Time for an Upgrade
My 31st birthday came and went earlier this month. I think I handled it very well. There was none of last year’s “THIRTY?! I’M going to be THIRTY? No frigging way. There will be no cake, no candles, in fact, no celebration of any kind. I am NOT having my birthday. EVER AGAIN.”
It didn’t help that my hair started going seriously grey. It’s genetic. Everyone in my family started going grey at 16 and I always thought the whole ‘salt & pepper’ look was pretty cool. Until it ended up ON MY HEAD.
Hi, I’m Jules, and I’m a hypocrite. I pay $100 for a cut and color every 12 weeks, and I can’t stop. I’ve never looked this good. Or had as many compliments.And I’m seriously hooked on that, baby.
When I first read Erin’s posts about what a compliment/freak magnet her red hair is, I admit, it sounded a little…out there. But I can tell you right now – it’s completely true. Complete strangers do come up to tell me how beautiful my hair is. And I’m just faking it. It’s awesome!
But back to the story. My birthday was fairly pleasant this year. We went to dinner on Saturday, brunch on Sunday, and I bought some new clothes. The only thing we didn’t do that I could have wanted, was to pop a bottle and get drunk. My husband’s mother was in town.
Family and friends sent lots of birthday cards and wishes – some even sent them twice. But It seems that somewhere amidst all the love and heartfelt hugs, I missed the second notice on my warrantee expiration.
“Step on the scale, please”
Man, I hate this. All I want is to get a stupid blood test so I can get a refill my thyroid medication. But I can’t just go get the blood test. Nooooo. I gotta get weighed. I gotta get my blood pressure. I gotta sit with the doc and chat about how I drink 3 cups of coffee a day to stay awake and can remember that “It’s in Johnson’s underwear” is a quote from the Breakfast Club, but have no recollection that my husband ever mentioned we’d be camping with his parents this weekend. For example.
“Do you want me to take off my shoes?”
“Nope, just climb on up.”
“Quick, what can I drop? Lose the purse. Am I wearing a headband? K, step on the scale.”
Chink. chink. chink. 127.5.
DAMNIT!
I’ve been eating fruit bars for breakfast and oatmeal for lunch for months and TODAY I’m 127.5?!!! C’mon. Friday I was 124. Can’t you put down Friday? Wait. My sneakers are 3 pounds, at least.
To those of you out there going, “127.5?! I should BE so lucky. This chick can’t EVEN talk about feeling overweight.” – I’ve heard it and I’m not saying I want to be 95 pounds. Or that I’m fat. However, 127.5 seems a little extreme to me because up until I devised the brilliant plan to gain a ‘little’ weight in the hopes of getting some actual boobage, I spent the majority of my free time in Ballet class and never broke 115 until the age of 27. To top it off, that damn plan didn’t work. AT. ALL.
“Hey, Jules. How we doing today?”
“Hey Doc. I’m good. Just in to get my blood drawn.”
“Hmm. Ok, ok. We’ll get that done. Everything else ok?”
“Well, my hand did go completely numb last week. I did Yoga the night before – it’s prob’ly just a pinched nerve.”
“Put out your hand, palm up. Let me tap your fingertips.
Tap. tap. tap.
“Do your fingers hurt?”
“No. But they’re really buzzy.”
“K. Put the backs of your hands together, fingers pointing down. Hold your elbows at 90 degrees. Does your hand hurt?”
“Can’t tell. It’s still buzzing from the tapping.”
“You’ve got Carpal Tunnel.”
DAMNIT!
“We’ll fit you for a brace and put you on anti-inflammatories. You’ll have to wear the brace at night and reduce as much computer work as possible.”
Uh, what?
I swear to god, his voice actually changes and I’m having a full blown flashback to my last dentist appointment:
“Your right joint seems to be wearing the lower jaw bone away. You’ll need to come in for more x-rays and we’ll to fit you for a permanent brace.”
I’m sorry, but what the hell is this? Some conspiracy to turn me into Frankenstein’s Bride? Have I not mentioned the hair dye? The fruitbars? The HUSBAND?
Oh sure, I really don’t want to have my jaw hanging off the left side of my face when I’m 50. But I really do like my husband WANTING to kiss me, instead of HAVING to kiss me. At this rate, he’s going to roll over at 2am on my 35th birthday and find himself fighting for the sheets with someone resembling the bald Hellraiser chick. Gh-huh.
I leave the doctor’s office with my right arm tied up in a black, five-strap wraparound wrist brace. It’s a beautiful, sunny day and as I drive by the Wendy’s that sits down the street, I glare jealously at the cars lined up at the drive through.
All the way home I think about how much better I feel, not gorging myself on a big, fat, cheesy meal of beef and veggies and mmmmmm…mayonaise. There’s an apple waiting for me at home, and if I’m really hungry, a bowl of chicken soup. Yeah, that’ll feel way better.
And I can weigh myself again. Their scale looked like it had been there when they first opened. In 1945. Mine’s digital. It’s gotta be way more accurate than theirs. Plus, I can take off my sneakers.
Step. step.
The digital zero blinks. Once. Twice. Three times.
127
Ignorance is Bliss
You know that prickly, buzzy feeling you get when a body part falls asleep? My entire right arm has been doing that ALL DAY. And now I can’t feel my hand.
You might be asking how I’m writing this. And I would say, the same way I’ve been typing letters and designing banners and generally using my mouse WAY too much today.
Pure dumb determination.
That, and because the idea of asking my boss if I can go home "because my hand feels icky" sounds unbelievably pathetic. Also? I’ve experienced so many minor medical issues in the last four months that I’m convinced I’ll be classified as a hypochondriac if I actually go to the doctor for this.
It’s probably just a pinched nerve or something. I think I’ll continue to ignore it and hope it goes away.
Just watch – I’ll wake up in the morning and my hand will be totally DEAD. “Oh GOD, NOoOooOooooo! Just when I discovered that I really DO love data entry! What will I do without my HAAAAANNNDD?!”
Dorian's Portrait
My friend Tracy quit yesterday. He started at eBay a month before I did, over five years ago. We both started in Community Watch, where we spent the better part of a year booting off the creeps who listed freak-show porn, Faces of Death videos and crime scene photos. Later, I moved on to the Quality team and then into Recognition and Communications – he became a Supervisor and then a Trainer for New Hires, China and Outsourcing. Oddly enough, the work still kept us in shared circles.
The same is true for many of the friends I know from the beginning. Sadly, month by month, there are fewer and fewer of us. We seem to be dying off, all completely unable or unwilling to let this place plow over us one more time.
eBay is a great place. It’s done a lot for me, personally and professionally. And the benefits aren’t half bad at all. eBay’s a great concept, model and opportunity. By and large, the people who use it and work for it, completely buy into its ideals and possibilities.
In Customer Support, we live for those fleeting moments when we see it work the way it’s meant to – when it brings people together in meaningful ways. Because as cheesy as it sounds, we feel like we were a tiny part of those moments, and that makes all our work worth it. Those moments pick us up off the ground and give us the strength to do it again.
Because working at eBay grinds you into the fucking ground. It asks for everything you have and more than you can ever give. It never stops. And we just don’t get to see very many of those moments.
When you’ve spent five years running non-stop, juggling the workload of 3 people and banging your head against the inter-office political blockade, those moments aren’t enough anymore. Instead, they just make you sad because there’s not one speck of strength left to be found in your heart. You’re so fricking tired. Dead tired.
And as much as eBay takes care of their people, it doesn’t matter a damn if you’ve managed to survive the swells crammed into the last 5 years that most companies navigate in the course of twenty. They don’t care that these ‘long term’ employees are dropping like flies.
eBay is so much bigger than a single person. We start and stay most of our careers as part of an internal community that kicks ass. As a group, there’s almost nothing we can’t accomplish. Nothing we’re not willing to pitch in and work for. But when an individual gets ground down, that’s a different story. They’ve gotta pull themselves back up on their own or get left in the dust.
Which is wierd. Because if you’ve got a problem with productivity or hotkeys, if you need to learn how a tool works or get some answers for a project, people will help you at the drop of a hat. It’s work-related. So they can deal with that. But when someone gets burnt out or emotionally nuked – it’s like they’re a ghost. No one knows how to fix that, and no one has time to figure it out because it’s not on the list of nine million ‘business critical’ tasks we’ve got to deal with RIGHT NOW.
Our ‘walking wounded’ become singular people caught up in a megalithic machine that adapts beyond every limitation, including experience. It bothers me that these people I have known, who have so much knowledge and talent, get worn down and none of our brave mid-level leaders care. As a Recognition Specialist, I thought it was my job to care. I cared A LOT. My boss? Not so much. And when I got really passionate about it – she nuked me.
So I think this is why the ‘older’ folks are dying, why we’re leaving. There are all these people here, all this community, and so few emotional touchstones. There’s little room for talent. No toleration for independent thought. Instead, we’re tiny motes of energy to be pushed around wherever and however is needed. And it’s my observation that talented, independent people tend to have very little tolerance for that kind of control. In the end, it’s about our dreams, our integrity, and the fact that we just won’t be bought.
I have no idea if Tracy felt like this. I hope not. We haven’t talked since I was demoted to my data entry punishment. But that day, he saw how pissed I was as I tossed the entire contents of my desk into boxes and sat in my chair with tears of rage in my eyes, looking blankly at my screen and trying to come up with any reason not to get up and walk the hell out. (The only reason I could think of was Travis.) Tracy came over to ask me what had happened – he lent his ear and showed me he cared, even though we were never close friends. It meant so much.
Maybe he didn’t have any of these issues. Maybe he just found something else he wanted to do. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the fact they’re reorganizing his group and moving the work to our Vancouver office. The point is, I don’t know. I never asked. And given what he did for me, I should have.
Tracy didn’t say goodbye. He left at 5pm and sent an email to his cubemates.
He left no contact information at all.
Total Geeker
Ohmigod, I am a GEEK. Not that that’s bad. Or some kind of newsflash. But I get so used to living in the World of Me that most of the time, I’m oblivious to the things that make me a dork.
That is, until I find myself doing something SO FREAKING COOL that it completely blows me out of my microcosm. It’s at that point that I hear my inner Ted say,"Whoa!" loud enough to wake me to the reality of my geek-ness.
Since I started Adobe’s Illustrator 10: Classroom in a Book, Ted’s been screaming his head off. Some of the things that made me go “Duuude”
-
I KNEW there had to be a better way to make a triangle…
-
You can SET THE NUMBER OF STAR POINTS AND TWIST IT INTO A FLOWER?!! Wicked!
-
So THAT’S how you use this @#$-damn scissor/pen/symbol tool.
-
Hey wait, this pen tool SUCKS. How the FREAK…?!
-
Lemme get this straight. You can MERGE two objects and take them apart later?!
-
I DON’T have to jerk around with 5 different files to make a mask?
-
Patterns can be applied to paths?! SQUEEEK!!
-
Whhhoa…transparency…
And when I say these are things that made me go “Dude!”, I mean that in the middle of my cubicle and the surrounding eBay Quality team, these are actual announcements I’ve made throughout the last two weeks. To no one in particular.
As the Quality team spends most of their time debating the procedural intricacies involved in marking down our representatives (that, and recapping the birthday party they threw this weekend – for THEIR DOG), when I burst out with a random statement such as,
“This thing zooms up to 6400%?! Awesooomme!”
They tend to look at me like a stray cat who just hacked a hairball.
But I don’t care. All I know is, I’m finally starting to understand why Illustrator costs $500. It’s totally bodacious, and I’m seriously addicted.
Party on, dudes!
