An Ode to Bianca
Today was a near perfect autumnal equinox, with truly splendiferous WALKIES!!! weather, and the woofus enjoyed himself accordingly. Howsomever, today is the occasion for which I have long awaited: an opportunity to write an entry in praise of my boss.
The timing is actually quite crucial. You see, if I do it at a time when she is doing something nice for me, she might think that I am writing it only because I am grateful for that particular niceness and not out of general appreciation. So I kept waiting for a time when something particularly nice for me wasn’t in the works. This has proved to be impossible: no sooner is the refinance settled and done, but she’s offering to fly me to Hawaii for her wedding. But one can hardly say, “Stop being nice to me, Bianca, so I can post a blog in praise of you!” It sort of detracts from the purpose of the thing.
Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the business, there is a temporary staff shortage at the warehouse and it is necessary for me to pick up some duties that can be done remotely by computer. The possibility of a respite from kindness obviously being a spectre of my fevered imagination, I decided that being given extra work would have to do. After all, most people do not respond to being given extra duties with anthems of joy, so Bianca would be forced to conclude that I do appreciate her generally speaking. This is, of course, assuming that Bianca opts for logic in this case, which of course it’s possible she won’t, but I’m hoping that she’ll keep in mind that the being whose motivations are under speculation is me and therefore logic is the way to go.
I met Bianca back in the dawn of prehistory, back when I was working at the Awful Place and didn’t even know I was an Aspie—even before I had a woofus! We met on an electronic mailing list about collecting an item of mutual interest. Bianca was in the process of starting her first business, in which she would sell (among other things) this item of mutual interest. We chatted back and forth for some time about our collections and related topics. At one point my failing business loaned her starting business a little capital and we saw the best profit we saw the whole time we were afloat. Bianca and I did occasional business, we chatted electronically a great deal, we actually met a couple of times when she was in NYC and I went there to meet her, she moved to Japan, she offered immense emotional support during the crash and burn of my business. Then she started her next business and that started really taking off.
We didn’t chat as much during that period, but then Bianca was busy. Starting a business is busy and starting a successful business is busy, squared. We kept in touch, though. I adopted a woofus and attempted to be Super-Mom. My situation at the Awful Place continued to descend until I lost my job there, as Helen once put it, in circumstances that were possibly illegal and definitely brutal. Despite the demands of her growing business, Bianca was there for me.
The next seven months, during which I was unemployed, were rough. I did have a copyediting project that kept me going, but it was going to end, as were my unemployment benefits. I finally begged Bianca to give me a job.
It wasn’t really fair of me. She didn’t need a proofreader or a copyeditor in her business, and she had no way of knowing that I was competent to do anything else. It’s a notoriously bad idea to hire friends as employees. Her business was still in its development stages and she needed to hire staff to do positions she actually needed, not waste the funds on a friend who might prove to be only a liability. She gave me a job, though.
I won’t say I don’t do anything for the company; it’s just that I don’t think I do anything special. Any college kid with an eye for detail and a year of college Japanese could do better. I often think of a Roseanne episode in which Dan asks a neighbor moving back to Chicago what sort of job it is that the neighbor will be doing there and the neighbor answers, “It’s a son-in-law job.” I often think that I do a “friend job,” but I at least try to do it well. Unquestionably from my end it beats any job I’ve ever had: I can work at home, I don’t have to deal with the public, to a great degree I can make my own hours. Periodically Bianca makes raise noises, and I get a raise. We’re long past the point where I feel overpaid, especially now with the refinance that I talked about in my last post.
The job is really the tip of the iceberg, in a nearly literal sense. Like an iceberg, the majority of Bianca’s positive impact on my life is under the surface and goes deep. Of course, it’s a lot warmer than an iceberg, so there the metaphor has to end, but I can’t really cover all the ways that Bianca has been a great friend and a great boss. This is only a blog, after all. I’m not saying that we don’t ever get on each other’s nerves—Bianca’s a human and I’m an Aspie, and sometimes the internet isn’t big enough for the clash of neurologies. I know, though, that Bianca is not going to suddenly disappear on me. In fact, one of the things that keeps me from suddenly disappearing on the whole overstimulating, complicated world is the knowledge that Bianca needs me to not suddenly disappear.
Besides, I think I’m actually starting to enjoy myself. If so, though, that has a great deal to do with Bianca and her unending support.