Work, Work, Work

Interesting day at work today. First, for anyone who knows me, they would find my work environment hilarious. I work in a USC Alumni travel office. It is basically a one person outfit, run by a competent lady obsessed with USC, who organizes trips for rich USC alumni all around the world. The rest of the office is volunteers, all old ladies with grandchildren. I work there with one other student, a freshman undergrad. I am the only guy.

So today I was surrounded by the volunteers as I came in, figuring there was a computer problem, which is usually why they surround me - not sophisticated one's mind you, one's involving getting a document to print and setting favorites on the internet, etc....but apparently they had heard I saw Passion of the Christ and wanted a review from a film student. I told them how violent it was and it seemed to me entirely about Jesus' physical suffering. It didn't take me long to realize, though, that this was a Christian group of ladies and they had already concluded, before seeing it, that it was an fairly accurrate docu-drama (not documentary) version of the gospels. Not being knowledgeable about gospels, I couldn't much argue, but did express my concern with the violence of the film. I told them flat out that anyone who enjoyed the film was a sicko - it is not meant to be judged that way.

The other interesting conversation I had was with my boss, a nice lady whose personal friendships with the volunteers helps her get around the many, many sloppy mistakes in the office. She started to rail into John Kerry, the Kennedy's, political correctness, racial profiling, and the hollywood crowd for Bush-bashing.

These two events, coupled with the generation gap, probably deserve some majoring snickering -- and I have to admit, going into my bosses office and looking at half naked pictures of the USC football team is a bit weird. But I realized something about myself while listening to these ladies and my boss, that having this positions I always have found a bit goofy and weird, didn't anger me in the least bit. I felt they were wrong about many things, but not in a malicious way. And while I disagree with all of them on many things politically, there nice people and frankly, pretty pleasant to work with. They are completely flexible and let me get away with anything, so long as I get my work done quickly and help them out with the computers.

Anyhow, I didn't really think about this much before writing, it's just on my head.