Last night I dreamt I was on a tepid jungly littoral, with one bit of safe clean beach and one bit of scuzzy, ominous algaeish beach. I wandered between the two, going 'ewww, eww', until I saw an old man on the dangerous side who had been irresistably drawn to somehow get in the middle of a hippopatamous and crocodile locked in a death struggle there, even though he knew it would mean his own demise. We watched a giant oyster swim away and then I took him ashore. He put on a nice trench coat and his face turned heart attack red. I also dressed, as the weather had turned and we were in something like Vienna, with pagodas and shit, and wet snow falling dully from the sky.
My father, who had also been on the beach, joined us, also wearing a trench coat, though much more dapper of course; my father has a tailor and Brillantine. He offered the suffering old man a cigarette and a slug of scotch from his flask, which he enjoyed briefly before he expired and I woke up. In my dream, I gawped at my putatively non-smoking, non-flask carrying daddy as he handed his contraband over to the gasping man, who was obviously pleased with the attention on the cold, drizzly afternoon it had become.
'Yeah,' my father said, in response to the semi-admiring semi-accusation in my eyes. 'That's right.'
Less defiance, than a note of 'aren't you dense for not cottoning on that I'd been carrying around a flask of scotch and some quality smokes longer than you've been alive, and it's my right, my girl, because I raised you from a blob, what's more this poor old man has probably never had good shit like this in years, and that's the only reason you're finding out about it now.' Except my father is Calabrian, and Calabrians don't need as many words to get things across with crystal clarity. I love that about Calabrians.
I try to tap into my Calabrian heritage at work, when I cram maximum information into my reports, which shouldn't go past a thousand words; I miss 10,000 word academic type essays because I'm a mangiacake. No more reports until the end of September now. That's nice, except I like writing them more than the normal articles. Oh well.
Yesterday there was a mighty explosion at work, as one of my seniors quit and HR asked her to leave right away, paying out her notice instead of her working it out. Something I'd jump at, of course, as every time I quit a job I feel ripped off as if I'd been fired I might have got some free money, or at least pogey. But the manner of the request made her really angry and there was a 'scene,' as us cakers call it. Afterwards, both management and the senior in question were very, very apologetic. Management even took us out for lunch. A nice one, with smoked salmon and buffalo mozzarella. I'm not complaining.
I am wondering what the big fucking deal is, though. People explode, people fight. At the office we button ourselves in so tight and I don't know why, because we aren't any less people for being there. Part of that thing, I think, about how it's rude to discuss your pay when obviously discussing your pay would be a really useful and interesting thing for employees, posing a problem only for the employer who might be held to account for discrepancies.
How did something against employee interest get to be the norm? Why are we all so tame? Okay - we're apathetic about the 'big issues' that happen in countries we can't see and haven't visited: we can go days without thinking about children starving to death or lepers or any number of constant realities. But why approach our own lives and the realities we spend hours of the day living in as though we were potted plants? It's a very caker quality and it's something that pisses me off, about cakerism and about myself as a caker.
3 commenti:
Yeah, we don't like scenes, at least that's what we tell ourselves. But secretly, I know that I am thrilled by a big ole confrontation in the office or a store or a restaurant.
It can feel good to cause a scene but then there's the side that says that you don't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they've caused you any emotional distress.
I think the reason we don't talk about our pay is that we're secrety afraid that we're not getting anything close to what we're worth. That we'll find out the lazy slob down the hall is making 10% more just because he/she had the stones to demand it or was better informed about his/her worth as an employee. I didn't talk about it at my last job because I knew I was getting a LOT more than the other two thanks to the generous client who argued to pay more for my salary. He was a sweetie. The problem is that we don't want to find out publicly that we're suckers.
I like other people's scenes, that's for sure. Better than television.
You could be right, Sugar, but that makes us doublesuckers.
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