"Do you sell bags of gum?"
The question was pointed towards me, standing in the 'gum' aisle at Walgreen's, trying to decide what bizarre flavor of sugarless gum I would most desired (today it's "Mango Surf"). I turned to the woman and replied, "Um … I don't work here …" She apologized, adding how annoying it must be to be mistaken for a drugstore employee. But considering my situation these days, is it really?
I was wearing a tie, as I am forced to do in the office, and I was standing next to a cart full of candy meant for restocking the shelves, so maybe I looked like an earnest go-getter from a previous era. The astute casual anthropologist will note the staff at Walgreen's wears drab polo-style shirts with the company name on it; I was wearing a dark green shirt and a skinny tie I bought in 1993. Maybe I just look like the kind of guy who should be working in a Walgreen's.
I thought of retorting something witty to the woman, like "Well I may not work at Walgreen's but boy, can I market to the older, ultra-affluent set. And their wealthy, layabout children." But I held my tongue. What skills have I gained from my time at this office, what will I take with me to a potential new employer?
I was talking with my coworkers (also soon-to-be laid off) and we determined that all the people we hate in the office are those who do the least, foisting their rightful work onto our more capable shoulders, simply because they outrank us. And as that Dilbert guy noted years ago, the stupidest people really do seem to be the ones who are pushed to the top of the management chain, where as Scott Adams says "they can do the least harm." People with true skills stay mired at the bottom, where they prop up the company's infrastructure. I fear I've been getting pushed into dumbening for several years now.
I've been at this job, in one form or another for over 9 years now. I have the word "director" in my job title. I, as previously noted, wear a tie to work. But what skills do I have? When I first got here I was semi-skilled, with a knowledge of hand-coding HTML and such, which at the time was still something in demand. Now my skillset has atrophied, as I spent valuable programming time on conference calls, flying back and forth to Asia to have pointless meetings with people who would later fire me only because I live in New York and they found this somehow distasteful.
Legions of nerds have come since; they have learned many programming languages as well as the other skills at which I was sort of adept at once, like Photoshop and Quark Xpress (I mean 'InDesign,' apparently no one uses Quark anymore!) Meanwhile I was filling out a Business Requirements Document and sending pestering emails to the regional marketing contacts asking them to update their office list for the website. I can think of ways to render this on a resume, but it fills me with shame to do so.
Plus I'm not even sure I want to continue down this path. Ironically, a fairly well-paid position as a Project Manager might be easier for me to get at this point than the modest remuneration of the semi-skilled 'web grunt' jobs of yore. Maybe I should shoot for that Walgreen's job!
Note: I have 8 days left at this job!
So my Zenni Optical glasses arrived, looks like it took almost exactly 2 weeks from date or order. First thing I notice about them is that they don't really look like the photo on the site: they're wider and flatter than I expected. Also they're black and not brown, but I checked my original order and I apparently ordered black for some reason, so my bad. Also the earpieces are longer and more wrap-around-the-skull style than I thought. I went through the list of $8 frames to make sure they sent me the right model. Truly no other frame matched as closely but the ones on the site are definitely more square than these. Oh well. 
Quality-wise, they feel like the cheap sunglasses you buy on the street for $5. This is sort of what I expected, and hey, I have some $5 sunglasses I've had for years. Due to the odd temples pieces, they kind of pinch the back of my head, but maybe that's because I don't have any hair to cushion the blow. Again, they're wider than I thought so I feel like a pinhead but I suppose I could get used to that. I still wish they were taller, I hate feeling like my range of vision is reduced to this little rectangle.
On the plus side, the little sunshade attachment seems to work fine, and is a nice solution to trying to swap out prescription sunglasses every time I walk outside. The glasses are really light which is nice as my regular frames are a bit heavy. I can't even imagine anymore what it would be like to have actual glass in the frames, we must have had calluses built on on our noses.
Overall, they seem fine if a little more nondescript than I had hoped. I am wondering if I ordered them with a narrower pupillary distance they might look a little better on my head. But that's another $8! Actually it was $22 all told, with the anti-glare coating, sunshade and shipping. Still a pretty good deal. I saw a subway ad for Cohen's Fashion Optical, they're advertising a special on specs, $99 for a set. I'm sure their glasses are higher-quality but I can basically buy 4 sets before I come close to paying that much. 
While I'm running out the clock at this job, I'm trying to use all the resources available to me while it lasts. One big issue is health insurance. Sure, there's some kind of Obama-subsidized COBRA thing but in all honesty I will probably forget to sign the forms or whatever when the time comes. So I'm trying to get some doctor-related stuff taken care of while I have full employer-backed coverage.
