Trying Again: "Meme" Continued

Let's see...now where was I?

What were you doing 1 year ago?

Moonlighting as "Rachellette the Pineapple Head" on a Strip G-rated revue down in Vegas.

You're not buying that? Well, how about...

Celestina

Queen of the Peacock People

appearing nightly at Sigfried and Roy's Secret Garden?

No?

Well, how about...

...Elvis?

No?

Of course not.

One year ago I was merely battling a cat and a child in a daily battle of wits and wills, struggling with the stifling Las Vegas heat, and playing on a computer. Almost what I'm doing today, minus the stifling heat and adding a heck of a lot of house repair.

Can we talk about 4 years ago? That may make for a better story. And it's a story that I've already written up. (A bonus, being short on time as I am.)

So. 4 years ago.

We had recently moved to Las Vegas, I was pregnant, and I was searching for a job. I finally found one working out at Nellis Air Force Base for a civilian-contract company that prepares lessons for the Air Force's Weapons School (the Weapons School is where they send their hot-shot pilots to learn how to use their hot-shot equipment properly, blah, blah, blahblahblah).

This is what I wrote to a friend about it:

The work environment is interesting. A bunch of the employees are retired AF pilots, and many of them have really REALLY big egos. I have a hard time taking any of them the slightest bit seriously. For example, they post a sign on a cubicle...wait, I have to back up.

For this job, they get everyone a security clearance. They go to all your old homes and knock on doors to make sure you really lived there. They talk to your neighbors. They ask questions like “Is it true that she liked to consume large quantities of chocolate when her husband wasn’t looking? Because that sounds like an addictive personality, and we’re afraid the Enemy may try to bribe her with chocolates to tell Top Government Secrets.”

Yeah.

It takes a year to do all this, and it’s an incredibly expensive process. And they do it so that I can edit some highly-jargonized material that I don’t even understand for a make-believe consistency*...Very, very silly.

Okay, so they get you a clearance, and that means that you can look at classified, secret, and top secret lessons. Since I don’t have my security clearance yet, I can only work on unclassified garbage. So, when someone is working on something that is classified, secret, or top secret, they hang a little sign on the outside of their cubicle, and I am supposed to stop at that sign and not progress any further into the mess of cubicles. If I need to talk to someone in there, I have to shout for them, clap, or something equally ridiculous. It feels for all the world like I’m back in the second grade playing secret agent with a bunch of other second graders. Very, very silly. Do you know what makes it even worse? Most of the people around here prefer to be called by their AF code names, like “Buzz” or “Thug.” How can I take my boss seriously when he insists that I call him “Taco”?

And wait—there's more! As long as I only have to copy and paste this stuff, why not? Here's some from another bit of correspondence:

The folks at work sometimes tell me stories about what Air Force life is like. For example, up until a few years ago, there were no such things as coffee breaks, or any sort of break at all, unless you smoked. If you smoked, you were entitled to a ten-minute break. However, if you did not smoke, no break for you. What this resulted in were an awful lot of people pretending to smoke or starting the habit who really weren’t interested in it. (This rule was only changed in the past few years because some officer’s wife was tired of her husband smoking, and apparently he fell back on this bizarre rule as an excuse. So she had it removed.)

Another thing is that if you live on base, you can be ticketed for leaving your porch light on after a certain time because it wastes energy (but you can have your A/C going full blast with your windows and front door wide open, and they won’t say a thing). You can also be ticketed for your grass being too long, or your bushes being too tall (they actually have people that go around and measure your grass, apparently on Tuesdays, and since they have a quota for how many tickets they are supposed to give out, you could get a ticket even if your grass is an appropriate length).

Rank is another weird thing. The difference between and officer and an enlisted man was something I never even considered—I never knew there was a difference, honestly. But apparently, if you are enlisted, you are a second-rate citizen. However, if you are an officer, you must have the perfect wife to attain rank, and at least one perfect child. If you are that perfect officer’s wife or child, other officers’ wives and children don’t like you if their officer outranks your officer. If your officer outranks theirs, they don’t like you then, either. I had no idea such strict social strata even existed in America.

Now I almost regret never having been associated with the military, because it affords such rich material for satire. (It turns out that Catch-22 is pretty close to the truth, if any of you have ever read that.)

And one more, just because I can:

I have a little anecdote for you on the importance of usability testing**! (Hooray! Just what you were all wanting to hear!)

It involves the bathroom situation here. (A bathroom situation may seem like a strange choice, but you must remember that I spend quite a bit of time in them. I can’t help it. Baby likes to kick/lean on?/poke?/jab with fiendish delight? My bladder, and so I feel more comfortable if I can keep it on the empty side. Of course, I drink so much there really isn’t an empty side. Hence, obsession with bathroom. On to anecdote.) There is only one women’s bathroom—and it’s just a bathroom: one toilet, one sink, no stalls—so it’s difficult to find it empty. Installed on the sink and the toilet are those lovely water-saving motion-detection sensors, only, they are installed poorly. When they are installed correctly, you just put your hands under the faucet and the water turns on; withdraw your hands, and the water turns off. Efficient. However, instead of buying a new faucet with the sensor in it, they tried to make the existing one work by installing a sensor on the wall. As a result, every time you walk into the restroom, you are greeted by the water enthusiastically turning on, and remaining on for about a minute (‘cause the sensor is the wrong type, and keeps the water on for awhile after the sensor has been activated, like motion-activated lighting). The toilet is even better. There is a motion sensor for the toilet as well, mounted on the wall even with the back of your neck. The toilet paper is where it starts to get good. Some genius installed an industrial-sized toilet paper dispenser—the kind you see in truck-stop restrooms—on the wall just low enough that you have to lean over and reach to get any toilet paper (try doing this with a bulging belly). So what do you think happens when you lean over to get some toilet paper? The motion sensor on the toilet, unlike the one on the sink, reacts immediately to your “absence,” resulting in several flushes before you can finish your business.

The best part about all of this is that Nevada is in a severe state of drought and the military probably installed these things in order to save water. I love the way the government works! They’re so cute with all their misapplied principles!

Five snacks you enjoy:

I THINK THAT'S ENOUGH MEME FOR ONE DAY, DON'T YOU?

*My official job title was "Word Processor." I checked Power Point presentations for typos. Really glamorous, huh?
**Don't worry about it. I'm still not sure what that phrase means.