Email sent to George one morning last week:
note: do NOT listen to howard stern, even with headphones, when it’s very very quiet in your office, especially when they play the phony phone call with Crazy Alice and the Indian exorcist trying to “free” her from demons. The last part, especially, when he’s telling her what to say to the demons? At the end when she’s “cured” ..?? good LORD…I was in tears.
~Gracie
I think this may be the best pic ever…such sweetness and peace.
~Gracie
Could someone PLEASE start a petition, enact a law, damn to hell, whatever it takes to ensure that not one. more. person, movie, commercial, what-have-ya uses the Rolling Stones song Sympathy For The Devil as a theme??
You know the one…where it starts with “please allow me to introduce myself…” Yyyyeah…THAT one.
UGH! ENOUGH already!! It’s been used 493 times! STOPPIT!
Love,
Grace
(Click to enlarge) - for those who cannot view images, the text of this Post-It is: “Post only this, in all caps: ‘Conversate is NOT a fucking WORD!’ and then…later on…’and net-net and net-new? Are STOOPID!’”
~Gracie (who cringes a little inside each time she lets you see her actual notes…)
Okee-dokee. I almost didn’t share this with y’all, but…what the hell. Most of you have been hanging out around here for years now and you know that sometimes I rant…and sometimes I don’t. I hope you realize that, for the most part, I am a nice person who just…gets…a little pissed off sometimes, usually because people are so frickin’ RUDE these days. And…that’s what this is about. I was hormonal as hell, was at the very front of a near-week-long cold/bug that kicked my BUTT, and I have just started a new job that, for the first time in close to ten years, requires more than a 20-minute commute each way, each day (more like an hour each way each day). And for those who haven’t been playing along? Gracie has suh-VERE road rage. Oh, not cause I’m mean, don’tchaknow, but it’s cause I get scared and panicky and start remembering how the very first and very worst panic attack of my life happened in traffic and how horrible it was and the resulting disaster and having to be picked up by family who had to drive three hours to get me and ohhhh, how it sucked. George senses that panic within me and chooses to do almost all of the driving and has for years. Which: loooove him! But also? Hasn’t exactly made it easier for me to face the whole fear thang, SO …that means that I still deal with my excessive fear in the car by yelling at everyone (also: judging. LOTS. Oddly enough it really does help!) and many of my recordings are a result of that.
This one, though, is a lot more violent, angry, and f-bomb-laden than most, due to aforementioned issues, so don’t send hate mail (or names of therapists I’ve just GOT to meet) just yet. I’m WAY better now. Yep!
Note: in case you didn’t catch any of the warnings above, let me be crystal clear here: this recording? SO NOT SAFE FOR WORK. (Unless, y’know, you work at a truck stop er sumthin!)
Click to listen to Gracie’s Version of a Podcast (which = streaming only in the sense that it’s a STREAM of hate-filled consciousness and…it goes on way longer than it should!)
Enjoy!
~Gracie
(PS, note that you may have to right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As…” and save it to your computer in order to hear it. I don’t know if it’s Vista or Wordpress or WHAT, but for whatever reason…I know I should know, but I’m having a total mind-blank on it right now, but I can’t just click on it and listen anymore, despite having the file associations properly set…so…if you have the same problem…that’ll solve it!)
(Click to enlarge)
Text: “You just aren’t a TRUE redneck unless you say things like “We’re gonna tee off at a lemon o’clock.”
just sound it out…it’ll come to ya!
~Gracie
Lovely. Juuuuust lovely. I had spent hours typing up new content for this part and…my lovely blog editor deleted it all. Yep. ALL of it. I’m usually so good about having numerous copies of EVERYTHING. But…of course not this. So…obviously this is going to take a bit longer than I’d hoped. Sorry.
Let’s start with the basics. I’m being completely serious with this entry and I’ll tell you what has worked for me (both when I’ve interviewed for a job and when I’ve interviewed and screened potential employees).
First and foremost, when people say to do your homework? They mean it. This means going online and finding their Web site, learning what they do, taking product demos, if that applies, reading their press releases and white papers, taking copious notes, memorizing who they are, what they do, how much they earned last quarter, how long they’ve been profitable, who their CEO is and a bit about them. Bonus points for knowing a bit of the CEO’s history by doing more research. Same goes for the management team (especially if you’ll be working for any of them directly).
Questions. I cannot stress this enough. When they ask you, at any point in the interview, if you have any questions for them, it’s not a courtesy thing. It’s a test. And if you don’t have questions, and not just one or two petty ones, but in-depth, I’ve done my homework on you, your company, the role, and I know what I want and don’t want and, while I’ll be completely respectful, I’m going to grill YOU now” questions? You can kiss it goodbye. Unless they’re desperate. And that means that the job will SUCK. And even though you’re scared and your bills are piling up…don’t settle for that. So when they pose that seemingly innocent question…realize that it’s your moment to shine. And, especially, to outshine all the others who were too “polite” or meek and who left with a mousy “Nope, I think you covered everything really well. I think I understand, but, you know, if I think of any, I’ll definitely call you!”
No.
(And don’t worry…I’ve done that myself. And sometimes I still got the job, but in this market and in most fields? It’s just not enough. And why bother? Why NOT go that extra mile?) Prove to them how great you are. How you will go that extra mile to get things done. It speaks highly of you. It’s about how committed you are to getting the job, it’s how hard you’ve worked to get there, it’s about your personality, and you will almost NEVER get the job if you don’t ask questions. And not “how much vacation time do I get?” and “what’s the salary?” questions. Things like “do you work in a scrum environment? Do you adhere to the Agile Method? Who will review my work? What are the top three things you feel I should accomplish within my first 30 days? And on and on. At my current job, I interviewed with ten people. TEN. And all of them asked me to ask questions. Thankfully I had a list of about sixty questions prepared ahead of time…and I still stumbled here and there. And I also deliberately asked a lot of them the same questions, with plenty of new ones peppered throughout, because I wanted to see how well they communicated together and how they each viewed the company from different departments. It tells you a lot about a company and how they work. I really can’t stress this enough. And I have heard numerous people tell me about people who were highly qualified but lost the job because they didn’t ask questions. How sad is that?? Just do a search online for “Great Interview Questions” or “Interview the Interviewer” and compile a list. It’s even better if you can tailor it to your particular field. And don’t just use their questions. Start out with your own. While we all know that we’re all working to pay our bills and fund our vacations and kids wardrobes and educations and yada yada, you still should WANT to work there. Even when you desperately need a job and almost don’t CARE as long as they give you the damned job…you should take a breath and make sure it’s the right place for you…by…asking QUESTIONS. If you’re a tech writer, for instance, ask things like where their documents are housed, what sorts of tools they use, who will review your work, what style guides they adhere to, and if they have one of their own. (Side note: if you’re a technical writer and haven’t read at least half of the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications? You need to quit. NOW. Also? If you don’t know that you should never, not EVER spell it cancelled? Regardless of the fact that it’s in the dictionary? You need to find another field. Harsh, yeah, but…still. No self-respecting writer would do it…let alone try to argue and defend it.)
Another tip for writers: be prepared to be tested. Not just vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and punctuation tests, but being asked to write a quick one-page guide for how to make a widget work. And the “widget” is usually something mundane like a stapler. My most recent test was writing a guide for how to make cinnamon toast. I had SO much fun writing it and they loved it. I wrote one serious “guide” and one with humor here and there. Actually they both had humor, but I obsessed and removed some from one of them because George got me all freaked out that they were going to be offended and think that I wouldn’t take my work seriously and I was SO ridiculously worried about it all because I desperately wanted this job and knew it was the perfect place and job and group of people and I couldn’t decide the right one to send, so…I sent both and asked the in-house recruiter to use her judgment and send them the one she thought was best. Or, more like it, to delete the “funny” one if they likely wouldn’t appreciate its tone.
Thankfully they appreciated my humor and craziness. Or, rather, they knew I could write and the rest was gravy. The point wasn’t whether I had a great recipe for cinnamon toast. It was that I had absolutely no problem writing instructions, leaving nothing out, using the right steps and tone of voice, (speaking of voice…if you don’t know what Active Voice is and why it’s always appropriate and why passive voice is wrong and wrong and more wrong?? You need to study a bit more) and they were able to see from my document that I knew what I was doing. (And didn’t punish me for the ridiculously obsessive duplication of effort.)
That’s about all I can do tonight, peeps. Hope this helps and I will add more if I can remember any of the other items I accidentally deleted.
~Gracie
i looooove my job…i loooove my job. I have a new job and I love love love love LOOOOVE IT!!!!!
(Note: this is not sarcasm. I truly am a happy, happy girl. It’s as though someone created the absolute perfect job for me and then called me up n’ said…um…dood! come n’ do it! and, yanno, I…did. Anyway, happy girl happy girl, I loooove my joooooob!)
~Gracie-loon
Click to enlarge…
Text for the image: “My dogs are more culturally advanced (young…hip…) than others. …They don’t hate the mailman…they hate the UPS guy. Also, at least ONE has an eating disorder. More later. (Ignore the “And” item. It was a note on the other side asking if I was the only one who was alarmed by the length of Michelle Obama’s arms…but we’ve already discussed that.)
~Gracie
I wrote this down after what was my daily Starbucks (which is what “STBX” stands for in Gracie’s Weird-Ass Shorthand) ritual. I must have said something about forgetting my change or needing to get my change or “Thanks!” for my change…and this is what he said in reply:
WOW. Someone took a weeee bit too much of his medication that day, eh?
~Gracie
