What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Two meetings today. One this morning at nine with the Wife of Bath to "discuss the position." I assumed she was officially going to offer me the job but no. Instead she wanted to give me an update on the hiring process, which has been slowed because after the req was re-posted as a Level 3, she said, they were deluged with applications from extremely qualified candidates, some with MBAs, and don�t you know the hospital�s first duty is to its mission, and that means making sure that every position is filled by the person who is the absolute best fit. That part I�m not worried about, since I�m entrenched here and making the previous occupants of this job look like tards in comparison and also because there�s nothing doctors hate more than administration and in this case they�ll be especially incensed at having to interview more people again because they�ve already said it�s me they want and why can�t HR just understand that. Aw shucks, guys. The bad news is that even though the position�s a Level 3 now, the pay rate would be "pennies an hour" more than I would have made as a Level 2 and the October merit raise range (isn�t that a cool noun string?) is narrower and in the smaller percentages, because other people at threeness have on the average been working in those positions for many years and don�t I know it wouldn�t be fair to them to start me off near what they�re making. This sucks but in the spirit of fairness I accept it without rancor. One Level 3 has been in her job for fifteen years, I cannot imagine, and where the Twos tend to be fresh-out-of-college types in Urban Decay nail polish and cute shoes, among the Threes you�ll find more Knit Separates and vapid doctors� wives, who have grounded their identities in their office work and take themselves very seriously as its practitioners. So, fine. I asked the Wife of Bath if she�d be willing to sign off on a plan I concocted earlier this week, which was that I�d take a week off between temping and going permanent and go to PA to visit my sister and Catharine � temps don�t get vacation � and I�ve been hanging on here since November, which is a long time. She said no dice, but she did make me the counteroffer of a week off without pay once I started, which is pretty much the same thing and also would not be deducted from the accumulation of the magic 90 days in between orientation and benefits, so that�s OK too. The game is to try to get the other candidates in for interviews next week so that I could start the Monday before May 1 and have health insurance on August 1. This probably won�t work, so realistically it�s September. Fine again. Whatever. Numbness. Blagh.

Then I went next door and talked to Dr. Blahblah for a while, and I have to say, for a Republican-campaign-contributing, Operation-Rescue-supporting sexist elitist bigot homophobe burnout with poor interpersonal skills, I think he may not be all that bad a guy. The impetus for the conversation was a few nights ago when as he was leaving he told me that Melissa would be doing a lot of the research administration for a grant he�s got and I lost my cool a tiny bit and told him that I�d like to be included too, as I have a vested interest in showing that I�m capable of doing more than monkey work and by the way in case he didn�t remember I worked as a research assistant when I was in college. Yes, I was torqued and I did actually call it it "monkey work." Well, it turns out that what he wants Melissa for is mostly recruiting patients and drawing blood and that sort of thing, and since I�m not allowed to have any patient contact (which in case I have not made this perfectly clear is FINE WITH ME), I couldn�t help out with that even if medical waste was in fact my bag, baby. Dr. Blahblah asked me what role I had in mind for myself as far as the grant went, and for some reason I was feeling what-the-hell and I told him that I was interested in doing whatever I could to get the kind of experience that would make me qualified to apply for better-paying jobs than the Gastro gig and give me the chance to use my skills on a regular basis instead of spending my days doing scut work that was an insult to my intelligence. A slight decoration of the facts because as you know I spend my days doing mostly nothing at all, but he doesn�t know it and in any case the thrust of my argument was the unused skills, not the scut work. OK, and it was the thrust of an argument that�s fundamentally specious all right all right all right quit hassling me and hmm, as I tell this story so many hours later it seems too boring to be worth recounting, but honest, at the time it felt kind of revolutionary. Upshot is that Dr. Blahblah is willing to work with me on making myself more marketable for better jobs here at the hosp and eventually to champion me for them and also to talk me up to those who hire into them if in the meantime I�m willing to do a little extra sidekicking for him and have a sweeter attitude about making him look good. See how boring that sentence was, that concept is? Barf. Try this: eventually Dr. Blahblah himself is going to need someone who�s like an executive grant writer, and, yes, he did happen to remember that I used to do that sort of thing in college.

I mean, I don�t know. I�m just so terrified of the job market, the panic-inducing bleakness of which I am experiencing vicariously through Vanessa all over again and as if for the first time (though watch, she�ll get something phat within two weeks and boy won�t I look like a moron then), and about school I�m starting to be afraid that even after I scienced myself up I still wouldn't be able to find a job making use of it nor would I be able to get into a graduate program and then I�d be back where I am now but with student loans to pay off. This is probably the main reason I�m thinking liberal arts again, because all I need are a few good letters and a boffo application essay and I could get in with funding, I�m not afraid of the GRE and my grades are dorkalicious. And you need to have a goal, sure, but when MBAs are applying to be project coordinators and level threes you also need a backup plan � and that�s probably the subtext to my talk with Dr. Blahblah that I couldn�t quite find my way to spelling out in the last paragraph � and you also need to be able to feed and house yourself.

I�m also toying with the idea of giving up my thusly-formatted diary and moving to something more cursory and bloglike so that I�d have the time to spend on other projects, in particular to get back to that movie-crit site where they were so nice to me last fall, and I would already be accustomed to spending it in this kind of writing. Though watch, I�ll do that and get all precious and then suddenly turn into one of the popular girls on account of it, and then I will hate myself in inverse proportion to my adoration.

And then I will write all about it!

The obvious downside to succumbing to the workplace protectorate of a powerful guy like Dr. Blahblah, allowing it to be made known that you are protected, is that if your protector ever leaves or is otherwise incapacitated, you�re fucked, and upon your exposure you can expect to become the target of the cumulative resentment of everyone in the protector�s sphere of influence who never got called out for special treatment. It also looks funny � years ago when I had a summertime contract job working as a paralegal for a sole practitioner, he took me to a few daytime events at his social club, encouraging me to network. He was a real mensch and we got along splendidly, he was somewhere between avuncular and grandfatherly to me, but his fellow club members had other ideas and would slap his back and then look me up and down, sizing me up with frank lewdness. I think what I�m saying here is that besides the low pay, which I don�t know why I even keep mentioning, if I play the politics right this may not be such a bad place to be undercover for a while. Have I said that before? I can�t decide whether it�s myself I need to talk into it or it�s you I need to convince that I�m not a self-rationalizing and self-defeatist sellout.

I didn�t dive into German today: school starts on a Monday, not on a Friday. The new Lucinda Williams rocks my clock and it�s about damn time; shipping took forever and that is the last time I try to save two bucks by ordering from Canada. Port Townsend is postponed until another time in favor of errands and mowing my lawn (me) and fixing my bike (Steve) and cooking (me) and furniture-shopping (Steve) and all manner of domestic stuff. It is sunny and springlike out but in a matter-of-fact, undemanding way, and I wish Vanessa weren�t in Oak Harbor this weekend because on a day like this I would love to be able to meet her for a drink. I wish Jerry had a cell phone so I could call him up and find out where Teachers� Cocktails is being held these days. I wish I didn�t feel like calling up some of the other people I know and suggesting a Friday-afternoon rendezvous would be social overreaching and cruising for an emotional bruising. I wish my sister lived closer.