YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS CONFUSED.

Sometimes, my daily interactions with human beings leave me soul-crushingly annoyed and exasperated. My favorites are the ones who have clearly never been to the campus before, and come to me expecting me to be the Ultimate Authority on All Things Campus Related (which i basically am). They ask me where a particular office is, where they can find a particular person in that office, who they can talk to about a particular issue, and they expect me to be able to provide an immediate, correct, helpful response. And 999 times out of a thousand, they are justified in this expectation. After all, i was a student here for 4 years, i spent two years as a student worker in the Admissions office, and i have been working here full-time for just over a year, while simultaneously taking graduate courses here. I know this place pretty well, and i am a receptionist/administrative assistant. By definition, people with that job title know very nearly everything worth knowing about their workplace.

So i am not annoyed by the confused people who come to me, seeking wisdom and guidance. That's what i'm here for. What i am annoyed by, what makes my blood boil, what makes me want to slap the mustache off of the face of the gentleman who was just in here, are the people who come in confused, and try to somehow transfer their confusion to me, as if they know everything about what they are doing and i am trying to distract them from their ultimate goal by giving them campus maps, direct extensions, and a guided tour of the building.

The gentleman who was just in here asked for a particular person (we'll call her Susie). Susie works in the Facilities department, the offices of which are located in the student center. He had come to the main administrative building, which most people do, since it is the first building you see when you enter the front of the campus. It also has big white pillars and huge front steps, and looks all official and important, like a capitol building or a library.

I told him that Susie worked in Facilities, and that her office was in the student center. I was about to offer him a map or directions, when he mentioned Human Resources, and said that Susie had asked him to meet her in the HR office.

"Oh! Okay. Well, she doesn't work in HR, but that office is in this building. Susie works in Facilities, like I said--"
"She directed me to meet her in HR," he snapped.

Let's review what happened here: he came into my office, gave me no information about who he was or what he was doing here, and asked for Susie in HR. When i (gently and enthusiastically and immediately) explained that Susie worked for Facilities, he became irritated and insisted that Susie had directed him to HR. Which she may well have done; maybe he's a new hire and needs to meet with HR for paperwork. However, he asked to meet with Susie in HR, which is highly unusual (Susie rarely takes meetings, and doesn't work in HR), so i tried to clear up his confusion. But he continued to insist on his own rightness, as if certain that if he said enough times that he was meeting with Susie in HR, i would remember that that was the secret code and would give him Oreos and take him to the meeting. When i began directing him to the various offices and people he was looking for (all two of them), he continued to insist on meeting Susie in HR. When i began (again) directing him to HR, he started interrupting irritably, asking questions that i hadn't yet had the chance to answer. "It's on the second floor. You take the elevator--"
"Where is it?"
"If you take the elevator, it's on your left--"
"Where?"
"As soon as you exit the elevator, turn left and you'll be there."

He left irritated, and probably still confused. I stayed behind, secure in the knowledge that Susie works for Facilities, that the HR office is on the second floor to the left of the elevator, and that his mustache looked stupid.

Reason #15 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

I live with all girls. I have three roommates, and they are all female. So who the hell bought fucking single ply toilet paper?!

Don't Call Us; We'll Call You

A girl came in today to fill out an employment application for summer work in our office. She was reading through the "Special Skills and Training" checklist and got confused by some of the skills listed.
Girl: "Filling? What's that?"
Me: "Um . . . Do you mean 'filing'?"
G: "Yeah. What is that?"
M: "It's putting paper away. In files."
G: "Oh. How do I know if I have that skill?"
M: "Have you ever had a job where you had to file things?"
G: "No."

*pause*

G: "What's 'attention to detail'? What's that mean?"
M: It means that you notice when things are wrong. If something has been moved in the office, or if something is wrong in a document. Do you notice when something is wrong?"
G: "Yeah, I guess I could do that."

*pause*

G: "What other skills should I put?"
M (in my head): Not interview skills. (aloud): "Anything that you know how to do."
G: "Oh. All right."

*pause*

G: "What's 'organizational'?"

The Second Nerdiest Thing I've Ever Done

I've spent the last month or so obsessively reading the MarkReads reviews of Twilight, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as the MarkWatches reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So when Mark announced that his first ever tour, "Intensity in Ten Cities", would include a stop in Boston, i naturally RSVP'd on Facebook immediately.

None of my friends were available to go with me (translation: no one else wanted to spend three hours at a table of strangers just to talk to a relatively obscure blogger and a bunch of MMRPG-playing basement-dwellers about Harry Potter), so i decided to go alone. At the last minute, interest was so great that Mark reserved a room in a Hilton near the original location.

I walked in the rain to the train station, rode into Boston, walked in the rain to the hotel, and sat in a room full of strangers for three hours while we talked about Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, and similarly nerdy topics. We also read aloud from terrible novels (like Knight Moves, a time-traveling erotic novel that has only seen the light of day because the author owns the publishing company), and acted out particularly-poorly written action scenes in very bad Harry Potter fanfic ("Harry pulled Draco away from Ginny as Hermione pulled Ginny away from each other.")

Afterwards, a sub-group went to a vegetarian/vegan diner, where i ate my first meatless burger (chickpea and mushroom) and vegan ice cream (coconut-based vanilla). It was all delicious, although there is simply no good substitute for ground beef. Shut up, turkey burger. There were fourteen women and Mark, all sitting around one table. At one point, M and i wanted to discuss an upcoming event in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but since Mark is currently watching that series and has a VERY strict no-spoilers policy, we couldn't talk about it. So we settled for acting out an elaborate pantomime of the upcoming events and our feelings about them. As i sat across the table from M, using my hands and facial expressions to tell her how excited i was to see Mark freak out about THAT ONE THING, it struck me that i had never been in a position quite like that one before.

In fact, the only time i have ever done anything nerdier than i did that night was October of 2001. The first Harry Potter movie came out that November, so while people were aware of the characters, they weren't yet instantly recognizable. This did not deter my siblings, Agelseb, and i from making our own Harry Potter costumes. One of my sisters wore a Sorting Hat costume made of (clean) garbage bags and paint, and i dressed as Hermione, even carrying a massive copy of Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible for added realism. So, yeah.

It's tough being wildly attractive.

So because today is Valentine's Day, and because i have to look nice for work/look sexy for my boyfriend later, i am wearing black lace tights.

And because i am making him dinner, i needed to pick up some fresh ingredients today.

On my lunch break, i went to the grocery store. As i was headed for the checkout, a woman with a small child stopped me.

"Oh. Mygod. I love your tights."
I laughed nervously. "Oh! Um, thank you!"
"No, seriously. You look hot."
"Oh . . . thank you."
"Seriously. Those tights are so hot."
"Um, I got them at CVS."
"Get out!"
"Yep. They were five bucks."
"They are so amazing. You look adorable. Do you have plans tonight?"
"Yes. Yes i do."
"Good, because you look really hot."
"Um, thank you."
"You have a great day."
More nervous laughter. "Um, okay!"

I mean, they are pretty smoking. But please, ladies and gents, keep your pants on. It's two thirty on a Tuesday, and your shopping cart is blocking the snack aisle.

In her defense, these are fairly stunning.

Writing Retreat, Day 3

I am a terrible, terrible person. And so is C.

That's the only preface i will give to the following bits of dialogue, with accompanying commentary by myself and C, overheard at breakfast on day 3. T is a morbidly obese sophomore, and A, M, and J are her three male friends.

On Words:
T: "That was rhetorical!"
C: "Does she know what that word means?"
Me: "I think that, whenever she says something and doesn't get the reaction she was hoping for, she just covers by saying that it was a joke or rhetorical."


On Identity and Relationships:
T: "That's because I'm a different species. I'm more highly evolved than you."

T: "If you ever talked to a girl the way you're talking to me, she'd kill you."
A: " . . . you are a girl."
C: "No, she's a different species."
Me: "And a more highly evolved one, at that."


T (on being reprimanded for asking for the loan of a pocket knife to peel her orange, and being told that she should carry her own knife): "I don't want to be needy. I'll just be friends with boys who carry pocket knives."

A: "I don't know if I want to be friends with someone who just beats me up (verbally) all the time. If our whole relationship is about fighting, why are we even friends?"
T: "That's not what our whole relationship is about! And I don't beat you up!"
M: "Take the way you argue, and imagine that it was made physical. It would be a fistfight."
T: "No, because A wouldn't hit a girl."
Me: "I thought you weren't a girl?"


A: "You make me feel awful!"
T: "Yeah, that's the point."

A: "Okay, Eleanor Roosevelt said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So, I do not consent to you making me feel bad and beating me up verbally."
T: "You're the one who makes me feel bad!"
A: "Okay, what do I do? And why do you consent to it?"
T: "You just don't do the things I want you to."

T (to A): "I was adding that to why I want to beat you up: because I don't like the way you think."

T: "I'd have a better chance with pretty much all of the freshmen."
C: "A better chance of what? Dating them? Eating them?"
Me: "C! That is a terrible thing to say! T would never eat a freshman! She is a vegetarian!"


On Identity and Fetishes:
A: "Why did you smell that (orange peel)?"
T: "It's like a creepy fetish thing."

T: ". . . you'd go through my trash and sell it on eBay. That's a violation of my personal space."
A: "But J does it all the time!"
T: "Yeah, well, I'm used to it from him. I'm not used to it from you."

T (as J was pretending to pour syrup on her): "I do NOT look like a waffle. (to A) You're the waffle. I'm more like spaghetti."
A: "You don't look like spaghetti. You look more like a waffle."

On Power Animals:
T: "A might be a flamingo, because I feel like he gets confused very often."

T: "No. A triceratops is not a real animal."

T: "Maybe (the unicorns) are all in Atlantis and you just can't find them!"
J: "Atlantis is underwater."
T: "So? Maybe unicorns can breathe underwater!"
J, A, and M: "No, they can't."
T: "How do you know? Have you ever seen a unicorn breathing underwater? No, you haven't. So you can't prove that they can't."

T: "I'm an education major, so therefore I'm right."

things that won't be exciting to anyone but me

OH MY GOD.

I have written three fan letters in my life. The third one was to The Bloggess, who is basically my idol/the person i want to be when i grow up.

AND SHE RESPONDED.

I'm pretty sure we're going to be best friends forever. Just look at this email exchange:

Jenny,

I discovered your blog a few months ago and became instantly addicted. (Seriously. Have you figured out a way to transmit crack and/or heroin through the internet and directly into peoples' eyeballs? Probably. I know how dedicated you are to scientific pursuits.)

Anyway, I have learned about your squid-fear, and I know that people send you squid-related links all the time. Apparently, there are actually people who voluntarily study that shit. It's a crazy world we live in. So it's inevitable that there would be lots of pictures/articles/videos/facts on the internet about squid. (Is the plural "squids"? I feel like that's the kind of thing I should know, since I have a degree in English creative writing. Balls.)

But while there should reasonably be plenty of academic and speculative information available about squid(s), so that right-thinking people can find out how to avoid and/or kill them, I found something today that seems to be to be totally unnecessary, not to mention mean-spirited. It also seemed like a direct attack on you, so I thought the best thing to do was inform you immediately. I've always been a big fan of Archie McPhee, what with their bacon-flavored chapstick and absinthe bubble gum, but if they've decided to make an enemy out of one of my favorite bloggers, I'll have to take my business elsewhere.

The link below will take you to the squid bag. I'm sorry to do this to you, but I thought you should be warned. 

http://www.mcphee.com/shop/products/Hungry-Squid-Bag.html 

I'm here for you if you need to mount an attack on Archie McPhee. I mean, they're in Seattle and I'm in Boston and you're in Texas, but I'm sure we could coordinate something if necessary. 

All the best,   

Diana Lark

Jenny's response: 

At least it's cheerfully terrifying.  :)

Do you see that smile? Clearly, she realizes that we are kindred spirits. We both have anxiety disorders, so this friendship will probably take some time to blossom fully, but i'm patient. A friendship like this is worth waiting for.

I swear i'm not a stalker.