Le Work

Today marks the start of my third week here at the new job.  Technically.  The first week was only four days long, and the second was only one day, so even though it's the third week, it's only day number six.  But it's still probably high time I told you about what I'm doing, right?  Yeah, I thought so too.

I am the new E-Commerce Customer Service/Order Support Representative for CK Enterprises, which is fancy speak for "I process all of our online orders".  But I haven't been doing a lot of that, since our online store just launched today.  So far I've been doing a little bit of everything; reception, invoicing, order placement, invoicing, filing, invoicing, invoicing, creating pick slips for the warehouse, invoicing, and learning as much as I can about the company and its products.  Oh, and invoicing.  About the company and its products is probably the thing you care about most though.  (And even if it isn't, it's what I'm going to tell you about, so pretend it's what it is.)

CK Enterprises is the parent company of le top, a children's clothing manufacturer.  Le top (the brand) has three lines of children's clothing; le top, le top baby, and rabbitmoon.  Le top and le top baby are typical of what you think of when you think of children's clothing-- colourful, playful, and covered in embroidered ducks and ponies.  Rabbitmoon is much more contemporary-- bolder colours, interesting cuts, mismatched layers, and never, NEVER any ducks.  Rabbitmoon is the line that the business owner says is "what the trendy moms buy".  Which is hilarious to me.  So here's a pictorial example of the difference between le top and rabbitmoon.

Both outfits are adorable, but guess which one is the contemporary outfit that the trendy moms would buy.

In the past, le top has been a wholesaler, selling to high end retail stores (like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus) and independent boutique stores. Lately though, a lot of the boutique stores have had to close or severely cut back their inventory, so the company decided to open an online store to try to make up for the loss of sales from closed or limited boutiques.  Our online store had it's "soft launch" today, which means you could go buy adorable clothing from the store if you already knew the store's web address (or if you followed the link I just gave you), but you won't be able to access the store via the company's website until next week (or possibly the week after if something goes wrong this week) when the "hard launch" is scheduled.  The online store only has le top and le top baby though, the launch for rabbitmoon's online store isn't until August or September.

The work here is interesting, and actually pretty fun so far.  The people here are wonderful, and as I said before, there's more than one person here who I'm determined to befriend outside of work.  It's interesting and varied work, and it's giving me an opportunity to learn about the inner workings of business and how everything is connected; marketing, sales, packing/shipping, invoicing, etc.  And in some ways, I'm learning about fashion as well.  Not in the sense that I'm learning how to pair solids and patterns, but learning about why certain clothes are made from certain fabrics, what a denim weight is and how you chose one, etc. 

But you can't not notice that it's a company that produces children's items.  You can't escape it.  The website is designed in pastels, there are pictures of children all over the walls of the office, the first four things listed in the what the blog is about subtitle are "pregnancy, babies, kids, [and] parenting".  There's no denying that everything in this building is, at its heart, about kids.  There was especially no denying it last Friday, when we had our "Go See", which is where potential models go to the offices of the company for which they want to model.  Which in our case meant 97 children (and their parents, and their toys, and their snacks, and anything else they wanted to bring with them) lined our hallways all morning.  It was loud and stressful and it was hard to focus on work, but at the same time it was also a lot of fun and the kids were all so cute.

Working here simultaneously stirs a desire to have kids and reinforces my desire to NEVER have them.  Which desire will win in the end?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.  But for now, the work is interesting and the atmosphere certainly provides food for thought.

Um, srsly?

So after all of my panicking about getting the audition announcement done by the July 1 deadline, and working on it at lunch day before yesterday and yesterday morning, so that I could email it to T before lunch....  I get a call from T yesterday morning (almost immediately after I hit the send button) wherein he tells me that we're not doing Blue Door anymore.  It's being postponed in favor of doing Fences.  This is of course after we agreed to do A Raisin in the Sun before Blue Door, and then he changed his mind because he didn't want to wait for the confirmation of the show dates and started looking at the possibility of doing Fences at the same time as Blue Door.

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/sigh. 

I suppose I should be used to T chaning his mind by now.  And it's not like we're never going to do Blue Door, so it's not as if all of my work up to this point has been in vain.  And since we're not doing Blue Door, there won't be any overlap between Fences and Blue Door and between Blue Door and The Wiz, which is dobuly nice because it means I'll only be working two shows at once instead of three.  And since Fences is being put on by a company other than T's and will be performed in a theatre other than the one he typically uses, it will look better on my resume.  And Fences will probably have a larger pull than Blue Door will, plus it's a different city, so there's a lot more opportunity to promote The Wiz.  It's a cut in my stage management stipend (read "cut" as "MASSIVE cut"), but now that I'm working full time again, that's not as much of an issue as it would have been otherwise.  Overall it's probably a good thing... but... I just get so frustrated with T sometimes that he changes his mind so often.  I love him, I do.  But sometimes I think the spirit that leads him is lost and wandering.

Mah Legs

There are few things in the world that I enjoy more than the way my legs feel when they're freshly shaven*.  Well, that's a lie.  There's actually a lot of things that I enjoy more.  If I'd been stranded on a desert island for six weeks and a rescue boat motored up to me and asked if I'd rather have a Red Robin Chicken Burger (no pickle, no bacon**, avocado instead of guacamole) with bottomless fries and lemonade or if I'd rather have shave gel and a fresh razor, I'm pretty sure I'm taking the Red Robin.  But that doesn't mean that the feeling of freshly shaven legs isn't amazing.  Because it is.  It's amazing.

I love the way my legs feel when they've just been shaved.  And it almost doesn't matter what the weather is like; if I have newly shaven legs, I'm wearing a skirt or a dress or shorts.  If my legs got shaveded in the last 10 hours, I'm showing them off.  Which I think is pretty standard for most women (and the occassional man who is into shaving), especially if they're like me and have a tendency to go several weeks between shavings if they think they can get away with it.

But here's where I think I differ from most women (and the occassional man who is into shaving); if my legs are freshly shaven and I'm wearing a skirt/dress/shorts/whathaveyou, it's because I want you too to appreciate how nice my legs feel.  I want someone to touch my legs and admire their softness.  Admire their hairlessness.  Ooh and aah over how wonderful they are.  I want you to do it.  Because if you don't notice how nice they feel, what's the point of even bothering to shave?

You see, I have have very light, very fine hair on my legs.  I can get away with wearing a skirt/dress/shorts without having shaved for a week or two.  I can get away with it, but I don't like to.  Because it feels like I'm getting away with something.  I get this strange almost guilty feeling in my gut when I wear a skirt/dress/shorts when I know that my legs aren't touchably soft and smooth.  Which is just weird, I know.  But the flip side to that is that if I shave my legs and wear leg-showing clothing and no one touches my legs and admires them, I get annoyed.  Like, a lot annoyed.  Unreasonably annoyed.  Because I put a lot of effort into making my legs soft and smooth and touchable, world.  And if you don't appreciate my efforts.... well that's just mean.

Now I know that you can't reach through the computer and appreciate the silkiness of my legs right now, so I won't expect you to coo over my legs right now.  I'll just let you know; if you ever see me in a skirt/dress/legs, I fully expect you to run your hands over my calves and tell me that they feel nice.  Because if you don't... I don't want to issue any threats, but if you don't, I may stop shaving my legs altogether.  And then if you ever do try to feel my silky smooth legs when I wear a skirt/dress/shorts, my almost invisble leg hair will be all prickly and not-smooth.  You'll be upset, understandably.  But it will all have been your fault.



*What is the difference between shaven and shaved?  I'm using shaven as an adjective and shaved as the past tense form of the verb.  I think that's the right way to do it, but I'm not positive.  Does anyone know the answer or feel like doing the reasearch for me while I'm at work?

**Yes, no bacon.  I realize that this makes me a blasphemer to every food lover ever.  I know.  I just don't like it.  Don't like the taste, don't like the texture.  I just don't like it.  No, you cannot make me bacon, or food with bacon in it, or bacon flavored anything in an attempt to somehow prove to me that bacon is the be-all, end-all food.  Stop trying to make me like bacon, world.  I don't.  I'm sorry.  I wish I could live up to your bacon-lover standards, but I can't.  I'm sorry.