Reversed Racism

Earlier this week one of my Asian co-workers reminded me to follow up with the patient I'd been helping earlier. Except I hadn't helped anyone earlier; I had just signed onto my shift. She thought she was talking to my other blonde co-worker. I was finally able to shout, "You people think we all look alike, don't you!" without irony.

But its a dry heat...

Have you ever entered a conversation, and the topic immediately, and suspiciously, changes? Not like the, 'shush, here she comes!' sort of change, but like today, when I walked over and the conversation switched to "Don't you hate when this humidity makes your hair all frizzy and poofy?" Which is how I found out my hair was all frizzy and poofy today.

I was already ready to run and find a hat, but of course it wasn't enough to just point out my poodle-do, what made it worse was one of my other co-workers tried to hypothetically defend frizzy hair. "I think it looks natural." ...I was now beyond find-a-hat embarrassed, by that point I was ready to go find a rock to hide under.

When I was younger, I had this image of myself outgrowing that awkward stage I was in. No. More than that. Everyone-- EVERYONE reassured me I would outgrow that awkward stage I was in. Turns out, I AM that awkward stage. I can only hope that someday I'll go through a stage, however brief, where I'm cool, or smooth. Or at least not hide-under-a-rock awkward. But I doubt it.

A new responsiblity

As I may have mentioned before, after the pregnant girl at work left for maternity leave, I was given all her work. I don't mind really, its not a lot of extra work, but its the work itself that is terrible. Probably the worst, and most morbid, of my hand-me-down jobs is to call people and tell them they have Glaucoma. And to clarify, I don't get to call people and tell them they don't have Glaucoma, another girl gets to do that, I only get to call people when they HAVE glaucoma. I'm like the Grim Reaper of visual acuity. For further clarification the OED describes Glaucoma as the following:

" A disease of the eye, characterized by increased tension of the globe and gradual impairment or loss of vision. "

And its my job to call people and tell them the news. I get a stack every week or so.

I call them at the number they listed for primary source of contact. I recently called a woman while she was working, and she cried. Love my job.

Hey. I'm e-mailing you something.

Interoffice spam mail has become the bane of my mid-day work week.

Cute Panda babies, scroll-down forwards, Top Ten worst si-fi movies worth seeing-- its all fair game in my work place right now. And I hate all of it. See, aside from gender, and a common employer, I don't have a lot in common with my co-workers. And I never pretended to, so when my inbox suddenly started to become flooded with irrelevant, time wasting video clips, I had to ask myself -- what did I do to deserve this? What cultural sign did I erroneously give off to make my co-workers think I wanted to see a 2 minute video of a skeleton with a boner? And how did they get my e-mail address to begin with?

Humor is the worst. Or what they consider humor. I fancy myself slightly humorous, but what they're sending should not qualify as entertainment. I find myself dreading the outbursts of laughter I hear from around the corner. I know whats coming. They call out from their desk to inform me that they've sent me something, and I am obligated to watch it immediately. As if it were, I don't know, my job. -Did you get it?- Yes. I got it. And, methodically, they wait, the exact time it took them to carefully and diligently look over the e-mail, then they ask me-- no, they tell me-- Isn't that funny -- Yes. Funny. Good. Moving on.

How can anyone possibly enjoy this cycle? I imagine in the future there will be a name for this mental illness. The forced perpetuation of mediocre humor via e-mail. Until then, I will strive to master the art of sounded enthusiastic about a joke while simultaneously deleting an e-mail.