The Reluctant Receptionist

i seem to have somehow beaten everyone to work today, which i always enjoy. granted, i didn’t really get here any earlier than i usually do (that isn’t really true, i guess, since i got here at 8:30 instead of 8:45, which means that i get to leave work at a blissfully early 4:30 today), so that probably means that everyone is at some extremely-important meeting where if you don’t go you get fired but i somehow didn’t find out about it and i’m sitting here in a t-shirt and two-day-old khakis. but so it goes.

speaking of working overtime (or totally not working overtime, since i’m leaving today at 4:30), amanda’s been up to that lately. we’d planned to have dinner last night (vegetarian chili, at amanda’s suggestion. specifically, that irritating little sprite rachael ray’s “veg-head tex-mex chili.” did you ever hear something so obnoxious? oh, wait. i have. it’s her “why the chicken crossed the road chicken tortilla soup.” christ almighty i hate that woman. unless, of course, she googles her name [i know you all do sometimes] and finds this blog, in which case yummo! love you and your e.v.o.o. that stands for extra virgin olive oil just eyeball it!) but amanda still wasn’t home at 7 o’clock, which is strange because she always gets home between 6:30 and 6:40. unless, of course, the train is a shitty wreck and none of us make it home until 8. so i called her and when she answered the phone all quiet-like i knew exactly what was going on: this girl was still at work. at her day job, might i add. not at some great rehearsal where she’s going to be the star soprano.

apparently, someone fucked something up at her job—not her, of course, but one of her underlings, because she, unlike pee-on me, has underlings—and she was staying at her job until it was fixed. i gave her the usual speech:

“amanda. are they paying you for the extra hour you just gave them?”

“no.”

“is the person who fucked this shit up even THERE anymore?”

“no.”

“so why didn’t you leave their problem for them to clean up instead of fixing it for them? aren’t they the ones who are going to get in trouble?”

“i know.”

“i want you to turn off your computer and leave. you are not getting paid overtime. do not give these people any more of your time than you already are.”

“i know.”

so she finally made it home around 8 o’clock, and i somehow avoided going off on a diatribe about how corporate america is sucking its workers into lives that revolve around nothing but work, guilting them or scaring them into working 10 hour days with little or no vacation. i’m on a one man mission to take that system down.