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albadgerI have a new job. It's in Sacramento.
Or at least I was told it was Sacramento.
When I got there, it didn't look like Sacramento at all. Glowering, red-tinged thunderclouds hovered over a grid of windowless three-story industrial buildings. My "intake specialist" ushered me into the one where I'll be working...and apparently living as well. My dorm room was functional, with a small bed, a writing desk, and a sink. I had my own flat-panel TV. The bathroom was down the hall.
First things first -- the orientation meeting was in a huge hall, the center of which was taken up by a gigantic mattress. After the horde of new employees had piled on, somebody pushed a switch, and the mattress lifted up into stadium-style seating. Nobody there would even acknowledge my existence, except for an older woman (also the only person to acknowledge the feral cats prowling the building), and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
urso. Boy, was I glad to see him. We got bored with the orientation (it was in Basque) so Urso and I rode the escalators down to the lunch/rec area in the basement.
Somehow we got separated, and I searched through the giant, empty pizza parlor for him in vain. The only pinball machines there were perched on piles of driftwood, and obviously too unstable to play. There were a lot of Ms. Pac-Man machines, but I decided against playing. I only had the one quarter.
Tall people in long robes of white and forest green wandered purposefully through the room, studying each lonely soul as they passed.
I got tired of looking for Urso in the knotty-pine-paneled downstairs, so I rode the escalators up to the roof, which had been landscaped to a scale model of the rolling hills of central Wisconsin. Urso was nowhere, and I couldn't find the cat lady either. I sat down on a hummock in despair. One of the tall robed people came over to me and started talking. Turns out they were actually employees whose job was to make sure new hires didn't feel too lonely and isolated. Right then Urso called me on the cel phone I didn't know I had. He was lost somewhere too. Rudely, I told him I'd call him back. The reason for this...
There's a certain person for whom I developed an intense, painful crush about 12 years ago. Yes, he's on LJ and no, I'm not saying who. He walked up and sat on an adjacent hill and started talking to the green-robed proctor about how lost and isolated he felt. "Nobody will even acknowledge my existence here," he complained. "They won't even acknowledge the feral cats."
I stood up. "God DAMMIT," I shouted, "if you concentrated on the people who WANT to acknowledge you instead of these other idiots, you'd realize that there's a @$#^*(#)-load of love and concern out there for you, that there are people who care deeply for you and want to --"
But the phone rang again and interrupted me, but it wasn't the phone, it was my cat. He wanted to let me know that the power was out.
That was 4:00 A.M. The power's still not back on. I'm at Zocalo's coffeehouse writing this on my laptop.
Or at least I was told it was Sacramento.
When I got there, it didn't look like Sacramento at all. Glowering, red-tinged thunderclouds hovered over a grid of windowless three-story industrial buildings. My "intake specialist" ushered me into the one where I'll be working...and apparently living as well. My dorm room was functional, with a small bed, a writing desk, and a sink. I had my own flat-panel TV. The bathroom was down the hall.
First things first -- the orientation meeting was in a huge hall, the center of which was taken up by a gigantic mattress. After the horde of new employees had piled on, somebody pushed a switch, and the mattress lifted up into stadium-style seating. Nobody there would even acknowledge my existence, except for an older woman (also the only person to acknowledge the feral cats prowling the building), and
urso. Boy, was I glad to see him. We got bored with the orientation (it was in Basque) so Urso and I rode the escalators down to the lunch/rec area in the basement.Somehow we got separated, and I searched through the giant, empty pizza parlor for him in vain. The only pinball machines there were perched on piles of driftwood, and obviously too unstable to play. There were a lot of Ms. Pac-Man machines, but I decided against playing. I only had the one quarter.
Tall people in long robes of white and forest green wandered purposefully through the room, studying each lonely soul as they passed.
I got tired of looking for Urso in the knotty-pine-paneled downstairs, so I rode the escalators up to the roof, which had been landscaped to a scale model of the rolling hills of central Wisconsin. Urso was nowhere, and I couldn't find the cat lady either. I sat down on a hummock in despair. One of the tall robed people came over to me and started talking. Turns out they were actually employees whose job was to make sure new hires didn't feel too lonely and isolated. Right then Urso called me on the cel phone I didn't know I had. He was lost somewhere too. Rudely, I told him I'd call him back. The reason for this...
There's a certain person for whom I developed an intense, painful crush about 12 years ago. Yes, he's on LJ and no, I'm not saying who. He walked up and sat on an adjacent hill and started talking to the green-robed proctor about how lost and isolated he felt. "Nobody will even acknowledge my existence here," he complained. "They won't even acknowledge the feral cats."
I stood up. "God DAMMIT," I shouted, "if you concentrated on the people who WANT to acknowledge you instead of these other idiots, you'd realize that there's a @$#^*(#)-load of love and concern out there for you, that there are people who care deeply for you and want to --"
But the phone rang again and interrupted me, but it wasn't the phone, it was my cat. He wanted to let me know that the power was out.
That was 4:00 A.M. The power's still not back on. I'm at Zocalo's coffeehouse writing this on my laptop.
