Author Archives: johnozed

About johnozed

I'm 50+ years old, 210-ish#, 6'2", reddish blonde, blue eyes with glasses (and without) masculine, funny, relatively intelligent, enjoy the company of assorted friends and family especially sordid friends and family. I love music, reading, writing, conversing, laughing, going to films, shows, concerts and smoking cigars. And I also enjoy looking nice in a suit and tie. Looking more like Lewis Lapham than Tom Wolfe. I'm sure there is more, but we'll just have to find out when I write about it. In a lifetime relationship with partner Bill Vila.

We’re getting old here

It goes on and on and on. It never ends does it? It was another Wednesday, they keep coming around every seven days or so. I keep writing and rewriting my self-evaluation as if I were James Joyce writing a laundry list. It’s more like Samuel Beckett with the existential morass that is my work week.

I do enjoy the clients though. I engage them and put them at ease. It’s quite a varied group, especially the ones that just show up without an appointment. They claim to have spoken to someone on the phone but can never remember just who was at the other end of the line.

Both yesterday and today I had people who received mass mailings and since they were in the neighborhood, they thought they might drop in to see someone about it. And since all someone has to do is say they’re there for the legal company, they get sent right up to the 18th or 22nd floor with no notice from the lobby guard.

My friend Kate fills in for me for my break and she mentioned to me that she was stressing the self-evaluation. I played it cool then but the past few days I’ve kept her abreast of my writings. She told me I should stop writing and I believe she is right. I have got to stop. Tomorrow I will stop.

For my break today I went in a different direction. Instead of north to Thomas Street I went south and sat by One World Trade Center. I needed some sunlight but the trade-off is a lot of tourists whereas Thomas Street is almost a ghost town with less than a dozen people on the sidewalks as I sit and smoke.

I don’t know, I am finding Tribeca to be so dull. Would I prefer midtown? Perhaps. Tribeca has a lot of families in it whereas midtown is mostly all business. I started working in Manhattan in midtown and that was the eighties.

I think the majority of jobs that I’ve had in the twenty-first century were mediocre at best. Really looking back on what I have done, it seems things had started out strong and then fizzled out. Putnam Lovell, Alger to name two. Both of those were financial companies and both were incredibly awful.

ABIO-IB was wobbly to begin with, no one seemed to know what was going on, including Ashish Shangrawhatchamacallit and he was the head of the pimple.

I heard from an old friend from the Maxwell’s days, Stephen Siparoti. It was a text asking if I would be at a proclamation for the original owner of Maxwell’s, Senor Fallon. It’s going on at Hoboken City Hall next week and I sort of helped out with it.

The organizer asked me for some tidbits about Senor Fallon and I told her what I could, what could be said in public without regret. It’s a limited amount of what could be said so I was quite kind and informative.

Misunderstanding

It has been one of those days. It started OK. Bill was gone when I woke up. I am trying to go to bed a little bit earlier than usual so that meant I was waking up a little bit earlier but not getting out of bed. Doing my best to not open my eyes to see the time, I eventually did and saw it was 7:30 so I got out of bed.

The first thing I do when I get out of bed is make the bed. I’ve been doing that for years and read something a few months ago that suggested doing just that to start the day off with an accomplishment. I do it just in case I need to, or decide to go back to bed. That rarely happens but it’s good to know that it’s there and ready for me.

The self-evaluation at work is due on Friday and I keep writing and rewriting and editing. Some things I realize are that there’s no way to get away with posting such things and would hasten my departure if I submitted it. So I write, copy, and delete.

It’s due on Friday and I received a posting on my computer that it is due in 72 hours. I kept myself busy at work dealing with Schlomo the DKB. He had an envelope that had been mislabelled. It was noticed after I left. I apologized for the error.

I also explained to the DKB that this could all be taken care of if only the person who picks up the mail would ask me five words, ‘Do you have any mail’ Most of the day I do have mail but his guy doesn’t ask and will check other spots for mail but not ask me and I could have a pile of mail next to me.

The DKB said, ‘Well you know that’s how so and so is’. I told him that’s ridiculous. Five words to ask. I do not want to be his friend I just want the work to get out. He’s not hurting me at all with his disdain, it’s the clients who are sick and sometimes terminal that might suffer because he does not like me.

These people think I am an idiot and not treating the clients with respect, but I do respect these clients and I have tremendous empathy for what they are going through. Yes, I sometimes use humor to put them at ease, I converse with them, asking where they are coming in from, you know- conversational topics.

And when someone is not used to such things, they mishear and misunderstand and that gets me in hot water. The five stages of grief still apply and I am still in the acceptance phase. Nowhere else to go.

I still have to finish the self-evaluation and that is different from what I write here. I write here not knowing if anyone will read this. It’s been over two months now. The self-evaluation will be read by the inhuman resources directress Barbara Shorten and well as Schlomo the DKB. I am anxious to find out how they don’t understand much of anything I do or write.