You Just Are A Box

I went to my token quarterly punk show last night. Had I known I was going to a punk show, I would have abstained from wearing color. As it was, I was in a bright yellow tank top and a kelly green cardigan - I looked something like a canary in a sea of black leather and spikes. While people watching between sets, I noticed a most perplexing phenomenon; I was startled and amazed at the sheer variety of things people had stuck in their ears. Earplugs obviously topped the list, the Troubadour sells them for a buck fifty. However I also spotted cotton, napkins and a substance suspiciously looking like cheese. You're punks, people! You're meant to be hardcore! What are you doing with earplugs? You people have studs in your faces and yet you're concerned about hearing damage? It just reeks of establishment. What's happening to the world if we can't rely on people with spiky hair to throw caution to the wind!
But I digress . . . The real reason I'm blogging is because I have recently been yelled at, bitched at, ignored and generally despised by the rest of my department. Why, dear reader, do they hate me so? Get this, its good, because I do too much work. No, no typos, I was actually told (in a high pitched screaming voice) by a co-worker, let's call her Slack-a-rella for expediency, in a meeting attended by my entire department, that "me wanting to learn things and taking on new work makes the rest of the department look bad". Clearly, these are things that slackers think, but to say them? Out loud? In front of one's boss? I'm shocked and awed. And said boss? Did he come to my defense? For the yelling at least, regardless of the drivel Slack-a-rella was spouting? Nope. Nope. Nope. I had to actually walk out of this meeting to stop the abuse and insanity. I had hit the point where, if I had stayed, I would have yelled back, cried with frustration, or had a completely inappropriate hysterical laughing fit, none of which would have gone very far towards goodwill and general niceties.
Just insert some shocked babbling gibberish here because there are no words to describe how heinous this situation is. Backlash, from taking on work and doing it well. Along with my little rant in the first paragraph, what IS the world coming to? I hear Mercury is in retrograde until the 30th and could explain some of the current disorder in the universe. But seriously, I don't know if I can make it to the 30th without doing any work in order to please my co-workers.

Let me set up a little scene for you: There's this venue in LA, Largo, that tends to have a lot of really cool singer/songwriter and comedy type acts. A few years ago, Rhett Miller started doing a solo show there about once a month. I went to every show dear reader, despite these alarming things that suck about Largo:
1) Its the worlds smallest venue, in order to assure yourself a place in the club you have to make a reservation, basically, the day the show is announced - which brings me to point number
2) Reservations at Largo are for tables at which you have to order their horrible food. Seriously, its jr. high school cafeteria caliber. Something stupid like $15 worth per person and this is after
3) You've already paid $10 to $15 just for the privilege of occupying space within the club.
4) And don't think you'll be able to leave said club at your discretion. No, dear reader, the servers at Largo hold your check hostage until the last 5 minutes of the show and then take about 3 hours closing it out, so you're basically stuck there until next Tuesday.
All of this I was willing to endure for the sake of seeing Rhett Miller once a month, but the unbearable rudeness of the servers and the owner eventually caused me to stop going to the dive at all. Just to draw a parallel, denying myself Rhett Miller was like denying myself chocolate because I couldn’t stand the people who provided it. I just couldn't feel good about having a $60 night at a place where the food blows and everyone’s a bitch, never mind who's performing.
So on Saturday night when I was informed that a group of friends had made a reservation to see a show at Largo I wanted to refuse to go. I didn't of course, who am I to fuck up everyone else's plans. So I went, and discovered that in my one year hiatus the staff at Largo had gone from simply rude to an almost inhuman level of disregard for the customers who keep them in business.
Short version, what happened is this: they gave my "meal" to the wrong person and offered me pasta with meat sauce instead, which clearly, I wasn't going to eat. I gave back the Bolognese and they "found" my real dinner, which was at that point half eaten by somebody else. Here's what I meant when I said "inhuman level of disregard" - they presented the half eaten meal to me and expected me to finish it. When I, quite reasonably, refused the server claimed the kitchen was closed but she would go back there and "see what she could do for me". 20 minutes later, as my companions were finishing up their meals, she presented me with some god-awful salad that I didn't want and didn't ask for. I politely declined.
One of my friends at the table decided to speak to the owner / manager on my behalf. Big mistake, not only would this asshole refuse to hear her out, he refused to take my meal off the bill. She came back fuming, everyone at the table was upset, we were still being held hostage and because of the blatant disregard for our comfort exhibited by the staff and owner, none of us were having fun anymore. Which is sad, because the performers (called “The Naked Trucker Show”, featuring, you guessed it!) were truly funny. I couldn’t help thinking that they deserve better than Largo. Tell ‘yer friends.