I’m generally a happy person. My life is challenging, but I mostly get to do what I want, and I’m surrounded by good people. But find me on my commute and I get exceedingly crotchety and cranky. I don’t get violent, I become like Tommy Lee Jones in any movie that Tommy Lee Jones has ever starred in. And considering what a public transit commute is like in any big city, who can blame me? I keep to myself, I don’t jostle anyone, and I get home to my big, adorable, stupid cat, and everything is good again. 

There’s this thing, though, that I never noticed during my time served in New York, and that’s the singing. This usually happens at night, but it can pop up any time. Someone, of any age, with earpods in their ears, will start belting out, at the top of their lungs, and usually not very well, whatever they’re listening to. It’s loud enough to pierce through my podcast, and it drives me insane. It also puts me in a dilemma. I encourage self-expression, however you want to do it, from wearing colorful shoes to dancing on the sidewalk. This, though, is kind of awful. Even when the singer has talent, it’s kind of awful. I can’t maintain my bubble if someone keeps popping it with whatever the latest star has to say this month. There’s a reason playing music without headphones is illegal on the Metro.  

There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not about to tell a Metro agent about it, because what are they going to do about it? And even if they could, am I really the kind of person who wants to penalize someone for doing something that makes them happy? No, I’m not a Republican. The good news is, it doesn’t happen very often, maybe three times a month. It’s a temporary nuisance when it does happen. So I just suck it up and mutter under my breath. Joy is a challenge to come by, and they found it, even it’s just for the length of this track. 

Oh, now they’re singing the next song on the playlist? Goddammit! 

“How would you do it?” asks the woman who is showing me the ropes. “Why don’t you give it a try?” 

And so I return to my desk and spend a while coming up with a two-sentence blurb about our new podcast, featuring the phrase, “… a companion to the journal.” I send it back to her, and she says, “This is perfect, run it past the boss.” This is going to take a while. If I’ve learned anything these past five days, it’s that the boss is a reviser, almost pathologically so. Obviously it got her where it got her, so I have to keep that in mind, but I was prepared for some back-and-forth that would go on for hours.  

About forty-five minutes later, the boss props herself up on my desk and states, “Here’s the thing. It’s not a ‘companion.’ We need another word.” 

“Supplement?” I suggest. 

“No, it’s not a supplement either.” She then lists all of the reasons that the podcast doesn’t qualify as a supplement.  

“So what is it then?” I ask. 

She then proceeds to give me a perfect, literal definition of a companion podcast and concludes with, “See? Not a companion.” Since I couldn’t think of any other word, especially given her explanation, we agreed just to remove the offending phrase altogether. The rest of the blurb went in unmolested. 

I say this without irony or snark—I think I’m going to fall in love with this job. 

I had a job interview this morning, and unlike most job interviews, it was pretty clear what they thought of me as it went on. This is how it went: I was seen by one person who asked me questions and described the job. She went downstairs to get her boss. Fifteen minutes later, her boss sits down with my resume and says, for real, “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what you’re doing here.” She says that my editing background is solid and tells me all the ways this isn’t an editing job for about ten minutes before she lets me explain that I wasn’t there as an editor. She then brings me to her associate who is not sure he fully understands my jump from editing to administrative work. 

After they send me on my way, I call the recruiter who set up the interview and tell her how disappointed I am. Had they not seen my resume before calling me in? This was kind of a waste of my time. The recruiter told me to hold, her boss was on the line, and when she returned, she told me that was the job asking when I could start.  

It was quite the roller coaster this morning.