1998 october 29

responsible girl

now that i have reconciled with my inner child, i am having a series of adult moments.

i'm just back from the post where i dropped off two envelopes. one paid my property taxes, the other cast my absentee ballot for the upcoming election.

i like to vote, i consider voting a license to bitch about the government, i just hated having to go out and do it. once i figured out you can get absentee ballots sent to you in perpetuity, i was hooked. i haven't missed an election, no matter how small, in years. i get out my little voter's handbook, snuggle up to my ballot and then make studied and informed decisions in the comfort of my living room, usually while wearing a minimum of clothing. you just can't do that at your local elementary school.

the bad thing about voting early is you still have to suffer through the interminable television and radio and newspaper ads since all those wily politicians haven't a clue that you've already made your choice and no amount of cajoling, begging and backstabbing the other guy is going to make one whit of a difference. and those idiotic flimsy little signs that suddenly sprout from every lawn and berm and street divider! nothing brings out the pyromaniac in me like those signs. it takes a conscious effort not to grab all of them in eyesight and start a bigass bonfire.

^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^

now that we've established i am indeed a responsible tax paying voting citizen, let's talk about the idiots i work for.

call me naive, but i think a certain responsibility towards your employees goes hand in hand with owning a company. i also think the ceo of a company should have at least one foot somewhere in the vicinity of reality. so of course i work for a company where the ceo is a delusional cracksmoking egomaniac whose only concern is his own pocketbook. to be honest, i work for a family owned company and they are always more dysfunctional than companies owned by people who have no bloodties. and to be fair to the rest of the family, it is just the ceo i detest.

we make a good product but our management is so poor that we are constantly struggling to make ends meet. our greatest talent lies in our ability to limp along under a mountain of debt and irritated clients, so we were all optimistic when one of the big guys in the field started sniffing around, sending flowers, boxes of chocolates, coy love letters. in short, it was courting time.

last week, big daddy finally sits down with the suitor to ask his intentions and set the dowry price.

let's say you had yourself a little lemonade stand. and let's say that the first week you made a dollar, and for several weeks thereafter you kept up that pace. then the sun came out and people got hot and thirsty so your weekly take upped itself to two dollars, then three, then you finally had a banner week and you made six dollars. of course that same week, you owed three dollars to the guy you buy the lemons from but let's ignore that for the moment.

so, let's say you're sitting behind that stand, feeling smug when along comes the guy from across town and he says he wants to buy you out because, while he sells a variety of drinks and food items, he doesn't have a lemonade division. how much would you ask for your little stand?

well, if you're a cracksmoking delusional egomaniac, you ask for 60 dollars and then you watch the guy from across town nearly wet himself as he laughs his way across the street to the grocery store where he will buy his own lemonades and figure out how to squeeze them all by himself.

i need a new job.

perusing the want ads and the job boards, claire