I pissed someone off AGAIN today. Goddammit.

Once again, the same old problem every year: "If I don't have X by Y date, I lose out on my future plans." My office isn't permitted to grant X, or even ASK for X. Other Office is permitted to ask for X of the Gods of the Giant Org. So I have to say something along the lines of "My office can't do it, but you can try asking Other Office about it. I DO NOT PROMISE OR GUARANTEE IT CAN HAPPEN FOR YOU, but you can ask." I do spell out the "no promise or guarantee" bit, like every time, because almost all of these requests are international clientele again and ah, at least some of them don't always pay attention/listen/read/whatever and get their hopes up. Sigh. I don't think this one did that here, mind you.

There is some higher-up in Other Office that I don't deal with much. My primary contact over there doesn't really have any backup except for this lady, but primary contact is out of the office for the rest of the week, so somehow the request made its way to the higher-up and she got offended and cc'd my boss about my "phrasing," Because she seems to think I totally said "Oh yeah, Other Office will totally do X." The fuck? She also wants to discuss this with ALL THE OTHER OFFICES, so that's very bad for me. So I was waiting for the inevitable Meeting of Shame with my boss and grandboss to be scheduled about how bad I was. It never happened and my boss never brought it up, so...I guess Monday :P I didn't even write back to it because I figured if I said anything I'd get in more trouble.

Later, it occurred to me that for all I know, this lady has no idea that being asked for X is really common these days. Maybe this is all 100% new to her because she's not involved?

Last night I watched the Lindsay Ellis cancellation video. (Short version of this drama: she does film commentary on YouTube, she tweeted that two movies had similar plots. Both movies are Asian movies. Offense, being called racist, death threats, everything she's done in 13 years of YouTube critiques was dug up and bitched about, the usual.) So she did a very long video responding to all of this, and while she doesn't apologize for the comparison tweet since others have said the same thing, she does apologize for shit she did before. And unfortunately it goes into Bad Shit That Has Happened To Her, such as friend breakups, feeling suicidal in the past, her biseuxality, getting raped in college.... as someone else said, it's horrifying that she had to get into getting raped to try to get people off her back. Not that that works anyway. So I did make a rundown of what the video talked about for another website, and now there's drama on that website about the whole thing and people getting into fights. SIGH.

I have no idea if it's offensive or not, really. I never saw either movie, I definitely would not watch one of them (I have never understood what the plot of it is about) and don't super care about watching the other. I don't know if that is genuinely offensive to all Asian people or not, but I'm an evil white person and I know nothing and I'm not the one to make that decision.

But really, I just have whopping sympathy for anyone who inadvertently pisses people off when they didn't mean to, because look what fucking happens when you do. And people wonder why I live in fear? And people wonder why I hate myself? Also, yet another reason to stay off social media and not try to work in the arts on your own. Too late for Lindsay, who got popular on the Internet long before social media started ruining lives.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I had another phone training with Adventure Girl. Weirdly enough, she got almost NO calls for the half hour of time, so I just asked her how you answered financial questions and how often we were actually going to have to answer the phone anyway. She said not often, just on days when both adults were out of the office and/or Emergency Financial Situation Days, and that we have over 20 part time phone answerers right now, though 4 are leaving, but come fall...they will be less available, sigh.

Also, today we got a very hinky email from some lady who got her Important Document in 1992 and says that YOUR OFFICE recommended she use such and such a service to seal the thing in a giant box. (I have never heard of this in my life. Suffice it to say that anyone who was working here in 1992 has long since retired by now, so it's not like I can ask.) Now it is ORANGE and she wants a new one and she's changing her name and she wants it for FREE because MY OFFICE offered a service that turned it orange.

Name changing your Important Document is not free. That is spelled out on the website.
You honestly think citing something people who are long gone told you in 1992 is going to get you a freebie in 2021?!?!
Your dumbass free will chose to seal the thing in a box. Not ours. Also, why the bleep didn't you complain to the box company about the orangeness in the first place? Also, it's been nearly 30 years. I know nothing about hinky box sealing companies, but maybe their seal doesn't last 30 years for all I know. This company may no longer exist for all I know, though she helpfully provided their address from 1992.
Frankly, this whole thing smacked of hinky cray-cray and I forwarded it to my boss, because if I attempted to write to this woman I was just going to have a rage moment. I'm sure she can come up with a politic way to say "we are not responsible for literally anything anybody told you in 1992, and also, if you want a new one, you still have to pay money."

TGIF, baybee.

In other news:

(a) More super awful variants have been detected in my town. Fuuuuuuuck.

(b) It has been determined at my alma mater that they WILL hold some form of smaller graduation ceremonies this year (sorry, class of 2020, not your year!) in which only 2 people are invited per person, nobody touches anything, and you have to either show proof of vaccination or a negative test taken within 72 hours. This is also all predicated on/assuming that we'll be in yellow tier come graduation weekend. Uh-huh.

(c) BigBoss's interim successor will be the other guy in the office who's equivalent to Grandboss (we have 2 second-in-commands). Grandboss will also run the tech stuff in addition to her usual work. I assume this is probably because we're all assuming Grandboss will at some point go back to Washington with BigBoss?

(d) The Craft Center has somehow been permitted to get a second adult manager again! This is very shocking since that position got budget cut a few years ago, and I'm surprised they brought it back now. Or at least transferred someone over, I guess. We'll see if I ever meet the woman or not.

After work, I walked around the neighborhood for another hour in another area. Nothing much changed there either. Then about five minutes after I got home, we all heard a very noisy car crash on the corner of my street. Let me tell you, I have NEVER seen this many people in the neighborhood here in my LIFE. I saw people I haven't even seen before coming out of their homes (well, probably about 75% masked). For all the sirens I hear multiple times a day around here, you know the cops and fire department and ambulance arrived QUICKLY. (One girl called 911, but I guess they already knew about it.) I am happy to report that nobody looked hurt from the incident, though the car in the middle of the street completely lost its front and the airbags had deployed. The other car was backed up onto the sidewalk but otherwise looked unharmed.

After that, I watched a play online called "Whole Cloth," billed "a reading of a work in progress." Our lead walks out of a curtain that's projecting someone embroidering on it. I'll note that my old improv instructor Lucas is in this one, surprise. Danielle the playwright straight up says, "This is my play," calling it a "choreographed surprise." She introduces her character, Ansky (Lucas) and his desire to preserve the legacy of the Jews, which involved a giant questionnaire. Danielle describes herself as "an only child...only adult." I hear ya, girl. Then she talks about her ancestor Elke, "a terrible seamstress!" and Elke, of course, has to say her own piece, and wave at the computer. "I am Danielle's perception of her great-grandmother Elke." Danielle talks about her shitty "best friend" who shunned her and had everyone else shun her circa age 12, threw her a surprise birthday party at age 13 (huh?) and finally Danielle friend dumped her on age 14. Elke comments that Danielle is basically making up a version of her, but she's fine with that. Danielle is all, "I'm glad, though I did make up those words for you to say." Elke maritally nags Danielle and Ansky says that an old maid is a blemish on the family. Danielle so clearly has nobody in her life--again, IT ME! Is old maid a thing now? "I pretend that it's not," though she thinks her family might call her that behind her back. 'It is hard not to buy into that collective judgment." She dubs online dating a "robot yenta" to explain it to Elke. She straight up recounts a text thread between herself and a "brief friend" and then has Lucas act out meeting the guy in person, who is ah, jobless and showing her this on her phone: "Imagine a cinematic masterpiece, but with Lego figures." Danielle seems to be all, is this the same guy that I was having charming texts with?! "There may be other fish, but how can you FIND THEM?!" I'm an old maid, because I didn't choose to settle down with that guy?! Elke says they only common-law married, really, with her so-called husband. Ansky asks about her "village" and she's all "Village!? I lived in Minsk! It's a city!" "People eye me with suspicion" about being single, Danielle mentions. "I am an only and an only and an end, confirmed." She didn't want kids but can't have any even if she wanted to. She has BRCA1 and had surgery to remove all of that. "I might not want to have a kid, but I want to be remembered." She wants to step out of this play for a sec. Ansky points out that her cancer surviving experience might help others. She says she got mad at his questionnaire because it was so reductive. She doesn't like the "cancer survivor" label either. "We label one as all." She tells Ansky he wrote a play called "The Dybbuk." "Without children, who will tell my story?" Theater, apparently. "This play leaves my DNA on the stage." She did not do a Q&A afterwards (bummer) but thanked everyone.

After that, I discovered that the Amber Ruffin Show is back online, and she offered a raffle to get a free pass to say the N-word to whoever gets a vaccine today. LOL Amber. "I should have never hired that guy." Tariq and Amber on all the shootings: "How was your week?" "Shitty!" She sings about this was the week she hit the wall, and later did a song called "Ghost Guns." I won't recap the fly sketch though, that was super gross. In the end, the white guy does not get the N-word pass.

You know what's weird? On some level, I am feeling fine about the Scott situation. Yeah, I'm mad and sad and bothered that I'll never know for sure what it would have been like, and I'm super mad that my 17 year streak fucking continues. I can't figure out whether or not I should bother to tell him this (that I'm gone) or not.

But am I actually feeling the caring for him that I used to? I'm not, right now. I refuse to care about someone who can't care about me, or won't, whatever it is. He's never going to be there for me, we're never going to have a conversation again, we're never going to do anything together like I wanted. Never, never, never. And it's all for the best because no point in pining over someone who doesn't want me and will never be close to me.

Note from November 2021: I was wrong on this last bit.

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