Flaunting My Inner White Trash-ness

Thanks to the retards who took out mortgages they would never be able to re-pay, and even bigger thanks to the retards who approved them, my bloke and I have joined the ranks of white trash in NYC. While I'm mildly miffed about the whole thing, there is a tiny part of me that is relieved to be able to bring my cheap, miserly ways out of the closet and into the bright light of day.

Here are some of the things I've always done that are now justifiable:

DOGGIE BAGS
My bloke just plain old gets embarrassed by this habit. Especially when I ask the very expensive restaurant waiters to wrap up my bloke's steak bones. He is not convinced that it is worth it for me to take his eaten dinner home as a gift for our cats.

CREATING RECIPES FOR ROTTEN FOOD
Honestly, the Swiss got it right: rotten cheese makes a delicious fondue. I usually try to hide from my bloke the fact that we are having stir-fry as a way to disguise the soft and runny onions. Sometimes he catches me in the act and then refuses to eat my concoctions, but most of the time I get away with it.

MAKING MY OWN CLEANING SUPPLIES
Trust me - ain't nothing you can't clean with vinegar, baking soda, salt, and/or water. This lost nugget of wisdom is Proctor & Gamble's biggest dirty secret.

GARBAGE PICKING
As far as my bloke is concerned, this is the one habit of mine that, had he known I engage in this activity, he never would have married me. The first time that he witnessed me trying to lug an old bureau out from under a few bags of leaky Hefty bags, his lips curled back in disgust and he spit out "WHAT are you doing?!?" After explaining to him that this was exactly what I was looking for to replace the crappy dresser we had, and could he please just pick up the other end and help me carry this home, he visibly drew back from me, turned abruptly, and left me there. I tried as hard as I could to get that beautiful thing home but in the end, I had to abandon it.

To this day, most Sundays will find me meandering up and down the streets between 23rd and 13th and between 5th and 7th Avenues (what I consider the perfect balance between high-end garbage and close-enough-to-lug-home), Garbage Shopping for that elusive perfect bureau. In the meantime, I have yet to actually purchase a granny cart (do you know how many people throw these things out for no visible reason?), plant pots (honestly, a little chip here and there is NOT a big deal), or -my personal favorite find- a barber chair.

Disney always gets the message wrong: Why Remember the Titans is false advertising

In my late twenties, when I got a new job managing both a helpdesk and a deskside support team, I was ready to kick ass and lead my teams to Harvard-case-study-worthy excellence. I knew I could do it - all you had to do was get them to work seamlessly together, like 2 parts of one whole. And to learn how to do that, all you had to do was watch Remember the Titans.

In the first couple of months, I had a big team meeting with both teams together. I had them sit mixed in together: helpdesk-deskside-helpdesk-deskside, just like Denzel Washington did when he got his football players to sit together black-white-black-white on the bus to football camp. It worked for Coach Boone when he was trying to integrate his football team, so of course it would work for me when trying to get my 2 teams together!

Shortly after my meeting, Human Resources informed me that someone had lodged a complaint about me treating them like children by telling them where to sit. Nevermind that the complaint was made by the same guy that fought (and won) my complaint against him by saying that when he fell asleep with his forehead on the phone, he was still doing his job: his job was to answer the phones, and if it rang, the ringing would wake him up...it still stung. Where was my Gary and Julius?

I'm not sure if it was that moment that I started hating my job, but it must've been close to it.

After that, little by little I've come to realize that it really didn't matter how the team felt. If they answered the phones and fixed people's desktops, then we were doing alright. No one had to love doing it - they just had to do it.

I would love to see Disney make a movie that got that message across. It was probably one of the best lessons I ever learned as a manager.

PS. I have to tie this back into the whole my-bloke-is-on-the-dole theme, so here goes.....
According to Disney, coaching football in a newly racially integrated high school is as easy as picking people's seats for them and having them call you Daddy. Sounds like fun, right? I think I'll suggest to my bloke that he research high school football coaching jobs in Zimbabwe. I think there's still plenty of racial tensions there. Oh, the possibilities....