Dentistry

Yesterday I left work early to go to the dentist.



It should tell you something about the nature of my day that when I left my workplace, I was happy to be going to a place where they were only going to poke needles into my gums.



I have got to, got to, got to get out of that job. Beverly the Big Boss treats me like I'm a puppy that crapped on the carpet; Amy speaks to me like I was a mildly-retarded toddler; and nearly every conversation with RuthAnne makes me wish for a "voices in my head" type of excuse so that I could bludgeon her with impunity.



Yesterday's indignities included:



--a meeting with Amy and Stan, the IT director, which Amy told me was to discuss "what happened with the summer computer configuration and how it could be prevented next time". Apparently, "what happened" was that I had the nerve to mention to Stan that the IT guys who did the configuration did it in a way that left me with a lot of work to do after they were done, because they hadn't preserved or noted the original configuration before they blew it away and re-imaged the disks. Then we moved on to "by the way, Bill didn't like the way you talked to him when you e-mailed him about..." and "Joe thought you were very short with him when...." Meanwhile, Amy is sitting there pulling these sheafs of e-mails out of her folder--e-mails that had been forwarded to her by Stan before the meeting. (Keep in mind that I am repeatedly treated with total disrespect by my superiors in my own job, and repeatedly witness people interacting in disrespectful ways. But somehow I am not supposed to absorb this culture at all--I am supposed to be little miss ice-cream and bunny-rabbits, and never convey dissatisfaction or dismay to anyone, ever, for any reason. You think I'm exaggerating?? The e-mails that were so problematic were simply direct requests for assistance, letting someone know that something appeared to be wrong at their end. Apparently I'm supposed to just say "Hi, I noticed this, but I'm absolutely SURE it's something I did, because it couldn't POSSIBLY be an error on YOUR end. Could you check and let me know how I've failed again?")



Now, I was prepared--still am prepared--to take the advice that was given in that meeting. I am not disputing that I might have been short with someone, or too direct, or frustrated in a noticeable way. That's not only possible, it's probable.



What I objected to was the way it was done. I was sent an e-mail describing a friendly sort of "touch base" meeting, in which a fairly-innocuous topic would be discussed, with an eye towards optimizing procedures. What I got--and this is STAN'S word, not mine--was an "ambush". Amy clearly knew what the meeting was about; the stack of e-mails she pulled out of her bag proves that much. I should have been told what I was walking into before I found myself being attacked from both sides.



By the end of the meeting I was in tears. I spent ten days staying late, skipping lunches, working my ass off to get the summer computers up and running in the face of total cluelessness from an entirely new staff, and instead of "good job" or "we noticed how hard you worked on that", I get the sneak-attack. In fact: Amy said during the course of the meeting, "I didn't know if today was a good time to have this meeting, since you're just coming off three weeks of high stress setting up the stuff for summer...But then I thought, we'd better deal with it NOW, because otherwise I'll have a backlog. And I don't like backlogs." (That is a direct, unembellished QUOTE. In other words: Yes, I know you were under stress and you might be more than normally vulnerable to this criticism. But given the choice between concern for your feelings, and my own need for constant and unceasing productivity, I decided that your feelings were secondary. Fuck THAT, you know?)



THEN, as if that wasn't bad enough...after she shanghai'ed me to that meeting, after she saw how upset I was, what did Amy do when we got back to the office? Did she take me into her office and discuss what had happened, explain to me why it had to be done that way? Maybe even give me a little pep talk and tell me I'm really not a gross fuck-up?



No--she sent me an e-mail to bitch me out for not sending her my list. She demands a list of my projects every Monday, and her e-mail said "The last list I have is dated June 1, which means you've missed four weeks." (This would have been impressive counting, except I was on vacation for the 7th and 14th, and had sent her a full accounting of where everything stood before I left for vacation on the 4th.) For the other two weeks, all I did was summer stuff. Nothing else. That was it, and she knew it. But no, we simply MUST have the list. Nothing I do matters unless I've first sent in the list. No matter how hard I work or how much I accomplish--all for naught unless Amy has the list. And that couldn't possibly have waited for a day or two after the meeting--no, absolutely not. (After all--that might create a backlog!)



After that, I was GLAD to be going to get my teeth drilled. At least the dentist used Novocaine.