Tuesday, December 19, 2006
How to Spend the Day on Reception
by "Eliza Stonemason". Bachelor of Very Smart, Master of Fucking Genius OK?
First, you will need to get up early enough to remember to pack one of the mangoes you bought on the side of the Hume Highway on the way back from Tumut. 9 for $12. Not outrageously cheap, but cheap enough to buy. There is currently a plastic bag full of mangoes sitting on the kitchen bench. I offered one of my flatmates some, but he has this masochistic shyness about him which prevents him from accepting people's generosity.
Second, you will also need to carefully select one of the chocolates from the box that your awesomely awesome sister Kate created for you. Full of every chocolate you could imagine. Don't forget the little tub of Vittoria drinking chocolate. When the admin girl comes to relieve you for a tea break, you can pull it out of your bag, and start a conversation about it, with the ultimate aim of showing off about what you got for christmas, how you spent your weekend, and who you spent it with.
Third, pack a book for the long, lonely afternoon you will endure once you have finished the daily envelope-stuffing which is always finished by midday the latest.
Now, you are ready to leave for work.
Yesterday you were too poor for a weekly bus ticket, so you should have at least $1.40 to get to central (using the travel concession from your time as a full-time student for eight weeks earlier in the year). You were also too poor for a weekly train ticket, so you buy a one-day return through the city.
On the train, you hold your breath for as long as you can so that you don't breathe in the BO that is swirling around you.
At Milson's Point the train doors open and you take a deep breath in.
At 9.05, buy that one coffee that you have promised yourself you would stick to. Contemplate what would happen if you asked the friendly barista out: Would he already have a girlfriend? Is he already too old for you? No, you're too shy to do that. Mission aborted. But he makes a damn good coffee, and it only took him three coffees to remember what your 'usual' was.
Now, checking emails is your absolute number one priority. This must be undertaken in a professional manner. Feel free to reply to emails, but don't forget those gas bills that need to be stuffed in envelopes! All 200 of them. Next time the phone or electricity bill arrives, think of the poor Master's student sitting at some desk somewhere who stuffed your bill into it's envelope without giving it a second thought. Ask yourself, why is she (probably a she) stuffing envelopes for a living? Does she like it? Does she spend all day brooding about it? Does she feel like she's betraying women all over the world by agreeing to fill an admin/clerical support/menial/repetitive role which is always filled by a woman?
Emails checked, envelopes stuffed - it is now time to boogie on down with the Crunch bar hiding in your handbag and the hot styrofoam cup of Earl Grey. Yes, that's right, it's just you, the chocolate, and the internet, alone in a room together.
In the afternoon the admin girl comes out with a bottle of white wine for you - she got two from a client, and would like to share the joy. She also brings you a 2007 diary with the company logo on the front in gold letters. Not bad.
Throughout the day, you are obliged to answer that 'damn' phone.
"IT please"
"One moment"
"I haven't received my gas"
"One moment"
"Mr Marky Mark please"
"One moment"
and so on. You remain chirpy, because in an effort to redeem yourself from that experience at Elton, your are giving it 110%. The UNSW careers site says ("Confucious say") that whatever you do, do it well. Logical. But it's quite hard. When you spend all day brooding about how you're stuffing envelopes.
Home time. You are usually busting by 5.30, because your last break is always at 3.30 because all the accounts girls who could relieve you go home at 4.
You have a few options. Go home, have toast for dinner, watch Drawn Together with flatmates, and go to bed. Your other option is to have a personal training session in Greenwich. Your trainer is a fucking professional, and you become paranoid he is going to hate you for asking for 'mates rates' when you hardly knew him. Then you feel pathetic that you need to actually pay someone to motivate you to exercise. But fuck is it worth it.
Alternatively, you could meet your flatties in the city where you are going to do the christmas walking tour. You have succeesfully persuaded them to go to the classy cocktail bar (with table service) above the Establishment. All the rest, you shall 'play by ear'. If you, as usual, end up filling the leadership vacuum, you will end up being very, very drunk somewhere, the pennies you had put aside for the much fabled Beijing - London trip all pumped back into the local economy. ¶ 15:44
by "Eliza Stonemason". Bachelor of Very Smart, Master of Fucking Genius OK?
First, you will need to get up early enough to remember to pack one of the mangoes you bought on the side of the Hume Highway on the way back from Tumut. 9 for $12. Not outrageously cheap, but cheap enough to buy. There is currently a plastic bag full of mangoes sitting on the kitchen bench. I offered one of my flatmates some, but he has this masochistic shyness about him which prevents him from accepting people's generosity.
Second, you will also need to carefully select one of the chocolates from the box that your awesomely awesome sister Kate created for you. Full of every chocolate you could imagine. Don't forget the little tub of Vittoria drinking chocolate. When the admin girl comes to relieve you for a tea break, you can pull it out of your bag, and start a conversation about it, with the ultimate aim of showing off about what you got for christmas, how you spent your weekend, and who you spent it with.
Third, pack a book for the long, lonely afternoon you will endure once you have finished the daily envelope-stuffing which is always finished by midday the latest.
Now, you are ready to leave for work.
Yesterday you were too poor for a weekly bus ticket, so you should have at least $1.40 to get to central (using the travel concession from your time as a full-time student for eight weeks earlier in the year). You were also too poor for a weekly train ticket, so you buy a one-day return through the city.
On the train, you hold your breath for as long as you can so that you don't breathe in the BO that is swirling around you.
At Milson's Point the train doors open and you take a deep breath in.
At 9.05, buy that one coffee that you have promised yourself you would stick to. Contemplate what would happen if you asked the friendly barista out: Would he already have a girlfriend? Is he already too old for you? No, you're too shy to do that. Mission aborted. But he makes a damn good coffee, and it only took him three coffees to remember what your 'usual' was.
Now, checking emails is your absolute number one priority. This must be undertaken in a professional manner. Feel free to reply to emails, but don't forget those gas bills that need to be stuffed in envelopes! All 200 of them. Next time the phone or electricity bill arrives, think of the poor Master's student sitting at some desk somewhere who stuffed your bill into it's envelope without giving it a second thought. Ask yourself, why is she (probably a she) stuffing envelopes for a living? Does she like it? Does she spend all day brooding about it? Does she feel like she's betraying women all over the world by agreeing to fill an admin/clerical support/menial/repetitive role which is always filled by a woman?
Emails checked, envelopes stuffed - it is now time to boogie on down with the Crunch bar hiding in your handbag and the hot styrofoam cup of Earl Grey. Yes, that's right, it's just you, the chocolate, and the internet, alone in a room together.
In the afternoon the admin girl comes out with a bottle of white wine for you - she got two from a client, and would like to share the joy. She also brings you a 2007 diary with the company logo on the front in gold letters. Not bad.
Throughout the day, you are obliged to answer that 'damn' phone.
"IT please"
"One moment"
"I haven't received my gas"
"One moment"
"Mr Marky Mark please"
"One moment"
and so on. You remain chirpy, because in an effort to redeem yourself from that experience at Elton, your are giving it 110%. The UNSW careers site says ("Confucious say") that whatever you do, do it well. Logical. But it's quite hard. When you spend all day brooding about how you're stuffing envelopes.
Home time. You are usually busting by 5.30, because your last break is always at 3.30 because all the accounts girls who could relieve you go home at 4.
You have a few options. Go home, have toast for dinner, watch Drawn Together with flatmates, and go to bed. Your other option is to have a personal training session in Greenwich. Your trainer is a fucking professional, and you become paranoid he is going to hate you for asking for 'mates rates' when you hardly knew him. Then you feel pathetic that you need to actually pay someone to motivate you to exercise. But fuck is it worth it.
Alternatively, you could meet your flatties in the city where you are going to do the christmas walking tour. You have succeesfully persuaded them to go to the classy cocktail bar (with table service) above the Establishment. All the rest, you shall 'play by ear'. If you, as usual, end up filling the leadership vacuum, you will end up being very, very drunk somewhere, the pennies you had put aside for the much fabled Beijing - London trip all pumped back into the local economy. ¶ 15:44
