October 20th, 2009
Another Anecdote – The Leech
First off, the new job is okay. After my last nightmare of a job, it’s such a huge relief to have a boss who doesn’t breathe down my neck. It’s an eerily quiet, anti-social environment for the most part, but such is life when you work in legal publishing. I knew what to expect before starting. My co-workers seem nice and good-humoured enough, so hopefully I get to run into them more often in the halls or library to strike up more conversation (how ironic, yes, striking up conversation in a library – again, such is life when you work in legal publishing).
Anyway, I’ve already got some work to do, which is good… I guess. To be honest, I was hoping to cruise for the first few days or so reading lame training material, but because I’ve got moderate editorial experience under my belt, they’ve decided to put me to work already. It’s not fun work, but it never is in legal publishing. I can’t stop thinking about the work I have to complete for the magazine – it’s so much more interesting… today all I kept thinking about was making calls to verify some details in a few articles I’ve been assigned to fact-check. I was really distracted. I wish they would just pay me! I’d be elated if they said they could pay me minimum wage to work for them… sigh, maybe one day.
Anywho, these updates are going somewhere today – for once, I have a point, haha. Reflecting on my varied work experience, which consists of paid and unpaid positions and ranges from God-awful to “meh” to, now that I’m working for the magazine, warm, fuzzy-feeling-eliciting, I’ve realized that it has definitely given me a better appreciation for the value of a dollar. I know someone who’s a pretty ridiculous character, quite happily leeching off of others to pay for her gym membership, satisfy her penchant for name brands, buy things she shouldn’t, rack up enormous debt in their names so that she can spoil herself, etc., etc., etc. She doesn’t pay rent, people. She’s been unemployed for several years and lacks any job skills (or people skills, for that matter!). She’s 30-something and virtually the only thing she can put on her resume is her short-lived experience working at a fair, for Christ’s sake. You would think that someone who takes, takes, takes from wonderful people who give, give, give would do what she could to show her appreciation. But no, she doesn’t even help out at home in any adequately quantifiable way… and she’s completely unapologetic about being thoroughly USELESS to her family that’s selflessly and painstakingly helping her out. She’s pretty crappy in my books, so these days I’m not surprised when I hear about something effin’ stupid that she does.
But the other day, my husband and I gave her daughter a monetary gift for her birthday. Sure, it wasn’t huge or anything, but I hadn’t worked in weeks and we had to be modest because of our situation. It wasn’t a paltry amount either, though, so I expected a polite “thanks” in return. But when her daughter gave her nasty mom the money and told her it was from us, nasty mom just looked down at it and said nothing… not a word. Nor did she tell her daughter to thank us. She looked down at the money like it was infected. I could see it on her nasty face: she was thinking, “CHEAP”. It wasn’t even HER gift! And still she passed judgment! I’m baffled by how she feels entitled to pass judgment with NOTHING that she’s EARNED SELF-SUFFICIENTLY to her name.
Funny that someone who’s too useless to generate an income would think that, huh? Apparently people who are “too good” to work honestly for a dollar are are still “too good” for monetary gifts/free money.
Maybe if the dumb b!tch actually WORKED a damn day in her life, had a boss who made her want to crawl into a hole and scream, had a job like my husband’s that made her body ache every day, had to settle for all of these not-so-wonderful things for the sake of DOING WHAT’S RIGHT… maybe then she wouldn’t scoff at our gift. She simply hasn’t evolved enough to understand just what kind of bullsh!t and sacrifice goes into making an honest dollar. And the fact that she revels in her ignorance enrages me – a 30-something ADULT who lacks this insight is a sorry waste of human life! ARGH!
I’m glad I’ll never be like her. Without a doubt, she’s the biggest idiot I have the misfortune of knowing.
