Ober and Out

Jump to Comments

Dear best friends 4-eva,

Yesterday, I began my new job at Seven Days as a staff writer. Since most of the three of you have been clamoring for a blow by blow, I’m going to give it to you. Be forewarned, though. A summary of my day could be a bit soporific. Or freaking terrific. Whatevs.

So I woke up at 7:30 a.m., bright and early, so as to give myself enough time to get ready without being rushed. But two hours to get beautiful just wasn’t enough. After I walked the Ween and had some breakfast, my neighbors informed me that my car had been egged. I thought they might be the secret egging culprits since the night before I was skulking around their backyard/geodesic dome construction site looking for a ladder and I made lots of noise. But no, it wasn’t them. Turns out they got egged, too. They advised me that I needed to wash my car stat, since egg goop could strip the paint off a car once it hardened. Great. That’s an awesome way to start my first day at my new gig.

As a result of the egging, I rolled in to work late. But nobody cared since they were all trying to forget that they ever hired me in the first place. I was all like, “I’m sorry I’m late. My car got egged.” And they were all like “Um, who are you?” And I was all like “Um, I’m Lauren. You hired me to write junk for you.” And they were all like, “Oh yeah. Well, here’s your desk. We forgot to get you a computer.” And I was all like “Oh, that’s ok. I’ll just use my pencils and notebooks and write everything out long-hand.” And they were all like, “Whatevs, dude. Entertain yourself for the next hour and half before our editorial meeting.” And I was all like, ” I’m gonna go wash my car, mmm-kay.”

And so I did. I ran my car through the car wash and the egg came off just fine and the paint is none the worse for it. When I got back to 7DHQ, I set about the task of cleaning my new desk and “making it homey.” I started with the computer-less keyboard. Let me just tell you a thing or two about this keyboard. Clearly, the fellow who had used it prior to me was storing food in the keyboard in the event of a nuclear winter. There was what amounted to about a half a pound of granola-type food detritus in the keyboard. A whole almond stuck under the D key. One of my fellow scribes, on observing me shaking the keyboard out with clearly misplaced rage, offered my one of those aerosol dust remover canisters. I promptly huffed the bejesus out of that thing, not realizing that he had meant it for my keyboard.

Anyway, with my keyboard clean, I was ready for the editorial meeting. That was fun- people throwing out ideas and planning stuff, me offering my thoughts on things I knew nothing about, me making jokes that nobody laughed at. After that, I took my usual three-hour lunch break. Then I came back and got my picture taken for a press release. In the photo, which was expertly styled by the office’s chief gay, I am leaning against a brick wall covered in graffiti. I look so edgy, so raw. Well, my nose does at least, since that’s really the only thing you can see in the photo. I know the rest of me was in that picture somewhere.

This is a photo of a total eclipse of the face (by the nose).

After my photo shoot, I came back inside and rolled in my Minnie Pearl desk chair for a half an hour. I’m calling it my Minnie Pearl desk chair because I’m leaving the price tag on, just like Minnie Pearl from Hee Haw did with her trademark hat. I’m original like that. After rolling in my desk chair and failing to figure out how to connect my Time/LIFE operator headset to my phone, I decided I had put in a full day’s work and I left.

This is what my new life looks like.

Sadly, they have asked me to write a few things, so every day can’t be as free and easy as the first. But I have high hopes that once they realize that I’m basically just a sub-par stenographer, they won’t ask me to do silly things like write stories again.