"Takin what they're givin 'cause I'm workin for a living" --Huey Lewis and the News

"I can't believe they pay me as much as they do for the amount of work I do."

"They don't pay me anywhere near enough for the aggravation I have to endure."

These are the two thoughts that are constantly playing out in my brain when I am at work.*

Constantly. With no middle ground.

It's as if someone said to you, "I'm going to pay you $500 for every comment you write on blogs." Would you take the job? Sure! But what if they neglected to mention that while you were typing in those comments there would be a turkey pecking you in the side while a recorded message played of someone shouting, "I'M NOT TOUCHING YOU!!!"10,000 times per hour? Would you keep the job? And if you did, wouldn't you be toggling between "I can't believe they pay me as much as they do for the amount of work I do" and "They don't pay me anywhere near enough for the aggravation I have to endure" constantly?

This has been going on with me for 25 years. It's staggering. Seriously. This past month marked TWENTY. FIVE. YEARS. And I never, at any point, imagined I'd be with my organization for more than 5 years, tops. Because they don't pay me anywhere near enough for the aggravation I have to endure. Yet, I can't believe they pay me as much as they do for the amount of work I do.

Compound question du jour for the worker bees: Can you believe how much they pay you for the work that you do? Or is it no where near enough for the aggravation you have to endure? Or both?

While the turkey was on break (Wonder how much he makes? Probably nowhere near enough for the aggravation he has to endure...), I snuck off to happy hour last week. And it was an epic happy hour!** In addition to a few non-bloggy friends, there were former bloggers: Just JP, A Jersey Kid, and Gilahi, and a number of current bloggy friends were in attendance:

LiLu
Brutalism
Malnurtured Snay
Blond with a bullet...
Always a drunk, never a bride


Eleven of us cozied up around a table at Vapiano's and it was lovely. My thanks to those that made the trek from hither and yon. Great time! You people are tops!




*Well, that, and the eternal Gilligan's Island question. Yup... Who names their child Gilligan?

**The kids still say "epic", right? And "groovy"?

"I should have left my phone at home 'cause this is a disaster" --Lady Gaga

A few months back, I took one of these:
and did this sort of thing to it:I wish I could tell you I was in a Naomi Campbell rage and flung it at my assistant. But, alas, I just knocked it off a counter onto a hard floor.* Damn that gravity thing. I thought about living with it for 30 seconds--the broken smart phone, I mean, I'm still not keen on gravity.** Spiderweb effects are nice, doncha think? All Halloweeny. But I kinda wanted to use my smart phone without tweezering chips of glass out of my fingertip. Hey, if I'm gonna get into cutting, I'll do it on my terms.

I had insurance on the phone and, fifty dollars later *gulp*, got a beautiful replacement phone.

So, fast forward to this past Sunday. I wake up and it occurs to me that I should probably charge my phone. I was using it the night before on the way to my car after a party. I seek. I no find. I check the purse. The coat. The desk. The refrigerator. The car. Under the sofa. My jeans. The bathroom. Basically, everywhere I can think of to look, whether it makes sense or not.

It is nowhere. ARGGGHHHH! I don't want to spend another $50.



Hubs and I play this game for a while:

Him: I'll just call it.
Me: The ringer isn't on.
Him:
Me: Too much noise.
Him:
Me:
Him:
Me: You know what? Go ahead. Call. Good idea.

We take a drive into the city and take a lovely morning walk along the four blocks between where I parked my car Saturday night and where the party was. No phone.

We go home and search all those same places again. Because, it'll totally be there this time. Not.

And then the Hubs has a brilliant idea. GPS! We can locate it via satellite! Sure enough, we fire up the computer and pull up the app and enter the phone number. It brings up a lovely circle centered on the front of our house. Huzzah! The phone isn't downtown! It's right here! ...Somewhere.

We redouble our search efforts. We check the bushes between the garage and the front door. We look behind curtains. (The great and powerful Oz doesn't know where my phone is, either.)

Hubs to the rescue once again: Take the car. I'll check the app. If it follows you, we know the phone is in the car.

So I did. And he did. And it did. And it was! Turns out, the phone was wedged way under the passenger seat. Luckily, it's black, which blends in very well down there.

Happy ending. I get to keep my fifty bucks and my phone this time. ***


Something sort of related that I've been wondering for a while: Is it reasonable to store a cell phone in your cleavage?




* Plus, Hubs isn't into titles.

** Did I mention I turn 49 next month?

*** I went ahead and turned the ringer on. *shrug* ****

**** On the lowest setting. Shh. Don't tell Hubs.