Why Is That?

There is nothing sexier than a man on a stage playing the electric guitar and wearing a wedding ring.

Resistance Is Futile

It's a foggy, overcast afternoon, damp and chilly. I decided to make a day of experimenting with glass painting. I hopped in the car and went down to my local craft store to pick up a couple bottles of glass paint. As I walked toward the store entrance from the parking lot, I saw a woman heading toward the same store entrance with her pre-teenage daughter. How lovely, I thought. The sight of them took me back to my childhood where dreary, lazy days would be spent crafting under the supervision of my mother. Bonding. Mental and creative stimulation. Family quality time. Then I saw ... one of those stupid ear phones stuck into the mother's head.

Now I'm for advances in technology and all that. I don't see anything wrong with the corporate types walking around downtown juggling cell phones, laptop computers, blackberries, and that cup of Starbuck's cappuccino. But here was a mother. With her child. On a Saturday afternoon. What could possibly be so important that she would need a phone attached to her head while going to the craft store?

While the constant phone communication gives the facade of keeping people connected, it is becoming nothing more than something to distract from what we are currently doing and who we are currently with, even if we are alone. There is nothing wrong with walking through the mall alone with a song in your head instead of incessantly chatting on the phone. Is it really necessary to have dinner with someone in a restaurant while talking on the phone to someone else? How unnatural it seems to see someone having a phone conversation while hiking through a state park. Just recently Boyfriend and I went to a theater production of White Christmas, and a couple seats down from me sat a person who had to periodically check cell phone messages during the performance, the LED lights from the instrument illuminating the entire section in which we sat.

Yes, technology is a good thing. Even I own a cell phone, which I carry with me at all times in case of emergency. I can't remember the last time I turned it on. Yes, it is possible to carry a cell phone without even turning it on. Get those stupid things out of your ears. You look like a damn Borg.

I ask you, what exactly is the difference?

Tysheeka

There is a woman in my office I refer to as Tysheeka. Tysheeka is a trainee. I don’t expect much from trainees as they are fresh to the business of social services. Unlike most of her fellow trainees, Tysheeka has been around the block a few times and has a few years on her. While I don’t expect much in the way of trainees knowing the social service game, I do expect someone of maturity (over 35) to know things like courtesy and professionalism.

She floats in and out of the office on her own schedule, and I’m not really sure how she gets away with it. On several occasions she has forgotten her card key and has troubled me, intake person, with her whining and excuse making while I open the locked doors for her. One day a guy came to our office with a bag. He was delivering lunch. To Tysheeka. Tysheeka was nowhere to be found to accept the delivered lunch. After a few minutes Tysheeka turns up and commences to do her business with the lunch delivery guy in the reception area of our office. Oh wait, except she is having trouble paying for it. The lunch delivery guy asks me if I have change for a $10. What’s wrong with this picture? I asked myself. Well, A) Tysheeka should get off her fat ass and get her lunch herself, like everyone else in the office does, B) if Tysheeka can’t get off her fat ass and get her own lunch, she should be here to accept the delivered lunch the minute it is delivered, C) if Tysheeka is going to accept a delivered lunch she should have the correct money to pay for it, and D) lunches are not delivered to an office that is open to the public needing social services, at least not this one. I told Tysheeka that lunch delivery was unacceptable and she was all, like, “I didn’t mean for him to come into the office. I was waiting out in the hallway for a long time and only left for a minute.” I told her I saw the receipt on the lunch bag and it said our suite number as the delivery site, not “in the hallway of that one building.” Of course she was aghast that I would have the nerve to tell her what office policy was. Not only that, twenty minutes after receiving the delivered lunch I saw her leaving the office for the day.

It’s been a while since I’ve had any conflict with Tysheeka. I think she’s learned to avoid me at all costs, including crouching in the hallways on those days she forgets her card key, preferring to wait for someone to go in or out of the secured employee entrance rather than to come to the main door and ask me to let her in. However, the other day I simply could not believe my eyes. There is Tysheeka, walking to the printer to fetch her printed materials, in her bare feet. What’s wrong with this picture? I asked myself again. A) It’s winter in Minnesota. There is three feet of snow on the ground and temperatures are in the teens. Because of that, fashion sense and common sense would dictate that one at least wear socks/hose, and B) this is a place of business. We don’t walk around like Appalachian hillbillies in our bare feet.

Bare fucking feet in the office. Who the hell does that?! Tysheeka. Because she’s entitled.