Some parts of my job I rarely, if ever, talk about. Working on the monthly, annual, and now decennial sales charts is one of those things. There was a lot of math involved for the decennial tables, limited as they are, but before I got to the math there was a lot of thinking. Just … Continue reading I Was Told There Would Be No Math
Category: Work
Several days ago I took about forty-five minutes and reorganized my office bookshelf, the one with my epic run on PREVIEWS, all 141 issues to date. It had been piling up with Image comics I was never going to read, and once I cleared that detritus away the shelf looks quite nice. It won’t win … Continue reading Organizing the Bookshelf
On Friday, a colleague of mine at work was let go. He had been with the company twenty-two years. A dozen years ago, he was the best mentor I could have had, taking a not-inexperienced writer and turning him into a copywriter. Then he moved into other, consumer-oriented projects, and we didn’t interact every day … Continue reading The Absence
Monday afternoon, before leaving home to attend a New Year’s party, I checked my mailbox. There was nothing of importance. Nothing, that is, but a letter from my apartment managers. The news that my rent was going up wasn’t a complete surprise — it’s gone up all but one year since I’ve lived here — … Continue reading An Unwelcome Notice
I was not expecting the office to close at 2 o’clock today. That’s just not the sort of thing that’s done. And when I pulled out of the parking lot at roughly 2:15 and hit the highway, I thought to myself, ‘This doesn’t seem so bad.” The drive to Mason-Dixon Line was… well, it was … Continue reading Half a Snow Day
A few months ago, Andrew Sullivan began writing a weekly column for New York. As someone who read The Dish, Sullivan’s daily blog, for years and years and years, I welcomed his weekly column. I haven’t always enjoyed it, but I still read it. In Sullivan’s column last week, he closed with a story on … Continue reading Writing Until I Drop
Wednesday marked my tenth anniversary at Diamond Comic Distributors. Part of Diamond’s culture revolves around the daily “Service Anniversaries” e-mail. HR sends out an e-mail to the entire company acknowledging those employees who are celebrating an anniversary, and then people throughout the company, some you’ll know, some you won’t, will send you congratulations. Suffice it … Continue reading Reflections on Ten Years
As the company has done for a number of years, a Christmas tree was put up in the lobby and, a few days after Thanksgiving, Angel Tree stockings were hung. I had decided long ago to participate in the Angel Tree program this year and, when I was passing by the lobby area on other … Continue reading An Angel Tree Package for the Office
Today was Purple Friday at the office. As will many more Fridays over the coming months. It baffles me at times that, at the office, whenever the Baltimore Ravens play a home game we can were Ravens gear, but Orioles gear happens only once a year, on Opening Day. What’s especially baffling is that our … Continue reading Rebel Rebel
Yesterday work passed in a haze of malaise and gloom. I can chalk that up, in part, to the catalog section I was working on. Sixty-four pages of catalog copy. Around page 10 it felt endless. At page 30 it felt impossible. At page 45 it felt interminable. The word “orrery,” used precisely, is in … Continue reading An Eeyore Day at the Office
Last week was… not the best. I should clarify. It wasn’t bad. It was simply stressful. And hectic. And tense. And all of the things that a week that where the catalog and orders go to press usually is. Thankfully, the week ended with the Nerd Prom — the Employee Appreciation Party (or the Christmas … Continue reading This Year’s Angel Tree Package
I went bowling today. At the office we have a Christmas tradition. The department goes bowling in December. But then we stopped having the annual Christmas bowling outing. Two years ago we went for a laser tag outing with the Sales department. And last year we didn’t do any team-building activities at Christmas. Today, then, … Continue reading On the Annual Bowling Outing