RAISING HELLene

Before you proceed with this, I want to share you something I read in the web a month ago, it says...


Blogs are meant to speak your mind and not make things complicated.


I'm gonna write what I want to write, so if there's something about this blog that you find offensive, just close this window and don't ever read this again. I always warned you about the things that I write, so don't tell me that you didn't know that I said DO NOT COPY THIS AND SPREAD IT LIKE VIRUS. Hindi ko naman sinabi na basahin niyo 'to, at kung may nabasa man kayo, sana manahimik na lang. I'm not angry; I just don't need people who will get me in trouble.


How many times do I have to tell you that my dear readers?


For those who are open-minded enough and those WHO WON'T STAB MY BACK, proceed


After a thought-provoking conversation with a girlfriend, my brain suddenly becomes fertile. Hippie-yippie-hipyip! This is good! Now I can finally write my thoughts without stressing myself.


First of all, what the hell does "Raising Hellene" mean? Well, when I was in first year high school my teacher in Filipino would call me Helin (no not Hen-Lin). She would pronounce the J with an H and it sounded Helene. I liked the way she pronounced it because it gave my name some edge, it sounded so Greek like Helen of Troy (FYI the face that launch a thousand ship). Hehe, ganda.

I was beginning to get used to it, but I change my mind when I realized how my nickname would sound like...“Hi, I'm Helene, but you can call me HELL."Nice. Never mind. I don't want to be called Hell Girl. Well, I heard Heidi Klum named her little girl Helene. Maybe the name is only cute for Germans.


Yesterday, I was reading the reviews of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End. It's a satirical novel about how people spent their eight hours inside an office. In an interview with New York Magazine, Ferris cited his reasons on why he wrote the book. I can somehow relate to his answers and it prompted me to write something about it. Here's what Ferris had said and what I'm gonna say about the things that happen inside corporate hell. And maybe through this you will know (well, a lot of people already know) why I am a rebel with/out a cause.


Rebellion

"Sometimes I’d just leave the office. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving. I’d just go home, watch TV, and make a sandwich. I didn’t need to do anything crazy, it was more about the intrigue of being AWOL. You miss that when you’re working for yourself."


- I confessed that I'm all over the workplace. I act like a self-promoted supervisor who walks in rows of caffeinated researchers. I can't help it. I just feel the need to walk and talk to make my mind function. I know it's bad, but it's so good. Wasting the company's time is so relaxing and it makes me want to do it more. I love to walk around and talk a lot, because staring at the size-zero PC (most PCs are plus-size) for a long time strains my eyes. Excuses, excuses, excuses. When will I walk out of this job?


"Procrastination is the thief of time." - Neil Gaiman


Well, I have a proposition to make. Since we are not allowed to visit non-work related sites, maybe it would be best if we visit our neighbors instead. He-ha. I wish. As if it's going to happen. Anyway, I know it sound so strange but there are times that I hallucinate and see my fellow researchers as multitasking-coffee-fueled-machines. It's so weird it could inspire me to write a book entitled LIKE COFFEE FOR GASOLINE. Harhar. Funny.


The Terror

"The day some of my colleagues were fired, there was one guy who stuck around for hours, trying to get various people in the office to tell him why he’d been fired. It dragged out so long, it became surreal, and then it became menacing. His entire self-worth balanced on knowing why that decision had been made."


- I can relate to this one because there are a lot of times in the past when I would ask myself "WHAT THE FUCK DOES PROBATIONARY-EXTENSION MEANS?" I don't fucking get it. I only have one absent and no late. They even fucking recognized me as one of their fucking researchers with fucking perfect attendance. I fucking achieved their fucking evaluation grade of 90. I fucking laughed at the comedy they called ERROR REPORT and fucking learned not commit the same mistakes again. I fucking kept in mind that QUANTITY IS BETTER THAN QUALITY. And I fuck this job as if it's hot. Yet they're fucking blind not to see it. Or are they just PLAYING FAVORITES? Do they know the meaning of "Unfair"? Or they just love to power-trip? What the hell does "pinag-isipan ko talaga nang mabuti kung ireregular kita o hindi" mean? Oh fuck you bitch! You're only good in slapping that to my face like I don't deserve it.


She should have killed me instead. Or maybe I should have put end to it. If only I wasn't in the middle of a Great Depression at that time, then maybe I have long before walked out of this job. If only I wasn't so bad like Mariah-Carey's-acting-in-Glitter (a.k.a. Nervous Breakdown), then maybe I could confidently face the world outside. I was left with no other choice but to stick with this. I was broke, and leaving this job would have made me poor and miserable. I never thought that graduation would make me like this. Life's a bitch when you don't have money.

But things seem to be okay now.

I just need to settle important matters and I will move out according to plan.

Yes. Because this salary won't buy me all the eyeliners in world.

- I have my own definition of terror. It always feels like Halloween whenever I hear the Goddess of the Underworld and her gang of witches engages in boisterous laughter. "Ahi-hi-hi-hi. Aray ko!" I can't help but imagine her and her fellow witches practicing a satanic rite inside the pantry. Iniisip ko baka habang tumatawa sila, naghahalo sila ng sabaw sa malaking palayok at tinitingnan kung kaninong mukha ang lalabas sa hinahalo. One more thing, I think there's nothing scarier than hearing someone say: "She is not here, she is HALF-DAY." Hala, sino yun? Sino ba yung nag-half na yun na may lahing manananggal? Nahahati yata ang katawan. She is half-day daw eh.


Ethics


"Idiocy is on wide display at any workplace, but it really behooves you to treat everyone with respect, even if they don’t deserve it. One day, I criticized a colleague about a decision she’d made. Later, she came into my office, closed the door, and cried. I realized that nothing I could say about a bill insert or a hotel newsletter was important enough to risk making that happen."


- A bitchy superior who is grammatically inferior doesn't deserve to be treated with respect. Oooh...Nasty. I'm so mean and I already know that. Okay lang naman mapagalitan basta ba tama ang grammar diba? I said this before, how can you preach about professionalism when you don't even practice it yourself? Paano nga ba magpaka-ipokrita? Explain to me the difference between talking to a neighbor and a non-work-related conversation on the phone. Sana man lang maging discreet.


Doris gave me this shirt that says EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, I know I shouldn't be wearing it because it will just make me a wrong example to Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message." But I don't care, I will wear it as long as I want to mock whoever it is who deserve to be mock. Bato, bato sa langit, ang tamaan avocado.


Romance

"The office is a romantic enabler because you’re always around the person you have a crush on. There’s no escape from, and maybe no desire to escape from, those pressure-cooker conditions. And there’s an automatic series of things you have to talk about all the time."


- I already lost my religion to what they say as "office love." Roden once told me, "ayaw mo nun, may reason ka nang pumasok sa trabaho." It only works for you Den, but not for me because you have a nice love life.


Truth: People will only stick with their own kind.


For example:

"I am a model and you are a model. I will marry you. Our children will be models and our grandchildren will be models and our great-grand-children will be models blah blah blah."
- Jay McCarroll, Project Runway


You don't get it? I don't get it too.I know it's good to stop and smell the roses in the stinking place of corporate hell, but sometimes I realize that I don't need to feel the butterflies to feel inspired. “Boo,” I can hear what people are saying. Anyway, maybe I should take a look around and find beauty in the ugly. Okay, I see nothing, or maybe I just refused to see it. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a romantic. I still find happiness in loving, even at a distance.


Comrades

"One Christmas party, I got really wasted on the top of the John Hancock building. I made a mess of myself in the restroom, getting sick all over the place. And those poor saps helped me take the elevator down, all 95 floors. I thank them for that."


- Allies are formed because of hostile working environment. I have made a lot of friends in this place, and believe it or not, our friendship was born out of mutual dislike to the Mother of all Phlegm (I should have copyright this phrase because someone has been plagiarizing it.) Anyway, the bond kinda grows from there and it continues to grow from there.


You may not believe this but I also feel guilty on the nasty things that I've said and done. I know it's difficult to lead a team and I also understand if they're strict. There are a lot of things that I don't understand about them, and for sure there are a lot of things that they don't understand about people like me. Maybe they tried to understand me but they didn't understand me at all. Maybe some things are the way they are. Maybe we'll never gonna understand each other.


If I don't like this job, then why am I still here? I don't know. Maybe I should clear my desk before everyone else does. It seems that everybody's leaving and I wonder who's next. It could be me, it could be you. I think this thing I have or we have also exists in any workplace. I already had enough of the unyippee yuppie life. I know it’s going to sound like a broken record, but this time, I better turn this life around.