Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Love and peace, people!

As a teenager, I thought that with the onset of adulthood, I would be given a congratulations package that included maturity, wisdom, better skin and the ability to buy myself booze. I thought that appearances would take a back seat to personality and intellect, that the women who were popular in high school would hang out with the women who were band geeks. I guess, in a word, utopia. Ah, the naivety of childhood.
It seems that in my office, pregnancy has become an airborne illness, passing from one mid-twenties woman to another, so yesterday, we had what will be the first of many baby showers. We all sat, crammed into the conference room, our coworker proudly displaying one pink onesy after another, pretty dresses and adorable bows, all of the attending women awing and oohing appropriately (with the two resident gentleman sitting, holding their pink plates of cake uncomfortably, trying to maintain the last shred of masculinity they had), never mind the fact that the guest of honor really wanted a boy and was secretly sickened by the disturbing display of femininity. At one point, during a break in activity, I got up to throw away my plate, leaving my purse on my highly coveted chair (there being only five for all thirty women). From behind me, I hear the woman sitting in the chair next to me hiss at a friend of hers.
“Psst! Quick,” she said, “move her stuff on the floor. Take her seat before she comes back.”
Because, ladies and gentlemen, those who initiated me into adulthood and the workforce failed to include in the training manual that regardless of age, bitches will forever and always remain bitches.
I have come to realize, and plan on making an addendum to the adulthood manual attesting to the fact, that the workplace is just a high school lunch room where you talk on the phone a lot and have a computer to sit at. There are cliques, oh yes. My group, the rebels, who don’t give a fuck about administration. Most of the people in my group grew up in the ‘90’s, and are still firmly rooted in the grunge movement. Then there’s the bitch clique. The women who still feel the need to prove their superiority by buying $500 gold razr phones that say “Dolce and Gabanna” when it turns on, or have a house in Connecticut even though they hate it, but just because they can afford it, and if they can con their husbands into buying it. The kind of women who have sugar daddies and wear different outfits every day. The kind of women who look at the clothes the rest of us wear, the shoes the rest of us wear, our unmanicured nails and think “ew”. These women are my rivals for superiority of my department. And their leader, who I will heretofore refer to as AN, is my arch nemesis.
AN can spend a half hour waxing poetic about the toppings she had on her salad the previous night, or how she has a great house in the country, but her heart is in the city, or about how beautiful her daughter is, or about how dirty jews are. Yes, she is my arch nemesis, and there will come a day when I will take her down, oh yes, mark my words, the end s nigh for AN.
We recently hired a new tech, because when the techs turn out to be unmalleable and possessing morals, they get fired. Then new ones get hired and the cycle starts all over again. So, this new tech gets hired, and the other day, I walk behind her to the front waiting room, and I notice something shiny on the back of her scrubs. Walking closer, but not wanting to be obvious, I sneak a peak. What the hell?
It was the Baby Phat logo. Baby Phat has started making designer scrubs. Scrubs that the techs wear because they get bled on, puked on, peed on, shat on, coughed on. Basically, designer spew rags.
It’s things like this, these designer scrubs, that allows these women to be haughty in the work place, where everyone should really be cordial to one another. I can imagine the inception of this idea, Kimora Lee Simmons walking into her doctor’s office (on 5th Avenue, of course), and a technician taking her blood pressure.
“Ohmygooooooood,” Kimora would whine, “look at your outfit. That is like, so totally unattractive. I’m totally going to design something fabulous for you to wear. My blood shouldn’t have to touch such awful clothes.”
I see this, ladies and gentlemen, as definitive proof that Kimora Lee Simmons is either an evil genius, or the devil.

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