Do You Dislike People?

Then come and work at NYU's dining halls and health center. That's right, if you hate talking to, interacting with, helping, or simply seeing other people, then these positions are perfect for you. Allow me to elucidate.

I'll start with the dining halls, as I have less of a bone to pick with them, but a bone nonetheless (insert appropriate sexual innuendo here). I live at the Palladium, which amongst it's numerous other features (a career center that I have not visited since fall and a gym that I never use) features a dining hall. There are 12 residential floors in the building with about 25 rooms apiece, most of which house 4 students each. Suffice to say, there are a lot of people in this building which means the dining hall is always crowded. This of course means that the employees there (with the exception of one cool guy who can knock off 10 people in about 2 minutes) prepare and serve the food one person at a time. This is in addition to barely ever paying attention to requests (because asking them to not put onions on your sandwich is an affront to them and you must be made to pay for it), maintaining a gruff and shouty demeanor, and essentially treating you like shit scraped from their boots for asking them to do their fucking job and get you your food. If food preparation is not your thing, you can be the official swipe nazi, ensuring that only people who have swiped meals are allowed to even look at the dining area (which is a completely separate room from where you acquire the food). This means that if you have a friend who doesn't have a meal plan (about half of the people in my group) it will cost you an extra meal for them to sit with you. Not even take the food. Just to sit down at a table. As if, given the choice between their own good food and the dining hall, somebody would knock over the dining hall for all it's worth. There's nothing I love more than burnt burgers, powdered eggs, and quite possibly the shittiest, driest sandwiches I have ever consumed.

Now onward for those of you so misanthropic that even sighting another human being makes your stomach turn: The NYU Health Center. If you make an appointment, it is almost guaranteed that you will not be seen for at least a week, probably two, after you call to schedule. Should you actually still be ailing from whatever your initial problem was when your appointment finally rolls around, they will make you fill out a questionnaire about every possible thing that might be even remotely pertinent (pre-existing conditions, things that run in the family, do you drink/smoke/use drugs, what kind of sex you have with how many people, do you wear a seatbelt - yes that is a real question that they ask every time you go in). This may seem like something that would be worthwhile, and it would be if the quacks that work at that fucking cesspool of incompetence actually read it. Instead, the nurse will come in, ask you the questions that you just finished filling out, and write them down. Then the "doctor" will come in and ask you the same questions that the nurse just asked you, which you just filled out on the goddamn form. Brief example: I have been taking zyrtec for my allergies since I was 14 and always say such on the form, yet when I went in this week to get the horrifying hives I have been breaking out in treated, the "doctor" had the fucking gall to recommend that I try zyrtec. When I told them I have taken it for so long that I am practically immune to antihistamines, the doctor shrugged and recommended I make an appointment with the allergist. They fit me in in March.

Now, should you manage to make it past the form/question triple barrage without dying from overexposure to pure stupid, they will chalk up whatever is ailing you to one of two things: post nasal drip or (if applicable) smoking. I could walk in there with a gunshot wound to the fucking arm and they would tell me that it is, in all likelihood, a cold. It took Allison 3 trips in two weeks to get diagnosed with mono, and on the last trip her throat was so swollen that she could barely talk and they had to intravenously hydrate her because it hurt too much to eat or drink. And they were still ambivalent as to whether or not it was post nasal drip. I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. This place makes me so goddamned angry that I sometimes contemplate lighting myself on fire and running around in front of their building to warn others not to enter if they might even be slightly sick, finally leaving an ashen husk as a grim reminder of my sacrifice (until the street cleaners sweep me into a dustpan).

So if either of these posts sound like something you'd be interested in, apply today and they'll be sure not to help you just as soon as they can.

The Key to the Most Profound Sadness You Will Ever Feel

Don't worry, everything is actually a-OK in the Michael camp at present, yet right now I am seriously bummed out. Like, seriously. What may have happened, you might ask? Did Allison dump me? Have I been booted from the university? Do I have every kind of cancer at once? Has my spleen fallen out of my asshole? No my friends, this is something much more, as the title says, profound.

Over winter break, my sister got me watching the show Six Feet Under. Let me tell you, for those of you who have not seen it, it is absolutely incredible. Better than The Sopranos, 24, Lost, and The Office combined. However, with such a fantastic show comes fantastic consequences. Namely, you get heavily invested in all of the characters. When you like a character, you are enamored with them, and when you hate them, you feel such blood boiling rage that the line between reality and fiction blurs so heavily that you may vent your frustrations on your family in retribution for the actions of the characters on the show. Suffice to say, it is engrossing.

Anyway, I don't want to give away too much for anyone who may still have designs to see it, but the final season is one of the most emotionally straining things I have ever put myself through. It's been almost a day since I watched the final episode and I am still plagued by a certain ennui. Life lacks a certain vigor now that the show has concluded, specifically due to the way it concludes. Oh well, at least I've still got season 5 of The Shield to watch in order to bring me back to the world of the living.