Cast of Co-Workers Part 2: The Terribly Ridiculous

Welcome to Part 2 of our rundown. (Here’s Part 1 in case you missed it). We started realizing pretty quickly that in the interest of giving you brief but thorough snapshots of our crew, we were going to have to divide and conquer. You got the good news yesterday, now on to the rest! These are the people that have us furiously texting each other in the middle of the morning, and gossiping all lunch break, and making us sigh with relief that the day is over. At best, they’re amusing. At worst, they make it really hard for us to do our jobs. You’ll see them featured most prominently in “Overheard in the Office”. Unsurprisingly, they tend to say some of the most ridiculous things we’ve heard someone utter with a straight face.

Spent Supervisor spends her days browsing celebrity tabloids and shopping online, and doesn’t expect much more effort from her employees. Great boss, or greatest boss? The problem is, at the end of the day, the employees are still out on the front lines exposed to the general public more than is really good for anyone. And Spent Supervisor has a nasty habit of waiting until the danger has passed and an ugly confrontation is over before poking out her head and adopting a concerned tone to make sure everyone is okay.  She’ll pretend to be your best friend, until she needs another scapegoat to save her own ass.

Nope.

No Boundaries is perhaps simultaneously the most frightening and most entertaining person either of us have ever encountered. Earning their title by giving every new hire the rundown of their family’s medical history, heritage, and religious viewpoint within minutes of introduction, it only goes downhill from there. We know that reading about No Boundaries might stretch our credibility to its utmost. You might be tempted to write off coverage of our conversations with a “No, they made that up. Pretty funny, guys, but no person would ever REALLY say that” Before Paul got hired, he thought Anya was exaggerating. Now all of his friends think he is exaggerating. It’s real! We promise. No matter how much we all wish it wasn’t, it’s real.  In fact, so real that we won’t assign any pronouns for fear of a (frivolous) lawsuit. All we’re saying is, it’s not libel if it’s true.

Next we have our That Guy, the resident delusional blockhead.  He’s got something to say to everybody and none of it’s necessary.  Go ahead and try to tell him that his attempts to bump elbows with his boss and “complement” Anya’s comely figure are unwanted.  Maybe there was a point in his youth when he was good at conversing with others and had other things to offer, but middle age has not been kind to his body, hairline, or charisma.  The fact that his wife and kids probably find him as ridiculous as we do might elicit sympathy from us, if he didn’t act like such a stupid boob in every single one of his interactions.

There’s also the mostly-harmless Faded Hippie.  Nobody (aside from some silent HR worker) knows exactly how old she is or how long she’s been with the organization.  She still maintains the same styles of clothing and hair from her wild younger years, and despite some kind of religious conversion during the Reagan administration, you can still find her meditating outside on sunny summer days.  Faded Hippie has deemed herself our unofficial goodwill ambassador.  She has taken it upon herself to make sure every visitor and volunteer at our building feels welcome, and is more than willing to put aside all of the projects she’s supposed to be working on to spend her entire afternoon doing so.  Interestingly enough, she is also the first one to comment when anybody else is five minutes late returning from their lunch break.

Picture this, but without any of the qualities that make it look relaxing or desirable.

Finally, we have someone fairly new to the scene, Overzealous Hire.  She flew into the office brimming with ideas and confidence, ready to implement some much-needed changes throughout the building.  However, her methods have been somewhat lax in a little something called tact, the presence of which has been known to greatly improve workplace relations everywhere.  This has won her very few fans at work, something that she is both unaware of and unconcerned with.  While you might think that her crudeness would be something we’d admire, she has yet to prove that any of her “revolutionary” ideas are actually good.  It also doesn’t help that she can be annoying as hell, dropping travel tales, wardrobe values, extreme sporting experiences, and dating woes at inappropriate places in every conversation. She provokes a LOT of this:

Goddamnit, Edith, stop acting like you have real ideas.

Sometimes we think our faces are going to get stuck that way. Not that I’d mind being stuck in Mary Crawley’s life/attitude/body...although we did skip the last two and a half minutes of the very last episode. Remember what I said about my psychic powers and talking through movies? Yeah.

Welcome to the major players in our work lives.

Cast of Co-Workers Part 1: The Great

If you asked a couple what cements their bond most strongly, you’d probably be hoping to hear something like “honest and effective communication” or “the little things we do for each other” or “true love”. Save it, kids! Realistically, in a decade or so, they’re probably saying “our kids” or “our shared debt” or “divorce is fucking expensive”. Luckily, we’re not a couple, so we don’t have those problems. In fact, we should really offer marriage counseling based solely on the fact that we’re so good at staying happily faithful in our sexless soulmate-ship. Some of you are probably getting really defensive about just how *sexy* and *exciting* your marriage still is after all these years. Fan-fucking-tastic for you, but our platonic bonds are too unshakeable to buy into the superiority of fucking your emotional confidante. I would say we’re firmly in the camp of “When/if you ever get married, I’ll probably have to be your live-in personal assistant/butler/pool boy/bartender because how would we ever go without one another?”. It’s a camp of two. It’s called Camp Codependency.

It almost looks exactly like this.

Basically, if you asked us “Hey friends, what cements your mind meld bond the most? What keeps you two united so strongly?” It would have to be our complete lack of faith in humanity. And our hatred of Meredith Blake, obviously. Before you start thinking that’s really sad, read on! Maybe you’ll understand when you’re introduced to the people we’re surrounded by on a daily basis. Some great, some terrible, all so ridiculous you’ll think we’re embellishing when we’re not.

We think it’s about time we shared the denizens of our office with you, and perhaps of our wider world. We’ll start with Part 1: The Great, to take the edge off that sad intro and show you that sometimes we actually do enjoy other people. The following descriptions are the closest thing to positivity you’ll probably ever get on this blog, so soak it all in and have some context with your morning coffee:

The best and brightest shining star of all is our Soul Sister. She worked on and off with us for a few glorious months (the Golden Age, if you will), before moving on to more exciting pastures. A passionate lover of history and handwriting, she’s the best roommate Anya could have asked for, and the best trainer Paul could have ended up with. Sharing our passion for Netflix, Mary Poppins, and Downton Abbey, Soul Sister is a witty companion and crafter of truly impressive correspondence. We have spent many an eight hour work day researching topics like the fate of the Romanov family, serial killer H. H. Holmes, and lucid dreaming, while waxing nostalgic for the days of the Victorians. Doesn’t hurt that this is her doppelganger:

She even has the pen!

Sadly, our next great co-worker is also a Ghost of Office Past. Another crucial part of the Golden Age, Married Guy was a force for good in all our lives. For one thing, he showed Anya the secret location of the Diet Cherry Coke. For another, he’s hilarious, a great sidekick for detective work, and devoted companion on quests of various sorts, and a fantastic tour guide. If he were the First Man (Lord? Husband of the first female president), his project would be bringing back Edwardian manners. A gem.

Spacey Secretary is literally the nicest woman either of us have ever met in our lives. She does her job, and she does it well, every day. She comes to work regularly. She never bothers either of us, she is a delightful, if very vanilla, conversationalist. She is a fountain of consideration and politeness. So basically, she’s very unusual. Identifying features include her love of Cat Fancy magazine and the fact that her head is in the clouds 100 percent of the time. Probably the only way she has made it in this office for so many years and is still not only doing her job, but is universally beloved.

This one's for you, girlfriend.

Frazzled Feminist is always on the verge of getting it together, but also of having a nervous breakdown.  She’s one of our most decent co-workers, but she is not without her faults.  Because we did not know her pre-baby, we can only trust her own account of her past stability, but lady has been having a rough time since the birth of her daughter, and the fact that everyone around her treats her like a little girl isn’t helping (including her mother-in-law, carpenters, older co-workers, and strangers trying to procure her services via letters).  We’re completely behind Frazzled Feminist’s impassioned speeches about the injustices she suffers from these people, but her inability to come to work (on-time and period) and occasional bouts of vertigo do a bit of damage to her powerful self-image.

Her vertigo is much more graceful than this, thank god.

So there you have it! We hope you'll be grateful for this handy little guide in the weeks to come, especially with "Overheard in the Office", a weekly feature we trust you'll find amusing as long as you're not the Big Boss of our organization. And if you are, sorry to break it to you this way? 

Stay tuned for Part 2: The Terribly Ridiculous!

What is Mind Meld?

Not quite like that.

Any blog needs an introduction, right? Like we should probably pretend to give you some information about ourselves, so that you’ll be invested in our lives. Or we could describe which niche we fit into, so you feel comfortable knowing that you’ll be getting lots of confirmation bias if you stay tuned, like Mormon-mommy-blogger-who-homeschools-and-never-feeds-her-precious-
spawn-processed-foods or frazzled-but-adorable-recently-married-and baby-hungry-hair-stylist or self-indulgent-undergrad-studying-abroad. Sorry, nope.

We’re going to describe YOU first, because we’re less the type of people who will be what you’re looking for, and more the type of people who will make you realize WE were what YOU were looking for all along but didn’t know it. Clever, right?

You probably don’t mind excessive profanity. You’re probably about as gainfully employed as we are (minimally). You’re intrigued by anecdotal history. You recognize that one cannot be both a dog person and a cat person. You aren’t going to lose your shit if (let’s be honest, when) we use the word “slut”. Hopefully your temper isn’t at short as Anya’s (it’s my cross to bear). Hopefully you’re a fan of ridiculously long, convoluted, and freakishly accurate analogies, as Paul is awfully fond of them. Luckily you don’t mind our widespread use of parentheses. Perhaps you’ll say “my, they have style!”. Perhaps you’ve been searching for a pair of people that are conversant on both the Sound of Music and Walking Dead, The Real Housewives and Game of Thrones, whose tastes run the gamut from the Kardashians to the Kareninas. Here we are! Here you are! If you’re none of those things, but you like pictures of corgis and witticisms, we can try that too.

Welcome.

You may call us Anya and Paul.  We are but two contrary travelers, sharing the same vessel through this winding journey we call life. (Sorry our first analogy is so heavy handed. We promise they’ll get much weirder and more difficult to follow) We’re also going to acknowledge that there are occasionally some potentially alarming holes in these analogies, but good luck trying to convince Paul of them.  Just keep playing along with us, it will probably be worth it in the end.

ANYWAY, Let’s say this vessel is a train. So, we’re all on this life train (we, meaning man/womankind). Ok, but maybe not all of us are on a train.

Some people are probably in planes, nevermind the fact that the service, food, company, and overall experience are pretty much guaranteed to be complete shit, they’re fast and that’s important, right? Those people are going places. There are probably others on cruise ships, enjoying the mediocre entertainment and canned food as they drift across the sea. These people are going to places that are made to look exactly like the place they just left, if a few degrees warmer. Same language, same food, whiter sand. But they like to say they have been places.  Then we have the walkers and runners and bikers, all great, active, alternative transportation methods, but not exactly feasible for long-distance trekking. These people are going nowhere fast. Don’t even get us started on horse people. Most are in automobiles, not caring that they’re trapped in rush-hour traffic, because they are in the drivers’ seats, wheel in hand, and are completely in control of their own lives. They have got it. Yes, we warned you were fucking judgmental. (Didn’t we? We are.)

Anyway, we’re on a train.  Trains belong to another era, but they certainly have not outlived their usefulness.  They’re powerful machines with a clear destination, while maintaining the option to get off at different stops along the way.  It might not be the quickest means of travel, but it’s efficient, romantic, and always carries the (remote) possibility of a murder mystery.  On this train, everyone has their own cabin.  Maybe you wander out to the dining car for a light dinner with a few other train travelers, maybe even the same group of travelers, but you must eventually return to your own cabin.  Alone.

The approximate level of glamour and intrigue of the train.

So, there we are, on this train.  And one day we found ourselves at the same table, enjoying lemon squares and tea (not an analogy, we fucking love lemon squares).  Our union started out with the basics: hypothesizing every minor plot point of Star Wars: Episode III (ah, for the days before Hayden Christensen was hired to overact our dreams into the ground), sobbing over the end of The Amber Spyglass, and acting out our own darkly comic versions of Harry Potter.  We would go on to spend many an afternoon turned evening singing praises of the finest Crawley sister (Lady Mary, obviously) and rolling our eyes at the most self-indulgent and delusional Kardashian (Try as they may, nobody can touch Kiki, did you see that Dragon Boat Race? Classic.).  One night, after scathingly mocking drinkers of kombucha tea (while making plans to try/brew our own), we returned to the same cabin.  We couldn’t tell you how it happened exactly, but we both made comfortable nests in this new joint space. It was a Mind Meld if there’s ever been one.

So, dear reader, here we are. Two bodies, sharing the same cabin on this train.  The cabin here is of course the mind, which we again didn’t need to tell you, but this post is supposed to be a missions statement (a convoluted, multi-paragraph mission statement) and you’re supposed to spell things out in those, right?  Regardless, we are essentially one unit carrying two different sets of experiences.  Do we occasionally differ on opinions?  Of course. One of us hates Jennifer Aniston, the other hates Jennifer Lawrence. Sometimes we’re purposely difficult to each other because we both love the Secret Garden and fail to see “contrary” as a character flaw. But at the end of the day, more often than not when Paul starts asking “But isn’t-” and Anya says “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona”, she’s answering the question she didn’t even let him finish.

We are completely in unison on all important topics, most of which stems from our eternal philosophy that people are completely terrible. Sorry, Anne Frank, we tried. We are of the opinion that if you give a mouse the benefit of the doubt, you’ll sorely regret it (unlike giving a moose a muffin). Yet we’re still somehow holding out that someday, someone will not be a disappointment (ha, right?). Despite this, or perhaps because of this, we are hilarious, poignant, and extremely judgmental, which is great for you, dear reader, because that means plenty-o-entertainment for you.  For you, we’re going to take a page out of Carrie Fisher’s book and use her "if my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable,” motto.  Please don’t mistake this for genuine cheer; we still have far too many incidents involving crying over Folger’s commercials and Dance Moms season finales to be real people. Isn’t it scary that there are two of us?

“Help me, Liz Lemon, you’re my only hope!”

 [Carrie Fisher Photo Credit: Cylla von Tiedemann]