is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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The Parable of the Hotdog Bun, Revisited.
I've had a couple of weeks of feeling angry most of the time, which I hate because it reminds me a bit too much of what I was like in my late teens and 20s. Nothing I want to revisit. Also, when you�re angry, you tend to take it out on other people more than you ought to, and when I do things like that, it just makes me feel like a terrible asshole, in part, again, because I used to be like that so much of the time and it is a sucky way to be.
Of course, when I was in my teens and 20s I was not aware that I felt angry all the time, because when you are angry all the time you have no way of gauging that feeling because it is all you feel. I also do not mean to say that I was never happy for those 15-odd years. I was. I had good friends and fun times and all the normal ups and downs. But I handled them angrily and/or impatiently. I sometimes can�t believe people put up with it.
In any case, people who know me now and didn�t meet me until my 30s or later cannot believe I was ever a hothead.
I�m writing about this now because, as the luck of timing would have it, I had to live through what would already be an inherently frustrating day in the midst of all this amped-up anger. In order to exit from my current job officially, I had to collect six signatures from different departments, turn in a key and a security badge, get proof that I did not have any library books, or any other property of the college in my possession, have an exit interview, and do some other hoop-jumping. At many of the points along my trajectory people just did not know what to do with the form, because apparently people don�t exit the college very often? It�s like the Hotel California, I guess. Or Kafka�s Castle California, where no one has the power to sign a form, and everyone is sure that if you come back at another time, the form can be signed. At one place in particular I was told I had to come back a half an hour later. All of this was making me angry and frustrated but I handled it calmly. I came back a half an hour later and the person I needed to see was still not there. Dude who wanted to pass the buck the first time decided to make some phone calls. 30 seconds into the first call he was told he could sign the form. But then, as he was signing the form, a really officious guy (whom I think was the one on the other end of the phone) came in and wanted to ask me lots of questions to make sure I understood everything that I was doing. I did. I got the form signed.
And then I handed them my pink slip of paper. It almost pushed officious dude over the edge. I had no idea the power I held. The pink slip of paper was given to me when I got the two keys to the two doors at the college that have locks I�d need to unlock. I had to leave a $10 deposit to get those keys. When I handed over my $10, two years ago, the guy who took my money handed me a pink slip of paper and said that if I ever left the college and wanted the $10 back I�d have to have the pink slip with me. And you just know that the percentage of people who hang on to a slip of paper like that for years at a time must be close to zero. So there I am, wanting my $10, and officious guy Can. Not. Believe It.
He points out that the receipt actually says $1. He�s right; it says that. I respond, calmly, that it must be a typo, since everyone knows that you leave $5 for each key and the receipt shows that I got two keys and indeed I am handing back two keys at this very moment. Dude who wanted to pass the buck agrees that it is obvious. So officious guy gets out a HUGE stack of receipts and starts looking for the original of mine to verify that I actually paid the $10? But of course my pink slip is a carbon copy, so if he ever found the original it would say the same thing, and in the meantime he is leafing through a SERIOUSLY huge stack of withered old paper. Oh, City University of New York! Must you use your resources this way? Anyway, he was about as ridiculously mad at nothing as someone who is angry that a drawer full of Tupperware won�t close properly and so starts swearing and kicking the drawer as if the drawer were a Hatfield and the kicker a McCoy. No one remembers anymore how the Kicking Foots ever got into the feud with the Tupperware Drawers, but everyone involved knows that this feud is DEADLY SERIOUS. (Welcome to my childhood.) As he leafs through the giant stack of receipts, officious guy has some things to say about how badly the slips were alphabetized and so on. It was, dare I say it, funny.
What does it all mean? There were many other moments during that week when I did not triumph over my anger-feeling. I got mad at websites, a basket of toiletries under my sink, the woman on the subway who wanted to borrow the pen I was using, and Gus (to whom I apologized profusely--full of the defeat a person feels when she has lost a contest with her own self--because he did not deserve my anger). But the sad-something of this guy wanting to find a way to quash my hopes of getting my own $10 back put everything into perspective. It was: The Parable of the Hotdog Bun, Revisited. I sat down and calmly waited. And I left with my $10.
4:01 p.m. - August 02, 2009
Hayy - 2009-08-05 22:57:54
Do you ever consider just skipping all the hoop-jumping? It seems childish perhaps, but so do all the signatures and proofs and officious exits, etc.? I mean, what are they going to do exactly if you just get on the train and leave, sticking all your badges and keys in a big envelope addressed to whomever. Am I being passive aggressive to suggest this? Anyway I've done it before. Sometimes there are consequences, but sometimes there are ABSOLUTELY NONE.
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js - 2009-08-05 23:31:22
i totally hear you. but in this case there was reason to do it: if i didn't do it i'd never get my final paycheck. i want my MONEY. another factor was this: if i didn't turn in the keys, the person who wants to move into my old office wouldn't be able to move in. and she's ready to move in. so i hoop-jumped.
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