A Letter to a Sick Co-Worker

Dear Co-Worker,

I want you to know I like you. I really do! You're nice, hardworking, passionate about our company, and have some really good ideas. You're usually pleasant to be around and, even though you're never the go-to-gal for chocolates, people seem to like stopping in to visit with you on occasion chocolate or no.

Bob in accounting, Mary in sales, Debbie in reception, Les in operations, Carol in IT, and Ben in marketing...they* all think you're swell too!

So you know how you came to work yesterday and today looking as though you were an under-cooked turkey, hacking, sniffling, sneezing, and blowing your nose every 20 seconds? We could all tell you weren't feeling well and we encouraged you to go home. Because we care, yes. We want you to feel better! 

But also...

Bob's got severe asthma. When Bob gets a cold, which is rare thankfully, Bob goes to the emergency room and then is on oxygen for a month afterward because that cold automagically turns into pneumonia.

Mary's undergoing some pretty heavy duty chemotherapy treatment to get rid of that pesky cancer. If Mary gets sick, they'll have to stop treatment right in the middle of the cycle...and then the chemo won't likely work so well. 

Debbie's going on a trip of a lifetime next week - one she and her partner have saved and scrimped and planned for over the course of the last 3 years. If she gets sick, she can't fly and, even if she can fly, she'll be hunkered down in her hotel room for the first several days too exhausted and sick to sightsee. All that time, effort, and money going to waste.

Les's got a brand new little baby - a baby conceived after years of trying and tens of thousands of dollars spent on IVF treatments. A brand new little precious bundle of joy, born 10 weeks early and who has spent the first 6 weeks of her life in the NICU while her wee little lungs develop. He rushes from work right to the hospital to be with his wife and daughter, holding her for just a few minutes is easily the best part of his day. If Les gets a cold, he won't be able to see or touch his daughter for possibly weeks.

Carol, well...remember how Carol had that organ transplant awhile ago? That life-saving organ transplant she'd been waiting for for more than a decade? She's on some crazy immuno-suppressant drugs to keep her body from rejecting that organ. If she gets sick, she's on her way to the ICU. 

We, of course, can't forget Ben. He's HIV positive. Enough said.

And then there's me and the rest of your 90+ co-workers who just really don't like being sick. We don't want to be sick. Being sick sucks...as you well know.

Yet, there you are, sitting at your desk, hacking, sneezing, sniffling and blowing your nose just before you use the copy machine, the printer, the shredder, the file cabinets, the door handles, the microwave, the refrigerator, the restroom, the faucet handles. There you are, in my office, multiple times a day, handing me a stack of invoices to review...invoices you've been coughing all over for the last 3 hours. I know because I listened to you attempt to hack up that lung every couple of minutes and cringed outwardly knowing you'd eventually be standing just where you are saying, "Here you go!" as if you've handed me some incredible gift you're so very proud of.

You aren't winning any medals or awards or even friends by working while you're sick, you know. Management isn't watching you and thinking, "Wow! What a dedicated, wonderful employee!" Management isn't actually paying any attention. If they were, they'd likely tell you to go the fuck home because they don't want to get sick either and the work you do, while extremely important, can wait a day or two until you feel better. It can even be re-assigned to someone else who would gladly take it on as long as they didn't have to say, "Gesundeit!" to you one more time without really meaning it.

Just so you know, while you're crawling through your day thinking you are such a trooper, the rest of us are fantasizing about featuring you as the dunkee at the carnival dunking booth where those of us with a good arm (and my arm can be lethal when necessary) could douse you in a pool of Lysol. And when we aren't thinking about that, we're wishing Human Resources would install a Silkwood Shower we could all partake in at the end of our work day.

Right now, we don't really like you. Right now, we all think you're an asshole.

So just stop it and go home.

Sincerely,

The Staff

* Fictional characters

It's Possible I Occasionally Lack Sound Judgment

I popped a rib slightly out of its socket yesterday morning.

Now it kinda hurts to do stuff. You know, like bend over, cough, laugh and generally live life. (As an aside, I just re-read that sentence and it now sounds as though instead of a bad rib, I was having my prostate checked...which I wasn't. I don't even have a prostate.)

Despite the pain, I was bound and determined to get up to Denhac yesterday as Jason Scott - the mastermind behind Get Lamp and BBS: The Documentary - was in town filming interviews for one of his latest projects...a documentary about Defcon. You'd think, since I've never been to Defcon, I wouldn't have anything to contribute. And you would be (mostly) right. However, the point wasn't for me to offer up my perspective (although I did do a brief pre-con experience interview) as much as it was for me to watch the process, listen to Scott's interview style, and hear what my friends might say about the Defcon years leading up to XX.

So I loaded up on ibuprofen and tromped up there for the day.

It was terrific! 

Loads of people - some I don't see very often - came up to interview. There was food and drink. There was merriment...especially when "Roy" got on a tear and I had to beg him to stop making me laugh as every guffaw also induced sharp, jabbing pain and unattractive facial contortions.

We even had a bit of excitement when a transformer located 100 yards away and directly in my line of sight at the time blew in spectacular fashion and knocked our power out for an hour.

However, I forgot one thing. Additional ibuprofen. So, by early evening, I was in pretty sorry shape. Luckily, St. Jude was there and took me in hand. Well...OK really she gave me ibuprofen from her stash and then took me back in the classroom, laid me out on the concrete floor¹ and worked on getting the rib back into place. 

Which was a relief.

But now the muscle around the rib is traumatized and inflamed. Rather than resting as I should have, I overdid it yesterday, and am now paying for it today as I awkwardly try to type while lying horizontally on top of an ice pack².

Awesome. So much for the gothnic this afternoon and the BBQ tonight.

It was still worth every ounce of pain I'm feeling today.

Additionally, better this happened now than 2 weeks from now. I'm Defcon bound, y'all. 17 days and counting.

w00t!

1: Note to self: That floor is filthy dirty. Get mop.

2: Note to self: Do not read anything on the list while lying on an ice pack attempting to recover from injury. People like Roy are on there and they make you laugh. Hard.

Things That Don't Fit Anywhere Else (aka 5 partial blog posts in one)

1) My ability to self-flagellate astounds me.

I mean, while I do take a perverse sense of pride in just how well I beat myself to a bloody pulp and am confident if it were an Olympic sport I would, at the very least, take a place on the podium, it's a rather disturbing skill to have honed. One I could do without. But, just like it's kind of comforting in an ouchy way to pick a scab until it bleeds, it's also strangely soothing to poke and poke and poke at my emotional guts until I throw up (figuratively speaking).

So that's how I've spent this fine Saturday. How about you?

2) Yesterday, I did something very exciting. I paid off the balance due on my second to last credit card leaving one last card to shovel out from under and then I'm debt free. Of course, I saved the largest for last and boy is it a whopper! But I'm proud to say more than $10,000 in debt is gone. Forever. I think I probably ought to feel much more accomplished than I do. Certainly it feels good to have gotten this far and the heavy weight of carrying around the crushing amount I started with has lifted but I don't seem to feel much of anything at all. Perhaps it's that there is no tangible proof that it's gone except seeing the $0 balance due when I log in to my account. Otherwise, the money I was putting toward all the rest of my debt up until now will be funneled into huge chunks on this remaining piece. I don't feel like I've achieved anything when I still feel broke.

Which leads me to...

3) It occurred to me recently - now that I'm entirely out of my funky cold depression - that a significant portion of why I felt so craptastic all of last year is because I have been a long-term patient of retail therapists for years and, starting at the beginning of 2011, I couldn't indulge in my favorite brand of therapy. Now, I don't spend money in the usual way of buying material things for myself like shoes, books, and cat shirts but I've always been overly generous when it comes to spending money on friends - drinks, meals out, presents - and donating to causes that strike an emotional or intellectual chord. Once I stopped allowing for that kind of behavior so as to get out of debt, I took away a major coping mechanism...one that also had strong ties to who I am as a social, kind, and generous being.

Once I had this epiphany, I went a little crazy with the spending. I made several donations, spent quite a bit treating friends to oysters on the half shell and sushi, taking non-husbands to lunch, and sporting a bar tab or two. It felt terrific!

But now I have to rein myself back in and put my nose to the grind again. Because I really do want to be debt free. And once I have no more debt, just think of all the fun things I'll get to do! Like...buy all my friends cat shirts! Like this one:

Spux in the best cat shirt of all time

That shirt seriously has never failed to cheer me up. I mean, look at it!

*sigh* Fine. I'll stop overspending on the pleasures. But I am giving myself a raise in the Mad Money column. It'll take me awhile longer to pay off the rest of my debt but, I think, in the long run, I'll be happier. It's not a race. It's a journey. A slow, plodding, methodical journey.

4) Do you ever look at your own Facebook profile, specifically at the little section that shows the profile pictures of eight of your friends selected randomly and think to yourself, "I have the most gorgeous, fabulous, crazy cool friends on the planet?" I do. It makes me happy.

5) Have you ever had a conversation with someone and, in hindsight, realize the two of you were not actually having the same conversation which, subsequently led to a weird, hot mess of a misunderstanding? Yeah. About that. I'd like a couple of do overs, if you please.

kthxbye

The Center Cannot Hold

The Denver Goth scene has what the Divatologist has often called an "embarrassment of riches".

That was back in the not-so-long-ago day when there were only 4 (count them 1-2-3-4!!!) nights a week plus a special monthly engagement the community could attend to get their full regalia Goth scene on.

In the last few months, all of a sudden, we've seen the introduction of new nights that literally give the Goth scene a place to dance, drink, and be not-so-merry 7 days a week...some nights 2 to 3 places.

Well...

Guess what, folks?

That's no longer an embarrassment of riches. That's over-saturating a niche market with finite resources - time and money. That ain't good for anybody.

There's a reason why nights lose Steam and Disintegrate into thin air.

Let's look at it like this: say we live in a small town...and by small, I mean, on the outside, 500 wage earning people. And in this small town there are 2 grocery stores each open 2 days a week on different days. Each grocery store must have, say, 100 customers minimum for each day they are open with an average grocery bill of $30 to pay employees, pay the electric bill, pay the mortgage, and keep the shelves stocked - just to break even.

And in a town of 500 people, that's totally sustainable. The storekeeps break even and sometimes even pull in a bit of a profit...you know, the reason to own a business in the first place, right?

OK! So then, let's just say that, for whatever reason, 5 MORE grocery stores - each may have a little different inventory but still just groceries - open up in that same town of 500 people and now those 500 people have the option of purchasing groceries on every day of the week.

Those 500 people may like having the option of going grocery shopping any day of their choosing. However, they still only have a limited grocery budget and, if they go grocery shopping on Wednesday, they aren't likely to go again Friday especially if their grocery budget's been spent for the week.

So now, instead of having 2 sustainable grocery stores, there are 7 unsustainable businesses whose days are numbered because payroll can't be consistently met, bills can't be paid, and storekeeps can't keep the shelves stocked with goods.

The Denver goth scene (I'm estimating here after consulting my local "expert" *laughing*) has a core group of highly active participants - out at one of the clubs an average of 1-2 times per week - of roughly 200 people. Additionally, there are perhaps another 100 people who come out on a semi-regular basis - 1 time per month. Then, there are possibly 200 others who have, in the past, participated in the scene but who are rarely seen more than 1 or 2 times per year (if that) and typically only for a very special event.

These numbers, of course, do not include tourists or one-offs who come once or twice and never appear again. This is the solid niche market base being catered to on a weekly basis.

Now, I can't speak for everyone in this group, but I can speak comfortably about myself and most of the people I know who participate in this particular scene. We have budgets...some of us very limited budgets. We also have varied interests that don't (necessarily) include loud music and booze. And most of us? Have full time jobs that lend themselves to requiring a good night's sleep on work nights.

7 nights a week is too much.

You may think you're a kickass DJ or a great promoter or have a fab venue. And you just may be!

But most of us will likely never know it because we don't want or need to go somewhere different.

If you want people to get out of their comfort zones, you're going to have to challenge them to do so. And, unless you've got something really unique and interesting and different? Just stop it. You're going to have to do a whole lot more than post a flier on Facebook and tell me I should go to your night just cuz you say when I personally like my DJs, my cocktails, and my smoking patios just where they are.

I'm Not Sure I Can THWAP Any Harder

*whips out zen stick*

THWAP

If people you've considered "good friends" for years suddenly don't speak to you or, when they do, fail to:

A) invite you places
B) acknowledge special events in your life
C) ask how you are
D) want to hang out with you

And you're feeling like a leper?

Ask yourself this one simple question, "Have I been a good friend?"

Good friends offer to help. Good friends ask, "how are you?" and then listen to the answer. Good friends send their apologies when they can't make an event. Good friends share the glory of good times and the burden of the bad...so you don't have to go it alone. Good friends remember someone is having a hard time of it and think to ask, "are you OK?" Good friends remember to say, "Thank you" or "I love you" or "I appreciate you". Good friends buy you lunch when you're broke. Good friends don't piss and moan on Facebook about how all women are stupid for liking asshole men or how shitty things are because some people didn't even acknowledge a birthday or blame everyone else for a mass friendship exodus. Good friends understand that sometimes a friend's life gets in the way of being there - always - for you. Good friends, in a nutshell, think outside themselves on a regular basis.

Good friends don't treat you like a leper...unless you turn yourself into one.

What good friends are not? Infallible or filled with infinite patience.

When you fully understand and embrace that it is, in fact, NOT all about you? You'll find yourself surrounded with love, support, and wonderful friends for life - friendships that will span decades.

You'll have patience when it's not about you. You'll be genuinely glad when it's NOT about you.
Now. Go forth. Prosper. Remember. It only gets to be about you sometimes. The sooner you know it, the happier you'll be.




This message brought to you by an extraordinary amount of woe is me self-absorption I've born witness to lately. Unfortunately, you, Lovely Readers, will get the stick and the ones it was really meant for? Won't bother to read it because they're too self-absorbed to read anything that isn't about them and, if they do read it, wouldn't recognize themselves in this Just Stop It message.

Reminder

I think we all¹ need a little reminder about vengeful/jerky/drama queen/asshat exes...

And no one says it better than my secret boyfriend, Dan Savage.



Please, for the love of cake! Just. Stop. It.


1: Meaning really just one person.

What Would Happen...

If the Mormon missionaries and the Jehovah's Witness were to meet in a dark alley?

A little background to today's story:

The first 10 years of my life were spent in a Mormon household. That's right, I was raised Mormon. Baptized Mormon in special garments even.

I eventually came to my senses - once I was old enough to have some.

But here's a little secret about the Mormon church. Once you're on their roles as a bonafide baptized member of the church? Good luck ever getting removed.

Truly, they will never ever everevereverevereverevereverever leave you alone.

I oughta know.

They come to my house about 4 times a year - the missionaries, the relief society ladies, the visiting home teachers *sigh*.

Every time I tell them to go away and never come back. Just as Smeagol told Gollum.

And every time, just like Gollum, they come back. *double sigh*

OK! On to the story.

So yesterday afternoon, after having driven back to Denver in holiday traffic from my visit to Betsy's patio, I walked down to Chef Zorba's in the sunshine to pick up some lunch for Lex and me.

As I was walking to the restaurant, I noticed two young women in skirts and blouses coming down the stairs of a duplex and then walking up the stairs and knocking at the door next door.

I guessed then who they were.

Jehovah's Witness.

I hurried past and didn't say anything to them breathing a sigh of relief as I made a clean break.

My business at Zorba's didn't take long as I'd called our order in earlier but I'd already forgotten about the two girls as I began the walk home.

Just as I was thinking to myself, "I really love my neighborhood and all the little shops along this street" the girls suddenly appeared on the walk just in front of me.

One of them began to talk to me, asking me how I was. I answered her politely and quickened my pace. Her pace quickened as well and the spiel began.

JW: Don't you wonder what your purpose is?

Me: My only current purpose is to get this sacrificial lamb gyros home and into my belly.

JW: Wouldn't you like to hear a message from Christ?

Me: Christ and I, we broke up a long time ago. It's over. I've had closure. That's in my past.

JW: But don't you worry for your soul?

Me: Look. The only thing I worry about is the fact that you are, for all intents and purposes, harassing and stalking me. Go away. Leave me alone. I'm not interested. Do not force me to call the police and press charges against you.

JW: We'll pray for your soul.

Me: As long as you stay here to do it and stop chasing me down the street, you can do whatever you like.

They stopped following me 1/2 block from home.

If I'd not been so hungry, I would have gone around the block and then doubled back through the alley. But I was hungry and there was lamb.

And it was good.