BROOD

I like grammar. I might not be among (not between, although amongst is also correct if not a little archaic) the best and brightest, but I like to think I know my way around a sentence. It wasn’t a formal part of my school curriculum, but my mom knows her stuff about words and, as recently as yesterday, continues to keep me on the straight and narrow:

Not to be critical about your blog, but you should be using the possessive form of pronouns modifying present participles. I know that everyday English has become sloppy, but I think it sounds better in its correct form.

For example:  my being (not me being) or his giving (not him giving)Professor Aswell

And so we come to yesterday afternoon, when I was discussing Monday Night Football with a coworker. I said, “The game was close when I went to bed. I wasn’t that emotionally involved in it. I guess I like to see the Saints win, although I could care less about the Titans.”

To which my coworker, whom (not who) I should mention I like a lot, said, “What you meant to say was, ‘I couldn’t care less about the Titans’.”

To which I held myself back from saying, “No, what I meant to say was don’t tell me what I meant to say.”

So. Could I care less about the Titans? Yes. Let’s say Vince Young had a season-ending injury - then I would care less about watching the team. Or if a better game were on a different channel at the same time - then I would care less about the Titans. And the use of the word although in my sentence implies (not infers) that I feel lukewarm about both teams.

I guess my point is that even though some people confuse the two sentences doesn’t mean that the phrase I could care less doesn’t exist at all as a correct sentence at some points in time. It could mean, “I care more than I might, even though I barely care,” or, “If I really dug deep and put some effort in, I could find it in myself to care less. But it would really be a struggle.”

I find the same phenomenon has popped up concerning when to say “me” and when to say “I” when referring to you and another person. There’s been a lot of overcorrection towards “I” in the last few years. I think it’s because so many moms and English teachers corrected us, and we didn’t think long enough about why. Even though it’s correct to say, “Sarah and I went to the store,” it isn’t correct to say, “The teacher talked to Sarah and I.” All you have to ask yourself is, am I the subject of the sentence or not?

Well, I can feel this entry quickly devolving into an aggravated lecture. I guess the point is that we could all care more — not only about the rules of grammar, but about how and why the rules are in place. Perhaps we couldn’t care more. I’m not really sure.

We have a new person in our office. She started yesterday and since she works right next to me I decided to pop in despite the fact that no one bothered to introduce us or even tell me that she was starting. Why didn’t anyone introduce us or let me know about her starting? Because she’s a few levels above me - whatever that means.

In any case, we’re neighbors so I popped in to say hi. I told her my name and that I was right next door if she needed anything in her first days.

She was nice and everything, but the first thing she asked me was, “What’s your title?”

I told her I was a marketing assistant and tried to move on. But then she asked who my manager was and then asked where my manager’s office was. I told her those things, too, but I was feeling smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter with every question. I tried to recover by asking her a few more… friendly… questions - we’re both from Boston, for example, and have that in common - but the entire atmosphere had changed and she was cold. Since then, she hasn’t as much as looked in my direction.  

Now, I don’t think this is a problem of this specific person, who may or may not be a nice person (I will perhaps never know, unless I get promoted and therefore suddenly materialize before her). But I do think that it’s an unforgivable problem in my workplace and in offices in general. Why must we treat people differently, depending on their title? Why can’t we talk to each other like equals? This woman is probably around the same age as me. She looks around the same in appearance. What separates us beside our paychecks?

I mean, I didn’t ask her how many degrees she had or where she’s been published. Or what her family tree looked like. I didn’t try to find out who had the richer creative or emotional life. I didn’t ask for her SAT scores or her pants size (obviously bigger than mine, I might add, just because I’m bitter). I just stopped by.

It reminded me of when I first started working here and one of the editors emailed me and asked me to sort an Excel file for him alphabetically since he didn’t know how. I called him and asked him to open the document and walked him through the process (the clicking of a single button, mind you) and then suggested that he take a tutorial on Excel (which my company offers) since we use the program so much. He seemed deeply offended, but why? Why shouldn’t I share my knowledge with him or make a (much needed) suggestion that would help the company as a whole? I certainly wasn’t mean or condescending about it. Is there just a general problem with me speaking my mind?

And I’m trying to walk the fine line between letting it show that this class/authority/title stuff bothers me and keeping it all knotted up inside. As much as I wanted to yell at that woman, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!” or, “AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL INTIMIDATED?” or, possibly, “ARE THOSE MATERNITY PANTS?” and stomp off, I guess I’ll be slightly more mature than that. I’m going to keep approaching her and talking to her like an equal. I hope it makes her as uncomfortable as she’s made me.

Is it necessary to treat people in the workplace according to their “status”? Does this happen in every workplace?

Yesterday morning the BACKSPACE key on my work computer started sticking. It might have had something to do with me spilling juice on that specific area of my keyboard the very same morning, but then again, that might have just been a coincidence.

But no matter how it happened, it started sticking. Now in order to successfully delete something I have to grab all four sides of the button with my thumb and three fingers, press it down firmly, and then pull it back up again quickly. I’d estimate that the whole process takes about ten times longer the normal pinky peck, not to mention that if I do just pinky peck then the button goes down but doesn’t pop back up and my writing gets eaten up with surprising and frightening speed.

So. Maybe because I’m so philosophical and inquisitive (or perhaps because I’m too lazy to write an email to the Helpdesk to get it fixed, what with a sticky button slowing everything down) I decided to see if my typing behavior changed after becoming conditioned to the sticky backspace button. I mean, under normal button conditions I press the backspace button a ton - I tend to type very fast, make a lot of mistakes, and quickly fix them. Maybe if fixing mistakes took more time and effort, I would make fewer mistakes in the first place.

Maybe it was all a metaphor for my entire life - do I tend to make mistakes in my daily thoughts and actions and then waste time correcting them just because the “backspace button” of life is so easy to peck sometimes? For example, is it sometimes easier to hurt someone’s feelings and then say “I’m sorry” than to not hurt the person in the first place? Are apologies, do-overs, retractions, and quick fixes the backspace buttons of our everyday? Would we all benefit from slowing down and paying more attention to who we were and what was right?

The answer is no. After two solid days without a properly functioning backspace button, I can tell you with certainty that it does not make you type more accurately or pay more attention to your actions. It just annoys the fuck out of you. The backspace button is there for a reason. And it’s twice as big as all the regular buttons for a reason. Mistakes happen, people. Like juice spilling. Even typing this post has pushed me to the edge of my sanity. And writing my email to the Helpdesk right after this will probably finish the job.

Sometimes I feel like no one else in the office/building/Manhattan feels the same way that I do about the work day. Sometimes it seems like everyone is ready to face the hours spread out before them, excited about meetings and deals, powerfully sipping their iced coffees. But then there are times, like this morning, when I connect with someone, if only for a moment. I was sharing an elevator with your basic middle-aged holiday-sweater three-exclamation-point office lady and her co-worker, a slouched balding guy in a colorless suit who looked a little beat down — like he knew that somewhere along the line he missed out on something.

Her: It’s Tuesday!!!

Him: [long pause] What?

Her: It’s Tuesday. The week is flying by!!!

Him: [longe pause] Seems like it was just yesterday.

Her: Before we know it, Christmas will be here!!!

Him: [longer pause] Before we know it, we’ll all be dead.

I looked up from my book and found his eyes. We both smiled, comforted.

One of the few redeeming parts of my job is that I work in on the 29^th floor of the New York Life Insurance Building on Madison Avenue. I am one of the luckier drones who has a huge window instead of a fourth cube wall - it looks north towards the Empire State Building and has views of the Hudson and East rivers. Even though I was told by higher-ups that it was “unfriendly” to be facing away from my cubicle entrance and toward the outside world, I decided to do it anyway. I consider it working toward my long-term goal at this company (being quietly fired).

I get to see a surprising number of things from 300+ feet up. Throughout the summer I watched the Park Avenue bathing beauties atop their posh apartment building roofs - sometimes relaxing, tanning, swimming and eating snacks for marathon sessions that lasted entire workdays. I also like to watch the construction of a building a few blocks away - the workers finish about a floor a week and then start on the next one - reaching higher and higher up into the skyline. It makes me feel good to know that some people see tangible results from their work even as I sit here typing away without seeing any progress, day after day and then at night, not getting higher or farther or better as far as I can tell.  

Also, things float by. Plastic bags do well as do runaway balloons. Blimps lumber around for hours and birds zoom.

But this week - suddenly - there have been butterflies. Monarch butterflies by the dozens, some even brushing the glass, so brightly beautiful and misplaced that it makes me want to cry.

I looked it up and learned that sure enough they migrate from the middle of August to the middle of September - they’re headed south for the winter. Mexico, Pacific Grove, Santa Cruz, Bermuda. Thousands of miles on delicate wings.

It’s one of those things that scientists admit to not knowing a thing about. Although most generations of Monarchs live just seven weeks, the last generation of the summer - the migrating generation - live for seven months so that they may fly south, winter, reproduce, and die. Even though there are three or four generations in between migrations, they always return to the same summering and wintering areas - some spots are so specific that it comes down to a certain tree.

Another one just flew by now - bobbing and fluttering against the wind. And I’m not sure if it’s sad or not that it’s the thing that is giving value to my day. I guess it’s good to know that sometimes it takes a lot of hard work - maybe generations of work - before you find results.

I am deep, deep into my second day of some major Excel spreadsheet bullshit at work. It’s probably the worst part of my job, right next to talking to sales reps on the phone and talking to sales reps in the office. And talking to sales reps over email. Cutting and pasting, sorting and numbering, freezing and unfreezing all day long.

Sometimes I feel like my job responsibilities are made up of only tasks that humans haven’t quite figured out how to make computers and machines do for them. Sure, we’ve achieved the creation of this program that can do a lot of things with data, but not quite everything that we want it to do with the data. Sure, we’ve created a machine to copy, collate, and staple documents, but we haven’t quite figured out how to make inanimate objects place these documents in binders and mail them.

And sometimes I just get so mad at Excel that I could cry. I get mad at that very specific type of computer stupidity-due-to-logic that you run into in these programs - the toddler kind of stupidity-due-to-logic like when you say, “Billy, stop hitting your brother!” so Billy starts hitting his sister instead. Yes, I know I should have commanded Billy to stop hitting everyone, but I also expect Billy to smart enough and human enough understand that that had been implied in my original command. Excel doesn’t bother to understand what you actually meant or what you obviously need, it only understands your exact words. “Excel, stop sorting by only column D!” I’ll shout, and Excel listens, but not in exactly the right way. Almost as if to teach me a lesson about saying what I mean.

More generally, after a solid six hours of data entry and organization, I start to hate the name itself: Excel. What an insult to me and every other cube-dweller on the planet! Microsoft Word is called Word because it is a program for writing words. Adobe PhotoShop is a program in which to edit pictures. Quicktime Player plays music and videos. Minesweeper allows you to sweep mines. And then there’s Excel, a word that means to surpass, outstrip, eclipse, transcend, exceed, top, beat. Really, Excel? Are you just going to take the fact that you’re better than me and rub it in my face all day - every time I open you and every time I name a file? It isn’t enough that my bosses and my freakin’ sales reps do that all day too? No, Excel, that’s fine. I understand that the name “Microsoft Spreadsheet” would be a dull, boring name. Maybe even duller than “Marketing Assistant.” Which is slightly less dull than “Do-er of Things Computers Can’t Quite Do Yet.”