How far we've come

This is the official six day countdown until I get to stop talking to whiny, complaining customers on my office phone. No more “I ordered this and it doesn’t work,” or “I need to place an order, but I’m not really sure what company I work for.” No more convincing customers that it’s in their best interest to order directly from us, and that having distributors would only increase the prices they pay. No more “I know I have a lower price, but I don’t know how I get it, and can’t be bothered to look it up.” This is me, acknowledging that I am only six working days away from turning off the queue forever. You may call my company, if you like, but unless your business is with me, the Contract Administrator, we will have nothing to talk about. No, I cannot process your order. No, I do not have a return authorization number for you. I am not your bitch. I am not your errand boy. My title has the word Administrator in it. I am seriously fucking important. I have clawed my way out of the call center and onto the ground floor of middle management, where I will languish for eight hours per day like some kind of narcoleptic elephant seal, dreaming of punching the clock so I can go home and do something that matters. Build myself some dreams. But for all the ennui that remains to be traversed between these rocky badlands of soot and foundered futures, the most important has been crossed. Goodbye forever, customer service.

A Frame of Earth and Sidewalk

I work in one of those large, box shaped buildings in an office park zone near the Oakland airport. I think if I were on the second floor, I could see the bay from here, but as it is, it’s just row after row of warehouses and an soft blue sky full of airplanes. You get a really dramatic contrast between the oppressive concrete and tame nature. Almost like manufacturing and deskwork could somehow wrangle the local trees and birds into something pretty. Like you could hang nature on the wall.

The tiny little birds mostly live off crumbs from the taco cart that visits the lunchroom every day. I have to imagine that the six years we’ve been in this location is enough to have fed two or three full generations of them from eggs to their little deathbeds. When you think about it, that means that they’re basically made of corn tortillas and list night’s leftovers. Kind of makes me like them all the more.

It’s a little grotesque. The endless cordoning off of these gardens, like accents. Afraid of anything more than a bush. Even Thoreau thought that people were afraid of the natural world, all those decades ago. Now the mention of natural things frightens the people into a panic and the media into a feeding frenzy. Brown recluse spiders biting. Mosquitoes bringing west Nile virus. A cougar might kill hundreds of children. Disappearing pets must be coyotes. Birds? Flu.

I almost think urban decay and turned over rubble would be more honest as a compliment to all these tinted windows and day use parking lots. I want to knock down a Wal-Mart and put in a marsh. Stretch my legs a little. Either admit defeat and let the sprawl take over, or make some concessions to the slimy and the earthy. Enough of this Thomas Kincaid meets the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stuff.