Big Fat Hairy Living

Buried in an article in the National Putz about how John Travolta was caught on camera kissing another man (Gasp! Surprise! Shock!) is this tidbit:

Only five years ago, a business executive alleged in Globe that Travolta made a pass at him in the sauna of Spectrum Club, a fitness gym in Valencia, California. (Travolta made several visits to the club while filming Swordfish nearby, it was independent [sic] confirmed.) Mark [sic] claimed he rebuffed the actor’s alleged advances because he was chubby and “really hairy on his back, upper arms and chest.”

Translation: The executive claimed he rebuffed the actor’s alleged advances because he was [sexy] and “really [sexy], [sexy], and [sexy].”

(A special prize for anyone who cant point out all the editing mistakes in the atrocious Putz article.)

Despite the fact that, in all honesty, I’m a sexist, misogynist pig, some of things I hear at work still make me cringe.

Men here refer to the women who work in customer service and the women who work on the manufacturing floor (because they’re all women) as “the girls.” Just now, a product manager teased “the girls” in customer service, jokingly saying “You tell a woman to do something, she just doesn’t listen!”

I can’t possibly imagine how it could be acceptable to say these kinds of things. If all the people in customer service were Chinese, would people be calling them “the little Asians?” Would someone make a joke “You tell those Chinese to do something, they just don’t understand?”

A question for all my readers who still have their foreskin in one piece: Does it bother you when a guy fetishizes you for your foreskin?

Feel free to respond anonymously if you wish.

At 5:42 this morning I hear a kock at the door. I pull the pillow over my head, fuzzy-brained and not really thinking, but sure in a mostly-asleep way that it’s not really someone knocking at the door. Ten seconds later it happens again, this time much louder. I don’t move. Then again, more insistent.

In my half-dazed state, I figure that it must be the superintendent. Who else would knock so loudly and insistently on my door at 5:42 on a Monday morning? Maybe there’s a flood, I think. I’ve had that happen before. So I put on my shorts and walk to the door half-awake and half-naked. I check out the bathroom on the way to the door. No flooding.

I open the door. It’s a bald, fat, short lady who looks like she’s not all there.

“Is Mary there?” She has the most whiny, grating voice imaginable.

“There’s no Mary here.” Writing that sentence now, I realize that it’s not strictly true.

“Are you sure?” As if someone could be hiding in my one bedroom apartment.

“Yes. It’s 5:42 in the morning and there’s no Mary here.”

She gets even more whiny. “What am I going to do without Mary?”

Am I supposed to have an answer? “I don’t know, but it’s 5:42 in the morning.”

“What time is it?” She doesn’t even know what time it is.

“5:42.”

I close the door.

Good grief. Normally I’d feel sorry for her and try to help her out, but fuck, lady. It’s 5 fucking 42 in the morning on Monday morning and how the fuck did you get into this building and why are you at my apartment which I’ve lived in for six years and had two fags living in it for at least a year before that and nobody named Mary ever lived here?

Of course I couldn’t get back to sleep. So now I’m tired as fuck.

I almost broke down in tears yesterday. I’m totally overwhelmed by this job.

Looking back at all the interviews I had, I realize now that the only reason they hired me was because they didn’t have enough electrical engineering knowledge to know that I can’t do the job and I didn’t have enough experience to know that what they were talking when they described the job about wasn’t what I thought it was. They wanted me to “hit the ground running”, and almost a year later, I’m still trying to figure out how to do my job.

I’ve been doing computer simulations on a new product in collaboration with an engineer at another division. We had a meeting to discuss our results and intially I was happy to find that he had reached the same conclusions as me. About 15 minutes into the meeting, I realized with a sinking feeling that it was a complete coincidence that my results were the same.

Every time I learn something I feel like ten new things pop up for me to figure out. I can’t handle the stress.

It’s taken ten months, but I’ve finally decided that there are two people at work I hate.

The first one is someone I barely know, but I know enough to say that she has to be the whiniest, most abrasive hag in the company. She’s always complaining about something, and she complains loudly and in the most annoying nasal whiny voice possible. She’s also the kind of person who’s extremely set in her ways: for months, she refused to have detailed information for the products she manages on the company web site. She insisted that the site say “Call for more information,” because she prefers talking to people on the phone.

Whenever I hear her talking on the phone, she always seems to be complaining about something. This morning she was whining about a shipment of something-or-other that had been delayed, asking in her piercing voice “What am I supposed to do about this?” If there’s one thing I’ve learned about business, the quickest way to get people to hate you is to make it all about yourself. With her, it seems that everything is all about her.

The other person I can’t stand is worse because I deal with him directly. This morning he asked me if I could spend some time with him showing him some of the new products I’ve been working on. I don’t have anything to show him. What do I do, show him some bits of metal and plastic rotating on my screen, say “Here’s what I’ve been working on” and sit there for nine more minutes? Yesterday, he promised a customer a test report I hadn’t even started writing without consulting me. After he’d promised it to them, he came to me afterwards to ask me if I could get it done by 1 o’clock. Since he’d already promised it to the customer, it wasn’t a question. It was an order.

More annoying than his stupid requests is his habit of resting his hand on my shoulder when he talks to me. I don’t know if it’s some kind of stupid dominance-establishing behaviour or if he just thinks he’s being friendly, but it doesn’t matter. I hate it. I’ve taken to noticeably squirming when he does it, hoping that he’ll get a clue. If he keeps it up, I’ll get very annoyed with him.

I’m sure he got the idea of touching people from a stupid business self-help book, because I remember reading one that suggested touching people gently on the arm or the shoulder to get better results. The author, of course, didn’t realize (or care) that people don’t like having their personal space violated.

At least I can tune out his stupid jokes.

This afternoon in our monthly department meeting, the manager pointed out that the Successories posters still haven’t been put up since we moved to our new office. “We’ll just get all our kids to make artwork!”

For a moment, I felt incredibly out of place. I don’t suppose I’ll ever work at a place where I feel like I fit in.

According to the conservatives, the age of consent should be raised to 16 because teenagers under 16 are not old enough to understand the consequences of sex.

At the same time, the age of criminal responsibility should be lowered to 10 because they’re … um … old enough to … um … understand the consequences of …