Monthly Archives: May 2014

I’m great, I’m terrific

When people ask me how I’m doing, I always tell them, “I’m great,” bare minimum, I’m doing great. You know, you like positivity, right? Well then why settle for anything less? I tell people how great I’m doing and they like it, they appreciate the jolt of good vibes I’m sending their way. I even like to say it aggressively, like, “I’m great!” but short, like a really intense response, I’m staring at you directly in the eye, that hand shake we’re engaged in, doesn’t it hurt? Not a lot, but just a little bit, right? That’s because it’s a great handshake.

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But like I said, that’s my bare minimum. So actually, if you ever run into me on the street, and you say, “What’s up Rob? How’s it going?” and I’m telling you that I’m great, well, honestly, I’m not really doing that well. Because that’s my bare minimum, that’s the basest level of interaction I’ll allow myself with another human being. If I’m just great, yeah, I’m glad that I got to maybe spark some positivity with my left hand, as it smacked your right shoulder while we were in the middle of that ultra-firm handshake. But your great, that’s my not-so-great.

And things aren’t usually that bad in my life, I don’t have too much to complain about. Which is why most of my day-to-day interactions will fall more “terrific” on the scale than they will merely “great.” I say it like an affirmation, “I’m terrific, how are you?” with added emphasis on the “rif.” Ter-RIF-ic. I might forgo the handshake for a high-five, not a regular five, OK, my hand is all the way up here for a reason, and if you present an outstretched low open palm, don’t expect that I’m going to come down to make contact. No, I’m going to stand here with my hand all the way up, and if you don’t make a move, eventually I’ll force it, I’ll say, “Come on man, high five!” and then when we make contact, I’m looking for an audible slapping sound, all right, yeah, it might hurt, but it’s not real pain, that’s the feeling of you not having experienced a real high-five in quite some time, so you’ll get used to it, all right? Terrific, I’ll repeat it again after that slap, it was loud enough that everyone around turned their heads in our direction, and I’ll extend that spotlight to you, I’ll say it a little louder, “We’re doing terrific over here.”

And again, I don’t want to get too hung up on levels and scales, my terrific equals your OK. But that’s exactly what it is, if I’m terrific, I’m just OK. And I don’t know about you, but I really hate settling for just OK, no way dude, life’s too short to go around feeling just kind of all right. Which is why, don’t get too hung up on the high-five thing. Yeah, it’s a little aggressive, and definitely loud, but I try not to really let myself get too comfortable feeling simply terrific. I’d say that the majority of people I run into say hi to me, and when they ask how I’m doing, I’ll tell them that, “I’m better than ever.”

Now we’re getting into some genuine good emotions here, some truly positive positives. Just embrace it, I’m not trying to rub it in your face, because, again, don’t read too much into it, all right, this my way of how you would say that you’re doing fine, everything’s fine, I’m fine. But I’m better than ever. Just hop on, there’s plenty of room on my express bus to outstanding good feelings.

Just don’t tell me that you’re doing well. I hate it when I ask someone, “How’s it going?” and they’re like, “I’m well.” I’m just like, man, what a buzz kill. Who says well anyway? Like I know it’s correct, and I know it makes sense to write it out that way. But to say it? In actual conversation? You’re well? You sound like a textbook. And now I’m just of great again. And I won’t even say anything, I think I see my friend Jim over there anyway. Maybe he’s got what I need to recharge the batteries here.

And no, I don’t think it’s disingenuous, trying to come across as better than I actually am. I’m just constantly reaching, like maybe if I tell you that I’m better than ever, maybe you’ll light up a little inside. Maybe I’ll inspire you to a higher level of however it is you’d describe yourself at the moment. And then I look at your eyes widening, I can see all of that positivity weaseling its way inside your head, I think, I did that, that was me. And I get pumped up. So when I said I was better than ever, maybe I wasn’t. But now I might be.

And so I’ll correct myself, I’ll add something like, “You know what? This is one of the best days of my life!” (emphasis on that life.) And then a high-five isn’t going to do, OK, I need something better, maybe I’ll get up real close and I’ll shadow box, like I’ll give you two or three fake punches to the gut before letting out a really intense laugh, “ha HA!” and then sidle up next to you, my left arm wrapping around your neck, like a noogie without the actual noogie part, and with my right hand, I’ll pat you on the gut, like we’re brothers, like we’re two guys just horsing around, reveling in the unlimited potential of our out-of-this-world dispositions. Hey come on, let’s go get some ice cream. Yeah, the ice cream place two blocks down, come on, I’ll race you! Let’s go! Ha HA!

You know what sucks? The lunch rush

I hate waiting tables during lunch. It brings out the worst in me, in the guests, in my coworkers. It brings out the worst in all of us, really, as a species. And I’m not just talking about my restaurant, I’m talking about the lunch hour, as a practice. If you’re lucky enough to be able to take a lunch break at all, it’s generally never more than an hour. Come spend eight hours a day working for us, and by the way, that doesn’t include a lunch break, that’s on you. And don’t take more than an hour.

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As a waiter, dinner’s pretty easy. People start rolling in around five or six, and the dining room stays pretty full until closing. That’s plenty of time to make money, to let people eat, finish chewing their food, the whole restaurant experience. But lunchtime, nobody’s cutting anybody any slack. We’ve got to do the whole restaurant thing, but it’s got to be over in an hour. Everybody got it? Hostesses, you ready to seat all of these people? Cooks? You guys all set?

Because it’s noon and there’s already a line out the door. And parties of business people get sat and they want their Diet Cokes and unsweetened ice teas immediately. And you know what? We’ll just give you everything right now, we’re ready, burger, boom, salad, got it, let’s go, get it in, if we get our food quick enough, maybe we’ll have ten minutes or so to spend outside before filing back into the offices, another five or six or seven hours of sitting down, pouring whatever reserves of energy we have left out to our jobs, so even though, yeah, I guess we could technically go out for a walk at nine, or ten, we’ve got to eat, and we’re so tired, it’s been such a long day.

So yeah, that lunch hour, that’s a lot of pressure, sixty minutes to try and feel like a normal person sandwiched by two stretches of productivity. Why can’t we figure something else out? Wouldn’t two hours be cool? Or three? Sure, that might eat up into a company’s bottom line, and yeah, what would the shareholders say? But then again, might not a shorter workday lead to less stressed out employees? Shouldn’t that be a goal?

But that’s not the way we do business, and so we’re stuck with the lunch hour, way too little time for everybody, especially if you want to sit down at a restaurant and enjoy an actual meal. “Hi, we’re actually in a little bit of a hurry …” Of course you’re in a hurry. Everybody’s in a hurry. I’m actually in a hurry too. I only have about two hours or so to make money today, so I’d like to get you fed and out of here in as little time as possible. And look at that, everyone else is saying the same thing to their server, that they’re in a hurry. And the whole restaurant staff, we’re all racing to the computers, trying to get your lunch in before everyone else gets their lunch in, before the window gets immediately overrun by orders. The first few plates are out in eight to minutes, but after that, well, even if nobody on the line makes any mistakes, we’re talking sheer volume, OK, you can only cook a hamburger so fast, and you can only fit so many burgers on the grill.

Even worse though, every now and then I’ll approach a table just as the lunch rush really gets rocking, and the businessmen and women at my table dismiss me with a wave of the hand, “Actually, we haven’t even looked at the menu. Why don’t you come back in ten minutes?” And that’s when I have to get a little aggressive, which I don’t like, but I mean, I need to eat, OK, I need money in my pocket. I’m not going to waste my entire lunch shift waiting for you guys to get your act together.

It’s like seriously, OK, order, eat, pay, and leave. Do you see the line out the door? And I get it, OK, it’s not cool to feel rushed. But that’s because there’s nothing cool about the lunch hour. Everybody’s feeling rushed. Do you see that swarm of bodies jockeying for position around the hostess’s podium? Yeah, they’re all waiting for your table. And so when I come over and start bussing everything off, your empty coffee cups, your empty water glasses, yes, I can see you rolling your eyes at me as I wipe down the table for the third time, like I get it, that I know that you know that I’m trying to get you to leave, and it’s not just me, OK, my manager’s like, “Hey Rob, how’s table eleven? Did they leave yet?” and I’m like, “No, I just wiped down the table again and they still didn’t leave,” and she’s like, “OK well, go wipe it down again,” and I’m like, “For real? Again? I just did it.”

And so I have to go over, again, and I have to wipe the table down, again, and they’re all visibly annoyed by my presence, and maybe one of them starts to take out some business documents, like a bunch of printed out spreadsheets. And I just want to be like, come on everybody, I don’t barge into your office and start asking people if they want more Diet Coke, OK, wouldn’t that get in your way? Wouldn’t that disrupt the flow of you trying to do your job, to make money? Yeah, so don’t sit here and bring your business to my table. I need customers to sit here and buy food and tip me so I can go home and go out to eat and buy food and tip people.

What really gets me is that a lot of the most guilty offenders, the parties that just don’t care at all, it’s these businessmen working at banks and hedge funds, paying for their lunches on identical corporate credit cards, all of them with ridiculous names like, “Hyperion Capital,” or “Acceleron Associates.” You guys understand business, right? Don’t you get the whole supply and demand aspect of this restaurant? Your table is in demand. I’m trying to get you to leave so I can supply it to a new round of customers.

And now I’m in full rant mode, but this is the invisible hand of the market at work. OK, this is what you want in your job, right, you want the government to leave you alone so you can make your money and do whatever you want, right? And then you go out to lunch and you get annoyed that there’s a whole restaurant full of people trying to get by on gratuity. That’s how it works. More customers, more gratuity, more money. You need to leave. Just eat, pay, leave, and make room for somebody else. Because this is big city, OK, there are like seven billion people on this planet, all right? You’ve got to make room for everyone. There’s a whole lot of people trying to eat lunch.

Originally published at Thought Catalog

I’ve got ninety-nine problems, and they’re all logistical computer stuff

I used to write on my laptop, but after a while, after an hour or two hours, my wrists would get so hot, resting on the computer, right below the keyboard. I could feel the heat irradiating my blood, I worried that it was poisoning my system. So I got rid of the laptop and bought a desktop.

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And it was better, I mean, I didn’t have that hotspot anymore. But working with a mouse was so much different than working with the laptop’s track pad. I guess I took it for granted, what with all of the excessive wrist-worry, just how convenient it was navigating my graphic user interface right there, right below my keyboard, I didn’t really have to move my hands.

What I gained in peace of mind, I lost in convenience. Because even though I tried to give it time, to adjust to the new setup, I couldn’t get a good workflow going, I kept having to pick up my hand and put it on the mouse.

And besides, now I’m basically stuck here, upstairs on my desk. I guess I also took for granted just how comfortable my typing setup was downstairs at the kitchen table. Because I just naturally assumed that writing at a desk would be more of an ideal setup. But it’s not. My wrists are just slightly more elevated. And with all of the moving back and forth from keyboard to mouse, it’s exhausting. I can totally relate to people making up all of that stuff about carpel-tunnel.

And this mouse, it’s supposed to be a Mighty Mouse. Like, it’s just a solid piece with a little ball on it to scroll up and down. But I keep squeezing it the wrong way, even though I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything, nothing conscious enough to actually activate one of the hidden side buttons, but it keeps clicking, it switches between windows, it shows the desktop when I’m not asking it to show the desktop.

So I threw that mouse away and bought a Magic Mouse. It doesn’t have a ball, nothing to get stuck and prevent me from scrolling up and down. And I thought it would have worked much better, but, and I don’t know if it’s the mouse, or my computer, but it’s so laggy. Like, the cursor is so choppy, lurching across the screen. I move the mouse, nothing happens, and I can’t click on anything that I want to click on.

And this keyboard, it’s just not as smooth as working on my laptop’s keyboard. I don’t know how to explain it. Like, it feels like there’s a really heavy spring under each key, and if I don’t hit exactly the right spot, somewhere in the dead center of the key, it’s like, boing! It springs my finger onto the next key, and so I’m just constantly making typos.

So finally I was like, you know what? I can’t do this, it’s just not working out. So I sold my desktop at a loss and bought a new laptop. I’m back downstairs at the kitchen table, it’s really nice, to be able to just write, uninterrupted, not having to worry about all of those logistical nightmares that were plaguing me upstairs.

Only, now that the weather is getting warm out again, I can feel my wrists heating up, just like before. And it feels worse. Could it be worse? Could this keyboard be hotter than my other one? Or is that just in my head?

I reacted a little too dramatically, pulling my hands off the machine like I would something that was really hot, like a stove, like if my wrist accidentally made contact with one of the burners, even though that’s totally unlikely. And when I did that, I knocked my cup of iced tea onto the computer. And thankfully nothing happened, like with the computer, everything still works, which is lucky, because that could have killed it.

But now, every time I type, it’s like the keys are all stuck with dried out iced tea, and so it’s just really annoying, I feel like I’m making even more typos than ever. Sticky typos like hhhhhhhhh or ttttttttttt. I just, it’s really getting in the way of my writing. I just feel like, how am I supposed to get any writing done? With all of these computer problems? What’s the solution?

A long time ago, on a vacation far, far away

I wish I could have a vacation home like five hundred years ago somewhere. Whenever I need to get away, I’d be able to hop back in time and take a temporary break in the not-so-distant past. And I wouldn’t even try to blend in. I mean, what would be the fun in any of that? No, I’d just zap myself right in the middle of town, a big public entrance, just to show everybody how powerful I am.

I’d wear my regular clothes, and I’d have small-talk with whoever happened to be around, but then I’d head off just outside of the community. I’d have a totally modern house, with everything, Internet, TV, all of my modern appliances. The house itself, it would just be in the past.

Also, I’d be totally untouchable. I’m talking about defense. Like, if anybody tried to overpower my futuristic abode, or try to kidnap me on my way back to the present, it just wouldn’t work. I’d have like a portable cloaking device or a random force-field generator. I don’t know.

And all I’d do is just kind of rub it in how awesome the future is. Maybe I’d let some of the townsfolk take a tour, I’d show them a cool movie on my giant projection screen. What kind of movie would it be? I could play them a period piece, something like Apocalypto or Braveheart. Or maybe I’d just pop in a copy of something totally crazy, like Star Wars, and I wouldn’t explain anything. In fact, I wouldn’t even be watching the movie. My entertainment would be totally derived from watching everyone else try to make sense of what’s going on in the movie.

Maybe I could teach them how to play basketball or baseball. Maybe I could really insert myself into the history of the sport. Although, I guess for continuity’s sake, my visits shouldn’t really disrupt the space-time continuum. Like, I visit, I leave, but nothing changes in the present.

So would any of it even be real? What would be the point of doing anything if there weren’t at least the potential for mild consequences?

Maybe it wouldn’t be as cool as I’m imagining it to be. Maybe I should just take a vacation upstate, get some fresh mountain air. Or something beachy, like, I don’t know, some beach somewhere. I’ll just order like ten piña coladas and fall asleep in the hot tub.

And it was all a dream

I was getting ready to jump out of the plane, but just as I peered over the edge, something kept me from pushing myself through that invisible membrane separating me from terminal velocity. What was it? I couldn’t be sure, so I tried to shake it. Just nerves, I told myself. Still, I tried to jump one more time and it was the same, no good. What had gotten into me?

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So I resolved to sit this one out. But Rick, my old trainer, the guy who’d taught me everything I know about skydiving, maybe he saw something that I didn’t. Maybe he had been there before, somewhat new, but enough dives under his belt to mistake the momentary hesitation for what it really was, doubt, fear, crippling anxiety. “Don’t be such a …” was all that I heard, because Rick had pushed me out midsentence, and in less than I second I went from being on the plane, to the plane disappearing above me.

The unexpected shove jolted my senses, like when your hot shower goes suddenly ice cold. But it didn’t take long for me to come to terms with how it went down. And now that I was in free fall, the familiarity of the rush started to kick in, clearing my head. A heartbeat later and I was back to where I always was, falling, flying, whatever, just pure adrenaline induced euphoria.

But the very instant before my altimeter alerted me that it was about time to deploy the shoot, it hit me, the reason that I was so reluctant to step off of that plane. The chord. I don’t know why, or for reason, but I knew that it wasn’t going to work. The idea that I was by myself up here, coupled with the lack of any details, it stopped my breath, it was like I was in the beginnings of a panic attack.

While my brain stumbled through a replay of my preparations this morning, my equipment check, refueling the tank, I couldn’t for sure identify that all of these little steps, steps that I’ve completed dozens of times by now, I wasn’t positive if they were from today or yesterday or the week before. Finally my hands took control of the situation and gripped the handle sticking out of the left side of the backpack.

And I pulled. And nothing. I pulled a little harder. It was the same. I was dead.

I thought, what do I do? Can I try to take the pack off my back, somehow go through it in mid-fall, identify the problem, fix the problem, get the pack strapped back on, with enough time to successfully open up the chute? Because the ground was coming fast. It’s like, those first few thousand feet, yeah, you feel the wind, but the surface is so far away, it doesn’t even really look like you’re moving in relation to anything down below.

But now, I was seeing less and less of certain objects in the horizon. My mind kept jumping forward, all the way to the automatic conclusion. My body cringed as I imagined what it would feel like, if I’d even have time to feel anything at all. Would death really be instant? Or would I kind of exist in a breathless state of panic while my surviving brain cells slowly shut down due to lack of oxygen?

Could I somehow make it through this? I mean, it was at least technically possible. I’ve heard of people walking away from stuff like this. Well, if not walking, at least breathing. Would it be enough to just breath? Should I try to get my body to start rolling the second I make contact with the ground?

A thousand questions, a million different thought fragments, mostly just emotions, fight, flight, instinct into overdrive.

And then just before I started totally freaking out, arms flailing uselessly in the sky, my bladder releasing its contents into my jumpsuit, just before the ground came right up to my face, I woke up.

I was in my bed. I’ve never been skydiving. What the hell man, I’ve never been on a small plane. Fuck that, are you crazy? Wow, it just felt so real. But it wasn’t real. It was a dream.

I thought I was about to fall to my death, but I didn’t, because I woke up. Because it was all a dream.