The Burdens of Geekhood in the Real World

It's not always easy being a geeky girl working in an office of apparently normal people. While I may be proud of my geek status when conversing with others who share my fondness for Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Mass Effect, I find myself less confident when surrounded by relative strangers who, for all I know, have never even heard of commander Worf, a TARDIS, or the Protheans. It's not that I'm ashamed. I decided long ago that people who would judge me for loving Star Wars were not worth my time or effort. Unfortunately, there are some aspects of geekdom that are just not socially acceptable for a woman almost in her mid twenties. Example: I have recently been playing through Pokemon: Soulsilver for a second time. I had wanted a gameboy and pokemon blue way back when gameboys still cost over $100, but with an allowance of $1 a week, I never managed to save the capital necessary to fulfill that desire, especially when I was also spending significant portions of my money on pokemon cards - I was the only girl on the playground whose collection rivalled those of the boys'. Imagine my delight when, last year, I discovered an extremely inexpensive Nintendo DS and Pokemon Leafgreen for the gameboy advance! I have since beaten every generation of pokemon save Diamond/Pearl (that's for after Soulsilver) Unfortunately, while children can play pokemon in public, it is really not socially acceptable for a young woman working for an investment management firm to pull out her DS and start running around Johto looking for Entei (seriously, how does he run away while asleep??) I get weird looks on the bus, so I can’t imagine what I would look like to the CEO whose office is directly behind my cubicle.

Another problem arises when I reference things that nobody else understands. For example, on someone’s birthday in the office, we got cake. The cake was not picked up until fairly late in the day, so people were starting to make jokes about how we were never going to get cake, and I piped up “The cake is a lie!” All I got were weird looks, while I stuttered “Portal- er… it’s a quote… never mind.” The same sort of reaction occurs if I mention “Gotta catch em all” with reference to spelling errors in something I’m editing, or the time when I accidently let slip lolspeak or, heaven forbid, “I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favourite store on the Citadel.” Nobody gets it. At best, I get awkward laughter. At worst, I’m forced to explain that I’m quoting from a video game, which leads to a whole new round of judgment. Clearly I need to work in a geekier office. Unfortunately, I’m a geek, not a nerd, and am therefore incapable of things like computer programming or… y’know… science stuff or other career pursuits that would lead me to an office full of people who would understand why I need some time to myself after finishing Mass Effect 3. (No spoilers, I promise, but if anyone wants to talk about it, drop me a line) Alas, I shall have to content myself with laughing inside my head and joining forums on the internet.

Until next time, live long and prosper, my fellow geeks. And fear not. You aren’t alone.

A Harrowing Tale of Lotion

Yes, lotion.

During the holiday season, I had the good fortune to find a job in a retail store. It was good fortune in the sense that I had recently been laid off from my previous job, and had very little time of unemployment before I found something new. This particular store, which shall, for contractual reasons, remain nameless, sold things like lotion, shower gel, soap and candles. The way that it went about selling these products was one of the most nonsensical systems of pressure-based sales tactics that I’ve ever seen, for a variety of reasons. What are those reasons, you ask, oh innocent and naïve reader? That is what I’m going to tell you.

First off, an important fact to take into account is that NOBODY likes pushy sales people. There is a reason why comedians without much imagination have a stock rant about annoying sales associates who follow them around trying to get them to buy something. Commission is often the driving force behind this irritating behavior, but that was not the case at the Lotion Store. In this case, the success of the day (and therefore the fate of the employees) was based on what percentage of people entering the store bought something. If less than a certain percentage of people entering the store purchased something (and that included the following: delivery people, baby strollers, small children, and reluctant men dragged in by their girlfriends) then there would be scolding emails, tiresome strategy calls, and ridiculous pep talks for every sales associate and sales leader. Unfortunately, this led to the development of a culture of NEVER JUST LEAVING PEOPLE THE HELL ALONE.

One page of the employee handbook literally recommended following a customer from the moment they entered the store until the moment they left. Not only is that stupid, because it means other people are left to their own devices, but it’s also really damn creepy. Now, having been on both sides of the counter, I know that it’s important to offer assistance to everyone who enters the store. Following that, however, if they decline your help, “checking up” on them every other minute is just going to make them feel pressured, awkward, and desperate to leave. I actually heard one woman ask my manager to leave her alone so she could shop in peace. Then there was the “demo” strategy…

Demoing a product to a customer is a great way to get them to consider buying it. I see a cool gadget in action, my brain’s going to go “Hmm, my hands get really burnt when I try to mash potatoes with my fists! I could really use that fancy potato ricer!” Lotion, however, is a little bit more difficult to demo. My personal preferred method to be “demoed to” was for the sales associate to ask if I’d like to try some “Magic Fruit Flower” scented lotion, wait for my response and out-held hand, and then squeeze a small amount onto my palm. I would then rub in the lotion, trying to figure out what exactly “amber, freesia and palm fruit” are supposed to smell like. The method taught and enforced by the Lotion Store, however, differed in one key way; instead of a polite exchange of conversation and hand cream, it was an unrequested assault of vitamin e and shea butter-enriched privacy invasion.

We were instructed to approach a customer, suggest that they try our new “Sparkling Moonlight Water” lotion, grab their hand, squeeze some lotion onto them, and proceed to rub it into their fingers, all the while maintaining eye contact and telling them about how good the aloe is for their skin. I’ve had less personal space invasion from bra fitters, and at least with them it’s expected. This just in: most people don’t like being touched by strangers, and those that do aren’t the kind of people that innocent sales associates want to be touching. In this day and age, as well, the plethora of allergies and contact dermatitis reactions that people suffer from turn this ridiculous process into, at best, a rash in the making, and, at worst, a lawsuit waiting to happen.  The eye contact just makes it weirder. Don’t even get me started on the soap demos. The only people who should be assisted with washing their own hands are very small children and those who are incapable of performing the task themselves.

What should be taken away from this experience? Three simple facts:

1. People are more likely to run FROM pushy sales people than TO them
2. Nobody should touch someone without their permission
3. Obviously the people coming up with these policies have never actually worked in the store in question. Maybe they should give it a try for a month before forcing their minimum wage employees to inflict this stupidity on the unsuspecting public.

Hope that helps. Until then, keep one thing on hand at all times when visiting lotion stores: Mittens. Nobody can give you an unwelcome hand massage if they can’t get to your hands.

Cheers,

Julie

An Open Letter to Cody and the Sister Wives

I am a fairly liberal young woman, living in Canada, a country known for its liberality, freedom, and maple syrup. When same sex marriage was legalized throughout Canada, I celebrated. When I read articles about politicians in the US trying to block the legalization of same sex marriage, I feel outraged, and am frequently tempted to fling things in a southerly direction. I have always identified as a proponent of marriage equality and the freedom to marry whomever you love, so you puzzled me at first.

From the small snippets of your lives that I caught from commercials during Say Yes to the Dress (Or as my father calls it, Say No to the Show), I immediately dismissed you as weird, misogynistic fundies. For that, I am ashamed. I have always prided myself on recognizing that reality television commercials do their best to make everything appear more fraught with drama and dissent than actually exists, but I did not even for a moment consider that a possibility for you. Then you appeared on The Rosie Show, a normal(ish), loving family, and I was forced to rethink things.

I’ve now watched two seasons of your show, and have a vastly different opinion of you, and the issues faced by families engaging in plural marriage, as it is so delicately named. Compounds and cults like those of Bountiful, BC and the community led by Warren Jeffs are appalling. Young girls are sold like livestock to marry men old enough to be their grandfathers and spit out handfuls of children, sometimes before reaching their 16^th birthdays. That is where the misogyny and abuse exists. I don’t see that in your family. I don’t see why you should be prosecuted, legally or otherwise, for your choice of lifestyle. You are all consenting adults. You have all chosen this for yourselves. Your children appear loved and well cared-for, and have no less parenting in their lives than most families. You are not defrauding anyone, you are not swindling anyone, you are not even legally married more than once! I have stated my support for polyamourous relationships, and so it would be both dishonest and delusional of me to suggest that your family is any less valid than that of a couple who also have partners outside of their “monogamish” marriage.

Polygamy is a touchy subject. It is associated, in many cases, with child abuse, rape, and subjugation of women, but we don’t really see the other sides of this many-facetted issue. I believe that a person should be able to love whoever they love, and that “whoever” is not necessarily singular. I may not have all that much pull, being a broke Canadian student with a blog on the internet, but for what it’s worth, I think that you should all be free to live as one family, without fear of being charged in court or ridiculed by your peers, and I sincerely hope that the future brings you that freedom.

Yours truly,

Julie

Interesting further reading: To the Exclusion of All Others, Walrus Magazine

How Not to Advertise

Being a person with a 37 hour work week, I have a lot of free time. This tends to lead to a lot of television watching, video gaming and reading. The particular joys of reading and gaming are the distinct lack of commercials. Thank goodness nobody’s figured out some way to "interrupt a video game for these messages" yet or I might be forced into hermitage.

Don’t get me wrong, I like television. I even enjoy some ads. There are plenty of clever, amusing and just plain awesome commercials out there. Obviously, the recent Old Spice commercials fall into all three categories. Unfortunately, some places just don’t seem to understand, if you’re annoying the crap out of your viewers, that’s not a very effective advertising strategy.

Example the first: Using small children to sell adult products. There’s a fantastic commercial from France for condoms. It’s thirty seconds of a little kid screaming and having a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store. It ends with a message on the screen warning viewers about the consequences of unprotected sex, and recommends these condoms. It’s brilliant, funny, and just off the wall enough to be interesting without being stupid. This is one of the only situations in which a child can be used to sell adult products.

Things that shouldn’t be shilled by kids? Cars. Children cannot drive. They have no money, no care for safety, no real power over adults, and obviously many have no taste (see: Justin Beiber, Zhuzhu Pets and the children’s menus at most restaurants.) Why, then, has there suddenly been a string of commercials with annoying little smart-ass kids talking about how awesome this car or that car is? Little nerdy children in sweater vest and bowties, talking about being on time for work and loving the cargo space make me want to do the opposite of buying a car, whatever that may be. (Crashing a car? Burning a car? Crashing a burning car?) Smarmy little jerks talking about how dumb their parents are and how they finally listened to their little brat and bought such-and-such car does not seem to me to be the best system for getting customers. I can imagine the board meeting now, "Hey, I have an idea how to get people to buy our gas-guzzling, too-big-to-fit-in-the-garage nightmare of an SUV! Let’s get some rotten little kid to insult our entire customer base and suggest they’re dumber than a 5^th grader!" "That’s a great idea Jim! Now let’s go shoot heroin into our eyeballs!"

So, to any advertisers reading this: Cut that shit out. If I wanted to be told what to do by a rotten little kid I’d be working as a nanny.

Till next time, this is me, signing out.

Sleep Labs Suck

I apologize if there are any sleep lab enthusiasts who are insulted by my post. If you work at a sleep lab, it’s nothing against you. I’m sure you’re great people. Sleep clinics suck though.

If you’re one of those people lucky enough to be able to sleep normally most of the time, I am extremely jealous of you. I, unfortunately, am one of an estimated 1 in 6 people who has some form of sleep disorder. In my case, the disorder is that, sometimes, I don’t. Sleep, that is. I’ll go to bed around 12, and then proceed to lie awake, tossing and turning, sometimes until almost 4 in the morning. Once I finally do fall asleep, I tend to wake up several times a night. I’m never well-rested. Being tired is a way of life for me. I’m an expert napper.

Augh. I sound so whiny. I apologize. It’s not all bad! All this not sleeping gives me more time to perfect my neuroses and work on important things like my internet surfing, video game playing and obsessive worrying skills.

Regardless, I grew sick of this, so, after years of being prescribed sleeping pills, being told to “think happy thoughts” (thanks Dad!) and being given the suggestion to avoid caffeine in the evenings (No! Ya think? Haven’t had caffeine after 1pm for about 3 years now…) I finally got a referral to a sleep clinic.

Fast forward about 6 weeks, and there I was. 8:45 PM, standing in a little room, clutching my pillow and holding a bag containing a change of clothes and a good book. Enter problem the first: Bedtime was 10 PM.

My average bedtime is about 12:15 AM. Sometimes it’s later. It is rarely earlier. I have difficulty falling asleep even then, and by then at least I’m tired. At 10 PM my body’s still ready to go for another two hours. I regularly spend the hours of 10-12 writing, surfing interesting websites, reading scholarly articles, and solving world hunger. Well, the first two at least. Putting me in bed two hours before bedtime and telling me to fall asleep is about as practical as putting a cat down next to a bowl of lettuce and telling it to eat it. Not gonna happen.

I wasn’t just lying in a strange bed too early in the evening though. (A strange, extremely lumpy bed – clearly some VERY heavy people have been on that mattress) I also had wires with electrodes attached all over me. Specifically: 5 electrodes on my face, 5 elsewhere on my head, 2 on my chest, 1 on my finger, 1 on each leg, and 1 on my throat. Also, a band around my chest and a band around my waist. What genius figured that you could get an accurate idea of someone’s sleep patterns when they’re covered in wires, unable to roll around as usual for fear of dislodging them all? Just to make things interesting, I was also allergic to the paste they used to attach said electrodes, which made them itch fiercely.

So, there I was. Covered in wires, itchy, uncomfortable, in a strange bed, not tired, anxious about sleeping enough to get the right data, and the technician came in to turn the light out. “Good night!” he said. Yeah, right.

Long story short, I almost didn’t sleep enough for their data to be valid, and it certainly wasn’t my normal sleep pattern. So far, my best option for a good night’s sleep still seems to be a cocktail of late bedtimes, over the counter sleep aids and enough homeopathic remedies to overwhelm a shaman. Any and all suggestions, save “think happy thoughts” and “don’t drink caffeine” are welcome.

Till next time,

Julie

Stuff I'm Afraid Of That It's Really Dumb To Be Afraid Of (part 1)

As far as I know, most people have fairly normal fears that stem from some sort of healthy self-protection mechanism dating back to the days of prehistoric humans. Some people are afraid of spiders. This makes sense, because, back in the day, if one got bitten by a poisonous spider, one usually wound up dead. Therefore, humans who were all "Pfft, it's just a little spider, I'm gonna go poke it with my finger" often died, and humans who were like "Gah! Spider! Run away!" survived. Same with snakes, bears, wolves, sharks, etc.

My fears are a lot less normal. For instance, I am afraid of Muppets. I can watch a movie with Muppets in it just fine - A Muppet Christmas Carol is one of my Christmas favourites. The idea of a live Muppet in my presence, however, scares the bejeezus out of me. All fuzzy and smiling, not able to blink, with their giant felt mouths and skinny little arms held up by wires. I shudder at the thought. If I watch a Muppet movie, I must be prepared for Muppet nightmares later on. Logically, I know that this is an absurd fear. What could a Muppet do to me? It's just a felt puppet. And yet I still have to close my eyes for certain scenes in Muppet Treasure Island. 

Something else I'm afraid of? Corpses. "But Julie," you say, "That's a normal fear! Dead things can have parasites or diseases, so it's natural to be scared of them!" Yes, this is true, I reply, but my fear of corpses goes way beyond what's normal. Funerals with open caskets are the worst. I have to remain sympathetic and heartfelt while at the same time doing my best not to look or move towards the place where the deceased is on display. If I'm watching a television show where a person dies in the arms of their friend, I freak. It goes something like this:

TV Character 1: Don't leave me! I can't live without you!

TV Character 2: I'm... sorry..... I'll always... love... you... augh (that augh was the sound of TVC2 dying)

TV Character 1 proceeds to clutch the lifeless body of TV Character 2, crying into his/her chest, possibly screaming "WHY?? WHY???" up at the sky while rain starts pouring. Very poetic.

For most normal people, this would be touching and romantic. It might even cause some people to sniffle a little and reach for a tissue. But not for me. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd be just as moved, sniffling and reaching for tissues, but only up until TV Character 2 dies. The second that it is evident that TV Character 1 is holding onto a lifeless corpse, my reaction goes from "Oh god, it's so sad!" to "Oh god! Put him/her down! Don't touch that! It's a dead thing! AUGH!" (that augh was the sound of me freaking out). My sister sometimes jokes that, if she were to die in my arms, as soon as she was dead, I'd drop her. She jokes, but the sad thing? IT'S TRUE.

At least my fears aren't completely debilitating though. I don't come across Muppets or corpses during my average day to day. I could clearly never be a mortician. Or a Muppet mortician. Eugh.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch some pleasant, mindless television, or I'll be up all night with dreams of dead Muppets. Cheers!

They’re Showing My Apartment, or; Why I Can’t Make New Friends

Come April, I will be moving out of my current apartment. Because of this, in order to not lose money on an empty apartment, my landlord has begun doing showings. I hate apartment showings. I’m generally an awkward person, and even more so when I know strangers will be traipsing around my abode, judging me on my choice of duvet cover and laundry detergent. My bedroom is filled with embarrassing things that I don’t want strangers to see. Some examples of embarrassing things in my bedroom:

•  Disney Fairies “Fira” doll, standing on my desk. I thought she was really pretty, so I bought her, but strangers don’t know me, so they just assume I’m some sort of freak who hasn’t moved past her childhood.
• Nemo-face pillow, two teddy bears, and a beanie baby hedgehog on my bed. Same reason as above, except replace “pretty” with “cute and fuzzy”.
• Picture on my wall, given to me by my sister. It’s of a squirrel holding an acorn, and it says “I Love You Unconditionally Forever”. It makes me feel better when I’m stressed, but to other people it probably looks like I’m emotionally needy.
• Box of stuff that I never unpacked. I’ve lived here for 9 months, and there’s still an unpacked box of junk sitting at the foot of my bed. I should probably just throw it out, but I won’t, because I don’t like throwing stuff away.
• Plethora of scented candles. I just really like stuff that smells nice, and candles, but it probably looks like I’m smelly and need to cover it up with twelve different candles all at once.

  

That’s all I feel like listing right now, but there’s loads more embarrassing stuff. And that’s just my bedroom. The bathroom is even worse. I have a whole package of toilet paper next to the toilet because it won’t fit in the cupboard under the sink, but strangers don’t know that. They probably think I have some horrible bowel problems, so I need a constant supply of 24 rolls of toilet paper.

The worst is when I have to show the apartment myself. This doesn’t often happen, but the other night two girls showed up and asked to see the place. They looked nice enough, and Boyfriend was here, so I felt safe enough to let them in. I then proceeded to make a complete fool of myself. I tend to ramble when I’m nervous. In this case, I rambled about the apartment, and probably ended up sharing WAY too much information. I don’t remember the exact details, but part of the conversation probably went like this:

Me: So, anything you want to know about the apartment?

Them: How’s the noise from upstairs?

Me: Not too bad. You can hear them walking around sometimes. And the girl above my room gets up at 5:30am to go to the gym or something. But it’s ok. I take naps sometimes and it’s annoying if they walk around then, but I have insomnia, so I’m always taking naps, and I’m sure you guys won’t take nearly as many naps as I do, so noise while you’re trying to nap shouldn’t be too much of a problem… Hahaha…

That last part was me laughing awkwardly to try not to seem like a crazy, nap-obsessed person. They were nice enough to laugh along. I then made a joke about how I was glad they just wanted to look at the apartment, and that they weren’t here to kill me. It went even more downhill from there, and everyone left feeling awkward.

Basically, that’s why I can’t make new friends. I get awkward and overshare. They shouldn’t let me be present in my own apartment while they’re showing it, in case I turn people off of signing the lease. Or maybe I should wear a sign around my neck:

DON’T WORRY: SOCIALLY AWKWARD GIRL DOES NOT COME WITH APARTMENT

Maybe that will help. Anyhow, I must be off. They’re showing in 5 minutes, and I have to go hide my bras and stuffed animals.

Cheers,

Julie