to be the only one. I started hopping around in my cubicle going “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” while all I heard from my co-workers was the subtle clicking of mice and shuffling of papers.

I started to think I was missing something, which is often the case in this office. Then I noticed I had a new email, and as I opened it to see if it said the world was ending and this was why we had a power cut, I realized, “wait.. how can I be on my computer if there was a power cut?” So the email was from Joe McNobody from the maintenance department saying that some generator in Nowheresville, Mexico had happily decided it had had enough of it’s work day, and for no apparent reason had shut itself off. So the whole county had been told to conserve energy.. and being the energy company, we were the first to comply. Ironic? I’m now sitting here in the dark looking at bank accounts for electric companies. This is too weird.

And I later found we were really the only ones in the whole county who actual conserved any energy. I think all the other tall buildings down here in downtown were pointing and laughing at our dark building and the fact that we actually took there conservation warning seriously, saying things like “the ENERGY company is dark! Haha!”

So apparently all of my co-workers had read this email a few minutes earlier and were completely prepared. They acted like this happens every day, whereas I thought it was Armageddon. I can’t believe they’re actually making us work in the dark, so I’ve decided not to. If anyone says anything I’ll be like, hello? It’s dark! But now I think it’s kinda cool being in an office in the dark. Power cuts are kinda fun, and voluntary ones are even funner! The lights have now been out for two whole days! People get kinda weird in the dark though… I just overheard my old-lady co-worker break into a verse of “Strangers in the Night.”

The only annoying thing is that our company also felt that having 8 elevators was just too damned efficient and helpful, so they decided to cut that number in half to conserve more of this energy stuff. So about a thousand people end up loitering in the lobby around 7:59 every morning, waiting for the one elevator that actually seems to work to come down from the executive floor, where it is inevitably being used to deliver eggs benedict to our CEO to eat in his well-lit office.

It was getting pretty testy down there in the lobby… Our building has some underground parking, so you can go either up or down from the lobby. Often an elevator will appear that’s only going down.. and there’s a rather difficult process involving looking at the lighted arrow outside the elevator to see if this is the case. Apparently, working in the dark has made certain people in the office go completely insane, because one of these elevators appeared this morning, and about 20 of the massive crush of people waiting for an “up” elevator got into the down one! It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while… all these seemingly intelligent people press the buttons for all their floors, and then, since no one pressed any for below the lobby, the elevator just sat there. I couldn’t help but laugh at them.. they all stood there, clutching their briefcases and staring up at the floor ticker above the door (the usual elevator stance) only the doors didn’t close and it didn’t move. So instead, the whole lobby got a nice show and a quick lesson in “who in the office gets really dumb in a crisis,” They eventually all got out one by one and went to the back of the line in shame.

The only great thing that happened because of the lights being out (besides the many watts of electivity that we probably saved, which may have kept a few poor families from freezing to death at night .. whatever) is that I got to go home early! At like 3:45 the sun started setting and my boss came by and said, “you can go home.. it’s too dark.” I was so excited! So I beat all the traffic and got home super early, which left me plenty of time to try and figure out how I could tamper with more generators and keep the lights in our office off for good.

This makes my thinking bones hurt

The latest news on me and the gym: Thanks to my yoga inclined friend Alex, I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of that strange body part that my pilates instructor keeps mentioning. All this time, I thought she was saying “sit-baums”, as in a fancy name for some part of your body. It’s somewhere on your lower back and I thought it was actually quite a fancy, German-sounding name for a body part I generally use to lounge on while watching TV. But I wasn’t completely sold, so I went to my friend for some clarification.
It turns out that it’s actually called your “sit bones”, meaning the bones you sit on! I was horrified! Eww! I don’t like thinking about my bones during class! You can’t be listening to Enya and drifting off to a land of contentment and then be reminded that the only way you’re able to do this pose is thanks to the calcium deposits your sitting on! And couldn’t they have thought of a more sophisticated name to give a body part? I mean, sit bones? What grade did they have graduate from to come up with that one? You sit on it… it’s a bone.. therefore, it’s a “sit bone”? I mean, should I start calling my fingers my “pointer bones” and my feet my “stand-on bones”? And then maybe our legs could be our “walking sticks”. So from now on in pilates, I will continue to sit on my “sit baums” and imagine that some European immigrant who landed a job at the body part naming factory came up with that interesting name. That will be my silent protest. Well, silent except for this blog, which I will now post in defiance by using my pointer bone to press “publish”.

Suzie Recruiter

A few days ago I had the exciting task of going back to my alma mater to be a recruiter for the next round of eager young accounting students. A fact most people are probably unaware of is that accounting students during recruiting season are completely crazy. And a year ago I was one of them. You’ve got to understand, accounting students are the super-competitive, irritating business types that you see on The Apprentice, only they’re smart and calculating too, because their accountants. Therefore, recruiting season on our campus is full of gossiping, back-stabbing, and mental breakdowns. Seriously, it’s crazy, and I’m impressed that I survived with my dignity, not to mention a job.

But this year it’s all different for me. I get to put on my fancy name badge and stand behind a table with our company’s banner and try to make my job sound as cool as possible. I suddenly have so much power and I was mentally hiring and firing people at will. Hmm.. that kid over there used to live in my dorm and definitely puked in the hall once. He’s out. And that girl there just took the last brownie, she is so done. But actually I think I’m a good recruiter. I’ve been in their shoes and I know what it’s like to be scared and not know what the heck the company does that you are supposed to want to work for. So I tried to sell our program as best I could, all the while with this kid staring back at me like a deer in the headlights, mostly thinking about the test they have in statistics tomorrow. Every now and then I would call over my friend who was recruiting with me to tell some kid I was talking to about the internship he had. Big mistake. I seemed to be the only one trying to relate to these kids. I would be like, “So tell him what it was you did when you were an intern..” and he would say something like, “I worked in SES with the Director of Commodities… mostly doing work with compliance for Sarbanes Oxley for the LES division. And that new SEC legislation really helped us with the LIBOR, you know?” OK, even I have no idea what you just said. He would totally confuse them. They would stare back at him and then blink a few times and then be like, “I can add 2 and 3. Do you do much of that?” So I tried to make our job sound as simple as possible.. I’d be like “I work in a big building and play with numbers and go ‘type, type, click, click’ and then go home. OK? Does that sound like something you want to do?” Then I would force my newly printed business card on them and send them on their way.

What really made me nervous about the whole thing was the little pep talk that our head recruiter gave us before the kids came. He was giving us tips on what to look for and suddenly I became very aware that I had these kids futures in my hands. But I was now very curious to hear what it was that this company looked for when hiring, mostly because I wanted to know why the hell they picked me. He told us that we’re looking for someone that has really good grades and job experience, but who has to be much more than book smart. He said we should look for someone with a “winning personality” and someone who’s a joy to talk to. And that’s me? Aw, shucks. I kept waiting for the part where he was like, “But, if you can’t find anyone like that, our basic policy is to hire someone who’s name rhymes with ‘weather’.”

I came back from the event feeling like I really had convinced no one that a job here was good. I only really liked two people, one of whom I couldn’t read their name on their nametag because it was stuck on their jacket in such a way that it would have made me a pervert to look at it for too long, and the other one who I remembered being called “Phillip” only to find that there was no one named Phillip there that day. So I got back to my desk the next day and resigned myself back to my job of typing and clicking, when I suddenly saw an email from one of the students I talked to! It was from a girl thanking me for talking to her about our program. Wow, that took some genuine thought and effort and really made an impression on me! This girls on her game! Too bad she used Helvetica font. I hate that. She’s out.

Kerry should have won for not dying

So the elections over and Kerry lost. After crawling out from under the covers a few hours ago, I’ve realized that much of the news media has overlooked the real story of the campaigns – how did Kerry survive campaigning?!

I mean, he’s OLD! For those not in the know, he’s 61! And he’s probably lived solely off ketchup for the last 20 years. He’s not a sprightly young thing that can afford to jet-set around the country and never sleep. Not only does he have to stay awake all the time, he has to give speeches and stuff and always be on. If it were me I’d be like, “Um.. yeah, I really want to answer your question about my plan for the economy, but I’m really tired. If I just went over here in the corner for a minute and took a nap, could you ask me again later?”

I bet by the time third debate rolled around, if I were killing myself on the campaign trail like he was, I would have some nasty cold and irrevocable dark circles under my eyes, and every now and then I’d have to use my 2 minute response time to hack up a lung or two. There’s no way a normal person could have kept it together like that! Not to mention I wouldn’t look all tan and groomed like our boy Kerry. He must be so pumped full of caffeine that now that he’s lost the election, we won’t see him for a while because he’ll be deflating and coming down from a year long medicated high.

On the day before the election, Kerry flew to six different states to campaign. Six states! In ONE day! In a related story, I had trouble getting to both the grocery store and the dry cleaners.

Considering I rarely get out of my pajamas until Saturday evening, I think a run for the White House just isn’t in the cards for me. I stay in my pajamas as much as possible. I’ve been known to wear my pajamas to work under my real clothes.

Not that I really needed convincing, but I don’t think I could be a big campaigning politician. I like my sleep, I like my pajamas, and I like to pretend that my Tivo not recording Will & Grace is one of life’s real hardships.