Done With Week 2

Week two is over. 4 more days to go. 

People started taking me out to lunch last week to say goodbye. I got to go to Din Tai Fung, that Shanghai soup dumpling place that takes 90 minutes to get into. The food was amazing, contrary to what the stupid Stranger has to say. 

The next day I got taken to Oh India, a southern Indian buffet. That was good too. 

This next week will be two more lunches and a little goodbye party.  I am going to cry and make a fool of myself at all of them.  Its been 4 years and 8 months since I came to the airplane factory. This is a big change for me and I am freaked out. 

The younger people who work for me keep asking if I have words of wisdom, like if I should tell people if they should stay or if they should go. I am being very adult and politically correct and mostly skirting the issue. I have nothing against the airplane factory, mostly. I do tell people that I have always felt that I have not fit in here. What I don’t tell them is why. I do have a list:

• Support of torture under the Bush administration.

• Plan to build a wall to keep out Mexicans.

• People asking me where I go to church.

• People asking me what my wife’s name is.
• Driving to Everett, Bellevue, Renton, Tukwila, Auburn.

• And of course working for fuckwit karaoke sining boss Rasputin.

The torture and racism are very hard to swallow, and have really bugged me since I found out, but to be honest with myself I would have given this current job a year if the Foundation had not popped up. 

It has always been weird to see people wearing crucifixes around their necks at work.  There is a law against this in Seattle.

The driving is hard and as you know I don’t like to leave the 206 area code unless I am on an airplane, flying First Class. But that is not the main thing either.

OK, here it is. The main thing.  I am a Seattleite.

I am snotty, arrogant, fully of myself, judgmental, liberal, artsy, and pretentious. Mostly all I think about all day is cooking, traveling, drinking, buying furniture, internet porn, shoes, cool music, and NPR. I do not care about your fucking children, your church, your wives (or husbands), or your where you went to high school.

Yes, I am a caricature of myself.

If you look at the suburban ring around the city that I have had to travel near for this job there are nearly 3,600,000 people out there who do not live in Seattle proper. Many work for the airplane factory. To quote Sandra Bernhard quoting Theresa Heinz Kerry, “I never wanted to be a part of it.” I am sorry, but have you seen the shoes these people wear?

Here is a great example. On Thursday I was eating dumplings with these two kids who work for me. One of them moved here from Costa Rica via the Bay Area last year. At lunch it came up that he "has never been to Seattle". He said he had heard that there were no good restaurants and that is was dangerous. I accidentally inhaled my soup dumpling. It went into my left lung intact and then squirted its super hot soupy contents into my superior bronchi as I gasped in horror. Not at the pain, no, but the fact that this seemingly smart, talented, funny kid has not driven the 8 miles over the bridge to the real world. 


That sums up my time at the airplane factory. I am not like these people. I have had great opportunity, been paid well, made some friends, had some terrible bosses, but in the end, I do not fit in.

I am going to miss some people a lot, but this is the right thing to do. 

However...I am somewhat concerned about what will happen when the people at the Foundation find out I hate poor people....

 

More later.....

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