I’m a Stay At Home Mom, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting on my ass, eating bon bons and shit since my high school graduation.

In fact, it is arguable that in the few years I did work, I worked harder than a lot of people do in their entire careers. I mean there are a lot of really lazy people out there.

But I’m not here to defend how hard I worked then, or how much harder I actually work now in spite of the whole bon bon joke up above. I’m talking about how annoying I was when I worked, which I now realize to the fullest degree.

Where to begin? I suppose, at the beginning.

Article One:

Yes, I did used to work.

In fact, full time for some of it.

The very first job I ever had was as a Burger Bitch at Burger King. That Burger King no longer exists, actually. Nonetheless, in the late 90s I worked there after school and on weekends.

The craziest thing happened when I worked there, well at least it was crazy to me – a young and relatively naive 16 year old. When it was Christmastime, I had to go to visit my mom in Seattle, so I took two weeks off work and left, completely unaware that I would return to find that everyone who worked there had been fired in this completely idiotic, marijuana-induced Christmas Eve internal theft scandal. Not me, though – remember I was in Seattle. But despite not being there to participate in the stupidest drug-induced burger-related crime ever, no one there as the replacements even knew that I worked there. So they gave me a couple hours a week (assuming I would be stealing like all the rest had) until I decided to find work elsewhere.

So I went to Wendy’s. While at Wendy’s I was awarded Employee of the Month. Probably one of my few award-winning accomplishments in my lifetime. I still have the plaque, and yes I am aware that this isn’t saying much.

Also, that Wendy’s doesn’t exist anymore either.

When I went to college I decided to get my shit together on the job front, so I went to a department store and got a job in Handbags and Hosery. But then they revealed about a month in that they weren’t going to work around my school schedule, so I quit. The department store was Robinson’s May, by the way. That entire company doesn’t exist anymore.

Are you seeing a theme here? It gets worse, and now that I’m typing this all out I am wondering if I am cursed.

After Robinson’s May I went to Longs and worked as a pharmacy technician for six years. I still know a fair amount of drug information, though am also out of the loop on newer drugs and insurance law changes and shit. And I also would never, not in a million years, go back to working in a pharmacy. I would force my family to live in a refrigerator box on the corner before going back to a pharmacy – it was that horrible.

A few years ago all the Longs stores were sold to CVS. So there’s that too.

My last job-job was in politics, after college. First I was a community organizer for the non-profit wing of the AFL-CIO. Then I was a contract community organizer for a partisan political action committee. After about a year the PAC had me do an underhanded smear campaign (against my better judgment) on a local candidate (of the same political party – i.e. one of their own) and I was done. I went back to school, left school, became a Stay At Home Mom and the rest is history.

That was the last “real” job I ever had, with the exception of working for a professor.

And if you are wondering if either of those political organizations exist anymore, the non-profit wing lost its funding a year after I left, and the ladies that founded the partisan political action committee liquidated it two years ago. I am definitely cursed.

Article Two:

When I actually worked for a living, instead of running our insane asylum, I was an extremely annoying person.

I’m not saying that I am lacking the quality of annoying sonofabitch now. Not by any stretch of the imagination – I know I am a tough nut to crack, a bitter cup of tea, and whatever other cliche you could spew out that indicates I’m annoying as shit.

You get the point and no doubt are nodding your head in agreement.

Now this is going to be quite a stretch, but if you can bare with me for a second and use your maximum imagination powers, think of how unbelievably obnoxious I am now. And quadruple it. Then add ten, more parcels of annoying as balls and you still aren’t even close to how un-fucking-believably annoying I was when I worked.

You know why? Why I lost friends – like literally lost friends – and was excluded from family events because I was so fucking intolerable to be around?

Because I never shut the fuck up about my job.

When I was at Burger King, I told stories about the sauces for the chicken tenders and the episodes with the drive thru timer. When I was at Wendy’s, it was similar only added on were the tales about the times they made me dress up in the Wendy costume.

At the department store, it was constant bitching about how the management was over scheduling me and trying to get me to work when I was supposed to be in class. And about the girl that worked in Handbags with me who I later saw on an episode of Blind Date. I knew it was her, too, because she was always talking shit about Asians even though she, herself, was Asian; and she did it on the show as well.

Longs there were the neverending stories about the customers and the old men that hit on me while picking up their Viagra. There were the tales about insurance problems and how my boss was so seemingly helpless he couldn’t even schedule his employees without my help as well.

It was the worst when I worked in politics, because there weren’t just the stories about what I did at work, but what political bullshit horsecrap issue or candidate I was all fired up about at the time. Health care. Immigration. Gun rights. In-fucking-tolerable is what it was.

Now that I’m heading on to 32, more people I know are getting promotions. Or going back to work after being at-home moms for a while. Even a few are just graduating from college or graduate school. Don’t get me wrong: I am extremely, like over the moon, happy for these people. Their work opportunities are wonderful for their situations. It’s awesome.

I just wish sometimes people could have things to talk about other than work. Like post a Facebook status about what you did with your kids. Or at a family party, could we talk about something other than your innovative quality control systems? There is so much more in this world to talk about than work, and maybe it’s only when you don’t work that you realize that.