Past workplaces.

The girlfriend of the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) is involved with some sort of departmental climate review at a higher ed school where she's a grad and has a regular event staffing position, and a few weeks ago when we were all catching up over coffee I asked her how that was going, since she had just gotten back from a trip there for that.

And, she started telling me about the report that she was writing and she began outlining problems about a professor with bad boundaries and two grads who went on to teach there but a dean kept them in check, and now that that dean is gone their behavior has devolved, and besides the institution has a habit of hiring grads and has a culture that's very hard to break, etc. etc. etc., and we talked about this kind of stuff for like fifteen or twenty minutes while the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) was sitting there quietly, just listening, so then towards the end of the conversation, I took a verbal step back and was like, "Higher ed workplaces are not like normal workplaces, in what other workplace do you have to spend so much godawful time trying to figure out convoluted personal dynamics and work around people who don't do their jobs and who don't necessarily seem to want to," and I then added that it's just this unnecessary massive timesuck and that that whole kind of thing is just a bad fit for me because I have too much common sense and I just want to show up to my job and do the work.

It really was like this massive blast from the past.

I mean, there's some personality dynamics at the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, but I could spend maybe 5 minutes discussing them, tops?

Higher ed is just exponentially different, and worse.

And they always invest so much time writing up these reports that no-one reads or does much about, and oftentimes it's just an underlying personnel or staffing problem.

It's like my one lawyer friend from (Missouri) observed years ago from her having quite a few people she knows involved in higher ed, that sector seems to involve a lot of "busy work" (i.e., work that doesn't seem to do or produce anything.)

Amen.

Well said, sister. 

Cleaning (2 of 2): Resthome farewell.

During that same cleaning, I also threw out a little mini backpack that I got at the resthome as logoed "swag" but whose zipper and front pouch got messed up when I put it in the drier once, and I think that when I swap out clothes for fall, I'm also going to get rid of a lot of stuff, including maybe a logoed jacket and scrubs from them that I have packed in at the back of my closet.

Farewell to the resthome, where I last worked 5 years ago, now. 

Cleaning (1 of 2): Hand-weights.

A few weeks ago, I really cleaned out my cottage to get organized and mentally level again after finishing a couple of huge writing projects, and during that process I remembered that I had some hand-weights in a kitchen drawer for a workout that I never do anymore, since I've now started using resistance bands instead.

So, I took them out and washed them down -- a few had spots of mildew on them, presumably from the hand-sweat that got absorbed into them, and then the high humidity in my apartment this summer -- and then I wrote out on a piece of paper the big word FREE and something about taking them in pairs, and I went and put them out by the sidewalk by the front of the front house, for whoever wanted them to take.

And, a couple of hours later, I happen to go out there again, and they were gone.

And then, a little while after that, I go to walk to the post office to mail some stuff, and there my hand-weights are, sitting out on the grass next to the "little free food pantry" out in front of a neighboring church like half a block away from me, where sometimes some people leave other stuff for others to take.

It seems that someone had transported all 6 of them there -- a big endeavor, since they're heavy and cumbersome and I had to do 2 trips to get them out to the curb --  perhaps because they thought that they'd go faster there?

It really doesn't make sense to me. 

A dream.

A few weeks ago I dreamnt -

I'm staring at a a radio and there's nondescript highly modernist classical music coming out of it, and a voice to my left says that I must identify which (Hungarian) composer it is, Ligeti or Kodály, and I say Bartók, you can't forget Bartók, and then amidst modest affirmation off to left, I think to myself, how the hell am I going to tell the difference between all their music.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(. . .) 

Another resume horror.

The (fat) (ex-Mormon) (recent social sciences Ph.D. / adjunct) who I know from the local brewery has really been applying for jobs the past few months...  

He has a lot of good quantitative skills, but the economy is really contracted right now just like it was the last time that you-know-who was president.

Anyways, when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, he was saying that there was a recent LinkedIn post about the horrors of AI on the application process...  You used to be able to weed out a certain amount of resumes and responses based on educational gaps that surface on the submitted docs and the emails, but the increased accessibility of Grammarly-type stuff has done away with that, and now you supposedly get people showing up at interviews with clear skills gaps and everyone is like, "What?!".

Yet another resume horror, beyond how many more you have to pump out because electronic applications have increased the busywork on both sides, where people have to submit so many more applications in order to find a job and employers have to review so many more of them.

It really makes me see how wise I was by trying to get into eldercare and then sliding back into restaurant work, because doing that just cuts out that whole source of nonsense and stress from my life. 

I mean, the jobs aren't the best, but at least you don't have to undergo all of that!

It's just draining and severely demoralizing. 

Another Saturday night...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) It's like not quite 5pm and it's like pre-dinner skeleton staff and there's one table in the main dining room and one in my back lounge area and then another one comes in to my back lounge area, two (neatly-dressed) (mid-40s) women, one (white) with (mid-length blonde hair) and one (black) with (short hair) and (conservative glasses) and the (white) one also has some kind of big cross and motto about freedom on her left wrist and so I assume that they're both evangelical but it turns out that they're both going to some serial killer event later that night and so are pacing their drinking till then but are still drinking a little anyhow to start while they have dinner, at least the (white) one is but the (black) one is a lightweight and so she's waiting, so, we end up talking forever, and then I step out into the main dining room and there's honest to G-d like 30 people who walked in during that brief-ish time that I was talking with them about things like Signs of a Psychopath and how from watching that I realized that I think that I've had customers who were psychopaths, at which the (black) woman was like, "Of course you have," and all interactions like that for like ten or twelve minutes, while the dining room was quickly filling up without me knowing it.

(There was a 7pm concert and a 7pm minor university sporting event that night, it turned out, ergo an early dinner rush.)

2)  This one (older) (white) couple is in who I recognize again, this (slow-speaking) (bespectacled) (blonde) woman and her (white-haired) husband with glasses, and she's at the table for 2 by herself and she says that her husband is parking the car, and I ask if they know about our customer parking spaces in a nearby lot and she says that they don't, so when her husband comes in, I tell him about them, and he decides to go move the car since he wasn't sure about the signage and legality with where he had parked, and so I step outside the door with him to stand on the front steps and gesture to where the parking spaces are and how you have to go around the building in order to access the lot, because the way that you think that you can get in is a one-way street that goes the wrong way that you need it to go.

Later, they say that they have to go because the husband says that he has to be up for work at seven, then he makes some comment like "Look at an old man like me, still working," so I ask him what his job is, and it turns out that he's a retired farmer but he still helps out one of his sons who farms and he's doing that tomorrow and so he has to be up at seven.

They grow corn and soybeans, too, it turns out. 

(I wonder if he voted for the sitting president, though... Best not to ask, and best case scenario anyhow would probably be that he did but has buyer's remorse and so is embarrassed to talk about it.) 

3) The restaurant is surprisingly busy through late at night, and I run in to dump some dishes and then run back out and print a bill, and the garbage by dish is very full and after I dump them on top of the mounded top of the trash the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook calls out to me pissily and is like, "Hey, you have to change that if you have time," even though I've worked at the place for like 2/3 of a year now and I've never seen anyone but kitchen staff change it, and so I'm like, "I'm right in the middle of helping some customers," and I exit promptly and I immediately see my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) and I ask him if that's our duty because I've never done that before, and he's like "It is and it isn't," and I tell him what happened and also that I have to go cash out a table and help another table, and he's like, "I'll take care of it," and he exits back to the kitchen to take care of it, which he does.

Then, later, I have to go get some lettuce for a customer like right before close, and that same cook is now sweeping the kitchen, and the other (fatter) (perky) (white) (female) cook is also not in her typical place because cooking is now over in there and cleaning has now started, but she's closer to the food, so I get a small plate and go up and ask her to get a piece of lettuce for me, and as I talk with her as she does that I take a tiny step in towards her and immediately the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook is like, "Hey! Don't go in there, there's a line here that you guys should never pass," and he throws a finger out and indicates an imaginary line extending from each end of the kitchen island and he immediately starts going off about how if we do that during the shift it will be chaos etc. etc. etc., so I'm like, "Okay" and I shrug, and I get my lettuce and I run back out while he's still talking, just not interacting with all of his pissiness.

(Later, a call comes in for takeout right before close when all of the cooks had already cleaned everything, and I hear him bitching when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] runs it back to him -- "Why is this happening now", he was like -- and so when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] comes out, I kind of speak low to him and am like, "He was kind of being a bitch earlier, so this is like instant karma, I guess?", answering the cook's question to him, confidentially.)

Jigsaw puzzle record?

Like I usually do after I complete a jigsaw puzzle, I kept this one goddess-y one up for a while, which was like a huge woman's body extending up out of a ship's prow with her arms holding up the sails, and then behind her flowed like rainbows and bits and pieces of dreams, including eroticky things like a couple clutching each other and faces with suggestive expressions on them.

The puzzle also included splashes of actual glitter on select pieces, too, like some of those that formed the roiling waves beneath the ship.

Anyhow, after I finally disassembled it, I put my usual note on there that all pieces were present as of that date, and then the next day I dropped it off on the local public library's "take one, leave one" jigsaw puzzle exchange table before going upstairs to do like 45 minutes of computer work (printing stuff, answering some emails, etc.).

Then, when I came back downstairs and went by that jigsaw puzzle exchange table on my way out, what did I discover but that it was already gone.

Less than an hour before someone took it... A new record?