What have we learned?

Friday was my last day in the office at Die Bank. So, how was the close of my two year career celebrated in the office celebrated? My two year tenure in which I highlighted helpful subway routes, was constantly called in to fix Microsoft Word margins, crawled around on the floor to rewire the phone system and set up printers, generate lists of helpful German train station vocabulary, constantly fought with travel agents and vendors, oohed an aahed over someone's birthday gift for his wife, sucked up to Germans, sucked up to Americans, listened to everyone enumerate the finer points of their Iced Tea preference for the kitchen, cleaned up after exploding toner cartridges and rest room floods, planned team outings and booked lunch reservations the likes of which I would never be invited to; after all the expense reports, the pots of coffee, the call screenings, the translations I thought would kill me, what did I receive on my big day? Nothing. Business as usual, folks.

Now, I need to clarify that my German co-workers took me out for dinner after work at a nice restaurant that I picked out (Zarella's on 2nd Avenue) of their own initiative and on their own dime. And I am very grateful for this gesture. However, as far as the office doing anything to recognize my efforts on their behalf or my departure: nothing. No lunch ordered in. No cake. No Hallmark card. No "let's all go into the conference room and take a minute to say goodbye to Nancy." Nothing. At 5:25pm as everyone made to grab their coats and dash off to catch the train, I got a hand shake or a hug, depending on the coworker, and everyone wished me well and said to keep in touch.

Now, I understand that this is a job that I quit. I didn't retire after 25 years of service, I'm not going out on maternity leave and I'm not moving to the other coast. But you may recall that we had that program where we would get a credit analyst from the home office to rotate through our office for a month, and at the end of four weeks, we would all go into the conference room and have a glass of wine and say goodbye to the guy. And sometimes, if they really worked him to the bone, they'd even present him with a gift. So what? No freakin' cake for little Nancy?

So, Cupcake was a little, how do you say? Pissed off. No one even asked me to lunch on Friday. Some people already had appointments and some were too busy to go out. 'Fine,' I thought, 'I won't eat a thing, then I'll have a nice empty stomach for those margaritas tonight.' But as the afternoon wore on and it became apparent that I wasn't even going to get a greeting card tossed my way, my blood pressure started to rise. "Come on," I said to the Memp (= man temp and my new spiritual guru), "let's go hide in the kitchen so everyone has time to set up the conference room for my surprise going away party."

"About your going away party..." said the Memp. "Do you remember when you told me about when your dog got put to sleep and the Vet sent your Dad a card that said not to be sad, because Mandy was waiting for you at the Rainbow Bridge?"

"Yes, what's your point?"

"Well, your surprise party is waiting for you at the Rainbow Bridge."

"Interesting. So what you're saying is that when I die, I'll be reunited with my dead Shi-Tzu and I'll get to have my going away party? Hey, that makes me feel better. Wait a minute! You're an atheist!"

So, what have we learned, cupcakes? Well, when someone at your job tells you, "We're like one big family here," that's probably true, if you come from the kind of family where everyone is considered expendable. Every time I've ever had a job that I've liked and I've used the family analogy, my father has corrected me, "That's your job, your family is your family." And, of course, the old man is right. I guess if you come from a strong family unit, it's only natural to project that institution on other areas of your life and likewise, if there is something about your family you'd like to change or escape from, every new social grouping is a chance to start again. Especially in New York work culture when you're away from your own family and you spend more hours per day with a group of strangers, hands down, than you do with your own self-chosen friends. Sometimes my Pop gives me bad advice, but sometimes he gives me good advice like when he told me this four years ago, "Never love your job, because it will never love you back." There's the core tenet of the Tao of the Temp right there.

Happy Thanksgiving, I'll be home soon.

Can someone explain to me...

... why I pulled not one, but two sticks of deodorant out of my desk drawer today? Also, travel-sized dental floss, some Q-tips, hair mousse, an Oral-B "Brush-Up", make-up removing towelettes, a lint brush, two tubes of hand cream, a nail clipper and an entire slew of over the counter pharmaceuticals were all removed from my desk today in preparation for my last day in the office on Friday. What exactly was I planning for? Did I think Prince William might be stopping by the 14th floor of our humble Midtown premises?

Tomorrow I tackle the snacks I've got hidden throughout the reception area. I'm anticipating finding a lot of stale cashew nuts and Werther's Originals. Der Mann balked yesterday when I told him I threw out the prize from a box of cereal he presented me with shortly after arriving in America. Trying to decide what to do with my giant rubber band ball, my pride and joy, is keeping me up at night.

Oh cupcakes, I want so badly to finish telling the story about the Tempelopolous and the Memp but I'm so busy these days. I'm taking a little vacation next week and we'll get all caught up.

Bionic Cupcake

Tuesday, 1:00pm

Report to lab to submit to drug screen for new job. A snaggle-toothed Brit steps out of the exam room to leer at me in the hallway while I have a more intimate encounter with my urine than first world plumbing usually calls for. I keep waiting for the lab tech to tell the spectator to sott off, but he is too busy giving me and my urine commands, "Fill the cup up to this line," "Bring the cup to me," "Now hop up and down on one foot," "Now pour the rest into the toilet, but don't flush," "Now wash your hands," etc... I spend most of my time pretending I'm not holding a cup of urine in my hand as various Midtown executives shuffle by studiously avoiding eye contact. Snaggle tooth really gets to me, though. He won't stop staring at me with that smug look on his face. I'm certain he's in for an STD screen.

Tuesday 6:30pm

Report to the eye doctor for eye exam. I have great vision care insurance at work, which I am about to lose. The problem is, not very many "doctors" are "in-network". So I went to a new vision care center after work and was examined by a very nice doctor. Maybe too nice. Kinda creepy nice. Like I kept expecting him to rub against me and I would suddenly find myself in an after school special. The verdict was that the glasses I have (and never wear) are good for distance, I need a new prescription for near vision. I went out to the eye glass store side of the office and one of the guys said to me, "We're closing. Do you think you could pick out a pair of glasses in six minutes?" Sure, it's just my face we're talking about guys. Luckily a woman stayed late to help me. Thanks to my super great insurance I was able to get a nice pair of Vera Wang frames for free, that's zero dollars, Hip, and only a $25 copay for the lenses. Then I paid $61 for the ultra super premium no-glare, no-smudge lens coating. On my last pair of glasses, I didn't get any coating, because I thought it was some bullshit extra they were trying to sell me like an extended warranty. As a result, looking through my glasses is like looking through a glass of cloudy tap water, no matter how often I clean them.

Tuesday 9:00pm

I walk from 47th Street and 5th Avenue to 28th Street and 1st Avenue to Bellevue Hospital to check myself in to the NYU Sleep Disorder Clinic for my sleep study. I let people glue electrodes to my head, face and legs, put a band around my chest, and stick a tube up my nose. Then I lay down in a room where I can be monitored by video camera and intercom and try to get a normal night's sleep. But no worries, I've got my pajamas and my teddy bear, so it's just like home, give or take a few electrodes. I survive the experience by pretending I'm in some European hostel with a new spa treatment.

Wednesday 6:20am

I am awoken by a technician and systematically unhooked, unplugged and unstuck. I feel about as rested as I do every morning. I have the option to shower at the lab, but since I hate hospitals, I don't want to spend another minute there longer than I need to. I tell the tech I'm going to take a cab to my friend's apartment and shower there. "Okay," he says. "You look like a crazy person. But you'll be leaving from Bellevue, so nothing too suspicious there. You might want to go to the bathroom and wash the grease pencil off your face." When I look in the mirror in the bathroom I see that the clumpy adhesive used to hold the electrodes in place is stuck in my hair and now I understand what the tech meant when he said, "You look like you've been attacked by pigeons." At 7:00am with my face scrubbed clean, my hair in a pony tail and still wearing my pajamas, I get into a cab. I can't believe I've got three more work days and a trip to the dentist before this week is over.

Training Day

Well cupcakes, today has been truly jawful (jaw-droopingly awful). One day after I resigned, my Boss panicked and decided he wanted to get a temp in the office ASAP for me to start training someone to take over my job. When he told me this yesterday, I said, "Okay, I would recommend that you try to get someone with good German skills." So today I met my replacement. Her German skills are very good. Unfortunately, she doesn't speak English. Right now you're probably thinking, oh well, they sent you a German girl. No friends, they sent me a 40-year old Greek woman, a mineralogist who had lived in Germany for many years. As I said, her German was very good; her English was something I could only describe as "a handicap". Also, she had never worked as an Administrative Assistant before; one of the first things she did was admit to me she was nervous because she had never replaced a toner cartridge before. If only replacing printer toner were, say, 40% of my job that is a skill I could teach and her and something I could work around.

She had a three minute conversation with my Boss today and as soon as that was over, my Boss called me into his office. "Close the door," he said. "How's it going out there?"

"Well," I said. "She seems very enthusiastic and eager to learn."

"How's her English?"

"Hmm."

"Was that English she was speaking to me? Because I didn't understand a single word she said to me."

"Well..."

"Are our clients going to be able to understand anything she says on the phone? With that thick German accent?"

"Actually, that's a Greek accent. She's Greek."

"Greek??"

"Honestly, I'm more concerned that it seems she's never had an administrative position before. She said something about computer science..."

"She hasn't. Look at her resume yourself. But she can tell you how much your diamonds are worth." I looked at the resume the Boss tossed me. That's when I saw she had trained in Germany as a jewelry appraiser. My eyebrows arched. I was trying to stay positive. This woman had no relevant experience. I wanted to question the parent company's HR policy of just throwing us a warm body, no matter how poorly matched the person was for the job. To be fair however, the HR department doesn't have a lot of time to think things through, seeing as how they get downsized at the rate of one person every three hours. "Well, what do you think," asked the Boss. "I need to know if this is not working out. I'll have HR starting looking for a new replacement as soon as possible."

I thought about the new trainee sitting at my desk who had been taking notes for two hours and who was so excited when I showed her the International Delight flavored non-dairy coffee creamer. I thought about how wildly out of my league I was when I took this job. "Why don't you let me work with her until the end of the day?" I said. And then, just so I'd have a pleasant reminder of all the good times, the Boss dropped a last minute project on me that involved hosting a seminar in New York, bringing some guys over from Germany, one guy over from London, setting up two days of planning, then sending everyone to Toronto for two days and one night, then setting up two return flights back to Frankfurt, one to London, one to New York, plus hotels in two cities and every one's car service. I walked back out to my desk, where my Big Fat Greek Temp was sitting in my chair and giving me the thumbs up and decided that I could never leave this job, I would just have to work here until I died.

The ironic thing is, everything the Temp was trying to learn in English, were all things I had once had to learn in German a long time ago. If I ask you to answer the phone, you have this inherent vocabulary to do so. "How may I help you?" "May I ask who is calling?" "Can you hold please?" "One moment, I'll transfer you." Once I had to learn how to say all those things in German and now the Temp was trying to figure out how to say them in English. My pointers were not helping. It all came out sounding like this, "Die Bank, Guten Morgen, who are you speaking to?" The other problem was she couldn't understand anyone speaking English on the phone. So I told her, you can ask someone to repeat their name once, after that if you still don't get it, you have to just do the best you can. So I would have a lot of conversations like this, "This guy is calling for the Boss, he says his name is Twin."

"Twin? Twin is his name or the name of his company?"

"Oh, I don't know they talk so fast!"

"Okay, maybe his name is Duane?"

"Yes, Duane!" So then I would tell the Boss there was a call from Duane on line 4 and you can imagine how accurate that was.

Every job I gave the Temp to do, she did it with gusto. When I asked her to photocopy a 100 page document, she had trouble with the auto sheet feeder, so she did it page by page by hand. She looked truly frightened when she saw me bang out a five paragraph memo containing lots of travel information in English, but when I had to write a few lines regarding a business card proof to a printer in German she helped me with my German. And although she spelled documents "document's" on a waybill, she took copious notes all day- basically I was on her side.

I sent an email to my Boss this afternoon that said, look her English is a handicap and I really would have preferred someone with some experience so I can focus on getting into the actual complicated tasks of my job and not spend half an hour on the postage meter, but she's got heart! Also, keep in mind the time frame and the fact that I've now spent a day training her. I have no idea what Boss is going to do. I do know there's no way in hell I'm firing her, there are other people that get paid more than I do to have those conversations. I told her I'd see her tomorrow but I was relieved when she didn't leave anything in the desk.

Next time instead of going through the whole process of resigning and giving notice and training a replacement, I'm just going to fake my own death. One hundred times easier.

Signs you are getting old. And lame.

Thought that kept me awake last night:

So if I had just made it one more year with Die Bank, my Employer contribution to my 401(k) would have been vested. But would it have been worth it? Damn, I love my hot little 401(k). Don't worry, baby. Momma's gonna roll you over real soon.