OTAS, you found it

. . . So what happens when you don't?

To those of my friends who work in the public sector or in non-profits (which is almost everyone) working in the private sector is, shall we say, much more heartless. So to the extent that I am able to distance myself from it, I have. That was, of course, until last week.

My boss hired a statistician to work with me and my team. Over the last month or so he’s fumbled getting anything of substance done, despite living in the office.

I’m not speaking metaphorically here. He was hired March to work in New York and came to the office on the first day and asked me if he could live with me. I refused. Generously, we put him up in a hotel for three weeks after which he managed the Herculean task of not viewing a single place to live. He then went to India (where he is from) for a paid vacation and returned to the office with his suitcases.

The odor from the cubes was stifling, he was clearly living there – had been wearing the same clothes every day. I confronted my boss about the situation, who spoke to him. He continued living in the office. Then I found out that he asked Pete to work out of India office because his visa expired in May and he would have to live there until October, when we would then have to sponsor him to work in the US.

This is where I put my foot down and actively lobbied to get him fired. I brokered meetings with my boss and team members to get him put on probation. During the probation I spoke to my boss about how absurd it is for us, to not only sponsor him, but to basically allow him to work in another continent, and he is not even good at what he does.

The final meeting, on Thursday, was as follows:

My Boss: “Well, if he’s even mildly productive perhaps we should keep him on and have him work from India. Has he been improving?”

My Colleague: “He’s been improving somewhat as I have been getting more output from him, but this is all relative.”

My Boss: “If he’s a liability, that's different. But if he’s producing something, then we should keep him on in the short-term.”

Me: “This guy comes in every day and needs someone to tell him exactly what to do. I spend more time helping him figure out his own job then doing my own. If he gets anything done it’s because someone else has done it for him.”

My Boss: “Okay, then he’s a liability.”

Me: “Yes.”

My boss: “Are you sure he isn’t just new and needs to learn a little?”

Me: “Look. I can tell when someone is on the learning cure or not. He is not on the learning curve and with him being in India for the next 5 months, he’s not going to get there even if he were. This is ridiculous that we think he can contribute.”

My boss: “So you’re telling me he should be fired?”

Me: “Yes, in this environment, with the ambiguity we have to deal with and with the need to have someone in New York, I can say without a doubt he’s got to go.”

My boss: “Okay, then.”

Later that day and after my boss tested my resolve: “Unless you change you mind about this, it’s going to be done. You can have a change of heart, you know.” To which I responded with an obdurate “No. I’m sure. He’s gotta go.”

So the decision was made. And the next day we had to break the news to him. But before he came in he was (finally) out looking for apartments when I get an e-mail from him.. . . “I looked on Craig’s List and found a place that told me they would find me a place to live for a $150 fee. I went there and they took my money and gave me two phone numbers that were bad. I’ve never been so harassed in my life.”

So there is one born every minute. Dear God, he doesn't even know that he's going to be fired, in addition. So at the end of the day my boss and he came into my office when we broke the news. He completely broke down. . . sobbing.

“What is it that I have done? I’m so sorry I have not been productive. I’m trying. I will work anywhere! What am I going to do?! I have a wife and child in India who relies on me for money and I’ve been struggling just to do that. It’s not me I’m thinking of it’s my family, it’s my daughter! Oh, I cannot tell my wife this! She will throw me out on the street and say I’m worthless. Oh my! I don’t want to live!”

This lasted for two hours as I waited for the travel department to book his ticket back to India.

“I cannot go back to Calcutta! I cannot go back to my family! They will kick me out on the streets! Send me to Delhi, where I will try to find work there before I tell my wife. Matt, I look to you as an older brother: What do I do!”

The tickets weren’t able to be printed. It was too late in the day on a Friday. So I printed out the reservation number for the Tuesday flight, the address of a hostel, gave him $20 for cab fare and escorted him out of the building, which I have to say wan't a trivial matter because he'd been living there.

“Bless me, or I shall perish! I don’t want to live!”

And I blessed him.

That's New York for ya, chew you up and spit you out. And I'm part of the process now.

Living in Manhattan, one gets used to the barter. I have guest over – it’s cheaper than paying the $250/night – and they buy me stuff like Brita water filters. Last weekend my old friend from Georgetown was up with her boyfriend. Judy is a lovely, innocent, person and like such kind and wonderful people, she is –naturally –dating a wretch.

So what is it about nice people dating horrible people? I don’t know. Or maybe Judy is just an awful person and I just don’t know it. Which is it? Does water seek its own level or do opposites attract? Well, as you can tell, this is now beginning to be a stupid blog that’s unsuccessfully trying to point out that there’s an anecdote for everything. Thank God.

But as the saying goes. . and idol mind is the devil’s playground.

Hmmmm.

Bear with me people. I’m just trying not to blog about work or opera, and there’s little else. Eeeeeer. . . My parents are visiting next week.

If there’s one thing you can say about the Metropolitan Opera, it’s that they don’t fuck around with the greats. This week I subjected myself to about ten hours of opera there, with two very different operas.
First was Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which started at six in the afternoon and ended at midnight. It was a brilliant. Wagnerian singers are among the most rare and the greatest of singers in opera (when Birgit Nilsson debuted in Tristan und Isolde, she made the front page of the New York Times). These singers must soar above thick orchestrations and sing for hours on-end. The Met would not stage these opera without the best in the world singing, and Tuesday night was no different. There was this stamina, the beautiful orchestrations. . . Wagner took the term “Prima Donna” seriously: literally meaning “first woman”, the first instrument of the orchestra. In Meistersinger the real stars are the men, Johan Botha and James Morris, who carried the melodies to heights all evening with seeming effortless.

Does the time go quickly over these six hours? No. Time, rather, is slowed down and we are wisked into a drama carefully conveyed through music, abstract and seamless.

The there was Wednesday night, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville). A comic masterpiece and a vocal showpiece. It was starring none other then the great lyric tenor Juan Diego Florez, who single-handedly brought the house down with this second act aria. And the remainder of the cast, particulary, the Barber, Peter Mattei, who’s vocal technique hit every note of the compled runs, like pearls falling off a string. This performance got a standing ovation from the Met, which has only delivered two in all the operas I’ve been to.
So it was a week of contrasts: Wagner, Rossini, Bel Canto and Dramatic. But where else do you get this roller coaster in the same week then at the Metropolitan Opera. It was divine, and reminds me why I continue to drag my ass out of bed and go to work every day: There’s really something else in life that’s worth all the hassle.

After a failed attempt at the opera last week with Eugene Onegin, I got a ticket to see Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the Metropolitan Opera, and just got back from it. On the surface, it would seem like a ridiculous story. . . a woman (Maria) has a child (Amelia) out of wedlock with a man who later would become the doge of Genoa (Boccanegra), Maria is killed and Amelia is assumed to be dead. 25 years pass between acts before Boccanegra finds her in love with a rival of her father. Another rival poisons Boccangra but not before he is able to bring peace to Genoa and reconciliation with his enemies.

Who, in God’s name, could make that work? Verdi does. . . When Boccanegria and Amelia find each other, a divine duet portrays their emotions, ending with Boccanegra staring off in to the audience while projecting an even, soft line of sound, “Figlia” (daughter): That single word floated in the house like a feather delicately drifting in the wind. That note, that duet, that orchestration, that moment, lasting only minutes, invoked emotion that language, acting and visuals simply couldn’t do alone. I was then reminded what opera does for me: It picks up that thing, those emotions residing only in the corner of my eye; those feelings that words don’t quite get to, and brings them into the center of my senses with a magnifying glass. The music is where the drama lies, the composer is pulling my strings.

So it goes without saying that I had great time. The end brought tears to my eyes, sad, happy, elegant, dignified.














One of Verdi's famed father-daughter moments in the Met's Simon Boccanegra. (Verdi's two young daughters died in the same year, along with his wife -- his entire family.)

Work, seemingly, has dominated my life, from my bosses’ fouling the relationship between the company and me, to my starting the search for a new job. But I’ve nonetheless found some time to enjoy life.

I’ve been to see the opera Eugene Onegin, which could quite possibly have been the worst thing I’ve seen at the Met. Yes, the guy who is if awe of the mere presence of the place has to say this was one of the most uninspired things I’ve seen in quite some time. And the fault, I have to say, was the reigning diva, Renee Fleming, who had a cold that night. How did I know? They actually came out and announced it and asked us for “our understanding” as she continued the performance. I suppose this was in light of recent booings. Quite honestly, they should have put the understudy in because her ailments had rippled out to the rest of the cast.

That notwithstanding, Gregg came in and I took a rare departure from the operatic world to Broadway, where we saw “Journey’s End”, an intimate look at a battalion on the brink during the Great War. It was a riveting piece of theater and have to say both Gregg and I immersed ourselves in it. For those who haven’t seen this play, they definitely should get tickets to see it.

And then there was, of course, simply hanging out with Gregg, horseplay, drinking, staying out all night, and having fine meals. All in all, it was fun (notwithstanding the fact that I was coming down with an awful sinus infection which I tenaciously fought with all kinds of over-the-counter medications).

Things are better now, in every sense. I’ve had some fun, I’m trying to remedy the job situation (there’s a long road ahead, I think).

And that, as they say, is that.