I have been at two back-to-back trade shows for nine days. On day ten, rather than resting, I drove our PR people around town to different destinations while a film crew followed. We were filming a video news release for my company. On day eleven and day twelve, I rested. God may have rested in the Bible only on one day, but God didn’t have to put on a fake smile and pretend that she was having fun selling her wares at a trade show in a badly lit convention center filled with recycled air. Not to mention wine and dine strangers at night, all the while, ooing over photos of their ugly-ass offspring.
Work ages you. According to my new best friend, my massage therapist - the person I see more than any other living being outside of work - my work is wearing my body down. I don’t even do manual labor, so I’m not sure how my job is killing my body, but judging by how I feel – like I have a hangover without the alcohol, I believe her.
This would all be bearable if there were no jackasses at my job. But there are. There’s Chickpea, the much reviled garbanzo bean of our organization. He can’t control his bodily noises, he picks his noise, he brags how men hit on his mail-order bride, he sits on his fat ass and cruises the internet, he berates those underneath him because it is the only work he can manage to do, and he exists. If you call him on his behavior, he tells you, “you know that is just how I am.” You want to say, “how you are is not good enough,” but you don’t, because he can fire you. So you blog anonymously and hope that there actually is Karma or a God and that one or the other will do him in. In the meantime, you see a message therapist and wonder why in your blog you shifted from first person to second in the middle of your post about your work. Is it lazy grammar or is it some psychological mishap kicking in, shielding you, I mean me, from the harsh realities of life with a chickpea?
Hubby tells me I have another year or year-and-a-half to go before we retire to Baja. I keep thinking: I’m too young to retire. Then I remember my aching muscles, my brain that is mush from too much thinking, my cheeks, which hurt from smiling (I have new respect for beauty queens) and, of course, I think about the chickpeas of the corporate world, and I realize, screw this. Hand me a shot of tequila, pass the sun-block and say Buenos Noches. I’m cooked. I’m done. I don’t even need Ambien to sleep I’m so tired. On the other hand, I still need my Prozac. I do have another 18 months of this, after all.
