Personal Day

oh my god oh my god. I just got home from a lovely day off, and in the car I was thinking to myself how it was such a nice day off. I had some phone issues the past couple days, resulting in my using my day off to go to the Verizon store and have them activate a different phone for me so that I could receive text messages and actually just use the phone period. The girl spent maybe 30 minutes updating the phone, etc, and going from one phone to the other in order to update my contact list. This meant that when I left, I did not see any "missed calls" nor did I notice the two voicemails I had received in that 30 minutes of time.

So I got home just now and listened to the first message, which said, "Hi, it's 2:40. We were expecting to see you here at work 10 minutes ago. Maybe you were under the impression you were supposed to come in at 3:30." And I seriously felt like I was going to throw up all of a sudden, because I knew the next voicemail was going to be an hour later, still wondering where I was. That was awkward. I tried to call work hoping one of the managers would still be around so I could apologize profusely, but they are all gone. So now I have to call them in the morning.

I am a responsible person. I hate it when people with cancel plans on me, and I never cancel on other people. More importantly, I have never not shown up for work, nor have I ever even called in sick when I was supposed to show up. Oh my god. I think I am making a bigger deal of this than it is, because the reality is, it's over and it's too late to do anything other than explain what a mistake it was. Although it says in the handbook that failure to provide notice of missing a shift was grounds for disciplinary action. I messaged a coworker on facebook, though, and he worked tonight. He said he didn't even hear anyone mention my absence, which is a good sign. But it's the managers I am concerned with. I don't want to be considered a flake or be in trouble. I hate trouble.

"Are you a hippie?"

I've been asked this quite a few times in my life, most recently, this evening at work. I said I didn't think so, and asked how he would define a hippie. He didn't give me a real response, citing another coworker as his definition, and explaining that someone else had said I looked like a hippie. The thing is, I don't see how people place me into this hippie category, when being a "hippie" can mean so many different things now, in 2009. Furthermore, I've hardly had time to have conversations with anyone at work, and I have to wear standard issue t-shirts to identify me as an employee above all else.

It's not that I necessarily have anything against personally being a hippie, I just don't feel I deserve to be called what I consider a hippie, nor do I think I deserve to be considered a pothead, which I find is generally a big qualifier. In college, two of my room friends had a discussion that I was present for. One said her father was an activist/hippie in the 60s: smoked pot, rocked out at Woodstock, praised peace, wore bell-bottoms and tie-dye... The other retorted that her father was also an "activist." He'd been in the army. I'm not sure either of them really had the same concept of a hippie as existed in their fathers' days. I think that people have criticized and belittled, as well as broadened the 60s hippie subculture and its goals and efforts.

I've had people tell me that I am a hippie because I am a vegetarian, or interested in recycling, which sort of bothers. Maybe being a vegetarian was "hip" and unusual back in the 60s, but now it is around. I mean seriously. And I was raised a vegetarian, so it's not as if I chose it as part of a hippie lifestyle. (But oh perhaps you could say I was just raised into a hippie life. Though I would for sure say that my sister and my mother are more hippie-esque than I, and both have become more so as time has gone by...) And being eco-friendly/a "tree-hugger?" Come on, it is a responsibility anymore, it's not something that just the hippies should be doing.

I don't think this is where my coworker was going with asking me, and I certainly didn't get into it with him at all. But it seemed interesting to me, especially there, where I don't feel like I have displayed much personality at all (possibly lame) or any hippie style, that people should consider me such. I don't know, am I? Is it just a vibe I radiate?



Next up: Learning that the Easter Bunny does not exist.

Being the New Girl

I am not used to being "The New Girl." Living in the same town my whole life, I was always at school with people I knew, from elementary school all the way up to high school graduation. Then I got a job at the same place my mother worked, went to college at the same small school as my sister, and upon graduating, went to live with my sister. What can I say? They make good decisions. Or I have issues getting out there on my own? Not the issue though.

The issue is that now I am working at a new place. The first few days I went to work, I felt like everyone was personally interviewing me, and oddly, almost all of them knew things about me already. Really, it felt a bit like vultures swooping down. So I thought maybe they'd talked about me amongst themselves, I mean, at least a little bit, but then I thought perhaps I was being paranoid or self centered. I found out tonight though, that out of all the people who work there right now, the newest one has been there 8 months. So they don't have a lot of new blood around. I remember there was always some excitement when there was going to be a new person in my class in elementary school. You know, I guess it was the excitement of meeting a new friend, or a new competitor, or a new friend for the bus ride home. And I suppose it isn't too different in the workplace. Anyway, my veteran coworkers are all totally in the swing of things, and they are two very tight knit crews: morning and night. Every time I ask a question of someone, I feel like nuisance, because it just disrupts their well-oiled machine.

What has been making this week, my fourth on the job, awkward is that at this point I don't feel that I need to ask very many questions. I'm pretty confident in the tasks that I'm completing on my own. BUT then someone walks over and tells me that I was misinformed, and I should do it their way. I understand that they have been doing it longer than I have, and they know the particulars. What works best. But please, I think it would be easiest for all of us to let me work out my own system. Yesterday I was doing one thing, and this guy came out of the back room to ask me if that was how I'd been told to do it. I said, "I think so..." He told me it just wasn't necessary, and after we discussed it a bit, he returned to the back room. I followed him a minute later to take some stuff back, and he and this girl were chuckling, as if he had shared his encounter with me, and both looked at me and stopped talking as I came through the door.

Aside from trying to learn the ropes, which takes concentration, I'm trying my best to be more outgoing or friendly. I don't think I generally give off an outgoing vibe, and have in fact been told that I initially seem unapproachable or do something to seem mean, or maybe superior. When I guess really I am just unsure where to begin or reluctant to impose myself on their social circle. At this job, they definitely hang out outside of work, and I think two of the guys went to high school together, and worked at the same movie theater. And while they're all very nice, I am kind of having a hard time telling whether they are being nice because we're working together, or whether they're being nice because they care.

There are myriad specific opportunities for awkwardness here, and I have experienced many over the course of my training. I'm sure I have not seen the last of them. But this entry ended up focusing on the overall feeling of awkwardness that comes with being new and navigating a new setting. For me, at least.

Long Ago and Far Away

Due to lack of other activities, I have decided to pull from my vault of awkward moments and make a post.

I was wandering through the New Jersey airport on my way from Paris to Vermont last year, looking for the right place to sit down with my book and a cup of coffee. On one of the moving sidewalks, I saw a girl going the opposite direction on the moving sidewalk right next to me. She looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place her before she was behind me. Then I realized that she had lived on my floor for the last semester of college. I wasn't going to go out of my way to talk to her because I didn't even know her, but I did think to myself that it was a funny coincidence that were were in such close proximity in the same airport, etc. But then she came back from her food run and sat down in the gate area next to me, which got me thinking about whether or not we should speak to each other. I know my mother would definitely have gone over to her, or my sister, but I just didn't see the point. Aside from living on the same floor as her, I didn't know anything about her, and I imagined the conversation would go like this:

Me: Hi! I think you lived on my floor last year!
Girl: I guess so!
Me: What a small world!
Girl: Well I live in New Jersey.
Me: Okay! How is school?
Girl: Great. I am happy for the break.
Me: Okay. Well bye!

I just generally do not like small talk, or maybe I'm not good at it, but I figured if I spent two years at a small school with this girl, and one semester on the same floor of a small dorm with her, and we never shared so much as a good morning while brushing our teeth, why would we have anything to share in a bustling airport during the holidays?


Now this has reminded me of a far more excruciating scenario, also at an airport. In March of my senior year at college, I was heading off to Spring Break in Atlanta! I was departing from the small airport near school, which was bound to be sending off some of my classmates as well. Because it was a day early, and in the morning, it wasn't too busy. Of course, as soon as I got in line for my flight, I noticed that I was standing two people behind a girl who shared not only my major, but also my minor. Forgive me, I think this is going to be pretty convoluted. In order to fully appreciate the awkwardness, there is some necessary back story. But also know that the majority of the awkwardness (/anxiety) was only in my head.

We had been in basically all of the same classes since sophomore year (probably three out of four classes per semester). First semester sophomore year, we even worked on a group presentation together. We talked to each other while we were working on the project, but then when I would see her around campus it seemed like we weren't going to be buds. Which is fine, she had a different "circle of friends" if you will: the rugby team, and I had, well, glee club people. As semesters went by and we continued to be in the same small classes, we still never spoke around campus. Or even in class, because neither one of us participated very much in the discussions. So then I was like, well, that's funny, we should probably be friends because we clearly have similar academic interests, and we are both not into public speaking. Oh! Junior year I went to a party in her room, which was oh so awkward because I am not big into parties, not into small talk, and not into situations where I don't know anyone. This was one of those situations. I went with my friend who had to pick something up, and we were supposed to go somewhere else from the party. She knew everyone, and got sucked into conversations, and I just stood there like a loser. By senior year we were not friends, and it was like, it was too late to strike up a casual conversation, because we knew each other, but we didn't, you know?

So Spring Break comes along, this girl is standing in front of me with her girlfriend, and I realize we are going to be on the same flight. Neither of us acknowledges this fact, and as the airline attendant calls people forward to step onto the plane, I start imagining my seat being directly next to these other girls. What would I do? Surely we would be forced to say something, or at the very least make eye contact with each other. If we were both by ourselves, I think it would have been easier (or maybe more necessary) to say something to each other. Like, hey, that midterm we had this morning was fun. But I didn't want to interrupt them, and they had each other as an excuse to ignore me. As I board the plane, one of the last people, I quickly but carefully scan the plane for their faces, and spot them in the very back. My seat is safely in the middle, the flight is short, and I've just used the airport's restroom, which means I won't have to pass them to get to the restroom. I can relax!