I needed space for my editing books at work, so I decided it was time to clear out the dust-covered TV and a box of yellowing, homeless printer trays. The decision didn’t come easy as I felt the TV lended a certain playful atmosphere that countered the very droll Accountant-filled atmosphere surrounding me. And while I wasn’t as fond of the box of printer trays, my feelings about them morphed over this past month and half. Instead of the yellowing computer hardware perception I originally held, they transformed into an art exhibit of sorts. The sharp, angular plastic hiding in the shadows of a table—bending this way and then suddenly that way—was a tribute to the lost world of the UW’s inner workings, and by extension, the lost world of any well-established non-profit organization. And I’ll be honest: having junk surround me was comforting if only because it reminded me of working at Hillel, which remains my favorite job to date. But in the end, I felt space for work-related materials was more important than dusty, unusable furnishings.

Just three feet away from my cubicle is a closet crammed so full that the door is permanently held open by a monstrous mess. The mess has grown sporadically for so many years that it reaches upwards with spindly appendages—much in the same manner as a plant with too little light. Inside the closet doorway—at the bottom of the mess monster—is another TV. I felt this was a most appropriate place to stick my TV and printer tray art exhibit, so I did just that. After some twenty minutes of puzzle-packing my desk-space refuse, I stood back and enjoyed the fruits of my labor. Balanced at a sixty degree angle atop of the mess monster was the box of printer tray limbs. Wedged at the very bottom of the mess monster was the TV, where it snuggled happily next to the other TV so that they could easily breed like fervent rabbits and make new baby TVs for me to sell.

After successfully match-making the TVs, I forgot about my adventures with the mess monster and attempted to accomplish something during my remaining three hours.

This morning Bill, the manager of the division where I reside though am not technically a part of, peeked over my cubicle wall and said, “I need to ask you a quick question.”

Delighted by the human contact, I excitedly looked up from my project and yelped a resounding “Sure!”

“I see the contents of the closet have grown…” he started.

“Oh, yeah. I moved the TV and a box of printing trays in there yesterday,” I said.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, we’re going to do something about this closet because it’s gotten a bit out of hand. And, I just wanted to know the origins of everything… But it seems the closet has gotten… a bit more full since yesterday,” Bill said.

“Oh, sorry. Is there somewhere else I should put all the junk?” I asked.

“No, it’s fine. I was just surprised by the appearance of three TVs.” he said.

“Three? Three TVs?” I jumped up and looked over into the closet. There, in front of my eyes, amidst a mess monster much bigger in size than anything I contributed to the day prior, were three TVs. My TV, the original mess monster TV, and a third TV about half the height of the other two and wedged right between the happy TV couple.

Holy crap! The things in this office do breed!

When applying to a company for the first time, there’s nothing more disconcerting than seeing the message:

“You may have already submitted your resume to our website.

Our recruiters occasionally enter applicants off of the Internet or from other recruitment activities…”

Even more disconcerting is what happens after verifying that the name and primary phone number they have listed for you is, in fact, your name and primary phone number: You enter your account and immediately click the option “Previous Applications”. After scanning the list of jobs you applied for, you realize that you apparently applied for two copywriter positions in December— about the exact time you were lazing around at your boyfriend’s family’s home during the holidays and not applying to any jobs because you had already accepted one. To add insult to injury, those two jobs you didn’t even apply to have “REJECTED” written in glaring red words under “application status”.

Damn recruiters— not asking for your permission!

For the first time in a long while, it’s sunny outside. No rain. Today is a clear, crisp mid-winter day with deep blue skies. Dry pavement, warmed by sun.

You hurry on your way, dodging people and gapping sidewalk cracks as you huff up a busy pedestrian street.

When you reach your destination (the post office), you continue dodging people inside the dim building. Sliding quickly across the grayish once-white tiles, you fumble with the keys to open your PO Box. You bend down and begin to awkwardly pull out a catalog and what looks like two cards. The big card is from your mother’s friend, who still sends you holiday cards for every major and not-so-major holiday. You have no doubt in your mind that she sent you a Valentine’s Day card, and you feel a twang of guilt for not sending her one.

After sliding the catalog this way and that, you finally retrieve your mail, though the second card falls to the ground face-down. You pick it up and turn it over. The brightly colored Christmas stamp is the first thing you see. Your eyes sweep across the card, stopping at the recipient name and address neatly printed in blue handwriting. That blue handwriting is yours. It was a card addressed to your Great-Aunt Barbara—the one you call “Aunt Barbara”, even though she was your mother’s “Aunt Barbara”. Angled over the blue ink characters of her last name are the neatly printed letters that read “DECEASED”.

You pick apart each of those letters, confused. Confused at the letters. Confused at how your own relative is dead and you didn’t know.

I wanted to write something funny, but I didn’t want it to sound so cute that the person reading it thinks: “what the hell is this crap?” and then hits the delete button on their email program. Instead, I went with the same old generic cover letter that everyone else sends. Frankly, I’m not surprised they haven’t called back.

Maybe I should have tried the “what the hell is this carp” technique. Maybe I would have a job now. Or maybe not.

It’s a mystery I have yet to solve. At first, I thought the solution was simple, like in a movie; “Duh, the murderer is dude with the shiny black shoes and hair-piece!” But as week followed week, I realized a malevolence beyond my comprehension was the cause.

Every morning, they’re waiting as I unsuspectingly weave through the maze towards my cubicle. When I pass through the doorway, they greet me in their open and inviting way, expertly feigning innocence. They’re the masters of deception. They lull me into their siren song, convincing me to pluck one of them from the box and take a bite.

And how can I resist? Each one has the slight silken sheen of quality chocolate. Each one is formed into an irregularly perfect square that promises hand-made mastery. Under the color-stripping florescent lights, they gleam together in dark brown beauty. They sing promises of delectable sweetness.

But as soon as I take a bite, the spell shatters.

They’ve betrayed me. Instead of the wonderful See’s Candy-like succulence promised to me, they taste of plastic and staleness. As the rest of the day passes, I glare at the box accusingly each time I walk by. With every glare, I notice another chocolate has disappeared. By the end of the day, just as the accountants clear out in a mad dash for freedom, the now empty box of lying chocolates disappears into the garbage can.

Good riddance, I happily think to myself.

And yet, just as they inevitably deceive me into eating one of their tainted kind, the chocolates always reappear the next morning. There they are again, lined up in the white box that was thrown out the night before. Each one with the slight silken sheen of quality chocolate. Each one formed into an irregularly perfect square, gleaming in their dark brown beauty.

My only solution to this mysterious and sinister force is that the chocolates contain magical properties that allow their crumbs to breed together and create new, full-sized chocolates every night. Those full-sized chocolates then work together in moving the box from the trash to the conference table so they can continue their reign of terror the next morning.

In the women’s bathroom at work:

• The stalls are 70’s orange.
• There’s a dusty desk fan shoved in the corner of the handicapped stall.
• The sinks are designed for midgets and also have a ledge immediately over them so that all non-midgets can’t see where the faucet is.
• There’s three different types of signs in the bathroom: the one on the inside of every stall door, the one above the “sanitary box” in every stall and the one on the mirror. All three signs lecture users on various aspects of keeping the bathroom clean and go into extreme, disgusting detail on what keeping the bathroom clean means.
• Taking into account the faded paper and peeling tape, a rough estimate on the approximate age for all of the signs in the bathroom would be somewhere between three and five years old.
• There’s always a lingering, foul smell in the air after anyone over the age of thirty has used the bathroom within the past three hours. Almost everyone in the entire building is well beyond the age of thirty.
• A milk carton has been chopped in half and placed under the middle sink to collect water that drips from the plumping.
• There are a total of five different faucet handle styles for the three sinks.
• A waiting room chair from the 60’s has been placed right next to the door for— well, for waiting, I imagine.

Had I been looking in a mirror this morning, this is the face I most likely would have seen when Tyler called to tell me that he made a mistake— his procedure is next Monday, not this Monday:

A diet of only liquids and a bottle and a half of laxatives for nothing.

Dear Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Holdings, Inc.:

One sure sign that a product of yours is not up to my high quality standards is if I mine. When I mine your bucket of ice cream, I chisel my spoon deep in the the frozen mass of fat and sugar in search of the elusive chunks of gooey, goodness advertised in excess on the front of your package. If a product is particularly lacking in gooey, goodness, then what’s left after my mining exhibition is merely a carton full of bland, boring ice cream.

If I had wanted just ice cream, rather than ice cream packed with cookie dough and chocolate chips, then I would have bought a carton of plain ol’ ice cream. But I didn’t want just ice cream. I wanted the falsified depiction of vanilla ice cream packed with not only cookie dough, but also free-floating chocolate chips that your “Nestle® Toll House® Cookie Swirl” flavor promised.

And you took your advertising ploy one step further; you stamped two golden seals on the package, suggesting that this worthless product won a “Best Taste Award” issued from the American Culinary Institute. And because your marketing ploy was that good, I purchased your product.

But I was horribly disappointed. After mining your carton, I found only one solitary chunk of cookie dough— a fraction of the amount found in the standard cookie dough ice cream that your company also produces.

My extreme disappointment in your product, coupled with the bold packaging made me feel cheated. Later, I researched the ACI’s Best Taste Awards and realized that you received a general award for all of your ice cream products rather than for this particular flavor. But you were sneaky, carefully choosing which packages to emblazon the award seal on so it appeared that those actual flavors received the award instead of your entire company.

So, this is why I will shy away from your products in the future. But also because I have always preferred Ben and Jerry’s ice cream over yours, and here’s why: they have mastered the art of gooey, goodness-filled ice cream and you have not. By skimping on the gooey goodness you advertised in excess on your packaging, you’re lying to your consumers and missing what’s most important. For Ben and Jerry’s, they follow a basic prinicpal; they regard ice cream as a mere lettuce leaf bed upon which the main course resides. With their philosophy, the ice cream is a base that the mouthwateringly gooey goodness of ingredients require as a glue to unify them into one food product. In other words, the base of ice cream is not the entire product.

Note: This is a draft of a letter written almost exactly one year ago that I still intend to mail to Dreyer’s. I’ll let you know if I actually get off my lazy ass and send it.

According to Tyler, drinking laxatives is like drinking pus.

Because he will have anesthetics during his “procedure” tomorrow, I have to pick him up from the hospital. I’m preparing for the worst. I remember the one time in my life I had anesthetics, and believe me when I say that I would never wish my worst enemy to have an encounter with me then. Fortunately, I had a mouth full of gauze that prevented my parents from understanding the profusion of obscenities targeted their way.

Well, I’m off to eat the remainder of today’s breakfast- a Gordito’s grande burrito. And if the hapless Tyler ever comes out of the bathroom alive and feels up to “eating”, it’s warmed vegetable stock and lime jello (if it ever solidifies) for him. Tomorrow, we’re going to a Taste of India for dinner, so he will hopefully regain some weight.

Or: All of the things I was either too depressed to write about, too lazy to write about, or too scared to write about

I graduated and lost my cozy, fun, and completely awesome student administrative assistant job.

I was unemployed for 5 months. For the first week, it was like a vacation. After that, it was like running through Dante’s 9 circles of Hell. During this period, there were a lot of really awful interviews on the scale of the Texas Chain-saw Massacre. There were also not nearly enough interviews- you know, the normal kind that balance out the chain-saw hell kind. A job was offered and then retracted after a day of work, followed by an exchange of many poisonous words when my promised paycheck never arrived.

I became horribly depressed.

6 months after graduating, an envelope came in the mail. It had two diplomas in it, which made me feel rather prestigious. Sadly, the feeling only lasted for a minute or two.

I took a two-month contract job where I copied and pasted cell phone help articles for Verizon Wireless’ new website. I did a lot of re-coding of horrid HTML and some light editing and rewriting. Sometimes, I actually wrote an article from scratch, which made me happy. I had lots of nightmares about cell phones and Blackberries, but I was sad when the contract ended because I hadn’t managed to save much money. The job did make me much happier, despite the long commute out of Seattle, the nightmares, and the boring work. After 5 months, having a weekly paycheck was just that exciting.

I started an editorial certificate program, hoping that it would help me get a job. Instead, it became another expense that I can’t afford.

During my two-month contract job, I applied to over 140 jobs. Administrative, part-time, temporary- even a position that would clean up monkey poop at a research facility.

I went to New York, using a plane ticket I received as a graduation and going-away present from my awesome coworkers at my student job. While there, I stayed with my good friend, Dan. I had lots of fun, and spent some money. I also received a lot of calls for interviews while away. Then, I was so inspired by how good my friend’s and his girlfriend’s lives were, that I freaked out about my stale life.

I came home from New York and realized I was too poor to apply for graduate school this year. I also missed the deadline for the JET Program by one day.

I interviewed for a number of jobs- contract, part-time, full-time, temporary, and permanent. Only one of the many interviews went poorly, but it wasn’t on the scale of the Texas Chain-saw Massacre. I did, however, encounter a lazy recruiter for a dream job who squelched my chances at a second interview that had been offered- all thanks to her laziness.

I spent the holidays unemployed and trying in vain to receive unemployment benefits. I later found out that I couldn’t receive benefits because I didn’t earn enough work hours while a student.

I was offered a part-time, temporary position at the UW two weeks before Christmas. I took it, and had to wait until the New Year before I could start working.