The Nonprofit

So, you know. I'm getting a little better each day. Mornings are still the worst because my body is still in a suppressed energy state, so no endorphins. I no longer lie in bed for 45 minutes wondering if I should barf though. Now it's just 10 or 15 minutes.

But I can barely control the spiral of anger and disbelief and hurt that still takes over whenever my brain has nothing else to occupy it. On the other hand, mind control in itself is also exhausting.

Most of the time I have enough clarity to focus on important things like not getting hit by a car or food delivery guy while crossing the street. But other times, like this morning, I will do something like putting on the same pair of underwear after a shower and going to work. So now you know. And I don't care if you are picturing it and unsubscribing from my blog.

Today was further confirmation that I should actually be writing a TV series called The Nonprofit. For starters, I share a (tiny) office with four other people and if I walk in at 9:10, I will most likely be the first person there. It's not like people work 10-6 or 11-7. At 4:45 everyone is pulling their coat down from the hook and waving goodnight. Fine. I'm no workaholic. It's a 35-hour work week after all, and I won't tell if people shave off another 45 minutes of their day to go home and live their real life.

But the bureaucracy. We arrived this morning to find out that they had turned off the power for half of the outlets in our office. It was a planned power outage for many offices throughout Bellevue, inexplicably during business hours. They had notified all Bellevue employees who would be affected, but because we are NYU employees, they neglected to tell us.

And you'd think that if you cut off half the power in our office that half the computers would be affected. Instead, one computer went down completely while I only lost my internet. Why?

Becausemyinternetcableispluggedintoanoutletontheothersideoftheroomwhilemycomputerispluggedintoadifferent
outletonmysideoftheroomsowereroutedmyethernetcabletoaninternetoutletonTheMoneyMan'ssideoftheroombutitturns
outthateachoutlethastwoportsoneredandonewhiteandapparentlytheredoneisforNYU'sinternetandthewhiteoneisfor
Bellevue'sandyoucan'tpluganNYUethernetcableintoaBellevueinternetportandviceversa so we re-rerouted my cable to a third internet outlet blahblahblah.

We spent hours doing this, while a couple of Facilities guys wearing plaid flannel shirts and tool belts periodically stopped in to ask if everything was working again. Sure, thanks for the help. I'm glad I went to grad school to thread ethernet cables through office furniture.

I'm also glad I went to grad school to get barked at by the mailroom guy. He's this Asian dude with a ponytail who delivers packages that need to be signed for. Since I sit closest to the door, he dumps packages on my desk and shoves a handheld electronic delivery tracking thing for me to sign.

"PRINT YOUR NAME," he barked at me the first time. "PRINT. JUST PRINT. PRINT YOUR NAME. PRINT. PRINT. JUST PRINT."

Okay, so this thing has a full keypad with letters for entering whatever information you're supposed to enter, plus a little plastic pencil thingy like on credit card swipe machines. If someone was screaming PRINT PRINT PRINT JUST PRINT at you, would you think he meant to type in your name, or to use the pencil thing to write your name? The confusion is this: typing causes print, and the plastic pencil thing is usually used to sign your name.

So I didn't know what to do. And the longer I stared at the stupid thing in my hand, the louder he screamed, "PRINT PRINT JUST PRINT PRINT YOUR NAME PRINT PRINT."

I forgot about him because he didn't come by for another few weeks. Like the first time, he handed me the whatever tracking machine and started screaming, "PRINT PRINT PRINT JUST PRINT YOUR NAME PRINT JUST PRINT."

"Okay, we went through this last time and I still don't know what you're talking about," I said irritably.

"PRINT PRINT JUST PRINT JUST PRINT," he barked.

"Yeah, I heard you fine. You don't have to yell at me," I said. "You want me to print with the pencil or what?"

"Print please," he said quietly. "Yes pencil. Print."

And ever since then, he tells me to print print just print your name print print in a quiet voice.