Friday, June 3, 2011

Bleeding For Work

But, oh! The humanity!

My boss – my younger, much younger, primed for great things boss – asked me how my day was going.
Sigh.
No. it's was not a sigh that time! That time, a light bulb went off, a spark was ignited, a fire burned in me!
“I'm not okay,” I rationally explained (which seems like a very irrational thing to say to a boss). “I'm not okay knowing that my job has been outsourced to someone in Texas. I'm not okay with that.
This is a New York newspaper. News from here should be written here. Not sent away to be processed and returned.”
She was taken aback, as if I'd literally punched her in the stomach. She set her hands on the top of my cubicle wall for security.
“This is fucked,” I continued, as a matter of fact. “I'm doing my work, and someone else, three thousand miles away is doing it too. There is something inherently wrong with this.”
She gave me an uneasy smile, showing me her awkward teeth, which clearly could have used braces a few years ago when she was still a kid.
She is still a kid.
She picked at a patch of old tape crusted to my cubicle wall. She was making the best of this situation I'd just put her in.
“Heh,” she uttered. “Well, you know..it's an uncertain time for sure. No one really knows what's going to happen with the outsourcing. It's definitely a wait-and-see time. For sure.”
I continued to tell her all about my worries and they came out 1. literally, 2. comically, 3. uneasy, 4. honestly.
She let go of the wall.
“This is a weird time for all of us,” and she took a step away.
This is Corporate America. One nation of assholes taking one collective step away from everyone else.
“I guess I'll just take it on the chin,” I said, looking her square in the face. “This is all I have.”
She was gone and I'm sure feeling sorry for asking me about my day, my week, my life. She was back to her own cube in a few seconds, possibly thinking about dinner that night and her greasy boyfriend to whom she was going to go home and fuck.
I cautiously rose from my chair, the only thing that keeps my hidden away in this tiny cubicle. I glanced around the newsroom - today a ghost town because news doesn't happen on Thursdays.
The ground shifted and I was in the bathroom. Three stalls. Three sinks. I flipped my view and scoured the floor for feet. No one. In the handicapped stall, I locked the door and headed for the toilet. Seated with my head in my hands, I could only laugh. I needed a tampon.
I was just a girl. Just a girl. I was alone in a bathroom, in a stall. Laughing. Bleeding. This was my life. I finished and washed my hands. As hot as the water would go.




I exited the bathroom. And then the building.

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