If a cow ever got the chance...

Work is strange lately: my department is receiving fewer and fewer books from the acquisitions editors to be put into production. There's maybe enough work to keep me busy two and a half days a week. It's important to look active and productive at all times, so this gets stretched as far as possible--to about four and a half. (Actually, it wouldn't even be two and a half days' worth, but I'm in the habit of proofreading all my manuscripts before they go to the typesetter, because all our copyeditors suck.) My anxiety disorder keeps telling me that the reason I haven't gotten any new projects is that I'm about to be fired, but they don't see any point in not having me finish what I'm working on.

Rationally, though, I don't think it's just me, because there are forty fewer books in the production database than there were last year. Everyone else seems busy, but the fine art of looking busy is one of the first things you perfect when you become a cubicle drone. So there's really no way to tell.

I've been working on the career series all week. We publish about fifty of these a year, which should tell you something about their quality. I've complained about them before here, but am too lazy to find the entry and link to it, so here's the rundown: most of them were written in the early 1980s and get "revised" periodically; what "revised" means is that they dredge someone up and pay them like $250 to go to the library, look in the newest Occupational Outlook Handbook, and update the statistics in the old version of the book. Then we copyedit and re-proofread the whole mess and reprint it with "Revised Edition" on the cover. Some of these books extol the virtues of FAX technology. Many of them (the more thoroughly updated ones) advise the reader to learn how to use the "World Wide Web," also known as the Internet! (It's surprisingly easy.)

The best so far has been Travel Careers, which we published last year. When I got the manuscript, in OCTOBER 2002, it contained this section (and man, am I glad I never throw anything out or you'd never believe me):

"After three years of flying out of Miami and Atlanta, one stewardess became secretary to D*lta's director of engineering. Soon she was promoted to be one of five female D*lta sales representatives, and within half a year became coordinator of women's services for the airline, overseeing the production of such travel information and services to women as a guide to efficient packing, recipe booklets, films showing secretaries and secretarial students how to book air reservations, and other projects to make travel by D*lta appealing and easy for women."

Whenever I get too pissed off about working on this drivel, I think about how much worse my job could have been. At least I freely choose to be here every day, doing something I'm good at and writing my own thrilling memos. I am so, so grateful for feminism.

Although it would have been amusing to get the recipe booklet.

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