PMS Chronicle 4 29 2010

Despite having not one, not two, but THREE heaving closets of gorgeous clothing, today I opted to sift through the “transitional laundry” pile on the floor of my bedroom, and select the very black loose pants that I wore to work yesterday. They’re the kind of pants that encompass all ends of the dressiness spectrum depending on what you pair them with. They can either be yoga pants or youthful, funky dress pants…or somewhere in between. Despite this versatility, yesterday I paired them with a hooded sweatshirt- -thus making them yoga pants (The clashing 1” heeled open-toed sandals I added to that outfit were a hideously offensive and apathetic attempt at “business casual,” at best). Immediately after that I nixed wearing a bra, so I paired my black snug/loose pants with a similar caliber of shirt- -and then added a poncho. Because nothing says, “I’ve given up on myself” quite like a poncho (plus it hides that my too-big-to-be-braless breasts are delightfully un-tethered). I’m basically a Snuggie infomercial, minus the smiling faces, make up, and couch.

“With Emily being so comfortable, how is it possible for her to be disgruntled?” Good question. Today’s disgruntled demeanor is brought to you by “Home Office Incompetence”…and the letter ‘C.’

I work in a field office, and sometimes that makes me feel like I’ve had to earn my job- -either through my own aptitude, demonstration of intellectual capacity, work ethic….or because my uncle is one of the most successful sales reps in the company and his niece needed a job. *Cough* Tomato-Tomato. Point being, sometimes I feel like the small pool of individuals in this office makes individual failure a bright neon sign of apparentness. Your peers keep you in check. Your manager keeps you in check. You understand that your own shortcomings will be recognized.
Our Home Office employs several thousand people, and there are days…lots of days….where I feel like there was some contest at a local 7-11 where you were the 50th customer of the day and you won a position in my company’s Home Office. Yay- -tell the kids that Mom doesn’t have to stay home and watch 17 hours of soap operas anymore! Now, she has a “purpose”…and that purpose is to make my 9-5 life HELL. Instead of passing her days how she’s accustomed…by eating processed foods and vacantly staring at this month’s featured doll collection on QVC, now she gets to play corporate “hot potato” with any legitimate request that comes from her co-workers and partners in the field offices. The extent to this “game” makes it very difficult to believe that there isn’t some kind of home office incentive, unbeknownst to the field, where the individual Home Office employees who accomplish the least amount of work are awarded on a quarterly basis.

One particular Home Office partner is the focus of my current ass-chappery. For the purposes of venting frustration to prevent sending very tonal and unprofessional emails to this person, I drafted a fake suggestion to an imaginary company suggestion box today. Here is how it reads:

“_______________ may be better suited as a relatively stagnant cog in another company’s mailroom or one of the unhappy Wal-Mart greeters that’s afforded the ability to sit at the entrance of said establishments and apathetically force a word and/or facial expression at approaching shoppers. Clearly she doesn’t like to work, she doesn’t like to answer the phone, and she is less resourceful than some humans are prenatally. Maybe she could gain 400 lbs and be relegated to a bed somewhere, and make a living off disability payments and money that tabloids would pay to photograph the “giant slothy slug woman.”

This is probably why I’m not God, despite our similar slapstick senses of humor. This has me thinking…maybe it’s socially irresponsible of me to keep this blog going(?). I can see conservative males citing my blog as the reason why we should never have a female president. PMS is a pretty powerful force. Now I’m imagining that I’m the president…right now….in my semi-clean black stretch pants and poncho with my disdain for the human race. Nahh, I’d never make it into office with the forceful and inspired campaign slogan of “Emily Lariviere: Heyyyy.”