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reflections
I'm still enjoying this gig a whole lot; a lot of it is that I'm enjoying being this person? Especially when it involves fixing real problems rather than simply supporting lazy people. (no lie, I saved someone $20000 today by means of magical powers; hilariously this gets me less commission than any other job I've done so far this year, but that's the way - the costs of any given service are related to price sensitivity rather than either difficulty or importance). See, this is the first time I've ever been a supervisor and the weirdest thing about babysitting n00bs has been that, they keep saying, the thing they're really finding hardest and have been looking to me for cues on is my allegedly excellent bedside manner. They (the n00bs I've met; I want to strangle one of the ones I've not yet met) are smart and well-trained and they know the law pretty well, at least the bits of it that are most frequently encountered, they're just not used to translating it into friendly English. And even the slickass marketing coordinator was complimenting me on my manners. I KNOW RIGHT WHAT MANNERS. It is just kind of baffling because as you-all know I am a huge bitch, but the truth is that four years working in Atlanta meant that 'nice' became one of the services I perform for money, and I do try to be good at the things I do for money. (It also made me appreciate second-person plurals. Y'all is a great word and you can stop being a goddamn snob about it.)
I am wondering if this is part of why I feel so much better when I am working as much as possible. Not that 'niceness' is in any way meaningful (most people are better off at least knowing how to turn it off, see also every batshit dramabucket southern lady I have known) - just the social confidence element. I prefer hiding in my head and not having to deal with people ever and just kinda distantly going 'how do they work and what is wrong with them' but reality works (as so often) the way David Wong says it works - it's doing things that builds self-worth, and 'things' are often people. I hate dealing with people, hate playing telephone tag and negotiating awkwardness. I hate all manifestations of the 80-20 rule when it comes to human beings - 20% of the people are going to be 80% of the work and you are going to hate them by the end of it. Possibly by the start of it. But each irritating human interaction shoved through is another 'I can do this' tally in the back of the brainstem, and that makes me both happier and less anxious.
Being in Boston makes it all the more hilarious that I let the south give me some of its ingratiating social manners, the ones I mostly hate being on the receiving end of, without me ever being perceived as southern because it gets completely misattributed in my case. What the south turned me into is a Fake English Person. This is what foreignness is - completely in the eye of the beholder, and their preconceptions of you are always going to totally override the reality, and you learn to let it. At some point I became solidly convinced that the American perception of 'English' is actually based on the antebellum South anyway; I get it, you want tea and deference in your own extroverted milieu, and you think that's what you can get out of some sailor. They never know that we're modern, or even real. They don't care, why would they, even regarding someone as 'foreign' is making it all about their own star-spangled nationhood, and I'm more than used to it at this point - everyone everywhere does it. At least in Boston they don't bug me about royalty, yet. [ . <---how much I care. I don't even bother to fake this one.]
So, I took to giving people what they expect because it works and much like my n00bs do now, I needed a spiel and there were bits of American I couldn't do. Usually, at least there's more distance available in Englishness. It's still taking time to wear off in the evenings, to drift off in its coat of stray words and leave me as just myself.
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yes this omg. At my old job when I had to help take to go orders, I could be cheerful and helpful because I was supposed to be, but the whole time I'd kind of stand back and watch me bullshit these people with my purported "sweet voice" and think, maybe I am laying it on a bit thick? Probably not, I don't (and never will) call anyone Honey or Sugar, at least.
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