Work continued to be pretty rocky socially this month. It had been strongly indicated to me by multiple people that everyone would be a billion times happier if I kept my damn mouth shut. Because I am apparently horrendous and offensive all the time even if I am not trying to be. So for several weeks I basically said hi and bye to anyone who’s not a supervisor and that was it for me all day. I spend every day with my headphones on, NOT paying attention to anything else anyone is doing, because apparently everyone’s happier if I’m as absent as I can possibly be. I talk to our part time employee (an easygoing lass so I don’t worry about her) and that’s about it.

But one day at the start of March was...different. Or at least people didn’t seem so cranky today, and I actually engaged in conversation with people without, as far as I can tell, getting into trouble or pissing anyone off. (That I know about.) It felt...normal. I have not felt normal there in several months. It was really nice. I wish every day could be like that, because I’m so tired of trying to figure out how to manage everyone else’s on-edge emotions (i.e. don’t set them off more).

A little later on, my old boss and I made an appointment with the ombudsman’s office to talk about the horrible social situation in my current team. They pretty much just listen to you talk and then recommend resources if you want to use them, more or less. (And soon after that, the lady I saw apparently quit? What is with the short duration of people in that job?) At the time I elected to not say anything to my current supervisor because given the bullying situation that was still intermittently going on, I figured reporting her would only tick her off worse. I should probably point out as a point of interest that the appointment was supposed to go from 3:30 to 5 and we got out later than that.. and guess who was still waiting in the office to see when I showed up? And then conspicuously pointed out to our office mates that I’d been gone the next day? She really put on A Show about it. It inwardly cracked me up because while the other office mates do not like me, they also do not give a shit whatsoever about what I do and certainly did not care. I straight up said I’d gone to the ombudsman to discuss the general office social situation (which is what the conversation did morph into eventually, really).

I have one random quote written down from my friend Monica (see April entry later): “This is supposed to be a pixilated wedding!”

I joined the Thank Goodness for Staff committee again and got delegated to investigate hiring henna painters for the event. And then that got budget cut like the thing I was working on last year (art show) in favor of food eating competitions. Oh well, I thought getting too many people painted in henna over the course of 2 hours would be way too long anyway. (It wasn’t my idea...)

At the Craft Center’s quarter party, we played musicals trivia. I pretty much won it for my team, and that’s saying something when I had a guy who could actually act in them on mine. (He actually said folks like me do better at trivia than him...well, I guess that was true.) I also picked our team name, the “Friendly Warlords,” which apparently got translated into “Friendly Warlocks” on the winning team photo.

I saw the musical Matilda, which is...really freaking weird. I can’t say I have a whole lot of knowledge about the writer of it, Tim Minchin, beyond “that dude is like, English and weird,” but yup, the musical is. It’s very surreal, there’s this running plotline about Matilda telling some weird story about circus performers that turns out to be Miss Honey’s parents’ backstory and she doesn’t know that, Mrs. Wormwood is a professional dancer instead of an amateur couch-sitter...I dunno, it was weird. Very surreal to watch.

I hit fifteen years of being here in March. I never thought I’d make it that far, especially after the year I had. I got gift cards to Amazon, which was great. Also great was that everyone else in my group went to Florida for a conference (obviously, I passed on going and everyone else was much happier not to have me there and I was happier to not have them there either) at the time, so none of them had to be around pretending to be happy for me. That was great.

Around mid-month Mom and I got to stay at the Native Daughters of the Golden West house overnight for a fundraiser. That place is huge and fancy and awesome. The entire ground floor is a meeting room and museum, they have a huge living room area and a nice dining area and huge kitchen and tiny indoor garden on the second, and the third and fourth floors have various hostel-ish rooms, some with their own bathrooms and/or TV’s, we got all of those. That place is so cool. I seriously was considering joining this organization just to get the privileges of staying at the house more often. I never got off my ass to do it though--I went back to real life and things got busy and lord knows I already have plenty of activities without joining an out-of-town club because the nearest branch isn't in my town.

While in SF, we also went to see the conservatory and saw a cool butterfly exhibit where you got to watch butterflies work their way out of their cocoons. So cool.

At the end of March...well, there was a giant blowup at work. The bullying coworker started spying on me while I was working on the computer. I was listening to “S-Town” ( if you haven’t bothered to listen to it yet, it’s quite something) and trying to write down juicy details from the podcast, like a certain Bible verse I can’t recall the name of now but at the time I was all, “holy shit, this exists?!” I wanted to look it up later. I was writing down stuff in between working, which that coworker started screaming at me for all of that. In front of everyone. And saying she was going to report me to our boss and the Big Boss. I was all, “GO AHEAD.” She later apologized to the other office mates for yelling loud enough for them to hear. They, as per their usual, completely ignored it.

So an hour later we’re in a meeting together and she’s going on about how she stalks my blog and how she thought I was going to blog about the podcast (I didn’t) and how she analyzes everything I read and how I tell any random stranger who calls how much I hate my job and she finds that offensive because she just LOVES her job (she doesn’t), and generally kept running her mouth in such a way that uh...it was probably apparent to the management folks that she was kind of off the deep end. Meanwhile I said very little other than explaining what I had been doing, and no, I don’t randomly tell strangers on the phone that I hate my job, because that’s ridiculous and who does that.

I asked to talk to my supervisor alone after this, and after everyone else left, I told him all the shit that she’s been saying to me for months. I took very specific notes on her first blowout and read them aloud to him. Looking back on the date that happened, that’s probably around the time of the letter writing. I feel fairly certain at this point that uh... the mystery of the likely anonymous letter writer might have gotten some light shed on it there even if it will never be proven.

In the end, we both got in trouble (basically, if I have eyes upon me at all times, I’d better be doing nothing but working constantly from now on) and I had to stop updating my blog (my own decision, but clearly she was gonna try to dox me). Also, ain’t it a good thing I don’t go on Facebook, because I found out she’s been stalking her husband’s last ex there for years (and those two broke up like 20 years ago). But she probably got in more trouble, if not in any sort of enough trouble to get fired.

(So why am I posting this here? Yeah, good point. But literally nobody reads this except during Holidailies, and unfortunately this shit blew up right during Holidailies last year so I feel like I need to follow up.)

My boss was really a champ during all of this, I have to say. I’ve been really impressed.

Anyway, after that went kaboom, I threw the plans I’d had in this area out the window and ran down to Meg’s for a long weekend. It was lovely and exactly what one needed under the circumstances.

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