My Job

Many of you email and ask how my job is, what's it like, how I'm doing and if I've embarrassed myself or pissed anyone off yet. I shall answer, and I timed it, this entry is a 7 minute investment, don't photo cruise, totally rude. I work until 7pm some days of the week and this took me over an hour to type, so suck your seven selfish minutes and read up.

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So, I get to work HERE!:

DM lives behind the window above the bench. This house is un-fucking-credible. It was built in 1863 and built by a guy who housed something like 20 Chinese workers in what is now our linens room, I have no idea why. Good thing those Chinese are little fellows and pack light, it's not that big of a room.

It's also supposedly haunted, but I've not been spooked yet, too busy smiling in hopes of planting my roots.

The carpeting throughout is scarlet. The furniture is Victorian, and scarlet. Even the spiral staircase..... scarlet, with a scarlet wall lining the way up. It's amazing.

View from my station:

I'm the front kid, so I sit where all the merchandise and patient sign in things are. The holistic Chinese medicine candy store if you will. All day long while I'm chewing hatefully on nicorette I'm stared at by those books. "Fast your way to Freedom!" "The Truth About Tea" "Find Your Inner Strength" "Detox Now!" Ya know, all the sort of shit that makes someone with my habits feel like a filthy representative of a proper human. The ... molding? (Top) is about 1.5 feet long, the photo doesn't show it right and frankly I was sneaking the photos between patients as it's kinda creepy to be caught snapping away and having to explain that I planned to slam them up on the net. Oh, and that's my Christmas Cactus. I inherited it.

Another view if I peer around my station: Stuff to have! Things to get!


The staircase: (I walk VERY slow). It spirals up a good deal, and sharply there at the top.


My waiting room. Shit fuck photo, I'll get a better one during a shift when the sun isn't so crabby. In the back there... the love-seat, is actually a bay window type thing (I don't know these words) but sofa sized! I was told on interview to take seat and I bee lined straight for that sofa. I was found sitting in the best seat in the house, petting the upholstery. The room is twice as big as that. To the right we have a tea fountain, and a large bowl full of bells floating in water that ching ching lightly.

After interview, I realized I didn't like an answer to one of the questions I gave, so emailed to correct it, and ended it with "I hope I didn't get too much dust on that lovely sofa."

Brownie points for sure, but I meant it. Aesthetically it is the most awesome place to spend a day and call it work.

Right, So what we do. We are.. and when I say we I mean they, and me as a secret sinning sidekick, an acupuncture and healing arts practice. Name it, we can do it. And if not, the yoga/exotic dance/Youiganquo studio can. Heh, yes I totally made up that last one because I can barely say it let alone spell it, but it looks tricky and does exist.

Needles, and herbs and music and everything to bring calm into your life, and they hired ME! I don't know when I have ever looked remotely calm or not coming off the crack pipe. I like the job. It's not even really work, it's repetition and making people feel warm and fuzzy and attended to, instead of the typical bored, put-out expression you get when in a normal place to seek medical attention.

Now I'm not saying this alternative medicine route is Word, but it's in the water and these people are drinking it up eagerly. There is probably a lot of truth to it, the Chinese live forever after all, so placebo effect or not, it's making fuckers happy as a dog who got away with getting a free meal from the garbage without being caught. This, while I sit feeling like a guilty sneak for enjoying salt. They have a thing that spins water into a tornado to remove electrons or something. I just watch it curiously.

One of my doctor bosses asked me if I wanted help. "With what?" I asked, half offended wondering if my fly was down. "I can put seeds in your ears, for the smoking."

/hm. I told her I wasn't ready. She doesn't know, so let's just not delve into my level of resistance to everything. She looked at my with a peculiar expression. I'm not ready to show off my ugly hands, and confess that I eat things that I shouldn't - which is everything, etc. etc. We'll get to that once I've endeared myself a bit more. Nothing like flopping your fucked up soul onto the table like a slab of sorry week old meat in your first week right? Not ready, if ever.

I'm slinging herbs, treatments and my dose of DM humor all day long. And getting paid! Those are the upsides. Oddly, in one week the patients know my name. It startles me, I've done nothing so spectacular to be too memorable yet, other than beg their forgiveness for taking so long to help them as I'm learning the most archaic computer program ever created by some sack who cut every last corner to make the piece of shit be user friendly in a decent increment of time. Some of these folks are at my desk with needles in their face like Pinhead (Hellraiser)while I'm farting around blaming the computer.

My co-workers for the most part are ok. Those who aren't, I'm SO over fussing with so don't give a shit and am playing nice because when shit hits the fan I don't want it to be said it was my steaming pile. The most difficult part of the job is not smelling too much of smoke, and yes I can be found bundled in a robe and a retarded shower cap at night, and bathing so much my skin may fall off. We also are discouraged from visible sweets, strong smells - perfumes hairspray etc, pretty much anything and everything that can be found within my reach right now.

I am making some mistakes, but I am making the same ones consistently, so...... is that good to be consistent or lame to not get the picture after five times? I ran a credit card (swipe type, not hand entry like my last job) and in my mindless haste I entered a $72.00 charge and hit ENTER before my brain told my hand in slow motion "nooooooooooooo stoooooop!!!" as I'd actually entered $7,200.00. You will never see a person rip a phone cord out of a machine faster than i did. I stopped it from going through by seconds.

The only other semi-disaster was someone mad at me for not getting a receipt when they had said ten minutes earlier they didn't want one. I'm not going to try and argue with someone who has more balls than me to be digesting this routine of happy frappy living via carefully placed stabbings. She yelled at me, then went to someone else to yell about me. Fairly amusing, and not a big deal, I am simply a bit slow right now.

That is the gist of it. I could get more detailed but people get fired for writing things on the net and I did sign a confidentiality agreement, which I do surprisingly take seriously. Plus, mama gots a mortgage to pay!

Hoping things stay on the ups, if not I'm enjoying my time there even if a new environment and new people are intimidating. In closing per my title paragraph, have I embarrassed myself? Of course. Pissed anyone off? Almost instantly without trying.

- DM