8 posts tagged “office lady”

Now I feel like I'm drowning under a pile of STUFF. Stuff is EVERYWHERE!!!

I've moved almost every year since I was born. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We moved ten days after my mother gave birth to us. We were a gypsy family. My Dad would give us a little bit of warning, then we'd each get a few boxes each and told to pack. We moved around different neighborhoods, we moved from the West Coast to the East Coast via crappy car, we moved to Japan via airplane, we moved around different prefectures via trains etc., we moved to the UK, we moved back again, we moved SO FRICKING MUCH!

And the crazy thing is, it never got easier. Well maybe it did get easier to some extent, but it never stopped sucking.

And it's totally sucking right now.

I'm throwing it all away. Everything! Dresses, shoes, hats, clothes, 80% of my underwear drawer (I hate bras anyway),  makeup, nail shiznat, weirdo crap that I've been keeping for sentimental reasons, IT'S ALL GOING OUT IN THE TRASH! Unless anyone wants it.

In slightly related other news, I found some trousers I haven't been able to fit into but was keeping just to taunt myself. And guess what? I fit into them! Except one pair that just needs to die anyway. That's totally awesome. Except they're a bit out of style at the moment.

And if you were my real world friends, this wouldn't be any of your business, but I have scars all over my arms from being a stupid depressed teenager with major problems. Lord knows if I understood at the time that I'd have to LIVE with these SCARS for the rest of my fricking life, I would have thought twice. But I guess that's the point. At the time I didn't even have the ability to think about anything but enduring the god awful pain I was in, and if the 28-year-old me could go back in time and convince the 14-year-old me to just stop being stupid, I probably would have just ended my life right then and there. The 14-year-old me did not want to live that long.

Thank goodness I learned somehow that life is great and beautiful and lots of fun.

What was my point? Oh yeah. Well now that I don't work in an office, and I don't have to look professional, I don't have to stress about hiding my arms all the time. So all those stupid office-type long sleeve shirts? OUT THE DOOR! OUT IN THE TRASH! Hells yeah.

I have just quit my daytime legitimate job. I call myself a workaholic, but the people at my very traditional old Japanese (former) company are super workaholics. They don't have lives, yo. So with that as the context, here are my Things on Tuesday:

Things I Loath:
- arrogant superiors who's sociopathic behavior goes unchecked because people want to look the other way and pretend they're not alcoholics/dangerously belligerent/plaint STUPID
- controlling husbands/boyfriends of my girlfriends
- the damn economy. customers at the club keep getting their fun budgets cut, which means less money for us "working" girls
- getting called to work last minute on my day off and having to wear a crappy dress with rushed makeup and flat hair

Things I Love:
- Sleeping in my warm bed when it's freezing cold outside
- Listening to stressed out (now former) co-workers let off steam about their arrogant superiors
- brushing my teeth with my sonicare
- My awesome family (even though I said that alread)

Guess what?

Today was my last day at my daytime Office Lady job!

Everyone was very nice. I actually felt very sad when I had to make my announcement in front of everyone that today was my last day. I got some green tea and other stuffs as going away gifts from various peeps. And a nice pen that I know for a fact was a gift from one of our customers. But that's okay, the coworker that re-gave it to me is weird anyway.

International sales peeps took me out for drinks. One guy who's worked there for a year talked about his hilarious interactions with the alcoholic head of his department. Alcoholic head of his department is just the worst drunk you could imagine. Belligerent, violent, and cheap (which is an unforgivable crime).

on top of this, after a few drinks, alcoholic head of his department suddenly thinks he's fluent enough in English to use "f" and "s" words all over the place. I can't imagine anything more embarrassing.

This one guy who's worked here for a year is kind of weird. In Japanese you say "his back is very low," which basically means he's always bowing, which means he's highly respectful of everyone and keeps himself at a low position. He's happiest when he's silent and in the background. But I decided to make him the focus, and I interviewed him. He got so nervous, the vein at his temple started sticking up. I wanted to know why he's suddenly sprouted a bunch of gray hairs within the last few months. He keeps himself at a distance and tries to stay away from human interaction, but is always getting himself into situations where he's passively allowed one of his superiors to take advantage of him (which is probably why he's sprouted all those gray hairs). I'm sure he's been hurt deeply by something in his past, and he hasn't dealt with it and instead thinks he can live a life free of human interaction so he won't ever be hurt again. After my interrogation, I found out that he's never even seen what his father looks like, and he admitted that he's scared of getting hurt again.

Anyway, that was the end of my last day working a regular day time job.

My bills are paid solely from hostessing now.

I might miss my office job after I quit. But I've had a lot of jobs and lived in a lot of places, and I live by the rule that when you move on, you move on.

I've had some inappropriate crushes on some of my co-workers at the office. Mostly out of boredom. I don't really want to pursue anything with these people, but it just helps to pass the time of day when I'm bored out of my brain at work.

And to my surprise, one of my crushes asked me out to dinner last night! What a big surprise. Maybe he was panicking because I handed in my notice. Who knows. But he definitely shocked me when he asked me out to dinner. I said alright, and then got a little panicked because I immediately felt weird about it.

He's younger than me, plus he's a salaryman. I seem to be a magnet for younger salarymen these days. Maybe I'm sending out some vibes.

Woke up this morning to two surprises. One was that it was snowing here in Tokyo. Here are some pictures. If you look carefully you can see the snow. It's mostly wet sludge.

snow outside the front door

And the other shocker was that Heath Ledger's dead. Jesus, poor man. We're the same age. Or I guess we were.

I'm baaaack!

I handed in my notice at the office day time job. I can't take the waking up early in the morning anymore. Even though I'll miss the money and the people, I know it's the right thing to do. After I did it my manager started spazzing out, because that's what he likes to do. But he'll be fine as soon as my replacement comes in.

Aaaaand I'm working tonight. I lost my phone while in LA. It just disapeared into thin air, along with all my customers' phone numbers and email addresses. This is how I find out who my best customers are, because they're the ones that left me messages and called me on their own, without me calling them first. So far, it's just one and a half customers! The half is because I know he called because he was with the other customer. Good to know...

So since this is my last day before real life kicks in, I woke up early (because of the jet lag) and cleaned my room from top to bottom and washed everything, including the blankets and stuff, which had to be washed and dried one at a time. Now I'm tired and ready for bed, but I have to get ready for work.

Maybe I'll have some more stories in the morning.

I don't know if men in general are just so cute, or if Japanese men are just particularly cute. I'm talking about the old guys at the company I work for. Our department decided to go out for lunch to celebrate the end of the year (we're not the international sales group so we're not really into drinking all night), and the boss wanted to go out for yakiniku (bbq). His reason? "My old lady won't let me eat it so I have to eat it in secret."

He was so funny. During lunch hour he's usually sleeping at his desk, but today he was rushing into the restaurant, rushing the waitress, then ordering even more food, and cooking everyone's meat as quickly as he could. "Eat this one, no that one's mine, put that one here," etc. So cute. He's got such a simple life. His old lady keeps him clean, fed, and cared for. He goes to work every day and brings home the bacon. And things like eating yakiniku for lunch makes him so happy.

What a day! Days like this make me feel like a real workaholic, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm achieving any of my goals at all, whatsoever. The day started a little fuzzy from a semi-hungover morning off to the old office. And then 7+ hours off pretending to work at my desk, followed by a phone call from a customer right before I was about to clock out. "What are you doing? Are you free?" For a paid date, of course I am!

So rushed back to Roppongi feeling and looking a little bit of a mess. No makeup, normal clothes, flat boots, but who cares, this guy is still shorter than me. He took me out for expensive yakitori (a slight oxymoron), which was pretty good. And then to the good old club, where i assumed he would sit for an hour, maybe two. He stayed forever, getting more and more and more drunk. I finally convinced him to take me to a favorite bartender's place in Shinjuku. He spent a fair bit of money there, so I felt good about helping bartender man out.

They're closing down at the end of this month, and I am just so sad about that. I really am.

And then I realized suddenly that I'm working every single night this week, with the exception of Wednesday. But I might be working on Wednesday too. Crapness. This was not the way my life was supposed to be.

But for now, I'm going to sleep, so I can get up bright and early to go clock in at the office, then wear a dress and heels at the bar, and basically start the whole cycle over again. And people wonder why I don't have a private love life! People really do. "Oh, but you're so pretty" (that's just the makeup), "and you're so nice" (really!?) " and down to earth" (another of saying I'm a bitch), "why don't you have anyone in your life!?"

I wonder. Would any man want to be with a girl who literally had no free time, and who's time was for sale to weird old guys who paid?

Didn't think so!

Just went to the first "bonenkai" (end of year drinking session) of the year. This was with an old, traditional, super masculine company I work for. I was the only girl. It was fun.

One guy was stressing because he just had his health check up and he basically drinks and smokes too much, and is under too much stress. His lungs, stomach, and liver are not looking good. I wonder about Japanese men who just work and drink their way to diabetes and ill health. Thankfully (?) most of them seem to reproduce before their health goes downhill (and it's a really small window of opportunity,we're talking like 5 years or less).

Got actually drunk for the first time in ages. Sort of passed out on the train, and was woken up by the weirdo guy next to me who kept telling me the name of the stop he was getting off at. He seemed to think that it was my stop as well. I said to him "what about it?" after he repeated the name of the upcoming stop to me a few times. He then just looked away and walked off the train. I think/hope he was drunk.

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