Friday, 10 Feb 1995, 2:38pm
OFFICE GOSSIP! Someone gave four weeks notice yesterday Sis. Her name is Kendra, she’s a desk-topper. She organizes the printed page, massages it around, makes sure the typeface is right, the pages are OK and does last minute edits. They get to fool around with all the cool machines and get paid about $4000 a year more than me. I’m toying with the idea of going for Kendra’s position when she leaves. It’s not an easy job, there’s pressure to get it done on time, but $4000 is a lot of money, and I’ve been feeling for a while that I can’t go much further with this book. Even if I just did desk-topping for a year and then left, at least I’d be able to take either an editorial or a desk-topping position somewhere else. I just haven’t learnt anything new in my job in the last year or so, its becoming a bit routine, I need some sort of novelty to keep my interest up. A change is what I need. I actually believe that a change is better than a holiday, a change will keep me interested for months, a holiday is simply a brief respite from routine. But then again, maybe I’m not really thinking this through. Sure it’s a change, but maybe it’s a change for the worse. I guess I don’t really want to do desk-topping, I just want a change from what I’m doing now. Ahh, fuck it, they probably wouldn’t let me do it anyway.
Monday, 13 Feb 1995, 3:30pm
Monday now. I’m so damned tired. I worked hard in dispatch all day Saturday, and this morning I had to help put all 3000 of the books I helped pack on Saturday into the mail truck. It’s really hard on your hands because the bags are made from canvas and it rips through the skin on your knuckles after a while. After work on Saturday, I went home and made a mess of the house with chip and ice-cream wrappers while watching TV. Then Leah rang and invited me out for a coffee but then reneged because she locked herself out. So I settled into the couch for an evening of audio-visual somnolence in front of the box, and there’s a knock at the front door. It’s Leah and her boyfriend Aidan, they got her spare key from her Mum. So we went over to Kate’s place where we sat around, drank the long-awaited coffee and listened to some git with a mohawk go on and on about his tee-pee in the Grampian Ranges. Then Chloe, a girl I met at a nightclub, who I never called back, turned up and made me feel really uncomfortable, we left soon after. What a dreadful evening. It made me realize why I haven’t gone out for six months and why I may not go out for another six.
Friday night was OK. I went out for drinks with some workmates and successfully avoided winning the office Grog Prize. The Grog Prize is won by the person who most embarrasses all the others present by their drunken behaviour. I am yet to be blessed with this prize, thankfully. Jeremy won it on Friday night by looking over Cav’s shoulder at some woman going to the Metro and exclaiming loudly “Oh my God, look at that pussy!” This guy’s an absolute shocker. Nathan won it the week before. I remarked that my celibacy anniversary was coming up, and I said that celibacy is like greatness – some people seek it, and others have it thrust upon them. Hearing this, some jokes were made about thrusting, and then Nathan leans back in his seat with his eyes rolling about his head and says to a passing barmaid, “Excuse me, would you like J to thrust up against you?” My ears went bright red and I grabbed him by the sleeve of his jacket, hissing at him, whilst Cav apologized to the barmaid, and the other punters laughed and proclaimed him the winner of the Grog Prize. Pretty machismo, I know, but kind of amusing all the same. Not too amusing for the barmaid, I guess, though Cav said he didn’t think she quite heard the offending comment. It just goes to show that celibacy is no laughing matter. We ended up traipsing all over the top end of the CBD and eating in this terribly groovy Florentino’s Salad Bar at the top of Bourke Street. it’s this narrow little oak-paneled restaurant next door to Florentino’s Restaurant, which is 10 times as expensive. So the Salad Bar is full of thirty-somethings waiting for their parents to die so they can afford to eat next door, meanwhile they tell themselves that they’d rather eat in the Salad Bar because it’s groovier. All this is irrelevant though, because the food was fucking horrible. I couldn’t finish my grilled tomato and eggplant, it tasted like vomit, no seriously it really tasted like vomit, not kidding Sis.
I’ve decided not to go for that desk-topping job here. Lots of pressure and no mistakes allowed. I guess all the computer stuff you get to learn interests me, but that would only be a temporary thrill. Once I knew it, it would become routine like everything else, and I wouldn’t have that annual little thrill of seeing my name in the front of a book.
Ciao Sis.
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