30 minutes - 30 lies

It was 6 degrees when I walked in to work this morning. Six degrees.

As in six degrees above zero.

Fahrenheit.

Yeah. Cold.

Typically, the sun would be up and the birds would be out chirping. Icicles would sparkle like glass ornaments on leaf-bare trees. I'd pass the other city people I see every day, walking the opposite way into work. I'd walk under the wind chime, three stories up, hanging outside some one's window. I walk under that wind chime every day. It's just the perfect pitch - that happy, light, melodic tinkle that brings a smile to your lips and adds a spring to your step.

This morning, the chimes were frozen together. The birds were nowhere to be heard or seen. The city people all had their faces covered, trying to protect their eyes and ears from the blistering wind.

This morning, I felt like I was making a death march into Hell frozen over.

It isn't that I don't like my job - the job is fine. I make enough money to pay my bills, I work in an office at a desk and I don't have to clean somebody else's bathroom or say, "Do you want fries with that?" to put food in my mouth. It's somewhat dead-end, and I certainly don't intend to spend the next decade of my life holding down that desk, but it's doing a fine job of getting things settled before I dive back into school.

The problem, of course, as with any low-end cubicle job, is the people. People hired in off the streets (yeah, just like me) without a college education (yeah, just like me) who can't form a proper sentence without saying "ain't" or forcing a double-negative (not-so-much like me). People who don't bathe every morning. People who are missing their teeth. People who's idea of "business casual" is stretching the 1970's polo they wore in high school over their protruding beer belly. "People" people.

I've been asking my boss for months now about getting some extra training. I have an idea what I'd like to do and where I'd like to go, and although I don't intend to stay with the company forever, I intend to stick with it for a few more years - certainly long enough for them to utilize whatever new-found skills I may acquire in the near to immediate future.

"After tax season" she keeps telling me. She's been telling me this since November. Finally, one of the big-wigs in an office across town decides our whole division needs a bout of training. Finally, my pleas of, "I've got to learn something new or I'm going to go insane," were heard (or at least executed, albeit without registration). Finally!

So the boss comes up with the training schedule. Everybody is supposed to be set up for two separate days of training, one month apart, so as not to leave the entire department without bodies to do the work. The training I'm scheduled for, unfortunately, are things I already know how to do. I mention this to her, and remind her of the things I've been asking to learn for going on three months now.

"Yeah, that's not really what we had in mind. After tax season. Guess that means I can cancel your training days, huh?"

And I can't post out until March 28th.

I thought we abolished slavery like, a century or so ago. What do I know?