I started out the day at the periodontist, which was mostly a bunch of nagging about how I can’t brush at the very very very back without barfing, and for some reason the hygienist did not want to give me any of the numbing solution we use there so I don’t barf while doing the X-rays. Normally they give me a very little bit to slosh around. This time she gave me a big ol’ cup of water and I was all uh...this is just water. She was all, “oh, it’s diluted, I’ll give you another one,” which was...just more water and had no effect At All. WTF? Don’t tell me they’re secretly out when the company that mixes the stuff is literally next door. Why would you do that? Anyway, she got lucky and I didn’t barf on anyone, but still.

It was another disaster day at work. God forbid I go out for two hours because it seems like when I’m gone, things go kaboom even if they have nothing to do with me being gone.

Let’s see:

* There was a whopping law-breaking technological failure. Not our fault whatsoever, but I bet we get in trouble for it anyway.

* A crazy lady came in to yell at me for mailing her thing to her address even though she didn’t want it mailed to her address. Which she did not mention to us whatsoever, but since she is a crazy harasser and who knows what any of them will do any more, she gets another one, very expensively and rushed here For Free! Yaaaaay! Happiness!!! And then she’ll probably hate it and complain again!

* Some girl came here five times during the day wanting something that nobody actually delivered to us until closing time.

* That thing that happened last week to make my job easier? Guess what? Other offices complained, so I am back to having 5-10 people per hour again starting next week! They want to be e-mailed personally for permission about Every Single One Of Them. I really hope that once they realize the giant workload they’ve just put upon themselves that they will stop, but...yeah, right.

* At one point my boss distributed calming hand lotion around the room.

* At one point a coworker said she didn’t have time to pee and I pointed out that peeing her pants would only make the day even worse.

* At closing time we got “oh, we forgot to do giant thing, can you all do giant thing Right Now?” when we were down to three people left in the office because half of them left early.

In other news: my coworker said she was going to go home and drink again tonight and I said I would except I was going to go to a storytelling thing that night. Coincidentally, I found Forcing a smile at work linked to heavy drinking.

”The study found a link between those who fake positive emotions or suppress feelings like eye rolling with heavier drinking after their shifts ended.
Alicia Grandey, professor of psychology at Penn State, believes these type of jobs should limit the need for employees to smile for the customer, according to the study.
"Faking and suppressing emotions with customers was related to drinking beyond the stress of the job or feeling negatively," said Grandey. "It wasn't just feeling badly that makes them reach for a drink. Instead, the more they have to control negative emotions at work, the less they are able to control their alcohol intake after work."
Grandey said people who work in more rewarding jobs will be less likely to drink afterward.
"Nurses, for example, may amplify or fake their emotions for clear reasons," Grandey said. "They're trying to comfort a patient or build a strong relationship. But someone who is faking emotions for a customer they may never see again, that may not be as rewarding, and may ultimately be more draining or demanding."
"Employers may want to consider allowing employees to have a little more autonomy at work, like they have some kind of choice on the job," Grandey said. "And when the emotional effort is clearly linked to financial or relational rewards, the effects aren't so bad."

As for the storytelling: this is the organization that’s offering storytelling classes that I would have done except for Gumbo. So these would have been my classmates, I suppose. Anyway, they announced that (a) you could pitch them a story if you want to be in future events, (b) they plan on offering classes again in July and future events in August and November. So yeah, gonna try for that.

Stories tonight:

* A chick whose mom was white and her dad was Pakistani and she grew up in Oklahoma after they divorced. She came out as a “woman of color” to her mom’s relatives and they did not get it.

* “NASCAR Dave” was the dad of a storyteller. “He was kind enough to point out every son of a bitch and motherfucker.” He came down with Parkinson’s and got deep brain stimulation, which stopped his Parkinson’s but meant he couldn’t drive any more in case he had a convulsion. So he drove anyway with Mom in the car until he got busted, and later drove crazy on the grocery store scooter.

* One guy told the story about how he got kicked out at age 15, joined the conservation corps, and met a girl. He also mentions having a hand knitted tie--”those were popular in 1800” and he thought it was cool to go clubbing in.When he met a girl and she said that she liked it, he said, “Thanks, I made it!” before admitting he bought it on Etsy. Later she said she’d totally judge him on what drink he bought her. He mentioned that meeting her family was weird for him because “if you went to my folks’s house you wouldn’t even know they had kids.” She breaks up with him because he had no idea how to deal with emotions, so he went to therapy...and needed a male therapist. So you gotta admire a guy who admits that and works on it on his on without no hope of getting the lady back (and no, he did not). Pretty cute, too.

* The next guy had a quote saying “Gender is a construct, but a crop top is a choice” in his bio. He was talking about his grandma loved to prank people. She faked falling down the stairs by throwing some shoes down them and screaming bloody murder, then later yelling, “I’m not dead yet!” When the guy was too young to know better, she told him she was pregnant with cats, which he helpfully put into his family tree project for school with “about 17 Lisa Frank stickers.”

* The next storyteller kept it short, but talked about “Is buying a $75 ham a good idea?” and being hit up for money for charity and whether or not one can get out of this by doing the “universal sign of I’m going to shit my pants, by pointing to my butthole.” She instead said she needed to buy a bottle of water and the charity person offered her own bottle, but then the storyteller was all “What if it’s laced with GHB?”

* The next one told stories about her mother, who died of cancer when she was ten but she still remembers her stories. When her name got made fun of in school, and her family found out that the girl making fun of her was named Madison, they said to tell her that Madison is what they named the cows on their farm and “Maddies” were the baby cows.

She also talked about how her mom sidescraped the family car when her parents were out of the country, got away with it because the scraped side was against the garage, and the grandmother got blamed. Twenty years later the mom came out...and said her sister did it!

* The next girl talked about doing a bunch of dumb things when she was 21, like dating a guy who was a lot older and insane, moving with her friends to go work on his pot farm “which was fun for about a minute,” and then the cops arrested him for making terrorist threats. Then the girls all moved out into a trailer and then the trailer burned down and the girls spent their last $500 to rent a truck to bring whatever was salvaged...and while their room and stuff hadn’t burned down, it was so covered in crud it was useless. “If you think I’m crazy, join the club.”

* The final story was about a girl going to rehab and trying to figure out how to go dancing again without also drinking and drugging.

I did not get ticketed this time. Ahem. I found the damn regular meters and all was well.

Mauricio has been talking for months about us getting together tomorrow when I’m in the Bay Area. I kept asking over and over again because he was highly likely to flake (you make fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plans and he’s there, you try to set anything up ahead of time and he ain’t) and sure ‘nuff, he flaked. Feh.

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