First day of work and already the curse has found me...an ex-boyfriend once said of me,"The U.S. government should just hang you underneath a plane and fly you over North Korea if they are really serious about dismantling Jim Jong Il's nuclear program, because whatever it is about you and your electrical field, it wreaks havoc on electronics!" This after the umpteenth time of me causing the TV & DVD player to just stop running merely by looking at them. So I go in, they say go talk to the I.T. guy and give him your name & how you want your email to look. I go in there & he starts futzing around with his program and BAM! He's locked out of his own mail server. Then I go meet with the boss to have a computer aided run-down of the company's work plan for the project I'm going to be working on, and their data base structure, and BAM! that computer went T.U. He finally got it up and running, then BAM! all the power went out to the whole building and I'm thinking, "Holy fuck, did I do that?" But no, even I am not that powerful, it was a mudslide that took out a transformer or something. Unless my superpowers now include "Cause mudslides with her mind". I stuck around long enough for my new boss to buy me lunch (I'm crafty like that) and then we came back to the office at 2:30, everyone else had left, and he said, "OK, go home, see ya tomorrow."
So far I love my new place of employment, except they DON'T HAVE A COFFEE MAKER!!!!!!!!! What the fuck is that??? I'm bringing my french press tomorrow, they do have hot water. They also have a decidedly less formal mode of attire than yours truly. I mean the (gorgeous!!! young!!! sweet!!! smart!!! I hate her already) receptionist was in jeans, and it isn't even Friday! In fact almost everyone was in jeans. They had me sign a "Confidentiality Agreement" which is a good sign from a business standpoint, but really, I'll only ever divulge their secrets if my life is on the line & my only option for survival is to try and bore someone to death.
One reason (besides the unmitigated greed of the Wall Street bankers who ground this country into the economic dust) that a lot of architecture firms failed in the last couple of years is that architects are notoriously bad business people, which doesn't make sense to me since they are also the most anal-retentive (like me!) of all the design professionals. Plus we're good at math. Architecture school is brutal and abusive. And the people (like me!) who actually made it in and then through it seem hell bent on perpetuating that particular brand of brutally abusive madness within the profession. These assholes (like me!) actually brag about how hard they work and how little they sleep and they (like me!) are always poor. I think it might have to do with the massive egos needed to make it to and through school and then cling desperately to the illusion that they are making a difference in the built environment. When the earthquake struck Haiti, I was joking with the receptionist/marketing/graphics genius at the firm where I was employed about starting an "Architects Without Borders" group, but that it would have to be made up of architects without egos, so it would never work...He laughed and said, "Yeah, architects without egos. I'll file that right next to 'Unicorn'." Sad, but true.
Hopefully tomorrow my superpowers will keep total destruction at bay, and I'll be able to work a full 8 hours. Wish me luck.
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