Alison discusses the highlights of her day below:
Alison on getting ready for work in the morning:
After waking up an hour late – I must have snoozed too many times and my alarm clock was like “F it, sleep all you want.”- I was rushing around to get dressed. As I put on my vest, the button came off and then I zipped up my skirt (one of those invisible tiny zippers) and the zipper broke open with the top stuck together by the broken zipper. It wouldn’t move up or down and I couldn’t pull the skirt off in either direction.
Freaking awesome.
So next, I decide to break the zipper and free myself from my tweed pencil skirt prison and apparently, although there are no strength in the teeth of the zipper, the actual zipper could not have been pulled apart my Hercules himself. FINALLY, it budges just an inch or so and I can squeeze myself out of it like a hamster squeezes under a door. I think I might have gotten the vapors as my blood supply was temporarily cut off like being wedged between a metro platform and train.
I thought I was going to die in that skirt.
Freed from fashion’s death grip, I then grabbed my work bag which got caught on something and the strap broke. If my day continues thus, I should be fired by 10 am and dead by noon – horrible accident with a hole puncher? I should have thrown on sweats and stayed home…
Alison on plastic flatware in the office:
Disposable flatware is to offices as cigarettes are to jails. I innocently discovered this upon the departure of a long-time employee who left me a literal treasure chest of office currency – suddenly, I was the Chinese and the Americans were banging down my door for “funding” and I was giving it, for large interest rates and short turn around times.
“Sure, you can have this plastic spoon made for the fine chain of Wendys, but it’s not free. I expect an ice cream scoop no later than next Tuesday, or I’ll make it a refrigerator!”
“But…but…Alison. My children – they need food,” pleaded these other office urchins.
Throwing the spoon I spat, “Let them eat cake!…WITH THEIR HANDS!!!!”
I laughed monstrously, the kind of laugh only someone who just made a life-size sculpture out of rare Chipotle forks and knives could laugh. “Who’s the boss now TONY DANZA?!?!?”
Despite my Pol Pot-esque dictatorship stylings, I still sometimes give away a free knife or the occasional spork when I’m feeling generous, or just want to flash my enormous office wealth in all their little office faces!
Alison on open and honest communication in the office:
“What should I say about you to the review board?”
That’s right, my boss was asking me….and yes, the review board was obsessing over me – probably jealous (see above for the story of my newly found wealth).
“Should I go with you? We could do a tandem magic show: watch as I make these low scores disappear – into the shredder…”
Pity laugh. “I think it’s better if you stay here,” Translation: Alison, you are way too awesome to come to this full-on review of your excellent work and amazing talents, just take off the rest of the afternoon while I’m gone and enjoy yourself.
“If it doesn’t go well, could you let me know if I am fired early, so I can go home and catch the rest of Dr. Phil?”
Without even missing a beat, my boss looks at me and says, “I’d never fire you, I’d ask my boss to do it. And since I don’t control her schedule, I can’t promise you’d make the tail end of Dr. Phil, but I assure you that you’d catch most of Oprah.”
At least if things don’t go well today, I can always look forward to the trash daytime TV I will finally be able to enjoy with my newly found unemployment.
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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.