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8-13-08 // 9:26 am code switching NP: Hem - "Eveningland" This morning I was walking down 14th Street in downtown Oakland, and maybe four blocks before the 12th St. BART station, I noticed this guy in a red baseball cap, jeans, and a red zip-up sweatshirt walking along ahead of me. He kept stopping and spitting. At one point, he stopped and...sort of threw up. Sort of. Then he kept going. He'd take sips from a bottle or can of something. Then he'd spit some more. I was convinced that as I walked past this guy, I'd get hacked on. So I kept eyeing him up, trying to figure out if there was a pattern to his actions, so I could zip past without incident. Apparently he looked back a few times and noticed my apprehension, because as I pulled up beside him, he stopped me. I took off my headphones, and he started on this spiel... He said something along the lines of "you probably noticed me puke back there". He then started going on about how he wasn't really like this, how he wasn't a drunk, how he was just trying to blend in, how he was a smart guy, an educated guy just like me. That he was involved in business and marketing, that he was performing an experiment, that he was "code switching". He said he dressed like that (he looked perfectly clean and well dressed to me, just hip-hop stylee) to try to blend in with "your typical African-American you'd find on the streets here, doing shit like this". I told him that I thought it was interesting, and that I wasn't judging him, that I didn't even notice he had an open can of Miller High Life half-wrapped in a sheet of butcher's paper. I just saw him spitting and hacking and didn't want to get spit on at 8 am. I have no idea if he believed me, but we stood there for a while outside the subway entrace and talked. He kept staying stuff like "I'm just a regular guy like you" and "I have a college degree". He asked what I did, and I told him. I tried to reassure him again that I wasn't judging him, and that I honestly didn't know what was happening and that I simply did not want to get hacked on. My parting words were "don't worry about it man, we're all equal". He asked my name and shook my hand, and I headed down the stairs to my train. I have no idea if the guy was a actually a college student involved in an elaborate social experiment, or if he was simply a real drunk. Either way, it was an interesting encounter, and incredibly humanizing. Three more days of work and I am done. Done. Yesterday was particularly trying. I spent all last week and even most of my Sunday in the office updating documentation, and in most cases, over-documenting my entire job. My boss is super needy and not very in-tune with the actual innerworkings of the department she's in charge of. Nice, eh? So I went the extra mile, two or three times over. Yesterday I had scheduled another training session for the so-called "purple lady", our gift processing person. She's eccentric, elderly, and only wears/uses/cares about purple things. I swear. She's also a self-professed "computer-phobe". A good quality for someone whose job entails working with a computer, yeah? So, at my boss' behest we did the training session, even though I did several with her a few months ago, and despite that I left incredibly over-detailed instructions. Seriously, stuff like "click the blue button". We got to step #1 -- step #1! -- before she started crying! Step one was "open a web broswer and navigate to [the URL of the application she needed to use]". That simple! But she couldn't handle it. Not my problem! I'm all about helping people get up to speed, but there comes a certain point where you can't claim ignorance as en excuse. Take a rudimentary PC class! The university offers internal training classes at no cost. I guess that's one of the problems with working here, there's no incentive to improve yourself unless you're self-motivated. Which is why I've succeeded, but also why I'm happy to be moving on. See, this place is a meritocracy, at least when it comes to hiring. But once you're in, you're in! Unless you royally fuck up, you're set, and there are very few reasons to get better at your job unless you want to. If you want to coast or feel victimized, this is your place. Whew. OK, I'm glad to have that out of my system. I've decided to leave on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday! I'm going to get the car back from Sarah on Saturday no later than 2 o'clock, pack up the my stuff and hit the road, with a quick stop-off in the East Bay 'burbs to deliver my wet suit to the guy who's buying it. I'll drive 200-something miles that PM and stop in Reno for the night. That way, I'll have the Sierra part of the drive out of the way already, I can sleep in on Sunday, and then hit the road whenever I want, and only have to do 500 or so miles till I stop in Salt Lake on Sunday like I previously planned. It's all coming together, and it's so close I can taste it. I suppose I was naive in thinking I could work my butt off in advance to make this week relatively stress-free. It's not been happening. But at the very least I'm happy and self-confident, eager and ready.
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