The circuit breaker and gossip in the workplace

 

I asked for a dream, and I got it. Since I wasn't specific, however, I got the monkey paw version, an embarrassing dream which I am having the most difficult time finding choice words to describe, exactly. OK, I'll just come out and say it: 

I dreamed I was at a party with a bunch of football jocks. I must have been the mascot or something, because I didn't quite fit in with the white and green jerseyed oafs that were running around with their red Solo beer cups, doing their homoerotic alpha dominance rituals. But that didn't mean I didn't want to take part. I did. I wanted to in the worst way. I wanted to get dogpiled, tag-teamed, spit-roasted and all that other nasty stuff, but no one would have me. 

Hmm. So, that's what's been lurking around in my subconscious while I've been dreamless these last few weeks? 

I woke up in the middle of that dream because I had to pee. Thank God, I thought to myself. Maybe I could just go back to sleep and just forget the whole dream. It's not fun for me to relate dreams in which I am exploring this side of the sexual spectrum. My binary switch may flip occasionally, like a circuit breaker, but its primary resting position has always been straight. At least, that's what I tell my friends. 

It doesn't bother me in the least that my breaker might trip occasionally. And when that happens, I just might enjoy it, just like some people might like it when the power goes out for a spell, since it gives them the opportunity to light candles and do old-timey campout things like tell ghost stories or sit around playing Kumbaya on the acoustic guitar. Might as well just go with it, right? But when the lights come back on, it's back to the life we know and are accustomed to, the 21st century life of devices and digital everything. 

But is one orientation really any better than the other? Some people's switches are just wired differently. While some people are hard-wired DC with a single polarity, where red is always positive, and black is always negative, others have alternating current. Things have changed in the last 50 years, and more people are becoming aware of their own and other's limitless options in the area of self-definition. The big switch has been flipped for all of society, and now it is a protected and sacred right to identify as gay, bi, non-binary, gender-fluid, trans or anywhere on the spectrum that one chooses (pedophiles and beastialists excluded). 

As an unbeliever in most formal world views and belief systems, I tend to rebel against labels. Right and wrong are subjective and situational, at best. Sure, sometimes the situation is that you are a human being on planet earth, and this is just how we do things down here. Rules apply within certain contexts. But even universal rules only apply within the confines of this universe. What about all those multi-dimensional other-verses out there? Different rules may apply in the pink Jello-verse.

Anyway, I did go back to sleep, and I had another dream. It was a typical back-to-work dream. I was at YC Honda, and it was extremely slow due to the lack of new cars available to the dealerships. As in real life, the pandemic had created a supply-chain breakdown, and new cars were not able to be shipped because they lacked some critical electronic components, back-ordered at the factory level. 

I was wandering around the empty sales lot, trying to remain unobtrusive. Sales staff were being cut because of the lack of available cars to sell. As a mechanic, there were still cars to work on, but not so many as there had been when new cars were selling. Independent shops thrive in situations like this, since people tend to abandon dealerships once their new car warranty expires. But no new cars meant no trade-ins to fix up for resale, and the whole operation was grinding slowly to a stop.

I found myself in the empty showroom. A pot of coffee was lying abandoned on the low industrial pile carpet in the middle of the sales floor. I walked over to it and felt the warm glass. Just about the right temperature to drink if one didn't add any cream or sugar. I thought about pouring myself a cup, but I decided that the responsible thing to do would be to pour it out and make a fresh pot. Who knows the backstory of a pot of floor coffee, right?

I went to the sink to pour it out, and I encountered one of the female office staff. We chatted for a bit about another female co-worker. The gossip was just getting good when I noticed that the person we were talking about was right there behind the sink. I swear she must have been a chameleon. She was wearing clothing that was identical to the drapery, and she looked pretty much like a wall with eyes.

"So, this is what you say about me when I'm not around," said the talking drapery.

"Wow, Bertha. I didn't know it was you. Your red velvet dress matches the curtains perfectly." I tried to sidestep the accusation with a compliment of sorts.

"Nothing you wouldn't say to my face, though, right?" She knew my playbook and was using it against me. 

I do often claim that I only say things behind a person's back that I would say to their face, but the in-person version usually requires a lot of preliminary context building to make it sound less gossipy and mean. "Well, uh, what I'm trying to say--and I mean this in the nicest of all possible ways--etc, etc." I sometimes have to practice my justifications in advance, just to make sure I won't get caught unprepared, like it seemed I was in this situation.

I didn't remember what I'd actually said, which made it worse. Gossips that can't even keep their stories straight are the worst. At any rate, it wasn't a big deal in this case. Bertha was OK within herself, and no amount of office trash talk was going to make her self-conscious. She was just having a laugh at our expense.

My ears perked up when I overheard a group of millennials in the lounge talking about something that happened in the 80s. What did these kids know about the 80s, I thought to myself. I grew up in the 80s, and some of these kids weren't even alive back then. Apparently, I thought the words using my mouth and vocal chords, and the entire room turned as one and looked at me.

"OK, so educate us, Mr. History," said one plucky twenty-something girl, snarkily.

"Well, I can remember where I was when the Challenger blew up," I offered weakly. I really hadn't prepared a lecture on the watershed societal changes that had taken place in my lifetime.

"What's a Challenger?" someone vocalized the consensus ignorance that pervaded the room.

I had no response. The dream was winding to a close. I remembered that there was a red Corvette on the lot, and I wanted to take it for a test drive. I was mulling over just how I would manage to take it off the lot for a quick spin when I woke up.