Maybe I’m a little pent up, or prudish. Maybe I forgotten a part of my networking training skills.

However, when did the bathroom become a place of conversation and to shoot the shit figuratively (and not simply literally)?

Usually, when I go to the bathroom in the workplace, I’m there for one of two reasons, obviously referred to as #1 or #2. I am not there for this newfangled #3: Dick-Chit-Chat. I want to be in and out. Or in until all is out. Or even sometimes just in so I can take a break and play some Zenonia 3 on my cell phone. Sometimes, on really rough days, I’ll even do a stall nap. However, the main point is that my bathroom time, even in a public bathroom, is my personal time. I do not care about the sports game from last night. I do not care about your daughter’s birthday party. I don’t not care about the TPS reports.

In fact, I really do not care about anything you’re saying while you’re jangling your dinglehopper around. The bathroom can remain cordial, but it shouldn’t degrade to bar talk. That’s why we have bars. I’ve witness more platonic work conversations hovered over one’s johnson than I have hovered over one’s beer. Also, how can you engage in a conversation that’s interspersed with kegel grunts.

“Hey Tom!”
“Hey Bob! ” (They’re always named Tom or Bob in corporate…)

“Did you see the Giants games? Man…Eli Manning has really got to get his act together!”

*drip drip drip*

“uuuuuunnngh Yeah! He keeps giving away interceptions like they’re Toys for Tots!”

Really? Wait until your member is back in your khakis, dude.

Bottom Line: If a man is talking to me, engaging in eye-to-eye contact, while his twig-n-berries are in hand, it’s for a very specific reason between two consenting adults in the privacy of some place that most certainly is not the office and I’m almost certain I know his name.

Blake. Or…Brent. Brenden. Brandin. Braydon. Bryan? Brecklin? Nope. I’ve got nothing.

Whenever a new offer or gig comes in, I run though a checklist that tells me if the hassle is worth going through.

 
1. Is the job awesome enough that I would do it for free?
Every so often I get a job offer that is just so cool, with such a great team, that the money just isn’t an issue. Sure, I still plan on getting paid for it, but the experience is so great that I’ll let some things (clerical errors, annoying commute, late nights) slide. Armani was a good example of this, as was BarStyle.com; I bartered my design work for free flair lessons. If you love a job enough that you’ll do it for free, you’ll be passionate enough to figure a way to make it lucrative.

2. Is the job high paying enough so that I won’t care?
Money is money, and at the end of the day, it’s nice to not worry about it. Again, if you’re good at what you do and you love what you do, you might come across gigs that aren’t your cup of tea. However you can still be compensated well for your expertise and to just get the work done. I’ve discovered that this is why people in finance tend to be generally really happy and really nice; they usually aren’t making award-winning work, but they get paid a lot and stress is low. Plus everyone leaves at 5pm, which is really weird for me given my advertising roots.

3. Am I desperate?
I went though a very dark time when I quit WEtv the second time. It was by far the worst mistake of my career. I had an office full of amazing co-workers. My bosses were by far the coolest, most down-to-earth, most bad-ass businesswomen ever. The work was fun and relatively easy. WEtv threw AMAZING parties. (The MadMen/Breaking Bad Emmy Party? In the Lobby? At 2pm?). But after almost 2 years of permalancing, I think I got burned out from the freelance grind, and when they made me a full-time offer, it just felt too low. After a 2 week vacation on the little bit that I’d saved up, I went the longest unemployment streak ever. I went crazy, and started applying for anything. Bartending gigs. Photography for babies. A cashier in a wine shop. It is more difficult in NYC to get a waiter job than it is to get a design gig. I ended up settling for a long-term interactive design job with a lower rate than my very first freelance job at Armani. I was miserable, but I had some money in my pocket. I stuck it out, and right after that I got a great gig with a super fun agency, and even that low paying gig looks good in my portfolio in retrospect.

 
So yes, I told her to not take the gig without the contract, as she wasn’t very keen on it and she didn’t seem desperate enough to go through the hassle of doing the job and potentially not being paid. I try to keep honest with myself in all my work environments, because that honesty will show in the quality of my work.

Today we had our big showcase of everyone’s work from the past 3 months, and everyone did a really good job! It brought me back to those days of my art critiques. You remember sitting in a room of your peers while they railed into your work, or the times where you made some elaborate avant-garde backstory to mask the fact that you waited until the last minute to finish your project and you haven’t slept a wink the previous night, and you roll up to class hopped up on Mountain Dew and smelling like cigarettes and vodka.

Being on the other end of the critique table, I was a little surprised about how freaked out some folks became, because again, the work was solid. The upper boss folks loved the progress, and if I had a heart, it would have been filled with that warm and fuzzy proud feeling people get at graduations.

However, I work in advertising. I sold my heart when I moved to NYC and replaced it with a Dirty Gin Martini and those little chicken appetizers they always have at One Club parties.

1. To ramble incessantly about the topics of which one feels a sense of expertise.
2. To whine in a digital forum, with the hopes that a reader will commiserate, or at least, “Like” or “+1″