The Smeller and The Puker

So before my rant, let me give you some updates on things.

Mary got a job at another company. She is pretty excited. I actually interviewed with the same company earlier this week and found them to be pretty awesome. I think she’s going to be happy there. She’s hoping I’m going to work there too, but I’m leaning towards another company. It would be cool to work with Mary again though.

I have decided that I’m exhausted on the job hunt thing. I have one more interview on Monday, and then I’m laying low for a while and seeing if anything surfaces. Otherwise I’m going to kill myself flying all over the country giving talks on a hundred different topics. It is mentally and physically exhausting. If nothing happens then I’ll pick things back up in a few weeks.

My mom is not doing so well now. She has a couple of doctors that are stumped and giving up on understanding her symptoms. After she has heard all of my horror stories about how incompetent most physicians are, she’s taking things into her own hands. I have sent her to her doctor with a list of diagnostic tests they need to perform next. I think everyone needs a medical advocate these days. Most people just don’t have one. I taught the medical school students, I KNOW what idiots they are. I currently educate physicians and I’m still not impressed with the median care.

Word of warning for those of you on herbal supplements, I just talked to my third person in 3 months that has had an adverse event because of them. My uncle called this week with significantly elevated liver enzymes. He is the second of my family members to have this happen because of herbal supplements. Additionally, more scientific papers are popping up with similar instances (case studies). There are no FDA regulations on supplements so there are all sorts of impurities in the pills. Both of my family members called me with the same problem and I told them both to quit taking all the herbal shit and then go back for blood work. Perfectly normal. The herbal thing is a nice premise, but with no regulations, they are sticking gravel in those pills to make money. Quality control just costs more and how can you buy your bottle of pills for less than ten dollars if they had to actually MONITOR what was in them? I also had a family friend call me about his newfound kidney failure. Turns out it was the same thing. So for all of you out there taking lots of herbal supplements, beware! If you are going to take them, then do your homework and buy the good stuff that has little inserts talking about how they monitor purity.

So now for my rant…

My Beef This Week

I’m not sure what kind of cruel joke life is playing on me. The older I get, the more acute my sense of smell gets. I can smell when my neighbors in houses on either side of me cook dinner. I can smell garlic on my husband 24 hours after he’s eaten it. I can smell when anyone has had ANYTHING to drink from about 15 feet away. I can smell when people haven’t bathed in more than a day, when most normal people would never notice anything. And passing a fart by me is like trying to pass an 18-wheeler by a bunny rabbit unnoticed.

This heightened olfactory system of mine is something that keeps developing. I’ve always had a keen sense of smell, but it keeps getting keener. It is not something I particularly like since half of what I come in contact with is offensive. I dread going into public bathrooms, sitting next to people who don’t use deodorant, chronic halitosis, and anyone who has eater garlic or onions. I almost vomit or do vomit at least once a week because of assaults on my senses. All of my friends with kids tell me that they develop this when they are pregnant so I’m totally dreading that if we ever have kids I’ll be able to smell the coffee beans in Columbia and my husband won’t be able to touch garlic or onions for 9 months. I truly can’t imagine how much worse it can get. I already have to tell my friends when they have bad breath (if I can’t tactfully get them to take a breath mint or piece of gum) because I would otherwise puke on them when they speak to me.

My mom has a really acute sense of smell and has always been so proud of it. She goes on and on about how she can smell EVERYTHING better than everyone else. I think she was a little bummed to learn Easter weekend that mine is better than hers. I, on the other hand, do not like my new gift. It’s like I’m a superhero: The Smeller, sniffs out crime and missing persons, rights olfactory wrongs.

I’m not really sure what is going on. I previously worked in a morgue and could take all sorts of smelly offenses as you might imagine. I could smell a floater before I entered the building, but it didn’t bother me. No dead body even caused a gag. I always held my friends’ hair when they were puking in the toilet and it never fazed me. Now with my super smelling senses, I know if I got within a 5 mile radius of a morgue or had to be in the same room as puke, I’d puke as well.

Maybe that’s a part of my new evolution. I’m becoming a different superhero: The Puker, pukes on all evildoers to stop injustices. Blugh. Unfortunately, if The Smeller doesn’t tame down, it will be an eternal loop of vomit.

In the interim...

Hello all. I'm out interviewing this week so my blog will be quite tardy. I will try to post late this week. In the meantime, here's ten things that have happened to me this past week.

1. Visited my family for Easter and outed my grandfather for SBD farts he was blaming on the dog and the kids in the room.

2. Stayed in a questionable hotel with my mom.

3. Tried to explain to my 7 year-old second cousin why my husband and I didn't own hunting knives, pocket knives, or guns since everyone else he knew had one or all. He still didn't get it and asked, "You ARE Texans aren't you?"

4. Am being pursued by the government to be the fund distributor for the massive health issues that face our country today: West Nile and the Avian flu. I keep telling this dude that I don't believe these are real issues, only perceived ones because of the current administration. He still thinks I'm perfect for the job. Go figure.

5. Had the worst flight of my life on a plane where a ten year-old kid sleep-drooled on me for four hours, some weird guy next to me kept putting his leg on me, and the dude in front of me was trying to leverage his seat back like it was a lay-z-boy. I finally told him I was going to spit on his head if he didn't pull up a bit.

6. Got three hours of sleep before my interview on Monday because the air conditioner in my hotel room was so fucking loud.

7. Had a semantic argument with a pseudo-intellectual salesman during my interview because I refused to call obstacles opportunities and issues challenges.

8. Missed my flight home because the fire alarm covered up annoucements about my flight boarding and when I asked about my flight to the Continental lady, she told me it was delayed when it actually wasn't.

9. Sat in Newark airport for 5 glorious hours moving from gate to gate in hopes of getting on a flight back to Texas. (Getting on a flight was an obstacle to getting back to TX, NOT a fucking opportunity.)

10. Finally got the last seat on a flight and had to sit next to an alcoholic who had to piss every 5 minutes so I could not get any sleep. Now I have to go back to the airport in 2 hours. At least I'm getting some serious frequent flyer miles.

A real blog is forthcoming, I promise.

Mr. Un-nebulous Strikes Again!

My Beef This Week

So one of my good friends, we’ll call her Mary, interviewed with Mr. Un-nebulous (see below) and his super-sensitive team. I cautioned her against it because I thought he was a tool, but she said she got along with him OK and would just be careful of her comments. It turns out that that he seems to hire like-minded people, which is a good thing I got denied early because people would have run from the building crying had I interviewed in person.

Her interview didn’t turn out so well. She was worried about the team initially because she was told by Mr. Un-nebulous that he was having some problems with a team member being too sarcastic and another team member being sensitive to her personal comments. He was siding with Ms. Sensitive. Mary met Ms. Sarcastic and found her delightful – sarcastic funny, not sarcastic nasty. Then she met Ms. Sensitive who turned out to have a stick up her ass.

Ms. Sensitive asked Mary if she had issues working with nurses – it turns out the whole team was comprised of nurses. Mary thought this an odd question since we work with all types of medical professionals. Mary answered that our team is made up of people from various education levels: MDs, PhDs, PharmDs, and an RN and that the team worked quite well because of this. She went on to express that the RN was one of the best people on the team. She left thinking she had survived Ms. Sensitive unscathed.

Mary sent her thank you emails and even got a response from Ms. Sensitive wishing her luck and commenting on her great interview. Then she got the phone call…

Recruiter: “In the future you should refrain from making derogatory comments about nurses, especially when you are talking to nurses.”

Mary: “Excuse me?”

Recruiter: “You made a debasing comment about nurses to a nurse on the team.”

Mary: “I did not. Whatever I said was completely misconstrued.”

This went on for a while and the recruiter didn’t believe her, but he did divulge that it was Ms. Sensitive who said she made the comment. So Mary knew it was most likely a complete lie, because what she said could hardly be misconstrued as debasing to nurses. And the good luck email seemed evidence of her 2-faced nature. Mary probably made some witty comment that was somewhat sarcastic that pushed that stick further up Ms. Sensitive’s ass. Maybe Mary, being young, cute, higher degreed, and very intelligent threatened Ms. Sensitive. Either way, Ms. Sensitive had to find a way to keep Mary off the team. So she lied.

Now Mary is distraught because she’s worried about her professional reputation. She doesn’t want to get a reputation for being arrogant and nasty, when she is anything but. It is a small community. Anyone who knows her will know it is all fabrication, but that is little solace to her right now because she feels like shit. She can’t understand why someone who doesn’t know her would defame her for no apparent reason. She is hurt that the people, who actually DID meet her on the interview, could believe she would make such a statement.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of shitty people in this world. And you have to wade through a lot of assholes to get to the really great people. Maybe I’m just cynical, maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but I feel like I’m finding fewer and fewer redeeming characteristics in the people I meet. Maybe I’m just a young curmudgeon and need to re-evaluate things. I don’t know.

I cherish the friends that I have because they are truly wonderful human beings, and truly wonderful human beings, for me, are hard to find. Integrity, principles, and compassion often seem in short supply these days. I find principles without compassion, and ‘integrity’ dwelling in the same house as hypocrisy.

So now as my friend is hurting, I’m marinating in my own cynicism. Maybe it will pass before next week’s rant. Or maybe I’ll just meet another asshole.

Damn The Man

My Beef This Week

I just got back from California (which is why this blog is late). Another job interview. This one went much better than the one with Mr.Un-nebulous (see below). I’m keeping my fingers crossed; maybe I won’t have to sell my soul to The Man after all. Maybe it will just be a different “man.” Only time will tell.

My dad laughs at me because I view each job as a stepping stone, as a place to learn and kill time until the next job. I have no more loyalty to the company than it has to me. His generation pictured getting out of school and having the same job for 35 years and then retiring with a pension and a gold watch. Times have changed. After 20 years at the same company, NAFTA changed everything for my father and all his plants were moved to Mexico. My father was out of a job for the first time in his life. He moved to another job, same thing happened after 5 years. Out of work again. Now he’s working as a polymer chemist for a group of people he hates and can’t WAIT to retire. He finally concedes that I might have a point. The corporation has no feelings or sense of obligation towards its workers, and any sense of obligation you personally hold towards it is completely one-sided. Don’t get me wrong, not all corporations are spawns of Satan, but very few are the bastions of good that are depicted on TV commercials.

The last company I worked for targeted employees who were about to collect pensions. Those that were less than 5 years from retiring were sweating it hard. They were being picked off for the most minor infractions. One for refusing to use a company provided cell phone (it turns out they were tracking their employees that way http://www.accutracking.com/). He kept it at his house and used his own cell phone, which he wrote off on his taxes. He thought he was saving the company money.

Unfortunately, companies are entities with the rights of people but have no scruples. That means they can try to impose their viewpoints on you, the employee, so that you can keep your job. Which means that I’m going to look for a new job when I feel like I’m being asked to sell out. So to me each job is a stepping stone, not a way of life. This just means I have to have a good investment portfolio and plan really well for retirement. My dad, who first laughed at my viewpoint and told me no one would hire a job-hopper, is now experiencing what I spoke about…he’s being asked to sell out, and now he’s looking for a new job. So now we’re a family of job-hoppers, but at least we’re not sellouts.