elbows - darren hanlon

I never think of myself as someone who's changing jobs all the time, but I've managed to go through quite a few in my relatively short time as a member of the workforce. My first was in a bakery. On my first shift the manager told me everything there was to know about every single variety of bread we sold. That night there were Vienna loaves and breadsticks floating through my dreams - quite literally. Later I learned it was a kind of initiation. Every time we had a new staff member, the manager would explain each loaf of bread to them in unnecessary detail. I'm still not sure if she really thought we'd remember any of it. Most of the kids who worked there were like me, just making their first foray into employment, still struggling to put on their uniform correctly. In hindsight I wonder if it was more for her own benefit, to prove to herself how good she was at her job and validate her existence. She was probably the most bitter woman I've ever met, though, so I don't think it was working.

After that there were a few office jobs, from which I mostly learned that there are lots of jobs in which you don't have to do much work and that most of them are chronically boring. I also developed a love/hate relationship with stationary. Most of it is so arbitrary, but some marketing genius has convinced every business/student/entrepreneur in the world that they can't live without it. Like post-its. You can achieve the same thing by sticky taping a square of paper, but no one does. (My favourite pseudo-neseccary piece of stationary is the staple remover. They're addictive. I used to staple things together just so I could remove the staples again. I also like tiny bulldog clips. Why use a regular paper clip when you can use a smaller version of a clip designed to do jobs too big for paper clips?)

At work yesterday I was handing change to a customer and my hand brushed theirs and I thought of this song. I love Darren's songwriting. It's just so clever.

Why I felt so alive I can't quite determine
There could be a word to explain it in German
Some take others home waking up to regret it
We only touched elbows but I'll never forget it