a blog for the beleaguered
“I make a lot of money, but I don’t want to talk about that. I work very hard and I’m worth every cent.”
Really? Want to talk about hard work, Naomi? I’ll give you a hint. It involves continuing to put up with a horrible rich woman’s diva behavior every day despite the threat of a cell phone being thrown at you.
Context: Kirk and Luanne (Milhouse’s parents) get divorced, and Kirk thus loses his job at the cracker factory owned by Luanne’s family.
Kirk: You’re letting me go?
Cracker Factory Executive: Kirk, crackers are a family food, happy families. Maybe single people eat crackers, we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we can do without.
Kirk: So, that’s it after 20 years? “So long. Good luck?”
Cracker Factory Executive: I don’t recall saying “good luck.”
sta reader is drunk at wrok
–Thanks to STA reader “S.L.” for spotting
Although this interview on Beliefnet is ostensibly about his new film The Music Within, it seems no reporter can talk to Ron Livingston without asking about his role as Peter in Office Space, the movie that launched a thousand disgruntled workers. Here’s what he had to say (interviewer’s question in bold):
I’m a firm believer in leaving the past in the past, but I have to ask about “Office Space.” Why do you think that film still resonates with so many people?
I think the fundamental story of that movie, which is about people trying to find where they fit in life, is just something everybody connects to. And the fact that [director] Mike Judge took it upon himself to make a movie about that without really trying to force a solution down everyone’s throat, and that he could do it in a lighthearted way, makes that movie still relevant to people. They just seem to like it.
We love you, Ron. Call us! Anyone who dumps Carrie Bradshaw on a Post-It will always be tops in our book.
“If you don’t like your job you don’t strike, you just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”
–Homer Simpson
“I really love having money, because it lets me be lazy. Work is overrated.”– Charlotte Church
As easy as it is to make fun of this comment, work is overrated, and any person who reads this site and says if they had a bajillion dollars they wouldn’t quit their job is lying.
Miss Ugly Betty herself, America Ferrera, had this to say in Star magazine (UK edition) when asked if her character was an exaggeration of an assistant:
“If you work in this industry, some of our plot lines aren’t as far-fetched as they seem. A lot of people in the film and television industry treat their assistants even worse than in this show.”
Um, word.
Have you guys seen the show The Fashionista Diaries? Neither of us had seen it, but the advertising image made us imagine Che Guevara rolling in his grave.
Thanks to Radar, we figured out what we (weren’t) missing. Enjoy this liberating quote from one of the show’s interns:
“It’s tough, because they’re making us work, like, long hours, and we have to answer to people,” laments Helene, a slender 24-year old brunette. “Plus, we all worked so hard to get to the top of our fields. Having to do this stuff is like starting over.”
Way to go, Helene! It’s clueless, entitled interns/assistants like you who give the rest of us a bad name. Hope you had a great Labor Day.
We came upon this quote today from poet Khalil Gibran: “Work is love made visible.”
To which we say: “Really? Really?”
Here’s the thing, Khalil. You lived in a world that didn’t know fax machines, the term ‘human resources,’ or video conference calls with the Tokyo office. Back then, ‘work’ had a purer meaning. It was cooking or boat-building or, hell, writing poetry. I’ve never been one of those people who thinks everything was better back in the olden days (because I really enjoy feminism, the internets, and other such modern conveniences), but the meaning of the word ‘work’ has totally changed since you were alive. There’s a reason that artists call what they do their work: because it is spiritually and emotionally meaningful to them. Otherwise, that definition of ‘work’ has largely fallen away.
I’d like to counter with another quote, this one from the philosopher Bertrand Russell: “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” Tape that above your boss’ desk.
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