Your job

Dear Bill,
You ever had to work the front desk at an office? You know, be the receptionist? Recieve people? I don't know if you have or haven't, but let me tell you, it's annoying work. Your phone rings every five minutes, and it has nothing to do with popularity. Everyone you talk to wants to talk to someone else. You're just the first stop, you're like a gas station outside of Pittsburgh, an appetizer on the way to the main course. Get my drift?
One more thing before I move one: You ever have your boss come in the door and, with a smile as wide as your contempt for your job, say, "Good Moooooorning, Bill!"? You ever smile back, not because you're happy but because you're picturing the look he'd have on his face if you jumped across your desk and went for his head? Yeah, me too.
Anyway, it can get frustrating here, down in the trenches of paperclips and online calendars. But somebody's got to do it, right? Who's gonna reserve the small board room, who's gonna direct that call, if not you?
My point is, everyone's got a job to do: receptionists, landlords, go-betweens....
Incidentally, our Mr. C.C. wouldn't happen to be the one that graduated from Kenwood Senior High in Essex, MD, 1976, would he? If so, I've found his myspace page, and frankly I'm disgusted. From the sparkling confedrate flag "About Me" right down to the John Deere confedrate flag background, I found the whole thing in bad taste. Is this what our money's going toward? I gotta say, though, his friend Blair Jr. seems like quite a card, and I mean that in the funnest way possible.
Even Blair Jr. has a job to do. He drives a forklift and he'll work at the Restoration Hardware Distribution Center till he "kick[s] the bucket," or at least that's what his profile says. Now that's commitment. And that's really what I'm driving at here. How many receptionists' hearts are in being a receptionist? 1 in 10, maybe? Less? Do you think Blair Jr.'s heart resides solely in forklift operation? No, it's in his son and his father, his two heroes according to his Interests section. But does that stop him from driving a forklift at the warehouse till the day he dies? No, Bill, it doesn't. Why, Bill? Because doing your job is just what people do. And what's more, a lot of them find a way to do it with pride. And that's the real key there, Bill: pride.
You gotta have pride in your work, the utmost pride you can muster, or else you've got nothing. And the way to muster that pride is to work well. Effeciently, kindly, innovatively, and a thousand other adverbs that too often become meaningless in the bumble of job jargon. Pride in your work means pride in yourself. And pride in yourself means a happier, calmer existence. Trust me on this one, buddy.
But you're in a weird position, I understand. You work for Mr. C.C. and for us. A servant of two masters. Ever read that play? Goldoni, I think. You should, might give you some insight. In it, a servant accepts a second job with the idea that he'll get a second meal out of it everyday. Needless to say, he bites off more than he can chew (haha—get it?), the whole thing runs amok, and just when it couldn't get any worse, the servant reveals his ruse, and everyone decides to get married. Perfect. What's the moral? If you're honest in your role as a go-between, if you facilitate the easy transfer of information, if, in short, you communicate without bullshitting, then everyone gets to get married, which, by today's standards (this is a 250 year old play) means falling in love, or at least getting some. And who doesn't want that?
So, come on, man. Get your shit together. We're all adults here.