The end of an era …

… and I am quite pleased about that, I assure you.

I’ve been in the “financial services” field since I graduated college wayyyyy back in 1983 despite having a degree in psychology and wanting to be a therapist. Mom said “get a job or get out of the house” and in hindsight, I see it would have been wise to have gotten out of the house at that point since it was hella harder several years later when I tried to do it without the family mandated caveat of leaving home to get married). I found a job as a receptionist at a brokerage firm where little old Jewish men spent lots of time yelling at the ticker tape as it floated by shouting “Go up Coleco, you bastard” hehe. I moved to being a cashier there (different than a cashier at a food store, you know) and then left to go to be a sales assistant at PaineWeber.

That was fun (not). Working for the “hags” was just such a pleasure. You never knew if you were going to be fired for something as stupid as not washing their dirty coffee cups. I remember my legs wobbling underneath me as I firmly declared that I was not there to do their dishes. Hag numero uno said “You do anything we tell you to do” to which I replied “No, I don’t.” As you can imagine, that went over well. I lasted longer with them (9 months) than any other sales assistant before me.

Left there to work at a strangely misogynistic firm where I was fired for making a posting error. In other firms, stuff like that was no big deal. Here it was. Riding the bus to work on the day you know they are going to fire you? Not much fun, I’m here to tell you. Whatever.

The road then led me to Legg(s) Mason where I stayed a nice long time and made many friends (waves to Bodie and Henry) and had lots of crushes and did an enormous amount of stupid shit. Good times. Then I moved to Richmond (still working for the Leggs) and spent 4 years being ignored and tortured as Branch Ops Coordinator. Thank God I had my resident Borderline Personality Disordered LoML to keep me amused (and slightly insane and on probation for talking on the phone so much).

This post could go on forever so I will condense the rest of the time like this: Richmond after Leggs – not too bad, ultimately worked my way into a position with a financial advisory group where I did basically nothing and got paid decently for that.

Moved to NoVA to take position with current place of employ which can best be summed up by paraphrasing Steinbeck: It was the best of times, it was so very often the worst of times.

Overall, though, I had fun here, made friends, gained lots of weight, cried a lot at my desk for various and sundry reasons, lost lots of weight, met lots of morons online and had fun chatting with (some of) them, worked my ass off, went back to the phones (from dust you came and from dust you shall return), gained back weight from frustration and FINALLY – FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!

So, despite not totally severing my ties here (yet), I consider this the end of a 23 year journey back to being the “real” Lisa. If you are interested in knowing who she is, stay tuned. I think you will see it all come together. :) :) :)

“There’s no greater power than the power of Goodbye” – Madonna (late 20th century philospher)