Profanity Approaching...

My boss needs to eat a box of dicks and die.

If I knew for certain that another job was waiting; if I knew for certain that I could live on my own for long enough to get another job; if the benefits weren't so good and all those other things that people say when they're eating their own guts out but can't summon the courage to just make the fucking leap...if all those things weren't true, I would absolutely, with no question, have quit this job in a firestorm of cursing and accusations today.

I do not remember ever having been so angry--at least, not within the scope of my severely-compromised memory.

The details are too long to relate; short version is: When I tell you I am upset and want to discuss something, and you e-mail me back a message that is, in essence, "You have no right to be upset, because you did this unrelated thing, that unrelated thing, and a third similarly-unrelated thing wrong, and so instead of listening to YOU, instead -I- will be snotty and juvenile and utterly unprofessional, list a group of things YOU need to do, and finish it with the completely compassion-free snide 'Correct??'" ...if that is your response to "I am upset about the way you handled X situation and would like to discuss it on Monday," then you need to eat an entire LARGE bag of dicks and die. And that is exactly what my boss did.

(No, he didn't eat the dicks. I mean, I don't know what his personal life is like--although you can DAMN FINE BET that he doesn't pull bullshit like the above with his WIFE, unless she's a similar flavor of goddamn idiot...anyway, I was going somewhere with this, I think. Oh yeah...eat, die, needs to.)

I had to write FOUR SEPARATE responses to his e-mail before I could calm myself enough to come up with one that was even in the same ZIP CODE as "appropriate and professional". Writing is the one skill I truly believe I have, and I know for a fact that I share a great talent of my father's: the murderously polite letter. My dad, when people pissed him off, would write them letters which would shred the skin off their bodies and leave them saying "thank you" for the shredding. I mean, he was GOOD. I'm not QUITE as good as him--I let emotion get in my way sometimes--but I'm pretty good at it. But today--again, it took four tries before I managed not to cuss him out six ways to Sunday.

Put it this way: this is what I started with. (Anything in brackets should be taken as an improvised flight of verbiage, and not what I sent to him.)

(Reply to Douchebag:)

You know, perhaps this exchange doesn’t show either of us at our best moments. Let me start this over:
I apologize if the tone of that last message seemed brusque; as I wrote that message, I was a)trying to complete the work I had promised, and b) upset because even though I had assured you in no uncertain terms that I would get the work done by the end of the day, you felt it was necessary to add assignments for xxxxxxx to both tickets while we were on the phone discussing it. I felt that you were completely dismissing my assurance that xxxxxxxxxxx would be complete before I left for the day, which they were (with the exception of two details that couldn’t be completed without xxxxxxxxxxxxx.)

And this was the end:

(Incidentally: whatever your intention might have been as you wrote it, the tone of your reply below conveys many things, but “concern” is not among them. As I said, my prior message may have been open to interpretation, so I’ll just assume you were responding to the frustrated and angry tone, for which I again apologize. As for the tickets you mentioned, we can discuss those further on Monday.)

And honestly, I wish I cared more about what he might do to me. I am serious. If they fire me, at least I can get unemployment--and believe me, Human Resources will get an earful. I was so tempted to just leave the whole thing where it stood and just call HR and set up an appointment--God knows I wouldn't be the first, not by a long shot!--but I decided to at least make an attempt to act like a grownup. The rest of the letter was very polite and professional; I used all "I" statements, didn't accuse him of being the troglodytic, male-chauvinist, underevolved ass-munch which I wholeheartedly consider him to be; and managed to finish the letter with "Thank you for taking the time to read this," instead of "If I leave this job before I see you crouching ignominiously over a rain-soaked cardboard box spilling your pitiful worldly possessions onto the concrete as you take the long, shame-faced walk from your office to your car for the last time, I will consider my time on this earth as having been completely wasted, for my ultimate moment of happiness will have eluded me for eternity. Incidentally, kindly go fuck yourself with a chainsaw." In short, I was as polite and as professional as I could be while wishing great personal misfortune and possible bodily harm on a fellow human being--but again: Douche. Bag. Seriously.

If my e-mail doesn't de-escalate the situation--I know, the last bit quoted up there may not be the most de-escalationary thing I've ever written, but it's loads better than the first three drafts would have been, and the main body of the letter was much less poisonous--but if my e-mail doesn't de-escalate this, and if it ends up with Human Resources, I will go in there with all guns blazing, starting with his strange habit of listening to ideas only when they come from men, or rolling his eyes when my one female colleague says anything, and a few other little tidbits besides. He would not have DARED to reply to a man like he replied to me, and it galls me because I am the last person in the world who plays the gender card, ESPECIALLY at work. But I know where this guy grew up, because it's right near where I grew up, and I know the mindset that gets set into many of the males--and in him, it's right up at the surface. So that's where I'll take it first; second, I'll go into his flaws as a manager (not least of which is "You DON'T reply like that to an angry employee, no matter how much you want to.") He was on vacation a couple of weeks ago; it was amazing how much more smoothly things went in his absence. I'd noticed the same thing last year when he was gone, but it was definitely confirmed this year: The Crazy is not the source of most of the problems in our department. I mean, some decisions she makes contribute to the chaos, but for the most part, I think HE is the problem, not The Crazy.

I am now completely exhausted. I have been so angry and so worked-up all day, and now I'm just tired--and when I leave here at 9:30, I have to be back tomorrow at 8 AM. I am going to just pass out the minute my head hits the pillow, I think...and dream of chainsaws.

Important Facts, June 2009

1. Birthdays are alternately sucky and awesome. The "pondering the passage of time, the wasted years and my own eventual death" part = sucky. The "really awesome present from Mom, upon which this blog entry is being written from the privacy of my own room AND wirelessly" = awesome. Also, not being in the hospital for my birthday, a la 2005 = also awesome.

2. My boss is a....no, don't want to be QUITE that profane.
My boss is a....no, I'd probably get sent straight to hell just for TYPING that.
My boss is...Okay, look. My boss is a FU----G B---H, is the point I'm heading towards here. (In fact, I'll even go back and redact the middle letters there, just so no one can go tut-tut at me. But she IS that, and worse, to the uttermost degree.) Today was the Office Picnic. It was moved inside due to an infestation of mud in the usual picnic ground; otherwise, though, it was a repeat of last year...in all aspects but one. See, last year, the picnic ended at 2, and afterwards everyone could go home. THIS year, however, Ms BossLady decided to buttonhole a departing Help Desk staffer and question his decision to leave. When my immediate boss objected, saying "that's not what happened last year," she insisted that it WAS. So while EVERY DEPARTMENT BUT OURS left to go home for the day, my colleagues and I labored on--even though we are a technical-support department and there was no one to support but ourselves! AND--to add icing to this crapcake--Ms BossLady left at 5, my immediate boss left at 4:15, and I? Had to stay til 6:30, just like every day. What a crock of crap.

3. I am not moving in November. I have told Tim this; I am not moving. It is not in my best interests to move. He and Squeaky are welcome to stay and work out what they're doing next, but the baby will not be brought "home" to here in December. We all have limits. Tim understands this and thinks it's fine, and he says he's grateful for my straightforwardness. Despite his many flaws, I will not be shaken from my opinion: Tim is a good guy, with bad judgement and worse luck, who's gotten himself in waaaaaaaaaaaaay over his head in life. He isn't trying to take advantage; if it does come out that way sometimes, it's unintentional. I fully expect that Tim and I will end up as roomies in the old-age home, if his liver makes it that long.

4. Squeaky, though, I can take or leave, and would prefer to leave. She spent Mother's Day with me at my mom's house--a last-minute invite for dinner, since Tim had gone all Asshole-Boy and went off to hang with his friends--and even my MOM said Squeak is extremely self-centered. Every conversation came back around to "I'm pregnant!" She's not a bad person--in fact, I think the thing that disturbs me most about her is that I see in her a lot of who I might have easily become, had my life not turned in the direction that it had. If I had continued on the pampered-darling path I was heading down when I was 18 or 19 or 20, I could very well have remained unconscious, invested my entire energy, heart, and soul into a Man, and been somebody's little shadow, someone's mouthpiece, for the rest of my days. I can't pinpoint the moment my life turned--it was before I met JP, probably, but not LONG before--but I thank X every day for it.

4a. "You thank WHO? Who's 'X'?" Okay, look. I know some of you might be religious, and I begrudge no one their deity, but seriously: if people do not stop whacking me upside the head with their Lord and Savior, I'm gonna get REAL heathenish, REAL quick. Yesterday I left work early with a bad stomach; before I left, my cubemate PUT HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER (big no-no--I'm practically Asperger-y about unsolicited touch) and PRAYED that I would be HEALED in the name of JESUS. (And no, there was NO irony intended at all--he was dead serious.) Today, when he brought his wife and kids in for the picnic, he announced to them "I prayed for Gladys yesterday when she was sick, and she got better." I WANTED to say, "I was gonna get better ANYWAY, nimbot--this happens pretty much EVERY month for a day or two," but I figured, if it made him happy to believe that he'd "cured" my monthly case of premenstrual bubbleguts, who was I to harsh his God-buzz? But seriously: between him, Mom, and random kindly strangers who take entirely too much interest in the condition of my alleged immortal soul, I am distancing myself ENTIRELY from this whole Judeo-Christian-normativity complex. In other words: please remove your higher power from my grill. He is not happy there; it's not the kind of 'hood He wants to inhabit. K, thx, BAI!!!

5. Summary: I'm good. Not great--sometimes not even functioning, alas--but taking things on the balance, I'm doing okay. A few improvements could be made, but that will come in time, I hope.

(but my boss is still a bitch...)

You Are Here. You Probably Ought To Think About That.

So, um....yeah.

WackyWackyWerld, aka Gladystopia, has done some of its expected and usual things. Tim has been playing Floor-Hopper, rotating between my living room floor, his friend Chuck's living room floor, and whatever it is he sleeps in at Squeaky's place-with-the-roommate. But that pool of potential stopping-grounds decreased by one the other day; apparently between the two of them, they decided that the remaining thirteen days on Squeaky's lease with the hell-roomie were just not worth the effort. (Apparently this woman--the roomie, not Squeak--is a wee bit of a beeyatch. I don't know her, and I've experienced enough time with Squeaky to be aaalmost inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt because: annoyy-ying!--but seriously, there are some birds that just don't fly, as in "you agreed on $400/month for rent on a room the size of a small pantry, but in mid-lease you demand $500/month instead, 'for utilities'." I cannot imagine how many appliances one would have to run to rack up $100/mo in utilities, but I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't all fit in Squeaky's room. It's pretty clear to all three of us--Tim, the Squeakster, and myself--that Wee Beeyatch is trying to use Squeaky's living situation to pay her OWN past-due bills. Which wouldn't be a problem if it had been agreed in the beginning, but you just can't change terms like that. So in this case, painful as it may be, I'm gonna have to side with Squeaky.)

They have been trying to find a place to live. They have been failing rather spectacularly, thanks to their combined lack of/abysmal state of credit. And last night, when I was on Facebook, Squeak IMed me to ask if she could just stay here for a while.

Now, who the hell would I be to turn a pregnant kid out on the street? (Yeah, yeah, I know--someone perfectly within her rights to do so. But sometimes just because it would be acceptable to do something doesn't make it seem right--and this, to me, is one of those cases.)

And I actually kinda like having Tim around, if we're being honest. He's a neat freak; he does housework; and when I'm not hiding out in my room (which I do when nobody's around, as well, so that can't be blamed on the two of them either) we have a lot of fun. It may not be the most equally-balanced friendship in the world, but...Look. It's fairly clear to me that there's a good chance I will spend my "golden years" having to look out for myself, in the absence of any husband or children or extended family to count on. I'm not as okay with that as I wish I was; I have to admit, seeing all my grade-school classmates on Facebook, married and procreating, with sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and a string of family stretching out the door, I feel like a failure at living. Mostly I can combat it; after all, in the absence of JP, this is my choice. And if it's not my favorite choice to make, I do recognize that it is the fairest choice for everyone concerned; looking back over the past few years, the things I liked about everyone I dated have been the things that reminded me most of JP. I never thought I was comparing, but yeah--I was. And I still am; it's unfortunate, but there it is. Everyone's better off this way.

But anyway: if I'm not going to generate a family, and since I don't have an original family to speak of--there's me, there's Mom, there's my dad's sister-in-law and her sister, and my mom's youngest sister who lives a billion miles away--and that's the lot of them, unless I want to count my mom's other two sibs who send her anti-Obama wingnut e-mails ten times a week, and I abso-freaking-lutely do NOT wish to count THOSE two, nor their spouses nor their spawn... anyway, since THEY're not there for me, I've got to create my own family. And I guess this is what I'm doing. Tim is like the irresponsible little brother with a good heart and not much in the way of sense; Squeaky's the little brother's bedraggled girlfriend who shows up pregnant one day. There ARE less-fucked-up or not-fucked-up-at-all people in my life; Debbie, for one, and Firefly; Debbie being a wee bit more fucked-up than Firefly (okay, actually a lot LOT LOT more, but since it's not her fault and hasn't completely compromised her ability to make a good life for herself, it's not so bad.) And honestly--let's just get to where the bear crapped in the woods now--seriously, who the hell am I to judge someone else for their fucked-up life? My record for keeping a job is not-quite-five-years; I'm stuck in an entirely different decade than most people currently inhabit; I've got an incredibly warped perception of time, and thanks to the illustrious Ms. China White, there are large blocks of my late 20's of which I have no recollection. I am in DIRE need of a really excellent grief counselor; I'm constantly harassed by the thought of the afterlife, and wondering if I'm living right--constantly moving between "there is a heaven, so I better get my shit together" and "there's nothing, so believing in some grand reunion is foolish denial of the truth". I have no house; I have no car; my credit is fucked to a high degree (although at least THIS time I'm in good company, and can blame no one but myself....oh, and the subprime mortgage industry); I am now officially Completely Miserable in my job, but I've also come to realize that I will probably be Completely Miserable in ANY job which requires working for someone else, or accepting arbitrary orders, or acting in ways which don't make sense to me--in other words, any job anywhere at all. I can't even start a relationship, let alone sustain one, and I've given up on the possibility of anyone ever finding me attractive again. So again, I ask: WHO the hell am I to judge anyone ELSE's life?? Mostly I want to run away and do exactly the things I want to do, nothing else; buy my little farm and put a "Baked Goods For Sale" sign out by the road, and spend my mornings baking and my afternoons in the barn doing all manner of art--pottery, and glasswork, and painting and quilting and writing and crochet (and maybe even learn to knit, even though I've never been able to get both hands working at once so far). And at night, just lay out in a hammock slung between two trees, and pull a sheet of mosquito net over me and go to sleep. It's not that I want a simpler time, exactly; I want a time that's MINE, where no one is controlling me but me, and where every action moves toward a goal; where rules make sense and exist for a REASON, and don't change randomly at someone else's whim. I want to live an orderly life--not a life without chaos, exactly, but a life where I UNDERSTAND the chaos. Honestly? Right now, Tim and Squeaky are the least of my worries.

And if from this you take the conclusion that my work is really screwing with me, please accept my applause for your excellent deductive skills. Last evening, upon walking into my apartment, I unleashed such a storm of profanity and invective regarding my boss--touching on issues including--but not limited to--her ancestry, her sexual practices, her hygiene, her mental state, and her predilection for inter-species mating--that even Tim, who has heard me at my peak, was surprised. It would have been one of my proudest moments of vulgar inventiveness, had I not been SO DAMN PISSED-OFF at the subhuman stinking pustulent piece of ....Oops....there I go again.

(Yeah, I know--what made me so mad, right? Let's just put it this way: When I am reprimanded for a violation of a policy --a violation which involved an interval of TWO MINUTES, against a policy which, although I was told in the beginning that it was perfectly acceptable to do what I did, has apparently changed, of which change neither I was EVER informed, nor were the two OTHER people who perform the same task...I do NOT remember EVER seeing, ANYFUCKINGWHERE in my job description, "reads minds/displays psychic ability". That was NOT in the qualifications, and so to be reprimanded for what is essentially my failure to read that crazy-ass whoreslut's degenerated parasite-raddled mind...

I am perfectly calm, now.)

Seriously, though, I am never going to accept a job working for another female boss. I told myself that when I left Other Place Where I Used To Work; my resolve was strengthened by Ill-Fated Short-Term Employment; but I needed a job so badly, and I thought there was going to be a buffer zone between myself and her (and there was, til they demoted Best Boss Ever--I should have started slamming out the resumes right there and then)...It's not a mistake I'm going to make again. I don't care HOW desperate I am...it's NEVER worth it.

Oh. And then, after all this--Squeaky asking for a place to stay, ElMo (which is what I have dubbed The Crazy--I have my reasons!) giving me nothing but shit because I couldn't read her mind, and a bunch of other crap into which I haven't even gone--after all that, last night the phone rang: After seven years, CR's been put out of the girlfriend's house. (Short form: She asked him if he loved her; he gave an honest answer. Next sentence: "Get out of my house!") He's trying to work out how to get a place of his own; even though apartments are SUPER-cheap there, so are wages, especially when he can only get 25 hours a week. I was really impressed, actually, with most of what he said; seems like all the things I said so long ago, about standing up and being a man and living on his own, may have sunk in after all. Seven years late, mind, but any progress is good progress.

And that, my friends--all those bits of wonder, and an exploding toilet too--is what my little life is made of, right about now. Strangely enough, I'm almost happy; there's something to be said for realizing that you are no longer willing to be crapped on for the privilege of drawing a paycheck. Obviously I've gotta hang on til the economy gets itself together, but that's okay; the important thing is KNOWING it's not forever, that I'm not going to let it be forever, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life scared of some bitch's opinion of me. That's no way to live, and even if I have to do it temporarily, I do NOT have to do it permanently. I may not be able to see the light at the end, but at least now I recognize that it is, in fact, a tunnel I'm standing in.

A Logic Problem For You

If I sent you the following in an e-mail on Wednesday afternoon....

"...Please make sure George Blow's computer gets checked over AS SOON AS IT GETS THERE and please get it back to him tomorrow; this is hugely important because he's been waiting for it for a long time and I told him he'd have it Thursday at the latest..."

Would anything in that message lead you, when asked on Thursday afternoon, "Is there any hurry for checking out George Blow's computer?" to answer, "No, not really..."???

I was working on a computer from my regular building, which I'd brought to the downtown building so I could finish it. It took longer than I thought, and so on Wednesday, when I packed it up to send back to the main building, I sent my boss (Joe) an e-mail containing the sentences above. I made it a point to emphasize that I wanted him to get the computer to George on Thursday because I'm off on Thursdays and I knew I was in no position to check up on him til Friday afternoon at the earliest.

I got to work Friday, and the ticket was still in my queue. I called Joe and left a message for him to call me; when no call was forthcoming, I called twice more, then called the help desk to see if he was even in the office. "He's in a meeting," I was told.

Around 5 PM--you know, when reasonable people on a 9-5 shift are pretty much ready to go home--I got a call from Carl, one of the other techs. (Carl actually used to be our boss, but due to office politics he was "reassigned"--translation: demoted--and his job was given to Joe. Carl was EASILY the best manager I'd ever had, and I was so mad when he got shafted like that...) Anyway, Carl called me to ask me a question....about George Blow's computer.

"That's not DONE?" I squeaked. "I TOTALLY e-mailed Joe on Wednesday to tell him that needed to be done YESTERDAY!"
"Well then how come he told me, when I asked him 'Is there any rush on the George Blow machine?' he told me 'No, not really,'?" Carl asked.
"Carl, I have NO idea. I told Joe that George should get that computer back on Thursday."
"Well why didn't you tell ME that?" Carl asked.
"Dude, I had NO IDEA that you were going to be the one who got it. I figured Joe would have assigned it to one of the new guys..."

And of course, by that point in the day, George had long ago left for home, so by this time there really WAS no point in hurrying. But steam was coming out my ears. Talking--or e-mailing--to Joe is like talking to a brick wall, I swear. There is literally no point in telling him ANYTHING, because he will ignore it, forget about it, override it, or otherwise discard it, and then leave US to clean up the mess when it comes.

--done venting now.

:::deep breath:::
Okay. Goodnight, all.

A "Good" Busy....

...uh, no.

Not a "good" busy; not a "bad" busy, either. (A "bad" busy, I guess, would be....what, heroin-related? That's the worst "busy" I can imagine for myself, right now, and it's definitely NOT the case; then again, the only "good" busy I could imagine would be a whole lot wilder and wackier than anything I'm currently experiencing. So...it's an AVERAGE "busy"--how's that?)

The job--which I still love--is driving me bat-crap bonkerellas--is that a word? If not, I hereby stick a flag in it and declare it to be one, 'cuz it's kinda cool--anyway. I know I've said this before, but I'm repeating it regardless: if I find myself sitting in a hugely-uncomfortable chair in Joe (El Boss)'s office, waiting for 15-25 minutes to ask him a work-related question, while meantime he yammers on through his PERSONAL FRIKKIN PHONE CALL about his kids' BOY SCOUT TROOP...There is no exaggeration anywhere within that sentence, incidentally. I have, in fact, sat for 20 minutes in his office listening to his personal call about the next campout. Generally my next comment has been something along the lines of, "you know, that thing we do here--you know, WORK????" In fact, today I actually said it out loud--for once he actually interrupted his call to ask me what it was I needed, and after I told him and as I left, he clicked back to his call with an "I'm sorry about that..." At which point I turned around, stuck my head back in the office and said: "Yeah...I'm sorry I had to interrupt this personal phone call to attend to WORK matters, while I'm at my JOB..." Fortunately, the environment is such that we can all get away with talking crap to Joe on a regular basis, so this was not seen as a transgression.

As much as I love the loose environment, the trash-talking, the verbal one-upmanship--and believe me, most of the time I can give as good as I get--I have a strong sense that the environment has changed for the worse within the last 3 months or so. And I can point, with a plus-or-minus-1% level of doubt, to the moment when the change began...

It was the moment we rolled out the first Windows Vista machine.

If you are (like me) a WinXP user, or even better (and God bless you, and she'll bless you even MORE if you buy one for ME) a Mac user--if, in short, the horror that is Vista has not touched your life...be grateful, dear reader, for you are Fate's own cherished tot. Windows Vista is, to computers, the equivalent of what would happen if you took bubonic plague germs, high-fructose corn syrup, the contents of the lint trap in the Chicago Sewage Treatment Plant, a 36-minute-long Michael Bolton vocal solo, the stuff at the bottom of the dumpster at a chicken shack, chili-farts, and that nightmare you have where you're running as fast as you can but you're not moving at all--if you took all those things, mixed them together with three pounds of Scotch Bonnet peppers, and reduced the whole concoction to a double-strength glaze, which you then poured into one ear through a large, sharp-pointed metal funnel. That, my friends, is called PAIN. There are simply no words on the planet Earth, nor in many of the better-known alien languages, for how very, very deeply I loathe Vista.

I am not alone.

Now, mind you, Vista by itself would be bad enough. Vista, coupled with our department's almost-phobic aversion to actually DOCUMENTING anything, has pretty much crippled our entire computer-building process. What took twenty to thirty minutes in the past--the installation and configuring of the necessary software for most of our clientele--now takes at least two days--and that's if you're LUCKY. If you're not lucky, you end up with a situation like the one I found myself in today--a pissed-off user waiting for her computer while I fiddle-faddled around trying to get one miserable, solitary, undocumented proprietary SQL-based program to act in Vista the way it always, reliably-as-the-seasons, acted under XP. At one point, both senior techs, a former senior tech, and a supervisor were all working with me to figure out what the hell this software fucking WANTED from us. "Database Error 556" was all it would tell us, and it was unGoogleable, completely opaque, utterly rage-inducing. Finally, Max the former-senior, who's been promoted to Systems, said "What if you re-create the folder it's looking for but can't find--you know, to fake it out?" I did, and it worked. Of course, that was after six hours of hair-pulling, head-desking, random Googling, reinstalling, and the rest...hours in which I could have been completing any of my OTHER ungodly number of work tickets.

And I'm just ONE person. There are FOUR of us who are doing builds, on and off; one, in particular--remember Erwin, the crank?--who does nothing BUT builds. At least we're not short-staffed anymore, thank heavens; we now have Johnny, the new Mac guy, and Dante, the new senior tech, who shares my cube. Dante seems to know his stuff; Johnny, a little less so, but both of them are still new. So now, in order of tenure, it's Alex, Erwin, me, Johnny, and Dante; Max has been promoted, and since the new guys are still...you know, new...the bulk of everything has fallen on Alex and on me. Erwin does builds. Erwin ONLY does builds. I found this out from Kevin, the helpdesk guy, when he joined Missy and I for lunch one day. (Missy...I haven't talked about her, because she makes me nervous. On the surface, she'd be the first guess of who I would pick for a friend--she's a fat white chick, like me; obnoxious and abrasive, like me; divorced, hard-headed, devil-may-care--again, like me. Unlike me, however, I wouldn't trust her farther than I could throw her. She's fun to talk to, but I'm constantly watching what I say because she seems SO very snaky and SO very two-faced--even Joe, Mr. Gullible-Isn't-In-The-Dictionary, warned me to stay away from Missy. The next day she asked me if I wanted to go for lunch. What could I do? Kevin walked out with us and she invited him along too; the newest of the help-deskers, he's already disillusioned with the place.) We were sitting at Eduardo's eating reheated nasty pizza when Kevin said "yeah, we can't give Erwin tickets anymore, just builds." I nearly spewed my Pepsi; "exCUSE me?" I squeaked. "You didn't hear that from me!" he said; "I'm tired of everything I say getting back to Joe with MY name on it!" "I won't breathe a word of where it came from," I said. And I didn't; I simply sat down in Joe's visitor-chair, waited for him to finish his personal call, and said, "So am I right in understanding that Erwin won't be doing any faculty or staff calls anymore, just builds?"

Joe, who'd been to some "leadership" seminar a few days back, said, "Well, that was a mutual decision, between The Crazy and Erwin and I, that Erwin should be focusing his energies on doing builds for a while--so he's not distracted, so he can just set them up like an assembly-line and one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, and so on til they're done."

"That's fine," I said. "I would just add, though, that if Erwin is doing all builds and no tickets, then the rest of us should be doing all tickets, and no builds."

"Yeah, well, that's the ideal, but sometimes Erwin gets snowed under, and...."

Yeah. Sometimes Erwin gets snowed under. It might help if he cut back his 90-minute lunches to the approved 60--or if, like the rest of us, he once-in-a-while worked THROUGH his lunch--you know, take a bite, click a mouse, tap a keyboard, take a bite...Anyway. Net result: Erwin does builds, no tickets; the rest of us do tickets AND builds. Thanks, Erwin. Thanks, Joe.

I can't hate TOO much on Erwin, though; he gets four times more Vista than the rest of us, so he's got his punishment already. Fucking Vista. I kid you not, my peeps--it's absolutely the WORST operating system ever created. It has, without question, poisoned the mood at my job, I'll tell you that much--and there's no chance of changing anyone's mind now. The techs hate it; more importantly, the users hate it--and let's not even TALK about Office 2007, which....oh, god, the STOOPID!--but because they're "progress", and because eventually Microfuckingsoft will stop supporting XP and Office 2003, despite the fact that they're FAR superior products to their descendents--because of that, the higher-ups have dictated that The Way Forward will include these two monstrosities--and that will happen regardless of how far behind we, the users and the techs, might happen to fall as we pursue this glittering, attractive Forward Way.

(My dearest, most beloved Microsoft. Have I told you lately that you SUCK? Oh...I have. Very well, then. But you SUCK.)

My Boss Is A Complete Asshole.

To all of you who found this blog by searching for variants of "my boss is an asshole"...Hi there! Welcome! I didn't realize there were so many of us out there, but fully 15% of my incoming traffic is from this search term, so....we're clearly not alone. So...good to have you here. Stick around and read some more, why don't you? It sure beats working.... --GJC, 17 Oct 2008

I am beginning to wonder if I am a maladjusted worker, or if I just find myself working in jobs with asshole bosses, or if there are just no other KIND of bosses. But today, once again, I have incontrovertible evidence that My Boss Is An Asshole.

The plot: As I've mentioned, there are four of us; myself, "Max", "Alex", and "Erwin". Max and Alex are the senior techs, Erwin and I are the junior techs. The distinction is minimal, really; Max and Alex get the "challenging" users and the long-term/complex projects, while Erwin and I get the normal calls and everyday projects. Erwin, for reasons no one has explained, has been given the lion's share of the task of building new systems; though all of us do builds, Erwin gets the most of them. I don't think that's terribly fair (though there's some consensus that it's because Erwin can't really do crap-else EXCEPT menial, repetitive tasks. I can't speak to that, personally, but I CAN speak to the fact that he's a whiny, petty little nit who has been known to bring meetings to a complete standstill by digging in his heels and stating that he opposes some minor policy change. Also, he's generally a jerk.) and will occasionally offer, when I hear him complain about how many builds he's got to do, to take one of them off his hands. (He has never done the same for me.)

Today, he spent the morning bitching every time a new ticket came across his desk, and so, after lunch, I said "Hey, Erwin, if you want to tell Joe (our boss) to give me one of your tickets, go ahead."

About half an hour later, I still hadn't gotten any new tickets, so I went into Joe's office. He got Erwin on the phone, and put him on speaker. Erwin read him the number of the ticket he wanted to give me--strange, since no one's usually that formal about tickets--we usually refer to them by the user name. I asked Joe, "Who's the ticket for?" and he just brushed it off: "Oh, just a user." My stupid self clearly wasn't thinking like an Asshole, because I just accepted it and went back to my desk.

A couple minutes later, I pulled up the ticket and discovered who it was for:

The ticket was to build a new computer...for The Crazy. Our big boss.

We had all known there was soon going to be a ticket for this build, and it had been made really, really clear that no one wanted to be the one to get it. First of all, she's THE BOSS, and nobody wants to be put in a position where any mistake will instantly be under her nose. Further, she's very particular, and then too, she has a list of annoying, complex software to install, archives to move, and general high-maintenanceness. It was the Hot Potato of builds, and not ONLY had Erwin handed it off to me, Joe had LET him--had AIDED AND ABETTED him, actually.

Now, it's my belief that if someone offers to help you with something, you--just as a common courtesy--don't give them the worst task you've got. If someone offers to help with your yardwork, you don't tell them "Hey, yeah, you can help--the septic tank hasn't been cleaned out for eight years now..." You give them something easy, or at least something average-to-middling. That's just basic human courtesy.

Well, apparently that doesn't fly, where I work. While the guys, including Erwin, laughed at my reaction, I said "oh HELL no," and darted back to Joe's office. "You let Erwin give me The CRAZY'S computer??" I yelped.

Joe? LAUGHED. (Keep in mind: this man is supposedly a manager.) "Hehehehehe...yeah." Said in the typical schoolyard-bully bullshit "sucker!" tone I remember from when I was, oh, TWELVE.

"Come ON, Joe. That's not right," I said.

He switched to the "affronted innocence" mode. "What? What are you so mad about? God, you're so whiny--you sound like Frack." (Frack--the guy at the other building who does nothing but complain.)

At that point, I just decided to shut up and deal. "You know what? That's fine. Where is the computer?"

"WHAAAAAAT??? Why are you getting mad at MEEEE? I didn't do anything....Erwin was the one who told me to give you the ticket!"

"That's right. But you--being the boss--could have vetoed it and told him 'Nah, give her another build instead'." (Which I thought was an eminently reasonable response, especially since he was acting like a bratty schoolkid, not a manager.)

"God. What EVER." (turns to student worker, also in the office) "Do you hear her whining??" (back to me) "Do you want me to give the ticket to Max?" (Notice--COM.PLETE.LY not dealing with the real issue; red herrings, allegedly-"humorous" comments. He has a habit of deflecting criticism this way. Not from The Crazy, of course--with her, he just grovels--but with the rest of us.)

"No. Just tell me, where is the computer, so I can just get started?"

Conversation goes back and forth, while he a)takes out the keys to the storeroom, which is where the computer is, but makes no effort to get out of his desk and actually LET ME INTO THE ROOM, which is his JOB. For FIFTEEN MINUTES I stand in his damn office listening to him bantering with student workers, help desk people, colleagues, whatever, and meanwhile I want to fucking STRANGLE this man, and everything I say is met with variations on the theme of "I don't know WHY you're so ANGRY."

So finally, he got off his ass and let me into the storeroom; I got the computer and went back to my desk and just got back to work. Later on I made a comment to Alex, who's the acknowledged brat of the department, and he laughed--but I know WHY he laughed. It's the old pie-in-the-face construct: it's funny, as long as it's not happening to YOU. I would have giggled too. Same with Max; walking home, though he admitted it was funny, he also agreed that it was a shitty thing for Erwin to do in the first place, let alone for Joe to go along with it.

So basically, the lesson for today, boys and girls: When someone makes a good-faith offer of help, the best thing to do is to take complete and total advantage of their good will. After all, if they weren't suckers, they never would have offered to help, would they???

I will not. EVER. offer to help Erwin again, for any reason, under any circumstances. If he were on fire, I would not even bother to muster enough spit to put it out. And as for my "manager", Joe--there is a phrase of which I hope he is aware: it's called "killing the golden goose". His total lack of good sense, regarding when to be a good-buddy-boy and when to be a fucking MANAGER, has accomplished exactly that. No longer do I feel subject to any mandate to "keep him out of trouble" as he has so often said. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact; anything I can do to subtly draw attention to his managerial incompetency and total inappropriateness, I will do. Not in a way to make myself look vindictive, mind you, or to depreciate in any way the quality of my work--quite the opposite, in fact. Joe and Erwin want to bitch and whine and play junior-high playground games? They can do that. I'm here to do a JOB, and to do it well--and I've found that sometimes, just doing your work damn well draws attention to those who don't. Not always--but sometimes. Regardless, from this point on, I am only looking out for those who look out for ME.

Busy Little...Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

I cannot believe they're actually PAYING me to be here.

It is Saturday, approximately 1 PM.

My workplace has two buildings. (Actually, that's a pure lie. My workplace has approximately a zillion buildings, but they are largely concentrated in two locations. Which is ALSO inaccurate, since we also have an international presence, but--Okay. Let's try this again: In the United States, my workplace has two major Chicago locations. There. That works.) On Saturdays, I work in the "other" workplace--the one I don't normally work at during the week.

This is my second Saturday here.
On my first Saturday, last weekend, I had exactly ONE request for support.
Today, so far, I have had ZERO.
Subtracting the parking costs for both days, I've been paid probably somewhere in the area of $300, gross, for doing absolutely BEANS.

Now, granted, I make up for it during the week--holy cow, do I ever!--and ALSO granted, I've been told that the "busy season" is impending (possibly as soon as next weekend) and that once it arrives, it certainly won't be anywhere NEAR as peaceful...but still, I almost feel guilty taking money for what I'm doing: sitting in my closed office, doodling, blogging, playing on SketchFu, etc. I even brought my crochet work, in case the computer got boring. (The one thing I forgot: my MP3 player. I downloaded a crapload of music recently, and pillaged Tim's library for a bunch of obscure stuff he only plays when he's emotional; but what with Tim and Squeaky never leaving the house, I haven't had a chance to enjoy any of my new musical loot.)

I love my job. Not so much this part of it--the sitting-in-an-office-on-Saturday part--but during the week, when I have a million things to do--THAT part of it, I love. I'm not sure if it's the WORK I love so much--really, it's no different than any other tech-support job--but the way the operation is run is EXACTLY up my alley. We don't answer the phone calls; the phone calls get answered at a front desk, and then the things that can't immediately be resolved, get assigned to me or one of the other techs. We have a mandated time-frame in which we are supposed to resolve the situations; we can ask each other for all the help we need (which is REALLY nice, considering there are a lot of policy issues I don't yet know about--you know "for this department, we install this software, except if they're management or their last name has a B in it"--all the little details that make bosses crazy if you don't learn them.)

My boss is a great guy, too. He gets mad, but not loudly and not often; mostly he's extremely laid-back, a reformed hippie/party guy who spends, as he admits, WAY too much money on guitars. He's very helpful, and yet he's extremely rigorous as well--every day, he goes over my tickets with me and if I can't tell him what I'm doing or why it's not done yet, he lets me know: that's not how he expects us to work. He wants his ship to run smoothly, and he treats everyone well enough that WE want it to run smoothly too. He ALSO has a boss--and she's enough of a beast that we don't want to bring her wrath down on his head! Fortunately, he acts as a buffer zone between his techs and the Beast. All in all, it's an ideal situation for me--it fits in perfectly with all my little workplace issues. I don't like authority figures who are condescending or vindictive or power-happy; he's not. I like to have very clear expectations of what I'm supposed to do, how I'm supposed to do it, and when it's supposed to get done, all without being micromanaged into insanity. Give me a task and a deadline, and some basic information about procedures and policies I need to know to do it right, then leave me alone and let me DO it--and I'm the happiest little worker in the world!!

And so far, in this job, I'm pretty much the happiest little worker in the world. (But seriously--they REALLY hafta find something for me to do on Saturdays. Because this? Is really, REALLY boring!)