Mediocre is the new Black

I don't know if it all started in kindergarten exactly but the truth is that I had the coolest kindergarten teacher ever. It was her first year teaching and her name was Miss Swansen. I am pretty sure she would still remember me. I was an A student right out of the gate. Whether it was picking up those paper-clipped nose fish with a magnet fishing rod or building block towers, I was an ace. I had my lapses of course, thank goodness they did away with handwriting in the fourth grade because it was bringing down my average. And mind you I wasn't one of those girls like Lisa Cookson who would argue a 98 to 100.



Flash forward 35 years and I am sitting here baffled by the fact that I am a solid C minus employee. And I am learning day by day to be okay with that. Considering that in my last job I was a solid D, I feel this is a minor improvement. The other girls in my "class" at work seem to think I know a lot more than they do but the truth is that I have made a lot of mistakes, not all of which can be linked directly to the fact that I was never really trained. It's hard complicated work that deals with details of taxes and benefits and small details that are easy to misinterpret. I asked for help via email today and the person in charge of answering sent me a four hundred page manual.



I don't want to be a D employee but I credit some of my original school success with my teacher's dedication and willingness to help. If I struggled with a subject, I learned to stay after school to get it right. Teachers were always available and willing to help.
At my current work environment when I asked a question about how to do something complicated I was told by my supervisor to "look it up on the internet."
Now in the working world, "after school help" is paid at time and half. So why is this a bad thing? We have some deadlines coming up and no one at my work seems concerned. I am keeping my mouth shut and my hand down. Mediocre is the new black.

Trial by Fire

Okay so today was my first week at the new job. I had been promised a week of training at a nice hotel which got changed to "please come in Monday to the office, we need you."

My urge to flee this ultimate chaos is strong. I walked in on my first day and my supervisor was not at work. My boss was not at work. The person who was to teach me was not at work. A very nice woman named Cindy who was hired exactly one week before me spent five minutes giving me her very detailed notes on the computer software which she had just acquired.
And then I was pretty much on my own. You have got to be kidding me. Even my mother was shocked. She said to me "That's ridiculous, they just let anyone open their own business, huh?" The answer is yes, actually, they do. I have no idea what I am doing and the girl I replaced messed up 95% of the accounts I am taking over. But on the bright side no one is concerned with my computer skills, everyone in the office is supernice and my boss is not a malicious jerk.

Chinese Laundry

My husband and I did wash today and the truth is that there are few things in life that go together as well as a laundromat and a chinese food restuarant next door. Seriously. You have to wait while you do your wash and you are probably going to get hungry so how convenient is it to be able to put your wash in and wander next door for some pork lo mein?

I remember when I was first out on my own working two jobs, substitute teacher by day and waitress at um, Cordially's by night. Some days I couldn't make it to the laundromat by closing and I would wash my uniform by putting it in the bottom of the shower and stamping on (like that I Love Lucy where she stamps on the grapes) while the shampoo ran over it. And of course it kinda showed and my boss would always harp on my permanent chocolate sauce stains. Of course that was before I found L.A.'S Totally Awesome. I am not being paid by them but you will hear me speak of this product often. I believe it is actually some sort of professional grade degreaser combined with a stain remover. My friend Joseph and I actually call each other up with new uses for this cleaning product and say things like "hey, I had this old fork with some balsamic dressing dried on it and I soaked it in Awesome and it is perfectly clean." These are the things that make me smile after a long day at work

Oh, I have simple dreams, simple things I long for, like my owen washer and dryer. But for now I will be content to eat my lemon chicken while the clothes dry.