The Bolshevik Revolution

Have you ever thought about how important alcohol is?

Well, I have. Especially after the meeting I just sat through. Once I can summon the energy, I'll tell you about it. Unfortunately, it sounds like my job - or at least my title - is changing a little bit.

But for now it's Friday afternoon, I just wasted three hours of my life, and my will to continue is nearly gone.  I came home early to finish the day lying on my back, typing on the couch. As I pulled my laptop out of its bag, this came with it. And I remembered what was waiting for me in the closet, smelling of earth and staining the inside of a big glass jar a deep purple-red.

A beautiful jug of beet-infused vodka! I wish I could say I came up with that recipe, but a friendly bartender wrote it down for me.

Oh - and you should know - if we're talking cocktails, I'm a girl who's more into the savory than the sweet, so if you're the kind of refined individual who enjoys sipping on a Riesling or draining a Cosmo at the end of a long day, I'll just recommend that you move on. In fact, I'll tell you where to go. 

Friday Riddle Day

Want to know what my next post will be about? Well, solve this riddle and you'll find out:

Burning without fire,
It makes you a liar.
At morning's humble start, it sways on the land;
By evening's rich finish, it flows from your hand.

The Interview

When you're a poor grad student, almost anything seems like a good idea.

Case in point: I used these criteria to decide which potential employers I would interview with during the second year of my master's program:

• Will interview me
• Will pay a salary

It's rules like that that get you a job like this.

Anyway, here's how my interviews with my current employer - Advantovate - went:

Interview 1: The Test
I walk into a room where a small gnome of a man sits at a desk, his back to me, eating a large ice cream sundae. Sun pours in the room from the window in front of him, and its warmth has started to melt the dessert. Large, white pools fill the bottom of the dish. He never greets me or turns, but continues to spoon the sugary treat into his mouth. As I watch him draw up the latest spoonful, I see a giant drip form on the spoon, angling for his dark suit jacket.

"Watchoutit'sgonnadriponyou!" I blurt out, hoping to warn him.

Pausing, but without turning around or making eye contact, he says evenly, "Thanks. You can go now."

The ice cream drip splats onto his sleeve. I turn and hurry out the door.

Interview 2: The Chase
A cheerful, roundish man greets me in the waiting area, saying his name is John MacGill and asks me how my interview with Arvo went. He's going bald, but in the way of men who aren't quite ready to admit it to themselves or the world, he sports a combover. He takes me back to his interview room and asks me general questions about myself, exhibiting a disarming lack of interest in my answers, his eyes roving about the room and skating over his open laptop screen. Then we move to the case question, which lays out a typical type of project I might work on. He runs through some scenario about a country that's hoping to start a virtual dog training facility.

I'm taking notes, so I don't notice him get up. Looking up to ask a question, I see he's gone. I scan the room, but there's no movement, and there's no sound. I sit for a minute, unsure what to do. Then I spot him, stretched tall in hiding behind a support pillar an arms-length or two in front of me. He's given away by his girth, which he can't suck in enough to conceal.

I step toward him and peek around the pillar. He blinks at me, surprised, and then darts across the room to crouch under the desk, but sighs when he gets there because he knows he's caught.

He stands back up and brushes himself off. We continue with the case.

Interview 3: The Meal
Cold, angry waves of dislike roll off of the narrow-faced man in front of me. I think his last name might have been Rille. He either disagrees with or reacts skeptically to everything I say as we discuss the case, some type of supply-chain optimization problem about a fertility bank.

Finally, he stops me mid-sentence with a wave of his hand and says, "So I see on your resume that you enjoy cooking. Well, if you could invite any person or animal - living or dead - to breakfast, who would it be and what food would you serve?"

Although I'm ready for almost anything at this point, almost anything doesn't include this, and the question throws me off-guard. My mind spins blankly as I consider the options.

I choose to stall for time. "Well, I guess a person is an animal, so maybe I should just be thinking about animals?"

His eyes narrow. "Oh, right you are about that."

But in an instant, I can see I've botched the entire thing. Of course, I never had a fighting chance to begin with. "Uhhh, a, uh, um brontosaurus and p-p-p-palm fr-fronds," I manage to stammer out.

Interview 4: The Foil
Exhausted, I sit down in front of a man who says his name is Mike Pritchard. I think we have a conversation about my previous job. I can't tell if it's my weariness or the sheer force of his bland normality, but seconds after we talk, I have no idea what exactly either of us said. At the end of the interview we shake hands.

And that's it. Back in the waiting area, everyone else has left for the day and the lights are out. There's just a single stale oatmeal raisin cookie sitting on a white china plate on a non-descript coffee table in the middle of the darkening room. And someone already took a bite out of the cookie. I let myself out.

Only later (and by accident) do I learn what my results were that day:

1. Part A: Fail. Part B: Pass
2. Pass
3. Fail
4. Pass

It doesn't add to my self-esteem to know that even in this ridiculous situation, I only got a 60%.

About Me

This is my desk at work:

Before I go any further, let me answer the obvious questions:

• Yes, that's dinner you see there
• I know Easter was almost two months ago
• If you haven't tried Li Hing Mui, you haven't lived

Moving on, this is my desk at home. Look closely and you'll catch my elegant dining table in front too:

I spend most of my waking hours in one of the two places. As a consequence, I’ve gained 15 pounds since coming to work at my company five years ago.

Here’s the thing - and I’ve actually thought about it, even drawing schematics and thinking through the specific wording I would use - I could try to save myself. I could figure out how to construct a time machine. I imagine it as a glistening aluminum box, covered with electrical wires, pneumatic hoses, and pressure gauges.

I would set the clock on my contraption for the terrible, fateful year that I joined my firm. My past self would be lying on the couch around midnight, watching reruns of Law & Order SVU when I’d burst into being, terrible to behold, covering the living room in a shower of sparks. I'd wear some kind of futuristic get-up, to lend my future self an air of credibility. Maybe something silver. Probably boots. Definitely a jumpsuit. I’d grab my past self by the shoulders, yank myself/her up off the couch, and try to shake some sense into us.

“Look, you idiot” I’d scream, “If you don’t get off your @ss, you're still gonna be in exactly the same miserable pathetic place in 2012!”

The thing is, I know exactly what would happen. After the initial shock and the uncomfortable silence that followed, my past self would look down in confusion. She/I would say, "I recognize those boots ... " and try to curl up on the couch again. So I'd leave. Get back in my silver box and go home. My past self would stew over it instead of sleeping that night. But by morning she/I would have accepted her/my fate.

Now this might surprise some of you, but it doesn't me.

There’s a psychological concept called learned helplessness. Here’s generally how the classic set of experiments (Martin Seligman et al.) went:

Poor Dog 3 has learned that there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop the painful experience, so he might as well just suffer through it. 

"Okay, that's a horribly depressing story", you now might say, "but how exactly did this happen to you?"

Funny you should ask. I've been doing some research over the past few weeks, and I think I might have an idea ... well, hang on - unfortunately I hear someone coming, so that's a story for next time ...

The Beginning

What’s that? I think I saw it yesterday evening, but I’m not even sure any more.

I was at work. Miserable. Walking down the hall with Tom, pretending to listen as he started expounding on all the changes the team needed to make to the deck before tomorrow's meeting. That's the thing about Tom- it always takes him ten minutes to find the right euphemisms to say "These slides are complete nonsensical crap." He also tends to forget that he tells us exactly what to put on the slides - normally writing out each bullet point word-for-word on the whiteboard in a completely illegible hand. Hours later, the team will puzzle over it - "Do you remember what he was saying there? Does that say 'deepen our understanding' or 'leper on Unitarian'?"

Right then, out of the corner of my eye I saw that ... thing ... there behind the glass door of the phone room on my right. Suddenly everything felt completely clear and completely terrifying. Except - and this sounds crazy, but I'm going to add it - the thing looked like it was wearing a navy blue pinstripe Jos. A. Bank suit and talking into a Bluetooth headset.

By the time I turned my head to look at it straight on and blinked my eyes, it was gone. I just saw the empty hall, a string of dark offices, and Tom. I don't even think he noticed that I had stopped listening to him. He's probably used to it. He squinted at me and handed me 116 slides with a bunch of scribbled notes and stains from a Potbelly sandwich on them.

I glanced at one of them, which was new, and handwritten. It had all the hallmarks of a Tom slide. Tons of new data we didn't have, confusing granular breakdowns of information, and waterfall charts. No client in their right mind would want to see a slide like this.

"So you're comfortable making those changes before the 9 am meeting tomorrow?" He asked. It was 8:30 pm.

"Sure," I said. It's a testament to my complete lack of engagement with my job that I was able to take it in stride - both the changes and what I saw in the phone room. Things that happen at work only dance around about 4% of my consciousness.

Anyway, at this point, I've been up for two days straight, so I’m probably not thinking clearly anymore, but it seems like either (A) I'm losing my mind or (B) there’s something really, really wrong. Either way I thought I'd write it down. If it’s option (A), then all of this will just be good entertainment. If it’s option (B), then people should know.

Wait. I need to tell you who I am before you make the mistake of hiring me.