The New Job (Top Secret)
I am legally prevented from writing about my job without express premission from the Secretary of State. Therefore, in order to say anything about it, I would first have to call Condoleeza Rice on the phone and say, "Yo Beayatch, are you down with a little bloggin'?" I shall therefore not write about my current job. I shall instead write about a fictional job that I do not currently hold. Thus begins the fiction:

I started work this week at the Minimal Assport Poppis. The Poppis is a division of the Great Department, so oddly, I found myself actually caring about the mechanations of the Bush administration as he shuffled his cabinet. After all, the new head of the Great Department would be my boss's contractor's contractor's boss's boss, and would therefore have unprecidented power over my life. Then, in a sudden flash of clarity, I stopped giving a shit and went back to shuffling papers.

My job, what I know of it, is processing Assport applications into actual Assports. The process is an assembly line, each step broken down to the simplest task, so that simpletons, Federal Employees and aspiring novelists can only occassionally screw up. I have very little negative to say thus far. The job is mindless enough so that I can listen to audiobooks all day. The people are nice, emphasis on 'ice'. And while the offices are themselves nightmarish holes filled with ecru cubicles and flourscent lighting, there are large windows nearby that let in pleasant natural light and which afford sweeping views of the city.

I am, of course, working for a Federal Government who's current head I distrust, dislike and generally dis. Oddly, I've yet to meet anyone in this office who professes to be a Bush supporter, and several who vocally bemoan his second term. This gives me hope.

The couch in the employee lunchroom is sad and flat, the elevators shudder and snap thier doors on your heels before you've exited. The people are dull, yes, but there's a pleasant odor in the air that is absent from so many offices: perspective. The powers that be know that this job goes on and on and on and on and that every day there will be more applications and more applications and that we, the employees, will get to them when we get to them. So long as we don't fall behind and at least appear to be at our stations, then it's all good. I've witnesses so much corporate madness and drive, that this attitude feels almost like laziness. Sweet, sweet laziness.

If I can stave off the crushing boredom with entertaining literture read by semi-retired b-list actors, then I might just do well at the Assport Office.

- posted by Katherine @ 5:08 PM 3 comments

 
"Hhhhrrrrrmmmrhrmrm..." --Horatio Hornblower
When captain Horatio Hornblower, from CS Forrester's fine maritime series, felt the need to say something effusive or revealing, he would instead clear his throat and keep to himself. In response to Joe's viscious, naughty and altogether humbling rant about both writing and my person, I shall clear my throat.

Ahem.

But instead of remaining silent, I shall proceed to be effusive and revealing. You stand forewarned.

- posted by Katherine @ 4:54 PM 4 comments