brisuscheez

1. People piss me off when I'm trying to explain something that might be helpful to them (I mean, it is my job!) and they insist on inturrupting me the whole time.

Hello, I know you think I'm stupid and you don't respect me for being in the service industry, but shut your mouth and nod politely. I'll say something helpful in a moment.

This lady came in and asked me how to get to the third floor. (We're on the first of a 4 floor building). I explained "Well, there's stairs to the left of us..." and she interrupted "OH! I CAN'T walk up stairs!" As I plowed through with "... and an elevator to the right of us." Which I had to repeat, because apparently I cared she hates walking upstairs.

Now my mom can't wait upstairs so I understand, but unless I see crutches or a wheelchair, I generally give people the options of going upstairs to not place my judgements upon them, or be condescending or insulting. I'm trying to help you out, be polite.

My colleague sitting here with me just read this and agreed, the past two days people have been rude assholes to us for no reason.

2. I'm very frustrated in rehearsals right now. I'm very serious and whereas the months preceding this one were filled with comedy and hijinks, now I"m very serious and deadpan because we only have a month left before opening night and we are nowhere near ready!

So a few days ago, we were learning a song. The director wanted us to have "internal motivation for singing" - to which I replied "I'd like to learn the song first and get it solid before thinking about why my character is singing it - otherwise I'm just going to be myself as an actor being frustrated, not a character with reasons to sing this song." To which I got "You have a bad attitude and you're being a bad role model for younger kids and newer actors."

I didn't know I signed up to be a role model for TWO people aged 21 and 40, sorry. I just was hired to sing two songs. Okay? I tried to explain it is difficult for me to think about internal motivation for my character in two hours of rehearsal on the 1st time we've sung this song together and that although I understand and trust this person as a director, but he's going to have to give me time to work on this piece and offer me the same trust and respect.

What this person doesn't understand is why I'm frustrated and upset - he goes on to say "I just felt like you gave up and you need to leave your bad day at the door." And I'm trying to tell him "I had a great day! It was your rehearsal that put me in a bad mood because you don't respect me or trust that I know how I work and how my body reacts to this type of work!"

UGH! Now every time I go to rehearsal I really do just have a bad attitude and negative feelings because of this director, and I'm not trying to be a diva even though my behavior maybe that way. I just expected to be taught a song in rehearsal and taught it well so I wouldn't be embarrassed in performing it - at least now I know I have to work on everything outside of rehearsal on my own to have a level of quality in my performance no one is going to help me achieve in rehearsal.

On a side note about this director: I got four calls to my cell and house phone on election day. You can't have computers or cell phones in polling locations when you are working them. I told them about this event weeks ago - and no one had the decency to write it down or remember, so I came home to being yelled at that I wasn't at rehearsal.

Guys, I've been working from 4am-9pm, I don't care. Leave me alone, I'm seeing you tomorrow anyway.

3. My old internship supervisor is apparently rude (to put it nicely). Last night I came in to work for four hours on my already completed UNPAID internship (she's apparently already hired a new intern - that I didn't know about, that, in my opinion, could and should be doing this work... but anyway...). Yesterday, I came in to tell her about something that happened at my new PAID job where I have to teach people how to work Microsoft office products for marketing tools and organization. She basically told me "Wow! People are morons who can't work Microsoft Office!" So then at 4pm today, I get this lovely email:

"Thanks so much for doing the check in forms. There was a problem though that the intern and I couldnt make corrections in it without messing up the entire spreadsheet. We had to start all over for all three sheets. Not sure what happened did you use a different program (like on your own lap top)? If that happened it doesnt talk to our computer here and so I cant make corrections I needed to.

In the future, lets avoid that if possible if thats what happened. Our computers are very old and cant read outside programs too well. It wasted 3 hours of my interns time. And I will need to make continual edits in these camps on the G drive. Thanks."

Here is my response:
"I'm sorry that happened for you. I used the company's intern computer. It is pretty important to note though, I was able to edit the excel spreadsheets by using a different "view" option and selection a particular magnification to edit each sheet to fit on one piece of 8.5 x 11 piece of paper.
In excel:
- I clicked on "View" and selected "Page Break Preview"
- Then I could select the %age of magnification to fit my print preview so that the page worked when I printed.

Could this be the problem?
Have a great weekend!"

Karma's pretty nasty when you think you know everything isn't it? Thanks for being so kind and polite when telling me about your problems and blaming it on my competence with computers instead of yours and your new intern's incompetence. Have fun next year with that one. I have a feeling it's going to be a long one.

And furthermore, if you wanted me to come in and work for you this week while missing my PAID job - you could have paid me $6.50/hr to compensate. Just because you're leaving for a cruise, doesn't mean everyone you work with can either. RUDE!