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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(A quick and friendly reminder that if you’re reading this before 10:30pm tonight and live in the Boston area — or, come to think of it, you’re reading this before, say, 3pm and have lots of airline miles just sitting there idling — you’re in time to come see The Ruckus Proves It! [Again!] over at ImprovBoston in Cambridge.
And remember, if you’re reading this after 10:30pm on Saturday — or those pesky airlines black you out from an immediate flight, who do they think they are? — you can always catch our Ruckusing next week — same time, same place, same misleadingly-named theater.
And don’t worry. I’ll remind you. Obviously.)
It’s not my intention to make this into an ‘all-office, all-the-time’ blog, To be fair, that’s mostly what I’ve talked about for the last two weeks — but it’s been sort of a big transition. When I started this site eight-and-a-half years ago — no, I’m not kidding; see for yourself if you like — I was in a tough employmentary situation. The company I worked for had ‘hinted’ at a large set of layoffs. Then they strongly hinted, then nudged us, poked us with sticks, and sent out memos essentially telling twenty percent or so of us to ‘get our affairs in order’.
(Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether they were going to let us go or just kill us and dump us in the basement. When a car backfired during my exit interview, I used the HR lady as a human shield.)
Anyway, in mid-June 2003, I started up this site. Eight days later, I was out of a job.
(I’ve always maintained the two have nothing to do with each other.
Now that I reread those first dozen or so posts? Not so sure. I might’ve fired me, too.)
It took four months or so — and one wildly uncomfortable interview — to land a new job. Which I kept, right up until the calendar turned two weeks ago. The point being, it’s been a while since I dealt with such matters. And I’ve been a little surprised at the changes.
Take sleeping, for instance.
At the old job, I had a pretty flexible schedule. Being a nighttime sort of guy, I decided to go in late and stay late most days. I’d get the same eight hours of crying under my desk in; just in a slightly different window than some of the other folks there.
“At new job, there are things that encourage one to hit the decks early. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Free little bags of Doritos in the lunch room.”
New job is different. At new job, there are things that encourage one to hit the decks early. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Free little bags of Doritos in the lunch room. So one goes in early, and one often stays late. And one is happy to do so.
With this injection of early-and-often stimulation, though, comes a price. In the old days — waaaaay back in 2011 — I’d stay up into the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis. Most of the posts here were probably finished after midnight, on some dubious whim or another.
I’ve tried keeping a similar schedule lately, and it hasn’t worked out so well. Here’s how it typically goes;
11pm: Start a post. Wax (relatively) poetic for six or eight paragraphs, floating zingers and asides and bazingas as best I can. Figure I can wrap things up by midnight and get a solid night’s sleep.
11:30pm: Nod off at the keyboard. Realize that I’ve only made it through the setup and there’s two-thirds of what I’d planned left to go. Shake myself awake and resolve to burn through it.
11:38pm: Nod off again after writing three sentences. Realize I’m in trouble. Slap myself, hard, on the cheek. Super-secret resolve to make it to the end.
11:51pm: Discover, again, that I have the willpower of a kitchen sponge, as I jerk awake. Get up and get a glass of water to get the blood flowing. Smart thinking, kid.
12:05am: Wake up slumped on the keyboard. Find that I’ve written exactly “jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj” in the last fourteen minutes. Sip the water. Soldier on like a boss.
12:17am: Knock over the water. Snore like a banshee.
12:33am:“iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”
12:43am:Finish the post with the perfect, hilarious ending and slip off to bed for a well-deserved and restful sleep.
12:44am: Discover that last bit was itself just a dream, and now I can’t remember what I’d planned to write in the first place.
12:51am: Drift back to sleep, hoping it comes back to me.
1:03am: Dream of falling off a cliff. Repeatedly. Wake up in a puddle. Hope it’s the water.
1:14am: Shake awake, sit up straight and change strategy. Hastily slap together words, some of which might possibly be in English, to bring the aborted train wreck to a screeching halt and get the hell to bed.
1:23am: Fall forward onto keyboard. Remember why sitting up straight is a bad idea.
1:48am: Finish post. Submit. Drag groggy butt to bed.
1:52am: Lie awake, worrying whether I spelled ‘asstastical’ the way I’d wanted.
2:02am: Get up to check so I can get some damned sleep.
2:05am: Find typo. Fall asleep on keyboard before I can change it. Spend rest of night dozing on top of desk.
So the next time you see a post from me, you’ll know exactly how it got onto the page. If it’s coherent in any way, you’ll know that I’ve figured out the dilemma. And if it’s filled with ‘llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll‘, then you’ll know I spent another night drooling on my space bar. Because sometimes the hardest part of a new job is what happens outside the office.
Permalink | No CommentsThings are going well at my new job. “Going well”, if you just count the work, that is. Every other aspect of settling into a new office is going about as devastatingly awkwardly as you’d probably expect, if you’ve read anything at all on this site.
Or know me in real life. Or ever called me up as a telemarketer. It doesn’t take long to figure me out, see. I pretty much telegraph the weird.
I mentioned last time that I get a parking pass at NewJob — and that said parking happens in a lot under a local mall. One of my least favorite places in the world. Malls bring back memories of trying on husky jeans at Sears, bad cafeteria meals on sleepy Sundays and deluding myself in so, so many ways at the local Chess King.
(Yes, I’m dating myself badly here. Just another reason to hate even talking about the mall, dammit.)
I was just starting to reconcile myself to the screaming willy nightmare of parking, and walking through, a shopping mall every single work day of the week when the unreconcilable happened. On Friday, I used a different entrance to get into the parking lot. At this one, there was no place to swipe my parking card, so I took a ticket like everyone else. When it came time to leave, I cruised over to the ‘Monthly Passholders’ lane, swiped my card, and… nothing. No beep. No raising little bar doohickey. Bupkis.
I swiped again. Nada.
Another swipe. And another fat bunch of nothing. And then it began to wash over me, a tsunami of fear and nausea and sickly sweet Cinnabon funk — because I knew. I saw what they were doing, what was about to happen. I just parked in a mall — and they were never going to let me out.
I think I fainted at the wheel. An attendant came over eventually — mostly to see who was holding up all the johns who’d just been validated at the hotel next door and were lining up behind me — and pulled me together. Mostly by telling me that I could get out of the garage just by forking over the exorbitant all-day parking fee.
That was a bargain, given the state I was in. I was about to offer the guy my pants, the car and one of my kidneys, if I could just escape from that hellish cave. Instead, it cost twenty-two bucks. Maybe somebody up there likes me, after all.
Nah. But someone’s definitely telling me to use the right stupid entrance so I can swipe my card on the way to work. Message received, big fella. Stand down the locusts and plagues of boils.
“Pretty soon, you feel like you’re trying to pedal Refrigerator Perry up a waterfall made of molasses. In slow motion. While he’s eating a bucket of chicken. And molasses.”
It’s not just the parking that gets me, though. It’s everything. Take the gym, for instance. NewJob lives in a big office complex, and right there, in the very same building, is a full-scale, honest-to-Jack-Lalanne gym. You might think that would be a straightforward ‘win’ for someone like me.
(Might you? Really? Who are you, and what the hell have you been reading? Because it sure as hell isn’t this.)
Here’s the thing: a gym next door is good. A gym down the block, also okay. Those are distances that are close enough to be convenient, but not so close as to taunt you. Right in the same building you work in? Taunt city, baby. This gym is literally — literally — seventeen steps out of my way to attend. No excuse short of full dismemberment — and I don’t mean some hokey doctor’s note claiming ‘temporary invisible unmemberment’, either — will get me out of hitting the gym. I’m lazy — but it’s seventeen fricking steps. Nobody’s that lazy.
And this newfound rededication to gymming it up comes with a cost. Naturally. I’m an old guy, and haven’t belonged to a gym since the Clinton administration. Or maybe it was Carter. One of those grinny Southern guys.
the point is, it’s been a while. I’m out of shape, and happy to try to get back into some semblance of it. But — big, overstuffed but here — it’s best for everyone if I do it in private. Nobody wants to see me sweat. Or gasp. Or fall off a rowing machine and flop on the linoleum like a wounded Shamu. So while I can’t not go to the gym — seventeen steps! — I also spend most of my time there desperately hoping that I won’t be seen.
Did I mention that the gym’s in my office’s building? And that people in this company are really healthy? Probably because they all go to this freaking close-by gym?
Pick up the story this evening, and you can pretty well guess what happened. I waddled into the gym, decided to do a little exercise bike work — because who doesn’t want to get healthier sitting down? — and hopped on a machine. Sure, I was beside some guy — it was a pretty crowded night in the cardio lounge — but I didn’t even glance at him. Some random gym rat, probably. Face forward, kiddo. Eyes on the prize.
So it was quite a surprise when, in the middle of my workout, this person finished, toweled down a bit, and said: ‘Oh — hi, Charlie.‘
Crapcicles.
It was one of the guys pretty high up in our company — someone I’d interviewed with back in the meet, greet ‘n’ grovel process. Really nice guy, and someone I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with… but there was just one thing. At the moment, I was strapped to some demented cardio-blasting pedal demon, and it was juuuust about to crank the pitchfork into high gear.
As a quick aside, I’ll relay how I’ve figured out this particular machine works. You sit on it, and it asks you what sort of workout you want. You tell it ‘Cardio’. It asks if you want to ride for a half hour, and you reply, ‘Hell, no, twenty minutes, chief. What do you want, I should pop an aneurysm on top of you?‘
Then it asks for your age. You round a little. And it asks for your weight. You round, a lot. Then it calculates what target heart rate it thinks you should shoot for. And you knock ten or fifteen off that ridiculous number, too.
Finally, it starts you off on a gentle, breezy ride. For two minutes, and if you haven’t reached your target rate, it makes things harder. Another two, and more resistance. Another two minutes, another more pain. Pretty soon, you feel like you’re trying to pedal Refrigerator Perry up a waterfall made of molasses. In slow motion. While he’s eating a bucket of chicken. That’s “level 4”, and it kicks in six minutes into the ride.
(Before it kicks the hell back out soon after, when the bike detects that you are, in fact, hanging on by three fingers and a foot, rotating fully up and under the bike with each rotation. Level 4 sucks. It’s hard as hell, painful, shaming, and honestly, I think the machine only displays levels 5-9 to scare small children at night. They can’t possibly be unleashed on human beings at will. The Geneva Convention wouldn’t allow it.
So, of course, this guy from my office wraps up and wants to chat at approximately the fife minute and fifty-three second point of my course. As soon as I said ‘Hi!’, it was on. Gears grinding. Calves burning. Teeth gritting, and all the while trying to have a light, appropriate, intelligent conversation with this person who probably counts as my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss. Or something.
Meanwhile, I looked — and sounded — like a constipated parrot with a bad case of vertigo. If I focused on him, I lurched to one side. If I looked at the bike, I repeated everything he said because all the blood from my brain was running into my shattered calves. I parrot-babbled something at him for a couple of exchanges, and soon enough he looked worried, crossed himself, and moved on. Just about the time the bike straightened up, and I could pedal again without a medicine ball bouncing on each knee.
So that’s going to be awkward, the next time I see this guy. And I’m guessing this same scenario — or scenes infinitely more mortifying — will be playing out in the gym for many, many months to come.
Because that’s how it happens, kids. Work is fine. But work-ing is never easy. And you’re usually left stammering, wiping down your own equipment, and stranded in a mall parking lot.
Jesus. It’s a wonder any of us make it to work, now that I think about it. Kudos to us, I guess. Yay?
Permalink | 1 Comment(For those in the Boston area, come by and see me — if you dare! — during ImprovBoston’s SketchHaus, Saturday nights in January. I’ll be performing with the high-larious sketch group The Ruckus; shows are just ten bucks and start at 10:30pm. Come see. There’s beer. Good times.
While I’m at it, the latest Zolton Does Amazon piece is up over at ZuG.com. Stop on over to Kiss Your Career Hello, If you’re into that sort of thing.)
I’ve just finished my first week of work at a new office, and things are going generally peachily. In fact, if there’s any teensy, weensy, tiny little horrific nightmare involved in the deal, it has to do with one of the perks the new company provides.
Parking.
The office building is — like ninety-nine percent of everything else of any value, utility or interest in the Boston area — in a neighborhood where parking comes at a premium. Minimal street spots, exorbitant garage fees, and parking cops who’ll ticket your chrome-bumpered ass fourteen seconds after the meter expires. It’s brutal.
But wait! New company will subsidize parking in a nearby lot. A perk available to all employees, including me. So to avoid tickets, boots, tows and the inevitable impound lot breakout adventure, I signed up for a parking pass. And got one. And since Tuesday, I’ve been nestling my car snugly in a lot, as planned. There’s just one thing I didn’t know:
It’s a parking lot for a shopping mall.
Now, for some people that would be a godsend. Roll into the lot at eight, shop on the way to work, shop at lunch, work some more, shop shop shop, work work work, call it a day and head to the car. While shopping. I know people who’d consider that heaven.
“I hate shopping. I avoid malls like most people avoid playing Twister with a bunch of lepers.”
None of those people are me. I hate shopping. I avoid malls like most people avoid playing Twister with a bunch of lepers. Until this week, that is. Because now, every day is Mall Day. Not only do I park there, but the only way out of the garage is through the mall. And the shoppers. And the kiosks. And?
The horror.
So far, every trip to and from work has brought back screaming willy flashbacks of trying on clothes, waiting in lines and haggling over return receipts. Some people see those as just the cost of shopping for things. I decided a long time ago that frankly, I just dont like things that much. If I have to not own things to avoid shopping for things, then so be it. I’m guessing this is how most monasteries get started. Think about it.
The disgusting irony of it is, I just finished getting out of going to a mall. I usually only see the inside of one in late December, when Christmas looms and I’ve neglected to buy the requisite baubles and trinkets online. My wife usually gets a mall-bought gift or two, as does my family. The mall for me is a place for panic, guilt and deep remorse — and I somehow miraculously managed to miss it this year. I planned ahead, ordered some gifts on the internet — and the missus and I made a pact not to trade anything big. And I navigated the holiday Scylla and Charybdes without experiencing the interior of an Old Navy or Toddler Gap. I was quite proud of myself.
And now I’m practically living in a mall. Partly because I have to park there, but mostly because I haven’t yet figured out how the hell to get in and out of the stupid place through the same door twice in a row. On Wednesday, I played Marco Polo for a while before someone showed me the exit. Yesterday, I set my car alarm off from halfway across the garage, to get a vague notion of which direction to wander. And today, I spent half the day trying to navigate my way out.
(I’m serious here. I left the house at a quarter past eight. It’s a twenty minute drive. I finally got to my desk at half past lunchtime. It was nightmarish; if not for the Cinnabon on level three, I could’ve collapsed and keeled over in that godforsaken place.
And who’d save me then, eh? Abercrombie? Fitch? Jesus Christ Penney? Honky, please.)
Anyway, other than that, things are pretty good. If I could just beg, blubber or breadcrumb my way out of that hellhole mall a little quicker, I’d be just peachy.
In the meantime, if there’s anything you need from Victoria’s Secret, let me know. I’ll be there on Monday. And Tuesday. And possibly forever. Yaaa-aaaa-aaaaay.
Permalink | No CommentsI am officially unemployed. But only for the next ten hours or so, which is comforting.
Actually, I’ve been unemployed for most of the long weekend. My final day at the last office was Friday, and my last “official” day Saturday, the 31st.
“On the way out the door Friday, they took my keys, my ID card, my logo travel mug and thirty bucks from my wallet.”
I’m not sure how “last working day” and “last official day” differ particularly in this case. On the way out the door Friday, they took my keys, my ID card, my logo travel mug and thirty bucks from my wallet. I also had a shoe print on the ass of my jeans and a ‘NO WORKY HERE NO MORE‘ sign taped to the back of my shirt.
So it wasn’t like I could come in Saturday to do any work, if I’d wanted. Maybe I could’ve still called a press conference as a ‘representative of the organization’? Or gone on strike to protest the sorry state of tater tots in the cafeteria? Coached first base for the company softball team?
Don’t know, and when the ball dropped on Animatronic Dick Clark’s New Year’s Overtanned Eve, it was all moot, anyway. I was no longer affiliated with the old place, after eight-and-a-half years of employment.
(You might think that’s even longer than I’ve been writing this drivel.
You’d be mistaken. This particular website endeavor began as a distraction to give me something to think about other than the fact that my company-before-last was planning a tsunami of impending layoffs at the time, and my wife and I had just bought and moved into our first house. Complete with crushing mortgage payments and a furnace system that was possibly older than I was.
The life crises, they can make some awfully strange bedfellows. And some wonky-assed websites, to boot.)
Meanwhile, I’m not yet on board with my new job. That starts tomorrow, bright and eagerly cheerful chipper early — just like all of my mornings are, if any of my soon-to-be bosses happen to be reading. Yaaa-ay, morning!
(Oh, please. We’re all “sellouts”. Get over it, princess.)
The point is, I spent the weekend as a free agent. A rogue worker. A man without a comp’ny. Unemployedicado.
Fortunately for me, it was just a weekend. Last time — when my job canoe was swept away by that parenthetical layoff tsunami up there — it took a few months to get back to the grindstone. Now, I’ve only barely rolled my sleeves down, and it’s time to roll them back up again and jump in.
As a matter of fact, I got a head start on things. I took a quick jaunt over to the new office last week to settle some details, and the HR folks sent me home with some of the paperwork I’ll need to turn in tomorrow morning, to get the ball rolling more quickly.
Of course, I didn’t actually fill out anything they gave me. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a free agent — like myself — would do. But I did get a head start. I confirmed that the paperwork they gave me was, indeed, made of ‘paper’, and looked an awful lot like ‘work’.
So there’s that. I’m calling it progress. And maybe time for a beer. Because tomorrow, I’ll be a comp’ny man again. Starting at eight o’clock in the a-of-m. Bright and eagerly cheerful chipper early. Just how I likes ’em.
(Maybe I should drive over now, and sleep in the car. Just to be safe.)
Permalink | 1 CommentI mentioned a while back that I sent over a submission this year to the Mona Schreiber Prize folks. Their top three essays were announced this week. My entry, sadly, was not among them.
Still, in the ongoing spirit of turning my abject failures into your glorious entertainment — or at least into my slightly-less-abject blog posts — I’ll share my not-so-much-winning entry with you here.
Hey, it’s either that or I bash the holidays again. Or talk about my dog’s poop. Or blat out another sketch script. Let’s face it — you should thank me for this.
Anyway, enjoy. And head over to see the actual winners of the Mona Schreiber Prize, while you’re at it. You might learn something. Or at least grab a crumb of that ‘entertainment’ we were talking about earlier. Can’t hurt nothin’, right?
Bob and Lisa — hi! I’m so glad you made it to the open house. I just know you’re going to love this place; let me give you the tour.
“You really get a feel for the sophisticated style of the last couple who lived here — it’s like Bram Stoker meets Hello Kitty in Malibu Barbie’s ski chalet.”
We’ll start here in the foyer, featuring this breathtaking pink gothic fireplace. You really get a feel for the sophisticated style of the last couple who lived here — it’s like Bram Stoker meets Hello Kitty in Malibu Barbie’s ski chalet. I know — stunning, right?
And here’s a formal dining room, with the exquisite wainscoting along the south wall. Now, I see you looking up and I know what you’re thinking. Let me put your minds at ease — those stains on the ceiling are definitely NOT water damage. They’re just burns — wispy, superficial little burn marks that you could totally paint right over, if you like. The previous owners enjoyed a nice open bonfire in this room, from time to time. Which also explains the charred floorboards. And the missing wainscoting on the east, west and north walls. Easily restorable. Barely a trifle.
You’ll find the kitchen is state-of-the-art, with all the modern amenities — including this floating island here in the center. Though technically, it’s not ‘floating’, exactly. Instead, it’s surrounded by this convenient in-floor moat. It was apparently installed to keep the pets away from the dinner scraps. I forget exactly what they were breeding — something about ‘thoraxes’, but it’s all Greek to me. Anyway, we’ve sprayed for pests. And pets. And swarms of… things. Not a problem.
Also, note that where most kitchens might have an under-counter dishwasher, this one comes equipped with a pull-out bidet. Which is about the most convenient thing ever, if you think about it in the right light. You’ll also appreciate the walk-in meat locker and the dry-curing alcove, which can double as a warm and inviting breakfast nook, if that’s more your speed. Really, really warm. You can fry your eggs right at the table, ha ha!
The house features one-and-a-half baths in total. There’s a full bath over here, a one-sixth-bath off the master bedroom, another two-ninths-bath in the crawlspace behind the fireplace, the kitchen bidet, and a towel rack on the roof over the bonfire room. The fixtures are matching stainless steel, of course, and quite lovely.
That brings us to the bedroom where the family — sorry, I said ‘couple’ earlier; it was more like a ‘family’ — slept. It’s very roomy, as you can see. They put in the queen-sized quicksand pit over here, and they hung their clothes, I assume, on these butchers’ hooks dangling attractively from the ceiling — one per ‘family’ member, so a total of fourteen. They really give the room a sense of depth, don’t you think?
Did I say ‘family’? They were really more of a ‘troupe’. Or maybe a ‘clique’. Not a ‘gang’ or a ‘cult’, like some of the local gossips and newspapers and police reports sometimes whisper. People can be so nosy and judgmental, you know? Not that you’ll have to worry about the neighbors here. The mine field in the yard takes care of that. Remind me to get you the map, in case you venture out to see the patio. Or the mailbox. Oh, and did you park in the driveway? Oh, dear.
What else can I tell you? You’ll have to provide your own basement, which I’m sure you can pick up at any local hardware store. But they left a few of the shingles on the roof, which should come in handy. Frankly, I can’t imagine a better fit for you two. It’s perfect, I’m sure you’ll agree.
And that brings us back to the foyer, where — what? You say you heard something? Oh, you mean the voice? No, it’s not saying ‘GET OUUUUUT!’ I think it’s actually saying ‘GOOD HOUUUUUSE! GOOD HOUUUUUSE!’ It’s like your own full-time housewarming party — how charming is that, right?
No, I’m sure that’s not blood running down the wall. Probably the bidet just backed up a little. After someone filled it with ketchup, maybe. That’ll scrub right out, no worries.
Wait — where are you going? Lisa, Bob — come on. Don’t be scared of a little ‘fixer-upper’ project. Well, can you at least sign the attendance sheet while you’re fleeing?
What’s that? The pen’s out of ink? Completely dry? Aw, dammit. Everything was going so well, too. Now the open house is RUINED!
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