Not Like Everyone Else's LBD

Wrap yourself in black
Listen to The Cure
Love-line wont call back
They don't know
They don't care
They don't see
But I do

And if it feels good do it
Cause if it tastes fine drink
Well, there's a range of possibilities to find
Teenager, teenager

No one knows your name
No one hears your cry
Fall in with the fringe
Cause they know what you're going through
They do

--Better Than Ezra, Teenager

Well, Kevin starts his new shift change tomorrow...

Essentially, now he's working Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday. For several weeks now, he's been really, really tense about this...

Part of it, I believe, was because he worked hard to get onto the weekday days shift. He didn't complain to Scott constantly about the hours (although he did to me) or slack on his work or spend all of his shift on the phone with me or show up late on such a regular basis that he got written up for it. I bring this up because it is exactly what the people currently on weekend nights and weekend days have done. In addition to complaining to Human Resources about the hours, which they knew about before they started working for the company.

Scott's solution?

Yep, you guessed it. Fuck up everyone's schedule so that the people who finally got off weekends now have to work weekends again. It's awfully discouraging to realize that hard work and effort don't pay nearly so nicely as bitching and slacking off.

Another part of Kevin's huge problem with this is how Scott went about doing it - rather than have a meeting to discuss the shift change, or even have the common decency to tell people in person, Scott sent out an email with the new schedule and promptly left the building for the rest of the day so no one could talk with him about it. Cowardice in its most elemental form.

The third part of the problem was the only one I truly felt was a legitamate concern. Scott's always been an asshole, he will always be an asshole, and there's nothing anyone can do about that. Assholery obviously works for Scott, as he still has a job and he's still married to one of the sweetest ladies I know. No incentive to change on Scott's part. However, all that being said... part of the reason for the original shift is because server maintenance is done on the weekends and any special instructions for weekend maintenance is given to Operations on... you guessed it! Friday!

Now they do have this shift-pass down thingie that's supposed to tell the next shift about important changes and whatnot, but 60% of the time, it's not filled out correctly or stuff is missing off it. Not to mention that the major Sunday maintenance starts at 6am, which is 30 minutes after Kevin arrives to work. So he's got to read through all the pass-down reports and whatnot (hoping it's correct) in half an hour before kicking off the Sunday maintenance. It is almost guaranteed that if there's anything important in that maintenance that Kevin ought to know about, he won't.

To make all this a really appealing package, Scott was originally offering a 5% shift differential to the Sunday - Tuesday shift. For Sunday only. Which was going to be something like a whopping 1.4% increase over all. Keep in mind that last year Kevin took a 9% pay decrease in order to get onto the week day shift and you can see where this overwhelming generosity was not impressing anyone much.

I think it was partially the fact that Kevin was starting to obviously tune up his resume, or that payroll once again told Scott they did not have the time to do that many different pay variation calculation and he'd better make things simple for them or they'd lose all his cell-phone expense bills for the rest of his life - or maybe it was that Kevin was starting to walk around the server floor clenching his hands like he just wanted a certain red-headed manager's neck between them - but Scott finally wised up and offered a 10% shift differential. To cover the whole shift, rather than just the one day.

At any rate, a 10% difference has gone a long way to sweeten Kevin's disposition about the whole thing and I am very, very grateful.

I love my husband, don't get my wrong. But the last eight weeks or so have been very difficult. Not only has Kevin been in a really bad mood and there hasn't been anything I can do about it, but he was also working on his resume. After being dragged down here to this god-forsaken wretched little neo-suburbanite, psuedo-city hell-hole, Kevin was going to look for work elsewhere? Admittedly, we've been here about six months already, so if we were going to move again, it would be about the right time to actually decide that. However. I really hate moving. Really, really hate it. (I know I moved a lot during college, but in college I didn't have antique Japanese wall screens that now have pieces missing or $2000 bed sets with grass stains on them or desks that had the legs ripped off.)

You know, none of this is what I actually meant to talk about (see above title entry) but it sort of does get me around, eventually, to the point. Sort of.

Anyway, now that Scott's come somewhat to his senses and offered a pay increase mostly proportional to the amount of inconvenience added, Kevin is no longer twitching with his resume.

Which means he'll probably - barring the usual disasters and vague possibilities of offers of employment elsewhere - be working at Dendrite by Christmas. Which means I will finally get to buy a new formal dress.

Background: I own a hunter green crushed velvet dress. I bought it nearly ten years ago so I would have something nice to go see Phantom of the Opera in when Liz's parents took us to go see the play. When I bought it, it was only $18. It was on sale-discounted-red-tag-everything-must-go. Originally an $80 dress, it had been marked and remarked and red tagged and everything today only was an extra 20% off. (At the time, I was working a $5 an hour job and paying my own rent while trying to finish off my senior year of college. for the second year in a row) So, to make a long story even longer, I bought the dress. And wore it to the play. And wore it to a friend's wedding. And wore it to Harris Trucking's awards ceremony. And to another play - Pirates of Penzance. And to GE's New Year's gathering. And to Gateway's Christmas party. And to another friend's wedding. And to Ashby's father's wake. And last year I wore it to Dendrite's Christmas party. That's less than $2 a wear, for those of you following along at home.

I was joking with Kevin a few weeks back that if he did get a new job, it would be the perfect excuse for him to not have to buy me a new formal dress. Again. Since I'd just be able to recycle the same dress I've always worn. This concept did not thrill me, but I was trying to make light of Kevin's mood.

So, now that he's decided to stay, I can actually buy a new dress. Day before yesterday, we got a fashion catalog which I idly flipped through. There were a few things I saw that would be nice and then I saw this dress...

I really like this a lot. It's cute, it's floaty and above all, it is not a Little Black Dress (LBD).

I hate LBDs. For one thing, I don't look good in what amounts to a tight black tube of crushed velvet. For the second thing, everyone wears the LDB for formal occassions. Last year at the Dendrite shindig, almost every lady there had on an LBD. There were (including me) only four or five ladies wearing something other than black.

Maybe I'm just an 80's child at heart. The "woe is me" psuedo-angst neo-gothic scene has never really appealed to me. Life sucks, get a helmet. Not that I don't complain when life sucks (I couldn't fool anyone into thinking that) but the whole World of Darkness, brooding melodrama just makes me slightly ill. So an LBD is out for more than just appearance reasons. I don't wear black dresses as a socio-political statement, as well.

Which is what makes that dress so perfect.

It's formal. It's a nice material. It's not sew yourself in after being on a starvation-diet dress. And best of all, it's a nice pale lavander color.

I think I'll buy it.

Posted by tisfan at August 14, 2004 08:47 AM