THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Underemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 23 September 18,1996

 

 

 

Know any Canadians? You can make yourself real popular with them by going up to them and saying “it’s our sport now.” You see, the good ol’ US of A beat Canada in the World Cup of Hockey (taking their two victories in Montreal, mind you) so our friends north of the border may have invented the sport, but it’s ours now. USA forward Keith Tkachuk said it best: “How do you say world champs in French?”

 

COLLEGE FOOTBALL SATURDAY

 

Pulling out of the Liquor Depot parking lot Saturday after scoring some Grain Belts and a sixer of Steinlager and laughing inside at all the Goofer football faithful on their way to Metrodome to watch the Ball State (insert joke here) game. At a stoplight some tubby, intoxicated and red-faced ex-frat boy about five years younger then me (though looking five years older - ha!) yells an unintelligible insult at me through my rolled-down window. An afternoon of drinking Miller Lite and watching good Division I teams on TV all day and realizing your team is too pathetic to even be a disgrace just brings out the ugliest in these people. After he yells the insult I yell back: “Eleventh in the Big Ten!” and drive away. Loser.

 

Driving home on Hennepin and backed up in traffic, I’m getting ready to crank up “Werewolves of London” on the radio and I look over into the Green Mill parking lot and see a couple go into what I believe to be their First Significant Kiss. It wouldn’t end! Poor guy, I bet he missed that Auburn - Ole Miss matchup earlier today, is all I can think of. And of course witnessing these people slobbering on each other robs me of the enjoyment of the Zevon song and of course it makes me feel slightly nauseous. I know I’ll have to have a cheap horrible-tasting cigar with my Steinlager on the front lawn when I get home to compensate. Then at Lake Street I get stuck behind a beautiful yuppie couple in a beautiful black Sentra with their two beautiful children in the back seat. They drive extremely slow and cause me to miss two lights. Poor chump, I think, instead of watching that Michigan - Colorado showdown he had to spend his Saturday afternoon shopping for stuff and listen to complete strangers talk about how cute his kids are and listen to his Significant Other talk about their plans for the evening, which don’t include the South Carolina - Georgia game on ESPN. When I finally shake the beautiful folks I thank my lucky stars that I was able to spend my Saturday afternoon on my futon five feet away from my RCA 19” Bringer of Joy with a game on the screen, a CD in the player, a cup of coffee in one hand and one of my five remotes in the other.

 

POST-GAME BANTER

 

I was at Lee’s last Saturday checking out the Honeydogs (highly recommended) and this drunk guy at bar - fortyish with a cheesy University of Minnesota (cheesier than most, that is) sweatshirt on and the total late-seventies look to him except for his “relaxed fit” jeans (jeans for those overweight but can’t ‘fess up) is pointing at this kid and keeps saying “Kurt Cobain! Kurt Cobain!” (though the kid, who has dyed orangish blonde hair and exaggerated stubble on his chin looks more like Scott Weiland) and the kid just smiles and tries to continue his conversation but the drunk continues saying this loudly, like it’s the funniest thing he’s said since he said “squeeze ya? I hardly even know ya!” to the cheerleader-like college girl who said “excuse me” as she tried to fit in past him at the bar to order a wine cooler.  I keep hoping the kid would point back and yell “Drunk asshole at the bar! Drunk asshole at the bar!”

 

BIRTH, SCHOOL, WORK, DEATH

 

The phrase I truly love these days is “real job.” As in “when are you going to get a real job?” This, of course, is an euphemism for “career.” Or “when are you going to join the rest of us in Corporate America so we can put one of those convenient labels on you?” Real job - hmmm... okay, but along with a real job comes real meetings, real bosses who change their minds after you get your stuff done so you have to redo it, real whiners, real people with their real boring conversations, real bad coffee that only a few people don’t feel above making, the real copy machine that only a few bother to feed with paper, the real voice mail, real - actually phony - team spirit (corporations love teams unless workers form the biggest team possible - a union - then a team is a bad idea), real parking spaces, real (nonpaid) overtime, real assholes on the phone, real doublespeak from management worthy of 1984, real bad jokes, real office politics, real corporate bureaucracy and red tape, real cost-of-living increases, real company gatherings where we’re all supposed to pretend we’re a family or something, etc. Anyway, if I get one of those real jobs then the next step is to buy those materialist goods that go hand-in-hand with such career choices. The nice car. The nice house. The nice furniture. You get the point. I actually had a friend tell me recently I should look into getting a cellular phone because they and their airtimes are coming down in price. Uh-huh. Let’s see, I barely answer the phone at home, so why would I want to carry one of those things around with me? Anyway, I’m in this whole work thing solely for the money, not for an identity or some feeling of a job well done. I guess that pisses people off or disturbs them - but hey that’s capitalism, baby.

 

Besides, I’m having too much fun being a temp. Not fun as in I joke around with my coworkers at Big Finance Inc. - we all know office humor is at best forced, repetitive and basically lame-o. No, I have fun in more subversive ways. Like there’s this guy at Big Finance who’s going upwards on that proverbial corporate ladder and he’s got all of the corpspeak down cold. So when I’m working with him and he uses such language I’ll play dumb and pretend to not understand. The other day he gave me this spreadsheet to work on and after explaining what needed to be done he asked “do you have the resources necessary to complete the task at hand?” Blank look from Wyman. “Can you do this?” he finally asked. “Oh, yeah. No problem.” I said and then because he thought I’m kinda slow I made sure to not complete the task at hand too quickly and worked on some baseball lineups using their software.

 

Another classic was they have this software which I taught myself to use and after using it for like a day and half I got the reputation as being the department expert. So when people come to me with questions and I don’t know the answer I make something up. “Let’s see. You should always put a one in that field, no matter what.” Hey, I don’t want to ruin my rep.

 

But things got weird earlier this week. I had worked for two days on a project and it turned out the report that they asked for was never used. The team leaders actually came up and told me that they didn’t use the report, but thanked me for my time and effort. Good thing I was sitting down because I couldn’t believe they actually said that. At my last real job I knew there were reports that were totally useless but dammit you had to have them done and they better be done right and on time because they go in a binder somewhere!

 

And it’s not like things aren’t challenging. Trying to not get busted for looking at the legs of the manager of the contracts department when she walks by is tough work. It used to be easy because she never looked in my direction anyway as she’s suburban ice personified with her medium-length black hair, serious demeanor and business attire complete with the matching skirt and jacket and pumps. But last week we ended up riding in the same elevator at the start of the day and she was talking to the new cutie intern (yes!) about the horrendous traffic and while she’s talking during our four floor journey, I’m sneaking peeks and constructing an elaborate fantasy where I’m cleaning the pool - like that new Levi’s commercial - or delivering groceries at her Edina home and she’s pouring me some iced tea and talking about how her husband doesn’t keep her satisfied and why doesn’t a handsome young man like me have a girlfriend and then SUDDENLY “did you notice that?” she asks me, we’re back in the elevator and it’s her first words to me ever and she’s talking about the traffic. “Yeah, it’s like New York City.” I say and she nods and goes back to talking to the intern. I ride the bus, what the fuck do I know about traffic?