Office Space Redux

At 2:15 on Tuesday we received an e-mail from our Executive Director. It simply read, “Hello. We will have a brief team meeting at 3pm today (Tuesday) in the conference room.” This was annoying on many levels, not the least of which is that I hate (hate) parenthetical notations like that. Like when people say “I would like to order fifty-two (52) of the pike variety fish tacos.” Are we too dumb to know what fifty-two is? Or 52? Do you just like typing? It is completely antiquated in the age of emails and also it's rather snooty. The other reason this e-mail angered me is because you can’t call a meeting 45 minutes before you want it to start! It’s just disrespectful to your employees. Also, I was really into a great game of internet Scrabble.


Nonetheless, all 5 of us grudgingly converged on the conference room, employees on one side, boss on the other. Dorothy, our executive director, had written on the dry erase board, “What is AOP?” Shoot. I really don't think I know this one.

As we sat, she smiled at us in that crazy cat lady way of hers that spells doom. Dorothy has a fervor for this company that never in my life will I understand. She gets here at 6:30 every morning. She has come in every weekend for the twenty (20) plus years that she’s worked here. She personally decorated the bathroom and on occasions such as these likes to have meandering meetings on no discernable topic. I think she sees herself as a combination role model, mentor and Hilary Clinton style tough gal. Her blinking jingle bell earrings betray her.

“I called you all here because I thought that we should do some mission building,” she began. “So—what is it that we do? What are we here for?” Everyone looked down. My direct boss began to write, seemingly taking notes, but when I looked closer I could see she was doodling her name over and over again. Thankfully, Dorothy called on our Membership Director. “What do we do? What purpose do we serve?” Dorothy was leaning back in her chair now, ankle crossed over knee, fingers folded into a steeple under her chin. If she had eyebrows, I feel certain that one of them would be raised. It was like she’d seen how this was done in a movie and was thrilled to be playing the part in real life.

“Um. Generally. What I…um tell people,” stammered our poor director, “Is that we are a membership association. Dedicated to providing services. For members.” I thought that was pretty good. I certainly couldn’t do better and as I chanced a glance around the table it seemed nobody else could either.

“Excellent!” Dorothy exclaimed in an oddly triumphant manner, at which point she launched into a thirty (30) minute monologue that I’m sure she must have practiced in the shower that morning. It was meandering, nonsensical, boring and hilarious.

“I’m like a bus driver,” she began. “And when I’m driving, sometimes I forget that I can’t be a passenger and when the passengers want to go see the biggest ball of string in the world I might pull over because I don’t want to be an ogre-boss because we’re a family but also we can’t have anyone on the bus with stinky feet …”and on she went. And on, and on.

And on.

I watched her as she hit her stride, gesticulating wildly, eyes alight with a fervor born of mission building. Slowly a guilty, uncomfortable sort of feeling began creeping over me that I promptly tried to ignore. A restless, anxious feeling that had been sneaking around my cubicle for months now. I was uneasy. I work here, I like to think I do a good job, but I’m incapable of caring about it. I’ve tried to care about it. I honestly have. Dorothy certainly cares about it.

“…and if we were on a boat maybe we could go fishing but it’s also important to check your sonar and gadgets...” There was no end in sight.

It’s not unhappiness lurking around my desk, more like uncertainty. It’s my quarter life crisis. The life crisis no one tells you about because it doesn’t result in sports cars or affairs with the pool boy. It’s the period after college and before babies when you realize that you have no idea what it means to follow your bliss, even though that quote was your mantra throughout those formative years. It’s the period where you realize that maybe your parents had it right after all—perhaps a job is just a job.

“…and a copy machine that collates and staples is important but if it doesn’t work properly then it is just junk and we’d be better off with that monkey we passed…” My boss had stopped writing her name and began writing, “What the hell?” over and over in a curvy sort of script. Everyone else was glassy eyed. I tried to tune out, thinking about my dinner and what I guessed would happen next in Twilight (spoiler alert— he’s a vampire and she's an idiot) But every couple of minutes that uncomfortable pang came back to me. Maybe my mom’s desire to be a mom and my dad’s desire to provide for a family wasn’t as antiquated-child-of-the-50’s-antifeminist as I thought. Maybe the fact that a job makes the rest of your life possible is what makes it blissful and meaningful? Maybe my career isn’t where my passion lies? Maybe that’s ok.

We were in there for about an hour, treated to more road trip metaphors and assurances that we could do great and good things for the doctors of our association. Over the course of the meeting it became clear to me that not only did none of us know what our association really does, we don’t know where we fit into the umbrella association above us, nor do we know what everyone else does day-to-day. It wasn't just me that wasted hours a day taking quizzes to tell me what Harry Potter House I belong in (Hufflepuff) or which Tim Burton character I am (Ed Wood).

For a while I was buoyed up by the comforting knowledge that I’m not the only one perpetually waiting desperately for 5:00 to roll around. But that comfort has slowly evaporated and prickly questions linger. Shouldn't I just shut up and be grateful that I have a job in times such as these and that my working life makes my actual life possible? And yet, am I really paying student loans so I can procrastinate on that mailing I need to send out? It somehow feels like a waste to spending my days sending certificates to members who don’t care. But what would I do instead? Probably no one will pay me, much less give me health insurance, to plan fun things to do with my friends. There has got to be more to me than this. God, I hope so anyway.

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. At twenty-seven, I’m told that’s a common feeling. This is a coming of age I didn’t expect. It’s a karmic kick in the pants. It’s a reminder that I still have a lot of growing up to do while the person I wanted to be and the person I am about to be duke it out. In the mean time, Dorothy is my bus driver and I have something to learn from her twenty (20) years in this association. As she so sagely wrapped our meeting, “We’re just in a tunnel, and none of us can see out of it but that’s why we have an office so we can get through the tunnel together and make sure we don’t scrape the sides of the bus too much on the way out!”

Moonlighting

He was too short to be a real rock star. Though not obvious at first, it didn’t take long to notice his five inch, electric blue, platform shoes. They weren’t there to mask his lack of stature, rather they embraced his height and accessorized accordingly. He was bald. He had shaved his remaining hair to make it look like a choice rather than an act of God, but the five o’clock shadow on the sides of his scalp betrayed him. As he sang he held the microphone directly above his head, up-turned face alive with passion and blue aviator sunglasses gleaming in the spotlight. Knees slightly bent, chest thrown out, eyes closed, he was every inch a pint-sized Bono, singing U2’s greatest hits with passion and fervor.


It’s been a month since I saw The Bloody Sundays (U2 That Can Play Your Party or Corporate Events!) and I’m still wondering about that Tiny Bono. I wonder what he does when he’s not performing in a cover band. I imagine him, practicing his Irish accent, working out new dance moves in front of his bedroom mirror, maybe singing into a hairbrush held aloft. Do his coworkers know that he moonlights as a cheesy U2 impersonator? Do his parents? How could one keep that a secret?

There’s no doubt about it, Tiny Bono was ridiculous. Yet, I found myself charmed by him. I am somewhat in love with his gusto! In love with the energy and honesty he brought to his performance. I am in love with the way he went all in and if he knew we were laughing at him, he didn’t care.

I have realized that I have much to learn from Tiny Bono. I wish I could do that. I wish I had the guts to moonlight as something potentially ridiculous just because it made me happy. We all have silly ambitions—those things we’d do if we won the lottery and could quit our jobs, or the hobby we’d take up if only it was not so absurd or impractical. Why must practicality always get the better of us? If practicality and pride would stay out of the way, I know exactly what I would do with my life. If no one were to find out what I was really up to, I know the career path I would follow. I, Erin Moore, would become a world famous romance novelist!

A romance novelist! What could be a more entertaining way to spend your day than to write those hilarious bodice rippers, replete with adventure, romance, intrigue and illicit sex with the stable hand? I would never leave my desk, concocting secret identities and kidnappings and heroines born to a life of privilege who fall in love with a blacksmith, forcing her to chose between the life she knows and the love she can’t live without! The adventure! The escapism! The wonderful absurdity of it all! Maybe Lifetime would buy the rights and turn it into a made-for-TV-movie starring Andie MacDowell and Rob Lowe! Maybe they would have a special marathon of my movies like they do for Nora Roberts. Maybe they would have introductions that feature me sipping a glass of red wine in front of a crackling fire, talking to the camera about the inspiration behind A Love Forbidden (He loved her desperately, but would it be enough?) the latest in my Strong Women, Strong Love Series.

Obviously, I’d have to come up with a pseudonym so that my mom wouldn’t know what I was up to. Maybe I could be Anastasia Petrov or Molly O’Shandy? Obviously, my heroines would be strong-willed women ahead of their time, who only want for a man strong enough to handle her! Obviously, I would have to pick up a few cats and grow my hair down past my butt.

It would be the most fun and embarrassing job in the entire world. Embarrassing. The word stops me short as it always has. This is why I’ve never taken to my eagle feather quill to weave a tale of deception and adventure. It’s embarrassing. My friends, who are so well-read and intelligent, who have always challenged me to know more and learn more, what would they say if this was my calling? My sisters, who are so smart and practical and insightful, what would they think of me? What would my parents say to a book that contains pirate sex?

Tiny Bono has opened my eyes to my own hypocrisy. Can I know that something is silly and ridiculous and do it anyway? Is it better to know how terrible the genre is and yet become a part of it? Or to know that I love it, yet abide by a strict no literary junk food diet? Can I still believe that words and books have the potential to change our lives and open our minds, and yet spend my days writing stories that have no depth or socially redeeming qualities? Can’t someone else challenge our minds while I provide escape? Having always been a firm believer in the simple, incalculable value of escapism, I think I could step into this roll quite nicely. Escapism is why I love Jimmy Buffett so much and cooking shows and Harry Potter. It would be an act of kindness to try and provide this distraction to others.

If Tiny Bono can do it, I can too! If he can strap on his giant shoes and matching shades, I can face my friends and family as someone who honestly likes this crap. The real me. Today I begin. Today, I answer the calls of the swashbuckler and con-artist and headstrong woman trying to succeed in a man’s world, for they are all waiting patiently in my imagination.

Today is my coming out. Mom, Dad. I love you and nothing has changed. I’m still the same Erin I was before, I just…I just write romance novels now. I know it’s not what you dreamed for me, but it’s who I am and if you loved me before you can love me now! Can you love me now? Because if you don’t then I don’t stand a chance at my high school reunion.

How strange. How perfectly ridiculous that a five foot man in five inch platform shoes singing twenty year old hits can inspire me to embrace who I really am— just your average assistant meeting planner who dreams of publishing books that feature a half naked man on the cover. Thank you Tiny Bono. Perhaps in tribute my first novel will feature a woman who falls for the lead singer of a cover band, believing him to the real thing. Can she love him when she discovers the truth of who he really is?

False Alarm

This morning I woke up feeling terrible. Swine flu. It has to be. The sweats, nausea, headache, blurry vision. I knew it! I knew public transportation would be the, if not death, decapacitation of me. Ugh why do I have to be sick on a busy week like this! Hmm. This has been a busy week. Last night was Trivia Night, so that must make this Thursday morning. Trivia Night. Nausea. Sweats. Huh. False alarm. Not, in fact Swine Flu, but hangover.


I am one, classy broad.

In case of emergency

Our building handed out "Go" bags.  In the case of terror attack, natural disaster, or an Oprah-induced rampage, we are to take these bags with us to help us get to safety.  The contents are as follows:
1 garbage bag
1 painters mask
1 map of downtown Chicago printed 5 years ago
2 small bandaids that I've already used thanks to uncomfy shoes

Really?

Making Good Choices

Today one of our vendors sent in donuts.  I declined the first offer, knowing that I do not need the extra sugar/fat/calories.

Two hours later I rewarded myself for my discipline by eating half a donut.

I hope this is not, in some way, a metaphor for my life.

Mamet Writes Anne Frank? What the F@ck?

I guess Disney is making an Anne Frank movie to be written by David Mamet? David “Every Other Word Is A Curse and No Sentence is Complete” Mamet?


Oh dear god.

I think this is how it will go and an apology to those offended by the F-Word. It wouldn’t be Mamet without it:

Nazi 1: Are they...

Nazi2: Are they what? You mean. What? Are you trying to say that they are...you know...in there?

Nazi 1: You mean the attic?

Nazi 2: Yeah the uh...you know...fu*%ing...What I mean to say is, they are up there. There. They are there!

Nazi 1: So, do you?...I mean...should we?

Nazi2: Yeah. I think we must.

Nazi 1: Um..Yes. fu*%ing in the fu*%ing attic where there's… You know. The fu*%ing Jews. Up there and we have to do this thing which rips the shreds of my, you know, my humanity. It rips my soul, my fu*%ing soul, out of my body, this thing and I just...

Nazi 2: What are you saying? I mean I understand. That is to say I comprehend but I also…We have to. We have to get…

Nazi 1: …the Jews, you mean? We have to get…

Nazi 2: Yes, yes, the Jews! The fu*%ing Jews in the attic! Let's fu*%ing go get them up the… you know…

Nazi1: Yes. Up there. Let's go... I mean it's not like I like this...this thing.

Nazi2: No, no, i don't either! fu*%, but you know.

Nazi1: Yeah. i mean we have to.

Tossing My Cap in the Air

Casey and I call it the Mary Tyler Moore feeling. Sarah calls it “Suddenly I See” from that KT Tunstall song. Or it can be The Sound of Music when Maria is running around singing about the hills being alive and is just so happy with her lot in life that it doesn’t even matter that she’s a crappy nun. Or the shopping montage in Pretty Woman. Or The Little Mermaid when Ariel has her first day on land with Prince Eric. It’s the feeling that you are so lucky to live where you do and so happy to be in this fantastic place, that you just want to throw your cap in the air and spin around, smiling like an idiot.


I get this feeling often, particularly in the summer. When I’m riding the brown line downtown and see that beautiful skyline. When I see those funny hipsters riding giant bikes down Damen. When I sit on my back deck and can smell the grills from neighbors on all sides. When I’m waiting for the train and see my favorite street performers—three guys with a guitar and a chicken shake, singing Sam Cooke covers. When I saw that guy carrying his parrot around. Even on the daily commute, in a crowded train, looking at the wonderful variety of random, diverse and bizarre people I come in contact with.

At moments like these the city feels like your quirky great uncle, full of life and weirdness and when I’m walking to work and look up at the buildings and see the commuters and the tourists and feel the energy of the city, I really do want to toss my cap in the air, throw my arms wide and spin in circles.

Today was not one of these days.

It’s a Thursday in July and so Michigan Ave is bursting with tourists stopping to take pictures of the Disney Store. I saw three separate groups of little girls who wore clothes identical to those of the American Girl Dolls they were holding. I nearly got hit by a bus because a group was clustered to watch a contortionist in a green leopard skin leotard stuff himself through a tennis racket outside Crate and Barrel. It took me twenty (20) minutes to get to the end of my block because befanny-packed travelers from Omaha were ogling the Coach store.

I was also waylaid by those evil solicitors for Greenpeace/Feed the Children/Aveda Salons. Oh, how I loathe them. They work in two’s and three’s like Velociraptors with clipboards. Their annoyingly cheery demeanor would not be out of place were they checking me out at Trader Joe’s or serving me mozzarella sticks at Friday’s. At least then I’d have something to show for it! Cheap produce or a tasty appetizer. But no. All I get is mad and I ignore them when they shout, “you look like someone who cares about the environment!” Damn hippies.

Along with the slow-poke tourists and volunteers who hunt in packs, there is another creature in this upscale shopping Mecca—the uber rich. In town from Glencoe or stopping by from their condos on the Gold Coast, these are the types who have personal trainers, nutritionists and are often featured in glossy magazines at the most recent Gala benefitting the arts association where they are a Board Member just like their mother before them. These are the pretty people. The slow moving people. The put together people. The people not trying to get as much done as they can on their lunch break. Because they don’t have a lunch break. Because they don’t work. Because they don’t have to.

Jerks.

The Magnificent Mile Thursday-Sunday is a warzone and fills me with a rage I don’t experience anywhere else in the city. The kind of rage usually reserved for Cubs traffic. Today’s casualty of battle—my ego.

I needed a new bathing suit and had put off buying one as long as possible, but an unfortunate Frisbee-related incident at the beach convinced me it was time to bite the spandex bullet. I went to Eddie Bauer. Eddie “Middle-Aged-Mothers-from-the-Suburbs-Shop-Here-for-Vacationwear” Bauer. Three sales associates called me Ma’am. I got ma’am’d three times. In a row.

One associate tried to push me towards their miracle suits that ‘helps with sagging’. Is it time to worry about that already? Surely not! Surely, I don’t have to start thinking about that until I’m 45!  Or have given birth!

I bought my regular, non-miracle suit, with a skirted bottom, and then fought my way across the street to Forever 21. I asked a sales associate if they still had any beach cover-ups this season.

She looked confused and sputtered, “are you shopping for yourself?” I half smiled as I replied in the affirmative.

“Oh. OK. Sorry,” she sputtered. “I thought maybe you were shopping for a little sister or something.”

Awesome.

I don’t normally have rage/age/body issues. And I don’t usually hate it here. And I know I’ll shake it off by the time I get home. All I can say is there better be some Sam Cooke while I wait for the train. Or perhaps a deep dish pizza.

Lament for a New Bride

Dearly beloved, we gather together today to celebrate the memory and mourn the passing of Erin Moore’s single life. And grieve we must, for gone forever is our happily incredulous enemy of Valentine’s Day. Farewell, sweet scorner of the overly affectionate. You shall be missed, most worthy adversary of couple’s nights.

So wide-eyed was she, so happy and optimistic about her life to come, that our dear Miss Moore was the last to realize that existence as she knew it was nearing the end. The first of her friends to go, she might have passed blithely from this life to the next in a haze of bridal expos and cake tasting, had it not been for the dire warnings of these most loyal friends. Eyes fixed unblinkingly on where she was going, it took Erin several years to grasp the concept that she has become part of a couple now, no longer part of a group.

May her most dear Urban Family love her still, though she is no longer of their realm. I hope that you might find comfort in the fact that she will no longer borrow and then never return your ‘going out clothes’, for where she has gone, there is no need for backless shirts and impossibly low-rise jeans. But know this—she is looking down at you from her two and a half bath on a quarter acre yard.

We mourn for never again will girl’s night be an easy careless affair, but instead it shall be relegated to mildly patronizing e-mails about needing ‘girl-time,’ glossing over the fact that He must work late that night anyway. Her weekends will no longer be spent sleeping it off, but rather shopping for coordinating wall sconces and throw pillows. Kiddie pools will now serve their intended purpose in her life, no longer housing cans of Old Style on a summer’s eve. Nevermore will her checking account suffer overdraft fees in thanks to $5 martini night at Bowman’s. Rather, she will begin to budget for new countertops and her vocabulary will expand to encompass hitherto unknown phrases such as ‘Credit Score’ and “Home Equity Loans” and “but it’s in such a great school system.”

Yet, let us not grieve what she is to become, let us instead celebrate who she was—a girl happily eschewing relationships, scoffing at the drama they caused in the lives of otherwise reasonable people. May her formerly dateless commiseration stand as testimony of the good friend that once she was, before we lost her to china patterns and joint savings accounts.

Condolences to you, young gentlemen of the city, for certainly your heartaches are the most acute, your desperation the most pronounced. Your hopes have been brutally snatched from you, your dreams dashed against the cruel alter upon which she stands. Although Erin has traveled from whence you cannot seek her, may you heal in the comfort of others. While their embraces may ease the pain, you shall never forget the muse who is taken from you forever. The irrevocable hole in your heart may never close, but my prayer is that you might learn to live with it, and love and heal.

Farewell, dear Erin. May you find solace, for Beyonce sings for you no more. May you always remember when life included blissful, wistful bemoaning of your boyfriendless state. May you never seat your single friends at the kids’ table. And may you enjoy the greener grass of the suburbs as you await your friends who, one by one, are sure to join you in the sweet hereafter.