Diana Dares

Foiling Chicanery with Boundless Intelligence, Fashionable Outfits, Moxie, and One Sporty Blue Roadster.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

...and the Wisdom of the Irascible Irish

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fuck yourself." Dignam, The Departed

Fantastic line. Fantastic part. Pretty fantastic movie. It's a great ride, but Mark Wahlberg steals every scene; it doesn't hurt that he gets the best lines in a movie full of quotable bits.

The point is: I can learn a lot from Dignam. I plan to answer all questions posed to me at work with that reply.

It's so frustrating. There's a lot of workplace making-nice gestures that are simply givens in Hollywood. They may be of questionable sincerity, but they are pro forma. These include birthdays. Everyone makes sure to send fruit baskets and cards, flowers and wine, whatever; they sing songs and hire bands and present cakes.

Recently there has been a rash of them at work. It's become a little bit difficult politically, because people have begun comparing the amount of attention and money spent on each other. Which, let me tell ya, does not make me yearn to celebrate the ingrates' birthdays.

Now, as an overworked, exhausted showrunner who's worrying about the cut for the 7th episode and the Act 3 out for the 9th episode and the outline revision for the 10th episode, there is NOTHING on earth he could possibly care less about than these little birthday celebrations.

And yet...every once in a while he weighs in vehemently and vetoes something and forces the details to all change. So while I would happily not bother him with any of it, for that reason and because it's his money, I try to keep him updated. I know he's at his wits' end with it, so I try to limit the number of times I bother him, but when I discovered that it was one of his colleagues birthday today, I thought I should give him a heads-up. Better for me to tell him and him not to care than for me to not mention it and find out later that it was a huge deal.

I told him. He stared at me and for a moment I feared that this very nice man was going to choke a bitch. And that the bitch would be me. Instead he shook his head and told me to get therapy. He said I was unreasonably attached to birthday celebrations, shook his head at me again, and walked off.

I stared back open-mouthed and outraged. I can't fully express how much I have loathed these birthday details and how little I care whether we order the tuna rolls or the artichoke dip for the special luncheons. This month of birthdays and its constantly shifting logistics have been a blight on my existence. And now he thinks I'm the one who wants to do all this?! And now I'm going to have the rep as the weirdly-obsessed-with-birthdays assistant?

So from now on, rather than keeping my employer up to date on details which he clearly wishes to know nothing about, I will respond with the wisdom of Dignam:

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fuck yourself.

Works in every situation.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

....and the Case of the Idiotic Illustration

Okay, so last week was pretty rough, but things here are slowly getting better. The situation -- and certain people specifically -- may not be as bad as I once thought they were. So I can relax and stop being Sandra Bernhard, but I also want to use this experience to remind me not to relax completely. I can't speak my mind as freely as I do to my friends or family. I can keep my opinions to myself.
Basically, I simply need keep my big mouth shut.

Discretion is a hard thing to learn. I'm not being facetious. Keeping a constant flow of information from one office to approximately fifteen different parties is my basic job description, but at any point in time, all those people need different versions of the information, but still enough of the basic information to be on the same page. Knowing who should know what and who doesn't need to know what is a difficult thing to stay on top of.

(pause)

Ironically, my boss just walked up behind me and saw me writing this. Sigh. So, my failure re: the subject of paragraph two may have just reversed the subject of paragraph one.

I should go.