Doctor Who?

It may surprise you all to learn, with me being the shy, retiring type who never EVER complains about anything, that I have a new pet peeve. At first I thought that it was people who insisted on referring to themselves as “Doctor.” As in, “Hi, I’m the Dean, Dr. Dean and that’s my assistant Dr. Blahblahblah.” But deep down, I get it. We’re not all jaded enough with our degrees to roll our eyes and instantly think “Hurray! You have a PhD! Who doesn’t these days? I don’t know about you, but the only thing mine does is disqualify me from any legitimate employment, forcing me to be stuck working for minimum wage at this super awesome community college.” Some people are proud of their accomplishments--and want others to acknowledge them too...on a daily basis. What really bothers me is people who insist on being called Doctor by everyone they work with who fail to address me that way. For example, all official correspondence from Dr. Dean that’s addressed to Ms. LastName, even though the whole organization knows I have a PhD because I put it on my application, and I’m fairly certain it’s one of the primary reasons they hired me. For reals, it came up more than once during my interview. My point: the super-pretentious titles cut both ways, and Dr. Dean may be earning roughly 750% of my salary, but at the end of the day, we both have more or less the same degree, which entitles us to exactly the same title. So I’ll call her Dr. Dean, but goddammit, she better start sending my letters to Dr. LastName!

cookie monster

You know how when you're watching your weight and you encounter a plate of cookies and you really want one and it's this epic Herculean struggle because you really want one but ultimately you decide to walk away and then you realize that not eating that one cookie doesn't make any difference in the grand scheme of things because the cookies are still there and it's not like not eating that specific cookie actually caused your pants to fit any better? I have been having an angry day--an angry day full of metaphorical cookies where my self restraint is my self restraint and the cookies are yelling at people. And I'm getting to the point where I'm willing to wear metaphorical sweatpants for the next few months if it means licking those last crumbs off that stupid plate. This morning I didn't yell at the pharmacist at Walgreens even though she had no particular explanation for why my copay doubled this month--a prescription that actually costs less at full price than what we pay for the prescription coverage each month. I didn't yell at the representative from the insurance company as she explained to me that my copay was only applicable if I bought a 90 day supply and that I was only allowed to buy more than 30 days at CVS. (Ironically enough I had tried to buy a three month supply last month and was told my insurance would only cover one month at a time.) I didn't even yell when she told me that, as a service to me, the insurance company accepted my regular copay at Walgreens for the first two or three months, nor did I tell her that I am not, in fact, a moron, and that their system was clearly designed to get me into a routine I would be too lazy to break and then charge me more for the convenience of not bothering to switch pharmacies. I didn't yell. I may have been terse, but since what I really wanted to say was "If I had another option--any option--for prescription coverage, I would take it no matter how expensive or inconvenient because your company is a lying, cheating, evil bureaucracy that should be burned down" I'm counting this as a win for self-restraint. Now I am not engaging a former elementary school teacher who has been posting increasingly insane right-wing crap on facebook. I wasn't even going to be all that snotty when I responded to her most recent post. I was going to invoke civil discourse and ask for a genuine, thoughtful expression of her perspective. But Steve kept saying "you don't want to get in fights with old ladies on facebook" which is true, except that today I so did. But I didn't. No cookies. No sweatpants. No sweet rush of guilt and satisfaction. Just good advice from Steve: hide her and move on. There might also be some slightly less metaphorical baked goods in my future.