Posted by Layla Winterborne on Sunday, 10 January, 2010 @ 2:33 am
(Off Topic: We had an absolutely beautiful sunrise today)
I don’t blog about work. I just…don’t.
Blogging about my day at work is about as interesting as the ham sandwich and coke that I had for lunch yesterday…or the cup of coffee that I had at 8 this morning…or the the less than mediocre movie I watched in the middle of the night in a fit of insomnia. I don’t have anything beautiful to say about the job which pays my bills…I make phone calls, I coordinate events, I plan birthday parties. By the end of the day, my eyes are watering from the harsh light of the glowbox to which I have been mercilessly chained. There is something about being forced to sit in front of a computer all day that makes my eyes water more than the hours that I spend crawling the web at night.
This is not to say that I dislike my job. I enjoy it actually, IMMENSELY, even though there is an awkward sentiment in being hung in limbo between hourly employee and corporate slave. I enjoy talking shit with my co-workers and learning about their love lives and their children…and even the high school employee’s…there is something special even in their stories of high school love and exams and parental issues…
And yet, all this time, I still haven’t been able to really open up about my day to day…
Until now, that is. Oh wow wow wow…until now.
These past few weeks at work have been filled with inebriated parents, broken glasses, and fist fights between nine year olds. Two Monday’s ago, I left my office long enough for a smoke and in that time watched as a teenage boy jumped from his moving go-kart, landed face first on the track, and subsequently was run over by the kart behind him. Broken arm, broken nose, and parents threatening US with a law suit. Upon being asked why he did it, he smiled and said “To see what it felt like”.
Same Monday, rewind 3 hours and in walks a family of five. Four children with their mother who smells as if she’s been doing nothing but drinking Martini’s and shooting vodka for the past week. She stumbles in, flask full of wine, shirt buttoned way too low for a woman her age. Her children shift back and forth from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable. You can tell from their faces that this isn’t the first time that she has been completely hammered in public. I watch from my upstairs office as she waves her arms around frantically trying to convey some sort of message to the employee behind the counter. He shakes his head slowly, eyes growing wider by the minute. He raises his hands in an “I don’t know” gesture then points to me as he spots me watching from above. From what I could gleen from the situation, Mother was upset due to the fact that we don’t serve alcohol in our “Family Friendly” environment. At one point she had slapped her older son across the face for trying to sneak her flask from her purse while she fumbled to answer a text message on her phone, and the youngest daughter was desperately trying to call a cab so they could get home safely. Apparently, their father was “Away on Business”.
From here on out, it just gets better as I break up a fight between two rival “gangs” full of 9 and 10 year olds. I walked away with nothing more than a scratched face, a broken pair of glasses, and a complete new WHAT THE FUCK attitude. This is the third time in this city that I have been witness to a children’s gang fight. At least this time no one was stabbed.
Six of the seven events which I had planned today cancelled last minute…which is good and bad, in a sense. Good for me because I was able to come home early and enjoy some of this beautiful Saturday…bad because I left with less money in my pocket. Houstonians will party until they pass out in 120 degree heat, but refuse to leave their house whenever the temperature drops below 50. Folks here start strapping chains to their tires whenever there’s even a threat of temps hitting 40. These past several days, you would think that the rapture had suddenly burst forth, leaving the rest of us non-believers behind.
As I look at my clock now, I realize that I have spent the last three hours attempting to write this entry, and it wasn’t for lack of wanting…it was more being interrupted by a mid-sized manic breakdown which threw a wrench in the works. I allowed someone whom I’ve never met, whom I never even knew existed until now, break a part of me…ah it feels so foolish.
Leeroy Jenkins
For my fellow nerds out there…this video STILL makes me laugh.
