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May 10, 2001
So I shouldn't bitchslap the customers, then?
I spent the first half of the day in a personnel workshop -- "Communication in Customer Service." About as much fun as it sounds. The whole thing could have been boiled down to one sentence: be nice to people, and they'll usually be nice to you. That's pretty much it. Instead, I walked for 45 minutes (always nice when they schedule the workshops in buildings miles away from the nearset T stop) got lost, arrived cranky and undercaffeinated, to sit in a conference room with a bunch of strangers, and do silly little exercises. "Everyone pair up, and sit back to back! Okay, we'll give one of you a picture, and you have to describe it so that your partner can draw it, without looking. It'll be fun, and you might learn something about communication!" Oh, Lord, kill me now... "Okay, take a ten-minute break, and when you come back, we'll do some roleplaying exercises!" And I will jam this pen into my eye... I left at the lunch break. I figured I could take my new customer-service knowledge out into the world by doing some shopping. See, I have a blind-date sort of thing tomorrow, and I've been on a fruitless search to find something decent to wear. Mostly, though, I've been trying to convince myself that I want to go -- it's not that I don't want to meet the guy, because I really do. Judging from his emails and the one phone conversation we've had, he's really cool. The problem is... well, I don't want him to see me. I had a long conversation with my mom about this last night (well, she talked, I sobbed into the phone incoherantly.) I have a really hard time believing that anyone would be attracted to me. I look in a mirror, and I honestly hate most of what I see. In fact, I try really hard to avoid looking in mirrors. Most days I can ignore it. On rare occasions, I think I'm okay looking. Very rare occasions. And I'm not fishing for compliments, here -- if I do get complimented, I generally assume the person is just trying to be nice, and doesn't mean a word of it. Or that they're making fun of me. I hate feeling like this -- I have for about as long as I can remember, and I know it's stupid. I mean, it's not like people faint in horror at the sight of me. Small children aren't frightened when I look at them. Mirrors don't crack when they catch my reflection. It's just... I don't see anything in me that anyone else would want. I can't see anything that would make someone daydream about me when I'm not around. I can't see anything that would draw someone to me. And I hate it, but it just won't go away.
Posted by Mary Ellen at May 10, 2001 05:16 PM