Dinner with the ex-company

Lots of things probably should have occurred to me before I accepted the invitation to spend last evening at the official office going away party for a former coworker at my former company. Namely:

1. It was a going away party for my former coworker, not me.
   Once I figured that out, I stopped thanking people for coming. You see, I got the invitation and wasn’t sure if I would go. Then Steph (the guest of honor herself) asked me to go because it was also a party for me and my former boss, who got da axe the same day I did. So of course I accepted, and of course I made my ex-boss come as well. But when we got there it seemed that Steph was the only one who thought the party was for us too.
2. When I'm drunk, I have no filter.
   I should have worn a post-it note on my forhead apologizing ahead of time for anything I said to anyone who had a conversation with me. Or maybe just one of those name tag stickers that could have said: "Hello. My name is Cella. I swear to God I'm sad that I don't work with you anymore."
3. There's a very narrow margin of acceptable responses when someone asks "How are you doing?"
   Think about it. Getting laid off isn't good news to most people. But I'd been with the company for eight years! I'm burned out! Time to move on! The only problem is that, in reassuring former coworkers that I'm thrilled about never having to step foot in that soulless office park ever again, I simultaneously insult them and remind them that they still have to work there. I wish I could give some advice about the best thing to say in that situation, but after about fifteen tries last night, I still couldn't get it right.
4. Former coworkers get uncomfortable when they reference something you used to do at the office and you say too loudly, "I can't do that anymore because I GOT FIRED."
   Poor Milly. She was laughing about being tipsy and that I might take her picture and post it on the intranet. All attention was on her, she was basking in the fact that we all "caught her" after an entire glass of wine and was clearly relishing the thought of her rosy cheeks beaming from the home page the next day. Everyone was laughing along with her too, because they all love Milly, and they all love to share a moment of sweet camaraderie with their coworkers when everyone is filled with joy and brimming with good cheer.
   
   That is, they love those moments until someone blurts out, "Don't worry, you're safe. I can't do that anymore because I GOT FIRED." Milly dropped her arm from my shoulders and looked down, most people shuffled their feet or swigged from their glasses and one let out the battle cry, "OhhhhHo!"
   
   I just raised my glass and said, "Cheers. Heh."
5. People aren't sure if they should laugh when you tell the general manager that it's cool of him to pick up the tab and that it's the least he could do, considering he's the one that canned your ass.
   But this isn't as bad as it sounds! I swear! He's got a roughhouse, blue collar sense of humor that appreciates comments that push the edge of social acceptability. In fact, I had said almost the same exact thing in an email to him earlier that week, when I asked him to join an online network of professional associates. He thought it was funny then, and he thought it was funny at the bar. It's just everyone else that thought I was a jackass. But he’s the only one I put down as a reference, so at least I got that going for me.
6. It's sad to say goodbye.
   I worked with most people who were there last night for eight years. Eight years! I've never been anywhere for eight years! These people have seen me grow from being a temp receptionist to a marketing diva. From a fresh-faced college grad to a seasoned (albeit slightly jaded) professional. From a young girl, scrawny from a recent bout of dysentery picked up in India, to a mature older woman who plumped right the frig up! I'm really going to miss 'em.

All said and done, it was a splendid event. Even if I wasn't officially one of the guests of honor, I still got to bid farewell to some good friends and a free meal. I was able to reassure Steph that life after da axe, whether you choose it for yourself or not, is fine just fine.

If nothing else, it was a heckofa reason to shower and leave the house.

I have found my people

I just did a google search for "Nestle Toll House Cookies," because I need to find resources to support my new position as full time cookie connoisseur. Also because I have no job and it's only 1:00 in the afternoon and I have already run out of things to do today.

A fruitful search! I found an entire thread on a discussion board by people who are just as passionate about Nestle Toll House Break and Bake cookies. With not even a lick of irony, I found this thread in the archives of the Tivo Community Forum.

Here are some excerpts from the discussion. I'm interspersing my own comments because this thread actually took place in 2002, and I'm not sure any of my kindreds are still communicating with the outside world. They may have fallen completely into a Tivo-inspired catatonic trance or, worse, a blood sugar coma. I'm sure they can feel a powerful connection to me, wherever they are.

Darin: Time for me to come clean.... I'm addicted to these things!! What better place to admit this? I love my beer, especially on a Friday night after a long week, and I certainly had my period in my 20's where I was in no shortage of vices. But all those were easily controlled, not like the Nestle Toll House cookies. I can't fight them. When they're all gone, I can't help but buy more. PLEASE HELP ME!!

Cella: Darin, brother, I feel your pain. I admire your plea for help! I aspire to seek help some day too. For now, though, it's just me gettin' jiggy with the elves. The elves live in the Toll House, right? No? That's Keebler? You mean it's just me and ... the ... cookies? All alone? Darin, can you hear me?

Retrodog: YOU BA$^@?D!!! I'd never heard of these before but now I'll probably pick some up. Then I'll try them and inevitably end up in the same condition as you. And then it will all be your fault. I hope you can live with yourself, knowing this.

Cella: Retrodog, don't do it, DON'T DO IT! You're still young! There's still hope for you! Retro, listen to me, babe. Turn off the tv now and go for a jog. Go! Now!

SallyPnut: Yep. It's also frighteningly easy to just reach in the fridge and grab a pre-measured glob of raw dough for snacking....help...

Cella: Sally? Sweetie? We've talked about this in the forum rules. No giving new methods to freebase the treats.

Darin: Hopefully we will all soon be able to eat these along with the new muscle-building pills, and get buff while sitting on the couch watching our recorded shows and eating cookies. Then you will all thank me!

Cella: Darin, you do realize that, when you post something on the internet, everyone in the world can read it, right?

From here the discussion degenerates into baking tips and tricks: which baking sheets are the best to use, an existential question of whether or not it's best to brown the bottoms, and the suggestion to preheat the sheets to which Pan Chun replies, "eeeowch! Sounds painful! Please Mommy, NO! I'll be GOOD, I promise!"

Yeah, that's about when I realized maybe they weren't all my people.

But still, I feel a special connection with some of them. Love is blind, man. Love. Is. Blind.

I have a new full time job!

I don't have an official title yet, but the job description entails eating Nestle Toll House Walnut Chocolate Chip Break and Bake Cookies, in raw cookie dough form, while sitting on my futon wearing sweat pants and a sweatshirt that has seen better days.

I am so styling.

And hot. Don't forget hot. Power jobs are sexy.

Oh no I *didn't* !

But yes I did. I really, really did.

My friend John, also recently unemployed, sent me to cuteoverload.com. A man of few words, he sent only the link. No hello, no how are you. He doesn't write often, so I clicked.

Evil, evil man, that John. Because I went to every damn link on the site. It's bad enough that I clicked on something I knew was all about being cute but, okayI'lladmitit, I was listening to an easy listening radio station yesterday, and somewhere between Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond, the DJ encouraged everyone to visit cuteoverload.com. The DJ gushed about cuteoverload.com. I'm not sure, but I think the DJ wanted to spend some "alone time" with cuteoverload.com.

If this was 3 weeks ago, during my employment years, I would never, ever, go to that web site. Endorsed by an easy listening DJ? Easy listening stations are for administrative assistants who dress up for work but wear bobby socks and sneakers over their pantyhose for the commute in, then change into the work shoes they carry in their purse. Sartre believed that hell is others. I believe that hell is packed, sardine-like, with pantyhose/sneaker-clad admins, chatting about salad dressing and nail polish. And cuteoverload.com.

But guess what unemployment does to a person, folks? That's right. It gives you no excuse not to click on lame links. On the contrary, it makes you grateful for any link to click on, nevermind the content hiding behind it. So I clicked.

And clicked and clicked and clicked. I could not stop clicking. I loved every damn adorable creature on the site, even the crocheted ones. Yes, I admired crochet.

But really, it's not so much the pictures of cute things that got me. It's the commentary accompanying every photograph. Someone named Meg is in charge of the site, and Meg clearly has a dark side that must want to kick the crap out of the angel sitting on her other shoulder. She's a contradiction of stereotypes. A juxtaposition of stigmas. A fluffy-animal loving BADASS!

Take, for example:

• The photo of a kitten with a GIGUNDA head licking its tiny paw, staring straight into your soul with huge saucer-like eyes. One look at this thing and you become its bitch. I think if the CEO that laid me off had seen this photo first, he would have reconsidered painting his yacht and given me a month or two of severance instead. The caption Meg put on it? And I quote: "Is it wrong to want to SQUEEEEZE a kitten?" Umm, Meg? Yes. Yes it is. But I understand. I have a friend who thinks babies are so cute she wants to bite them. Just a nibble on the cheek, though. She swears. Oh, and it really is a friend. It's not me.
• A two-photo series under the section of her site called "Cute or Sad?" The first pic shows a huge, all-white, wolf dog teeming with baby chicks crawling all over it. The second photo is of the same dog and his master, strolling down the avenue, followed by a long, single-file line of fuzzy yellow birds. Her caption reads, "Cute or Sad? You be the judge—to me, this entry falls into the Sad category—cause you know those teeny ducklings are like, WTF?" Meg, anyone who can put the words "teeny ducklings" and "WTF" in the same sentence is my hero.
• The image of a chiptych (no f'n clue what that is, either? It's a chipmunk-esque rodent about the size of your pointer finger) being fed peanuts. Still in the shell. Two of them. Big ones. The creature is the size of your pointer finger, people! The nuts are half the size of its whole entire body! And there it is, a monstrous human hand cramming peanut #2 into its mouth. It seems twisted and wrong, but the chiptych appears to like it.

After a lovely browse through the site, I can see why John was so taken with it. He and Meg are kindreds! He's got an appreciation for the adorable, yet twisted. He once shared his new, cute electronic toy with me. It wanted to play 20 questions, and dared me to think of a noun, any noun, and then guessed what it was after asking 20 yes/no questions. He left it with me for the morning, and I had fun trying to make it guess "penis." While it accurately guessed tangible things like "apple" and even intangible things like "e-mail," it would only go so far as to guess "urethra" when I tried to make it be dirty. I returned it to John later that morning and told him my findings. He said, "I know."

All righty, then! Thanks for the link, John! But I'm curious -- did you hear about cuteoverload.com on the easy listening station too? This I gotta know. I'd have to start my own web site called ironyoverload.com. Maybe I will anyway. It's not like I don't have the time!

(Hey... anyone want to place a bet that Meg is unemployed too?!)

Life after da axe

I don't want to brag or anything, but unemployment rocks. At least the first couple weeks of unemployment have been rocking. I remember the pitfalls last time around, and so far I've done a reasonably good job of avoiding the inertia that can prevent you from enjoying your time off, let alone doing things like bathing. (See Unemployment Paradise and Unemployment Stasis.)

The most imporant thing is to have a plan. Two weeks ago my plan included things that carved a strategic path to profitability for my company. These days my plan includes things like using coupons and checking pay phones for loose change. No matter, I'm a girl with a purpose -- so long as I can keep thinking up activities for my to-do list.

I'm heading into week two, and so far, here's what I've done:

1. Organized my home in the throes of an obsessive-compulsive frenzy.
   There's really nothing I can do to control the loss of my job, my community of eight years nor my income, so I've over-compensated by removing every last molecule of dust from all surfaces, reorganizing my kitchen for optimium effeciency and doing laundry with wild abandon. Having a clean and organized home provides a solid foundation for conducting an otherwise taxing job search. Besides, with my chores already done, I have no excuse for not leaving the house just because "I really should tend to the mess under my bathroom sink" first. If you lean anywhere in the direction of OCD, or if you have ever lost your job and have become overwhelmed with an overabundance of free time, you know what I'm talking about.
   
   
2. Leveraged my obsessive need for order by shopping for kitchen-organizing baskets at Target.
   This really killed two birds with one stone. Now I have separate bins to hold various families of kitchen items (e.g., baking needs, raw grains and legumes, cooking oils, silverware, tubers, etc.) AND I had a reason to leave the house. As they used to say in the corporate world, this was a real "win-win"!
   
   
3. Planned for at least one chore per day that created a reason to shower and leave the house.
   I am, perhaps, the most proud of this accomplishment. Monday was Grocery Shopping Day. Tuesday was Kitchen Basket Day. Wednesday was Buy The Cheapest Toaster I Can Find Day. Thursday was Return All My Impulse Purchases From Wednesday Day. Friday was Dig My Car Out From Under Twenty Five Feet Of Snow Day.
   
   I hereby solemnly swear to uphold this practice until I am once again gainfully employed. It will help combat the agoraphobia that can settle in when I lose all ambition for exploring the outside world and, instead, turn to exploring fictional worlds via science fiction novels and television series on DVD.
   
   
4. Unleashed my inner Martha Stewart.
   Who knew I was a baking goddess? We're talking cupcakes, death-by-chocolate cake and Winter squash with pine nuts lasagne. We're talking vegetarian enchiladas, extra cheesy tostadas, hot chocolate from scratch! We're talking homemade guacamole, bowties with wild mushrooms, zesty lentil soup!! And that was just Friday.
   
   
5. Joined Weight-Watchers.
   Now is the perfect time to start a healthy lifestyle. I also plan to start training for 6k road races, working my way up to the Boston Marathon this spring. After that, the Iron Man triatholon! Yes, I am completely making this part up, but it sounds good, doesn't it?
   
   
6. Crafted careful, yet honest, responses to the question, "What do you do for work?"
   People tend to feel bad when you tell them you just got laid off. It's sort of the same discomfort you give someone if they ask how you are doing and you tell them you've got a flaming case of 'roids. If you live in America, no one really wants to know about your woes. So I've market-tested a few quick, socially acceptable responses that save everyone the trouble. Here are my favorite:
   
   • I'm freelancing.
   • I'm a full-time blogger.
   • I work for the state. (Who do you think sends me unemployment checks?!)
   
   
7. Thought up off-beat inventions that will make a fortune.
   Ever been overcome with a brilliant idea and then done nothing about it because you don't have time? Well, I've got the brilliance. And the time. Read 'em and weep:
   
   • Prescription windshields: I dare you to steal my car!
     
   • College Food Cookbook: Featuring innovative recipes you can make using only ingredients found at in a vending machine and a hotplate.
   • Wine Pairing Companion Guide to College Food Cookbook: Self explanatory, really.

Whew! As you can see, I've been very busy. And this is just the beginning! Unemployment doesn't have to be fraught with anxiety and boredom. The trick is to keep making lists and, for the love of God, don't just sit there. Now is the time to do everything you wish you could do back when you had to spend eight hours a day in a soulless office park, pretending you weren't surfing the web. Everything, that is, unless it is something that requires money. Or going too far away in case you get a job interview. But everything else is fair game, damnit, and you have to remember that you are the envy of employed people everywhere.

I got da axe

Greetings, readers! It's been a long time, but I'm still alive. It's such a bummer when you check someone's blog and it's been abandoned since Halloween. I'm here with a quick update and a promise for more insightful, humiliating stories to share with you soon. (Really, I just wanted to keep that photo of my wet pants at the top of the screen as long as I could. You're welcome.)

The biggest news is that -- you guessed it -- I got da axe! It happened Monday. I knew it was coming because you figure these things out when you hear about an impending reorganization and your boss says things like, "you're looking for another job, right?" Yep. I'm a sharp knife on a string of bulbs!

I had tons of fun writing blog entries about my impending laid-offed-ness in my head. But I was afraid to write them, just in case the CEO of my parent company happened to:

1. Realize I exist
2. Figure out that I keep a blog
3. Give a crap about the blog
   
4. Decipher my highly creative blogonym
5. Actively search for said blog in blogosphere
   
6. Read it and decide that I'd let the cat out of the bag about the BIG FAT SECRET REORG too eary.
7. Decide that, as punishment, he wouldn't give me the 6 months severance that was burning a hole in his Armani pockets.

So, out of respect to my bank account and meager assets incase he decided to go after them in a law suit if I broke confidentiality about the reorganization, I decided to keep quiet.

Turns out that, at the last minute, he decided the yacht needed an extra coat of paint and that was a better use of his revenue than, say, ensuring that some girl who worked really hard for his company would have something to eat and a roof over her head when he laid her off. So he gave me two-weeks-in-lieu-of-notice instead.

So there you have it.

Am I bitter? Not at all, actually. I love unemployment.

Fa real!

I'm so good at it. I had lots of practice 2 years ago when he laid me off the first time! Well, let me just tell you now, mister. Lay me off once, shame on you! Lay me off twice, shame on .... oops. heh. yeah.

To be completely honest and unjaded, I'm thrilled for some time off. I had been getting burned out on it for a while. Being at a place for 8 years will do that to a gal!

Now I'm thinking about what to do next, and if maybe I can make a bigger contribution to the world than, say, spending the whole day trying to convince CXOs that they really really need us to do some IT work in their data center. More on that to come.

Oh yes, I will be waxing philosophically about The Man, Corporate America, the point of all of this silly working stuff and the movie Office Space. I'll also let you in on my exploration of what is wrong with the world and what I'm doing now to make it a worse place. Then you can help me figure out if maybe I can do something better with my time to try to make things better. Then, after you've been with me through that whole waxing period, you can be with me when I realize that, in order to have a job that makes any sort of positive change in this world, I'll have to make less than half the salary I'm used to making. You can hear me gasp when I exclaim, "What? No more shopping for bazillion dollar lamps at Pottery Barn?" And then we can both hold our breath while we wait for me to make up my mind between the six-figure powerjob offer that will come in on the same day that a non profit invites me to help them feed orphans.

It's going to be a real cliff-hanger, folks!

But first, I'm off to visit my friend who just got dumped. We will have conversations like, "what would you rather have, a stomache ache or headache?" and "Which would you rather be, deaf or blind?" And, "which is worse, losing your job or getting dumped?"

It'll be big fun, I tell ya.

There better be ice cream. LOTS of ice cream.

And he'd better be the one buying.