"If at first you don't secede, try again"

As all (three) of you know from my first entry, I work as a page in the South Carolina Senate. I am at the bottom of the food chain. My main duties include answering phones, making coffee and copies, shredding documents and running errands. Call me a human switchboard/answering machine. Even though I may have the most mundane job in the world, I have to say it has been an enlightening experience. Working at the South Carolina Senate has opened my eyes to how state government truly functions and can be characterized in two words: extreme inefficiency. If SC state's government is any indication of how federal government works, then this country is is in for a rough road and that's not a stab at Columbia's awful infrastructure. Let's take my job for example. All pages are pretty much expendable. While it's true that some senators, like the one that I work for, get high volumes of phone calls it really isn't anything that the main administrative assistant couldn't handle. If you think I'm being whiny, I have to agree with you. Whenever I complain, I think about what I actually do, which is read and play on the computer all day long and occasionally answer a phone call. There are worse jobs out there.

Let me give you a breakdown of the main players in the laugh/cry that is my job:

    Ms. Joanie is a sassy septuagenarian who is The Senator's administrative assistant. She is the sweetest woman in the world to those on her good list (luckily I am), but if you cross her, god help you. She would have no qualms destroying you old-southern-lady style, which means talking about you behind your back, the cold shoulder and ignoring your messages. Despite the fact that Ms. Joanie rolls in at 3:00 many days during the summer, she is actually very good at what she does. She has giant rolodexes of The Senator's contacts and she knows every one of them and if she doesn't she fakes it like a girl on prom night. The Senator also happens to be a hypochondriac (read: needy baby) and she dutifully puts up with every one of his "ailments." I couldn't do it.

    Bobby Caution is The Senator's chief of staff. If you're wondering what the chief of staff for a state senator does, you're not alone. In my year and a half of working there I still can't really tell what Bobby does to earn the $150,000 and corner office that he has, and to be frank, I don't think he knows either. As far as this amateur sleuth's eye can tell, his main duties include drinking diet coke by the gallon, chain smoking and talking on his cell phone in a way that can only be described as religulous, as Bill Maher might say. He is without a doubt the most interesting character in the office. Think Creed Bratton from "The Office."

    Penny is The Senator's actual right-hand woman even though on the . I'm not sure of her official job title, but as far as I can tell, she picks up Caution's slack. When I worked early mornings, I was always expected to be there at 8:50ish to make the coffee and catch any early morning phone calls and Ms. Penny was consistently there at 9 a.m. or earlier, which shouldn't be some miraculous feat considering that everyone there is supposed to work a standard 9-5 day, but from what I can see only a handful within my department adhere to that rule. It should also be noted that Penny and Ms. Joanie are BFFs 4 eva in the office and gossip over coffee and cookies daily. I guess I'd need an outlet if I worked full-time there too.

    The Senator. What can I say about the Boss Man? Last christmas he gave me a computer screen cleaner that looked like a knock-off beanie baby manufacturer realized he lost a ton of money then wondered to him/herself, "what can I do with these damn beanie babies? I know, I'll repurpose them into computer screen cleaners! Donezo, I think I'll smoke some more weed now." Surprisingly, rubbing a beanie baby's tummy on your computer screen will only smudge it and leave fuzz on it. There's other stuff about him, but this is the shit you really wanna hear about, not about his stance on the Voter Identification bill or charitable raffles.

Moral of the story: get a job in state government! You can make a pretty living doing minimal work! Also, it's never as bad as it seems.

P.S. I wish I could take credit for that amazing pun in the title, but I cannot. Senator Lee Bright said it in reference to a bill that says South Carolina should make its own currency in case the Federal Reserve collapses. I won't even get into it. Too. Many. Jokes.