Bemusing

Bemused [bi-myoozd] Adj. Bewildered, confused, lost in thought, preoccupied.

In originally choosing the blog name I was leaning more toward the “lost in thought” end of bemused’s nuanced definition spectrum. Plus there was the inexplicable (but powerful) draw toward something cutesy and alliterative. But here I am faced with my first long weekend as a nine-to-fiver and I’m feeling at best preoccupied. And am I preoccupied with some worthy task, drawn from my computer by, say, a leading role in some community theater production of Equus or polishing old people’s floors for charity? No. I’m not even up to any good mischief. I spent three hours yesterday watching a film in which the major plot points involved trying unsuccessfully to get a middle aged man laid for the first time and then an entire hour literally doing nothing. Literally. I sat in a chair. I sat in the same chair with a book by my side and a dog insisting in various ways that I pay her attention on the other and I kept my hands in my lap and looked at a not-on television and simply inhaled and exhaled as needed.

I think this might directly relate to the fact that for the past month I have shaken my pride out of a cardboard box and into a bowl every morning, poured milk on it, and eaten it for breakfast.

But Kelly, you ask, you have been a cocktail waitress for the past seven years – how could you possibly feel any worse?

I feel like Julia Roberts when she has to deal with the condescending well-married bitches at the polo game. If I had a tray in my hand and gum in my mouth and very little was left to the imagination in terms of my outfit I would have a much easier time, somehow, putting things in alphabetical order over and over and over and over again. And don’t forget affixing labels in the upper right hand corner. I am fucking awesome at affixing labels. I bend the non-adhesive backing once and that sucker is poised and ready to be removed and affixed. No fumbling. No dicking around with plucking and scratching and wishing for longer nails.

And yes, I just compared myself to a hooker protagonist. Let’s get past that and recognize that I am having a little trouble adjusting. I get up when I used to come home. I am glad that it’s a three day weekend, rather than dreading the elongation of the two-day nightmare that exhausts and depresses every food-service industry minion everywhere. I do not make any more or less money based on the following factors: how much cleavage I am showing, how many times I force myself to smile, how many different variations of an entrée order I can accurately remember… Nobody (openly) blows lines in the bathroom.

It’s weird.

But here’s the thing. In the restaurant industry pretty much everyone is a peon. We all suffer the same indignities day in and day out. We all curse the guests aware of but willing to ignore the fact that without them we don’t make any money. Nobody really wants to be there and it isn’t a secret. Everyone has something else going on.

Two offices down from mine a woman I have chosen to nickname “Babette” sits behind a desk and thinks of ways to make me want to think of ways to kill her. I’m sure of it. Granted, if I had no office nemesis my day would be entirely devoid of any and all excitement. Every Seinfeld needs his Newman. And Newman Babette is. She is the type of woman who, in her late forties, looks like she has just stopped being the hottest woman in the room a few years ago and is not dealing with it very well. She is the Dean’s secretary.

The first time I encountered Babette I was delivering several pieces of mail addressed to the dean but accidentally delivered to our office. Babette’s desk is behind a tall counter like structure so that she is set back from the entrance in a little den of bitchiness, on a lower level but since the counter is so high anyone my height is dwarfed by the thing, giving her the opportunity to arch her little head up as if she is trying to see the little insignificant person standing behind the counter. I swear she designed this set up herself.

Babette asks how she can help me in such a way that reveals a total and complete desire to help no one especially not me.

I’m in mid answer when she asks if I am new.

I say yes, I am new, I am working in the admissions office.

She inquires, tooootally innocently, as to where they have me since there aren’t any more offices open in the admissions office.

I explain that I am a floater. No office. Totally comfortable with that.

Babette one. Kelly zero.

Enter the dean. A jokester type who likes to pat people on the back, throw out a one-liner, and disappear. I have never seen him in the same spot for more than one sentence.

He says, “Hey Harvard, taking over the place yet?”

Fair to say this ties Babette and I.

She would like to know my title. I manage to tell Babette that I am a temp (the bus boy of officeland).

Babette says “oh” in such a self satisfied snitty little prissy ass bitch way that I consider vaulting the too-high counter and going cocktail waitress on her ass.

Since then Babette has visited our office three times. Each time she looks over my head and asks everyone, “Oh, do you have a new person? And what does she do?” And every time my officemates make up some new collection of words that do not include the word “temp” and every time Babette responds with, “Oh, you’re a temp? Well welcome.”

I tire of Babette’s welcomes. I really do.

Last week she brought in her mother-in-law who had one of those hats with the feathers splayed in an upward swoop like a handful of cards fanned out. The whole thing bright red. The woman was clearly batshit. She introduced her batshit mother-in-law to everyone in the office with one exception and then, after great pause, said, “Oh, I’m sorry, have we met?”

So far my only form of revenge has been to sing the chorus of a certain applicable ELO song whenever I pass her door on the way to the bathroom.

This office hierarchy bullshit is too much for me. Babette sits behind a structurally demeaning configuration of faux-mahogany and answers phones and makes coffee every morning just like I do. We should be bound by our misery, not in competition for titles and doors and windows and whatever it is she’s after. But we have no common enemy. We must keep it a secret that our jobs aren’t, at every moment, the very thing we had hoped since girlhood to be doing. As a waitress I had to kiss ass for a self-contained period. Everything was immediate. Someone I hate comes in, stays for an hour, and I can immediately start cursing him once the revolving door sends him back into the fuckhead factory from whence he came. Officeland moves much more slowly. In order to move from one office (or no office) to the next you must tolerate fuckhead after fuckhead for periods of time absolutely inconceivable to your average cocktail waitress.