The big news at the morning meeting was that we've finally been allowed to have a total of five people working physically in the office Monday through Thursday (why not Friday, I dunno). I think it boils down to one manager + two young'uns, and everyone has to go work in a different office. That starts next week. That at least gets one or two more warm bodies to answer phones and deal with the mail, so yay for that.

Today I got myself in trouble because in the morning meeting I said it takes me 20 minutes per each international client to explain how to get their documents ASAP (and very expensively). Unfortunately, this came about because some guy emailed both the general email box (which Lioness has taken over manning since her return) and Grandboss, which meant it all got forwarded to me, and I had to email both of them to say "Hey, you know how he sent a form with all of his financial information in it? You have to delete that immediately for security reasons." This is a huge, awful thing and I have been told that the entire organization will lose all ability to take money, plus I will be fired, if we are caught "accepting" it. I BEG PEOPLE NOT TO DO THIS and they do it CONSTANTLY because in this day and age it is quite reasonable to expect that one can make financial payments online easy peasy, and we are a super backwards organization because we can't do that for shit and it's extremely forbidden.

Asking them to delete the form is all I said to either of them, and I then proceeded to email the guy directly with all of the tedious "here is how to reorder your lost document, we mailed it out years ago so it's lost forever now, you said you wanted it immediately so that is going to be very expensive, here is how much," etc. I did not cc either of them since they don't handle the documents situation and didn't need me to clog their inbox with this shit. Now, in addition to that guy I had five other clients with the same issue, and like I said, it takes me a long damn time to have to explain all of their options to them, how expensive they are, how long it takes, blah blah blah tedious AF but there's nothing I can do about that. That is basically all I did today for two hours straight except for meeting time. Well, both Grandboss and Lioness OBJECTED TO THIS and demanded that we SET UP A MEETING TO DISCUSS THIS. Oh, FFS. So now I have YET ANOTHER DAMN MEETING on Friday to discuss this. Oh, come ON. We have no way to automate this issue as yet (our vendor was supposedly working on this, but who knows these days), and unfortunately they have tons of questions before they are willing to pay the enormous amount of money, and that's even assuming they understand what I said because they are international.* I despise that I have to spend so much time explaining the same crap for hours a day, but I sure as hell can't automate that. Do we HAVE to have a meeting over it?

* For example, the dingdong today who, after I specifically said DON'T EMAIL US YOUR FINANCIAL INFORMATION, immediately emailed all of his financial information to the portal. I am so so so sick of dealing with blockheads who either don't read or ignore everything I fucking say. I don't want to be a bigot, but the international clientele are SO EXHAUSTING. The ones who listen to me and behave reasonably are tops in my book, but I have way too many who just freaking don't.

So just for proof as to what I deal with, I literally copied and pasted all of those emails into a document today, so they can see exactly WHAT it is I deal with every damn day. For example, the aforementioned Guy Who Won't Read And Immediately Did What I Told Him Not To Do, Two Girls Who Don't Read And Paid For Special Shipping Without Actually Placing An Order For Thing They Want Shipped In The First Place, Guy Who I Have Argued With* Over His Foreign Address For A Solid Week Now, some other one I can't recall because they weren't as much of a pain as the other one, and the guy who kicked off everyone's ire...who is fine without ordering platinum rush after all, as it turns out.

I have been begging him to find any way to get his document that doesn't involve it being mailed into the Black Hole Of Mail Zone, which usually boils down to "please mail it to someone you know in the US." To his credit, he seems to have been trying, but he says literally every human he knows is moving back to Black Hole Of Mail Zone. *cries*

As for the afternoon training, it took 45 minutes to get three people into a Zoom meeting. Whee. Though on the good news side, Tigress mostly spent the time training Coworker Sarah on something tedious I already know how to do, so that was a load off me, and we ended early so I could actually get something done on my job for a change.

More news from the mailing list: Scott's family stores are starting their moves over the next few weeks, starting with the yarn store in a few days and then finishing up the other by the end of the month. So there's that. Feels weird to know I'll never be in there again, but then again, I knew that the last time I was in there-- but I thought it was for other reasons, i.e. I'd just go over there after they moved locations. Now I suspect I'll never even see the new one ever unless his mom posts a lot of pics or something.

Anyway: tonight's Winters show reading was this radio play. Mostly a bunch of old-timers I don't really know (that have moved out of town since they were last in shows, I guess?), but from TnT we had Nancy/Steve, Robert, Scott and I. It's been a year since we did that show now (sigh). Can't believe that one. Seriously, if I ever get the ability to go back in time and like, live in some year again, I'm picking 2019. I'm just gonna go hide out in 2019 forever if I get the option. I miss 2019 so goddamned bad. We can just rerun 2019 over and over and over again and stay there.

Obviously they had way too many people wanting to do it vs. lack of parts, she had to split a good chunk of the parts up, etc. so when Linda forgot to assign me a part, I was unthrilled about it but kept silent because I didn't want to be a difficult pain in the ass. "You forgot me! Waaaaah!" "Oh, I'm sorry, Jennifer, let me go look through this...." (stalls everyone for the next ten minutes because I spoke up).... Ugh, I just don't want to be a difficult pain in the ass who speaks up and causes trouble, you know? It doesn't matter what circumstances, I don't want to cause any difficulties. Really, I feel like I'm being difficult enough all day at work as is.

Linda, to her credit, did figure that out halfway through and apologized. I tried to be nice and say no, it's okay, you have too many people already, it's fine and I don't want to be any trouble, but she said "You're Geraldine Five." (Yay Linda.) I should probably clarify that Geraldine's the lead lady, who's being terrorized by some guy on the phone counting down the hours to her death, she lives on an island, she doesn't know who to trust...etc. Getting to read the end part was super overwrought and was a lot of fun for me, albeit I was starting to sound like how I feel all day at work. Hope that wasn't obvious.

I enjoyed seeing Scott again, but I can't exactly say we had any conversation or moments this time or anything. Just reading the parts. I was hoping for some sign of, I dunno, something (some sign) indicating that he'd be good with hearing from me, but no. I actually have the mug he got me sitting behind me with the other office supplies (and well, the hamster cage, but nobody noticed that either) but who knows if he noticed that or not. I find it sad that I got excited that she listed his email and mine next to each other on the emails and for a brief period of time we were next to each other on the gallery view (till some dude showed up and booted that out, sigh). That's as good as I can fucking get these days.

I do want to talk to him (maybe I am trapped under something heavy), but what the fuck would I say? "Hi, I'm okay except for the fact that I'm having a nervous breakdown?" Uh, sure, I already said that to Loretta this week, but Loretta used to work at this organization so that's not exactly a thing that would faze her. (Indeed, it didn't.) Pretty sure that would upset Scott at least some. And he'd probably be like "I have nothing to say, just busy moving the stores" anyway. For more When Harry Met Sally quoting, I feel like I'm through making a schmuck out of myself. I don't want to be Too Much and scare him off or whatever, so instead I cried and went through my liquor cabinet again, wondering why the hell I have blackberry liquor in there. Tastes way too much if you drink it straight so I ended up pouring water in it to be palatable. Life in quarantine: when you realize you have weird things in the cabinet to mix booze with.

And here I am watching another one of these dumb videos (#2) and getting "Once they make that decision, they will charge in," and the Romance Oracle cards This Could Be The One, Stay Optimistic About Your Love Life, Reconciliation, Worth Waiting For.... "working on the connection you were building before isolation." It's what I want to hear, right? And then I watched some other video (which I did not save, out of upset) saying that there’s no point in talking to him, he doesn’t want to hear from you, so don’t bother.
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