Where The Hell Am I?? The Cairo Egyptian Museum???
The first thing I thought of when I arrived at my new work place was ......"Wait a minute! Did I take a wrong turn and end up in the Cairo Museum??" During the initial interview process, I wasn't informed that they would be moving to another building! I only learned this fact over the phone one day after trying to work out a start date with Personnel, and they said to me, "Why don't you wait until after July 5 when the MOVE IS DONE....." Er, excuse me? The move? "What move?" I ask. "Oh, we are moving out of this building into the OLD (accent on OLD - remember that word!) United Nations Building while this building is being retrofitted. Oh. It turns out the building I have to report to is 2 blocks away from the one I interviewed at. Not extremely far, but far enough to throw me off with the bus stops and not knowing what to expect in the way of accommodations and facilities.
The first day I had to report to the Personnel Dept for 'Orientation'. I had a hell of a time just getting there that morning as the 2 buses I had to take across town took their good time ambling up and down the hills of SF with the speed of a donkey cart, while picking up what seemed to be nothing but indigents who stunk and elderly Chinese people carrying boxes, bags of crushed soda pop cans and pink bags! Needless-to-say, this was NOT the usual downtown business commute route! I rushed into the building, out of breath, but relieved to get off the bus and breath some fresh, if not foggy, air.
Arrived in the Personnel Department exactly 2 minutes late, and the personnel woman, with her dangling 4th of July plastic earrings, was already looking at me with daggers. Oh oh. In trouble already. Anyway, I sat down expecting to hear all about the procedures and the company, and thinking that at any moment, she would offer me a cup of coffee, which I could clearly see right behind her desk. Instead, she pulled out a HUGE pile of papers and booklets:
Me: "Oh I already have filled in all the paperwork"
Personnel: "Ah, but not these! There are more and these are different!"
I'm thinking and visualizing: CUP OF COFFEE -- CUP OF COFFEE!!!
But the mental telepathy did not permeate into her brain, and I had to make my way through a mound of paperwork at that ungodly time in the morning without any liquid wake-up juice! You wouldn't believe the forms I had to further fill out! Disclosures, clearances, HMO's, PPO's, Joe Schmo, age, weight and serial #, etc. What point is it anyway to have a law that says employers can't ask our age when, in fact, I have to fill in at least 5 forms with my birthdate on them!!? So there I was in Personnel for an hour and a half filling in forms with my scratchy reading glasses on, and NO COFFEE. Finally, my new manager came over to greet me and to bring me to THE WORD PROCESSING department where I am to be working. Of course, it is NOT the set-up I got shown in the interview, as this is now in a completely different building. The original building I was shown was a fairly modern building, clean and had a wonderful big cafeteria on the 2nd floor. The building we are NOW housed in happens to be located in a not-so-nice area of San Fransicko. Across the way, and not too far, is our Silly Hall (er, City Hall), but this whole area is a Mecca for the down-and-outs, bums, loiterers, drug users, mental cases, and general riff-raff. Frankly, the whole area is downright depressing. You don't dare sit on the lawns outside the buildings for fear of plopping yourself down on a hypodermic needle or someone's bodily waste!! Anyway, we proceeded past all the down-trodden flora and fauna, and entered the building. STOP. No one can go in unless one has a CLEARANCE and BADGE. This is a Federal Building, and as such, you have to go through the metal detector every time you enter. That includes the whole rigamarole of screening purses, bags, shoes, etc. - just like at the airport! I am already thinking "Oh geez".....
The moment I got inside this building, I thought I had been transported to Cairo's Egyptian Museum!! It is dark and old with long wide halls that seem to disappear into infinity and they ECHO!! Just like in Cairo's old musty dim-lit Egyptian Museum! I don't know why the hell they are retrofitting the other building when this one is so old they should be retrofitting THIS one! God forbid we should get even a mild 2.1 earthquake as I'll probably be trapped in one of their antiquated toilet stalls! Speaking of toilet stalls, the paint is chipping and peeling on the doors in the stalls, and the flush handle is so far behind the toilet, that you almost fall in the toilet trying to flush it. Already, I have 'dipped' my jacket bottom in there and came back to my desk with a wet lower half! The door knobs are loose on the old wood doors, the desks are old metal ones that creak and jam, the chairs are NOT in any way remotely ergonomic, (more like ergoCRAPIC...!), and the black old-fashioned desk phones (forget Re-Dial!) ring so LOUD (like phones sounded in the 50's) that they nearly made me jump out of my seat the first time I heard one! Oh, and another nice touch is that most of the offices have.... ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?.... a bathroom sink!!! YES. A regular old bathroom sink with the pipes underneath and with old fashion hot and cold taps!!! Why on earth sinks were ever put in these offices, I just don't know! My co-workers do not seem to know either! Then, most all the potted plants in the offices are even depressing... they are all limp and turning brown. Evidently, when the move was made last week, all the plants had to be put through the X-Ray machine (!), I was told, in case there was contraband IN THE DIRT!!
Now, the original building had a rather large, nice cafeteria. This building has a room about the size of a closet that serves as a 'snack shop'. You can get sandwiches, coffees, etc there, but it is in no way like the one I originally saw as part of the initial interview tour! This snack bar is in the basement of this building, and waaaaaaaay down a long hall. In an adjoining room, they do have tables and chairs where you can sit and eat and read out-of-date magazines and/or watch a non-cable TV that is on its last legs. The color is so bad that the people's faces are a shade of mauve and the sky looks a bit greenish. Yesterday, when London was bombed (just so devastated over that), I went down there at lunch to see if I could catch the news. But the only stations you could tune in were soap operas and one Spanish station. I guess I should be grateful that they even HAVE a TV at all!! To make matters even more difficult, we do not have a microwave or fridge anywhere on any of the floors. So it makes bringing in lunch rather difficult, since there is nowhere to store perishable foods or keep drinks cold. That leaves us with the choice of buying something from the dungeon's not-so-cheap 'snack-bar' or going completely outside the building and venturing into the lower depths of Market Street and outer limits of The Tenderloin district (SF's red light and drug area), which, then of course, means you have to go through all the security hoo-har on re-entering the building. I went out on my first day here to suss the neighborHOOD (Note the stress on the word HOOD), and passed several cockroach-style Chinese restaurants, about 10 pawn shops, 3 porn cinemas, one bargain basement clothes shop with hoochy-mama type clothes in there, and one ATM machine that charges a $2.50 service fee! There are no Walgreens, no well-known banks, no post offices, no Starbucks, and no grocery stores anywhere in sight. You wouldn't believe the types of riff-raff I have to pass in the street down this way. Extremely depressing, to say the least. Some of the varieties of human (?) beings I saw were: one Tranny (transsexual), who was actually a 6 foot tall man with blonde hair dressed in a leopard bustier and gold lame high heels strutting down the street eating an ice cream cone; quite a few wanna-be rap stars with their humongous boom boxes (Geez, haven't these dudes heard about a new invention called a TRANSISTER RADIO WITH EARPLUGS???!!) who are wearing baggy pants flopping around their ankles and hanging down so low you can see their butt-crack hanging out; homeless women with food coupons hanging out of their pockets with 2 or 3 ragamuffin children and a mangy dog in tow; many wrinkled, sucked-in-faced heroin addicts, one of which was aimlessly and carefully folding old newspapers and tucking them neatly into a ripped plastic bag that contained an empty water bottle and coke can; and last but not least, red-faced and red-nosed winos draped along the sidewalks holding out creative begging signs.
Ok, now for my boss. My boss is a little skinny guy who reminds me of Wally Cox of Mr. Peepers fame. He looks and acts gay, but who knows and who cares. His arms are so skinny that he puts Lara Flynn Boyle to shame. He's got a twisted sense of humor, which is better than no humor, I guess, but after this short 4-day work week here so far, it's already beginning to grate on me. He can't get over my interest in Egyptology and my various travels around the world. He was bowled over by my resume which mentions that I worked in Egypt and London, and I don't think he can quite wrap his mind around my eclectic and eccentric interests. He keeps joking to others about my 'hieroglyphics' and that I'm 'Queen of the Nile'.... We went into the law library the other day and passed some rolled up charts, and he yells out, "Oh look, Karen's ancient scrolls!!!", then follows his 'jokes' with a hyena-like shrill laugh. Then while pushing some boxes down the hall on a dolly, he all of a sudden breaks out singing "Hello Dolly..!"... That kind of humor, if you see what I mean. He lives with his disabled, diabetic mom, and says that all her medical supplies are in his bedroom. Hmmmm... "HER (??) medical supplies??? Then he is always quoting old classic TV programs like I Love Lucy or The Adams Family, so I can only imagine his social life! It's almost pathetic. The other 3 people in my department are nice enough people and easy to get along with, but God only knows how the hell they qualify as 'Word Processing Technicians'.... One guy who has been in this department and with this place for 15 years, asked me yesterday how to do UNDERLINES IN MICROSOFT WORD.....!!!! HELLO????!!!! I mean that is basic Word Processing and kind of like if you are a Chef, asking how to turn on the oven! Oh, and lest I forget, from my desk, I can also hear the lovely waterfall sound of a toilet flushing! Well, isn't that a nice touch --- Piped in poopee muzak...! And when I'm walking down the tomb-like, echoing, inner sanctum atmospheric halls here, I expect at any moment to run into a Mummy!
More in the next blog about JOB itself!! Now, excuse me while I go home and have a drink.
The first day I had to report to the Personnel Dept for 'Orientation'. I had a hell of a time just getting there that morning as the 2 buses I had to take across town took their good time ambling up and down the hills of SF with the speed of a donkey cart, while picking up what seemed to be nothing but indigents who stunk and elderly Chinese people carrying boxes, bags of crushed soda pop cans and pink bags! Needless-to-say, this was NOT the usual downtown business commute route! I rushed into the building, out of breath, but relieved to get off the bus and breath some fresh, if not foggy, air.
Arrived in the Personnel Department exactly 2 minutes late, and the personnel woman, with her dangling 4th of July plastic earrings, was already looking at me with daggers. Oh oh. In trouble already. Anyway, I sat down expecting to hear all about the procedures and the company, and thinking that at any moment, she would offer me a cup of coffee, which I could clearly see right behind her desk. Instead, she pulled out a HUGE pile of papers and booklets:
Me: "Oh I already have filled in all the paperwork"
Personnel: "Ah, but not these! There are more and these are different!"
I'm thinking and visualizing: CUP OF COFFEE -- CUP OF COFFEE!!!
But the mental telepathy did not permeate into her brain, and I had to make my way through a mound of paperwork at that ungodly time in the morning without any liquid wake-up juice! You wouldn't believe the forms I had to further fill out! Disclosures, clearances, HMO's, PPO's, Joe Schmo, age, weight and serial #, etc. What point is it anyway to have a law that says employers can't ask our age when, in fact, I have to fill in at least 5 forms with my birthdate on them!!? So there I was in Personnel for an hour and a half filling in forms with my scratchy reading glasses on, and NO COFFEE. Finally, my new manager came over to greet me and to bring me to THE WORD PROCESSING department where I am to be working. Of course, it is NOT the set-up I got shown in the interview, as this is now in a completely different building. The original building I was shown was a fairly modern building, clean and had a wonderful big cafeteria on the 2nd floor. The building we are NOW housed in happens to be located in a not-so-nice area of San Fransicko. Across the way, and not too far, is our Silly Hall (er, City Hall), but this whole area is a Mecca for the down-and-outs, bums, loiterers, drug users, mental cases, and general riff-raff. Frankly, the whole area is downright depressing. You don't dare sit on the lawns outside the buildings for fear of plopping yourself down on a hypodermic needle or someone's bodily waste!! Anyway, we proceeded past all the down-trodden flora and fauna, and entered the building. STOP. No one can go in unless one has a CLEARANCE and BADGE. This is a Federal Building, and as such, you have to go through the metal detector every time you enter. That includes the whole rigamarole of screening purses, bags, shoes, etc. - just like at the airport! I am already thinking "Oh geez".....
The moment I got inside this building, I thought I had been transported to Cairo's Egyptian Museum!! It is dark and old with long wide halls that seem to disappear into infinity and they ECHO!! Just like in Cairo's old musty dim-lit Egyptian Museum! I don't know why the hell they are retrofitting the other building when this one is so old they should be retrofitting THIS one! God forbid we should get even a mild 2.1 earthquake as I'll probably be trapped in one of their antiquated toilet stalls! Speaking of toilet stalls, the paint is chipping and peeling on the doors in the stalls, and the flush handle is so far behind the toilet, that you almost fall in the toilet trying to flush it. Already, I have 'dipped' my jacket bottom in there and came back to my desk with a wet lower half! The door knobs are loose on the old wood doors, the desks are old metal ones that creak and jam, the chairs are NOT in any way remotely ergonomic, (more like ergoCRAPIC...!), and the black old-fashioned desk phones (forget Re-Dial!) ring so LOUD (like phones sounded in the 50's) that they nearly made me jump out of my seat the first time I heard one! Oh, and another nice touch is that most of the offices have.... ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?.... a bathroom sink!!! YES. A regular old bathroom sink with the pipes underneath and with old fashion hot and cold taps!!! Why on earth sinks were ever put in these offices, I just don't know! My co-workers do not seem to know either! Then, most all the potted plants in the offices are even depressing... they are all limp and turning brown. Evidently, when the move was made last week, all the plants had to be put through the X-Ray machine (!), I was told, in case there was contraband IN THE DIRT!!
Now, the original building had a rather large, nice cafeteria. This building has a room about the size of a closet that serves as a 'snack shop'. You can get sandwiches, coffees, etc there, but it is in no way like the one I originally saw as part of the initial interview tour! This snack bar is in the basement of this building, and waaaaaaaay down a long hall. In an adjoining room, they do have tables and chairs where you can sit and eat and read out-of-date magazines and/or watch a non-cable TV that is on its last legs. The color is so bad that the people's faces are a shade of mauve and the sky looks a bit greenish. Yesterday, when London was bombed (just so devastated over that), I went down there at lunch to see if I could catch the news. But the only stations you could tune in were soap operas and one Spanish station. I guess I should be grateful that they even HAVE a TV at all!! To make matters even more difficult, we do not have a microwave or fridge anywhere on any of the floors. So it makes bringing in lunch rather difficult, since there is nowhere to store perishable foods or keep drinks cold. That leaves us with the choice of buying something from the dungeon's not-so-cheap 'snack-bar' or going completely outside the building and venturing into the lower depths of Market Street and outer limits of The Tenderloin district (SF's red light and drug area), which, then of course, means you have to go through all the security hoo-har on re-entering the building. I went out on my first day here to suss the neighborHOOD (Note the stress on the word HOOD), and passed several cockroach-style Chinese restaurants, about 10 pawn shops, 3 porn cinemas, one bargain basement clothes shop with hoochy-mama type clothes in there, and one ATM machine that charges a $2.50 service fee! There are no Walgreens, no well-known banks, no post offices, no Starbucks, and no grocery stores anywhere in sight. You wouldn't believe the types of riff-raff I have to pass in the street down this way. Extremely depressing, to say the least. Some of the varieties of human (?) beings I saw were: one Tranny (transsexual), who was actually a 6 foot tall man with blonde hair dressed in a leopard bustier and gold lame high heels strutting down the street eating an ice cream cone; quite a few wanna-be rap stars with their humongous boom boxes (Geez, haven't these dudes heard about a new invention called a TRANSISTER RADIO WITH EARPLUGS???!!) who are wearing baggy pants flopping around their ankles and hanging down so low you can see their butt-crack hanging out; homeless women with food coupons hanging out of their pockets with 2 or 3 ragamuffin children and a mangy dog in tow; many wrinkled, sucked-in-faced heroin addicts, one of which was aimlessly and carefully folding old newspapers and tucking them neatly into a ripped plastic bag that contained an empty water bottle and coke can; and last but not least, red-faced and red-nosed winos draped along the sidewalks holding out creative begging signs.
Ok, now for my boss. My boss is a little skinny guy who reminds me of Wally Cox of Mr. Peepers fame. He looks and acts gay, but who knows and who cares. His arms are so skinny that he puts Lara Flynn Boyle to shame. He's got a twisted sense of humor, which is better than no humor, I guess, but after this short 4-day work week here so far, it's already beginning to grate on me. He can't get over my interest in Egyptology and my various travels around the world. He was bowled over by my resume which mentions that I worked in Egypt and London, and I don't think he can quite wrap his mind around my eclectic and eccentric interests. He keeps joking to others about my 'hieroglyphics' and that I'm 'Queen of the Nile'.... We went into the law library the other day and passed some rolled up charts, and he yells out, "Oh look, Karen's ancient scrolls!!!", then follows his 'jokes' with a hyena-like shrill laugh. Then while pushing some boxes down the hall on a dolly, he all of a sudden breaks out singing "Hello Dolly..!"... That kind of humor, if you see what I mean. He lives with his disabled, diabetic mom, and says that all her medical supplies are in his bedroom. Hmmmm... "HER (??) medical supplies??? Then he is always quoting old classic TV programs like I Love Lucy or The Adams Family, so I can only imagine his social life! It's almost pathetic. The other 3 people in my department are nice enough people and easy to get along with, but God only knows how the hell they qualify as 'Word Processing Technicians'.... One guy who has been in this department and with this place for 15 years, asked me yesterday how to do UNDERLINES IN MICROSOFT WORD.....!!!! HELLO????!!!! I mean that is basic Word Processing and kind of like if you are a Chef, asking how to turn on the oven! Oh, and lest I forget, from my desk, I can also hear the lovely waterfall sound of a toilet flushing! Well, isn't that a nice touch --- Piped in poopee muzak...! And when I'm walking down the tomb-like, echoing, inner sanctum atmospheric halls here, I expect at any moment to run into a Mummy!
More in the next blog about JOB itself!! Now, excuse me while I go home and have a drink.
posted by LADYGOLD at 11:43 AM
