Here is another Sedaris article.

It was a short week at work and I am totally drained and drunk typing right now.

Tuesday: The gadget I have to use to log in at work died. I did whatever I could in my power to not have to call IT Help. I had to call IT Help. I did not hear back from them all fucking day, which meant I could do next to nothing because 99.8% of my job means I gotta be in the system, while still having to Look Busy because someone else was also having computer issues and waiting on IT Help and uh, didn’t have much to do but look at me. Sigh. The avalanche of needy in my emails piled up because I could do nothing.

Oh, btw, the new assistant is starting tomorrow! Got any work for him to do? Uh....seriously I have not had much come in for a week. (Luckily for me that picked up the rest of the week.)

Wednesday: IT Help finally wrote me some email around 7 pm saying “we disabled your gadget, use your phone to download the app that you can use instead of a gadget.” Which (a) didn’t work, in multiple ways, and (b) I don’t want to use my phone for that ANYWAY, and (c) I’m looking to get the thing repaired if I can find someone to fix the jack, so that’s not a great idea anyway. Thanks for the help!

So hey, I gotta train the assistant tomorrow and this shit needs to get done! My boss was back at work today, thank gawd, so he got on it. I got told “email (redacted) to get a new gadget.” I did and (redacted) said “Go get one from (person A) in your office.” Not only was (person A) not at work that day, their officemates said in great forceful detail that (person A) doesn’t do that any more, go to (person B). I am happy to say that (person b) gave me the gadget with zero drama involved. However, when I decided to email (redacted) back to warn them that hey, a bunch of people just told me that (a) isn’t doing it any more, it’s (b), just so you know...(redacted) basically ripped me a new asshole for my “tone” outta fucking nowhere. KaBOOM, I have pissed someone off yet again. And they cc’d my boss, who was all, “I know you didn’t mean it the way (redacted) took it,” but I got advised to call people “dear” or say “hi” in emails, which I do not always do especially with folks I talk to regularly (I probably do it upon first contact and that’s it, after that you know who’s speaking! It is on the top of the email!) so I can “soften.” SIGH.

I hate calling anyone “dear.” I hate pet names (ever notice some people call you them when they are dropping bad news or otherwise trying to snow you?) and nobody on this earth is my “dear.” Gag.

Anyway, I apologized up the wazoo, (redacted) did too, it’s over, but this was my first hour of work and I was fucking wiped and drained after that. Like, I went home and went to bed ridiculously early level of drained.

Though training the assistant went well, he’s nice, he picks things up very fast and accurate, huzzah there. I just need to come up with more workload for him since it varies and he can do more hours than my previous one was doing.

Thursday: So I got two emergency bombs dropped on me in one morning, and I mean by 8 a.m. morning. Because two people contacted the higher ups multiple levels above me, so then it’s all “can you do this ASAP so X and Y can get jobs?”

X called (person A) at 7:15 a.m. saying they needed to get into a certain status in order to get a job, they thought they were IN said status but something went wrong, dah dah dah. X calls me a few hours later, same thing. A and I told X the same thing: go talk to Other Office, if you can get them to approve what you need, then fine, we can help you. X wants a name at Other Office and I recognize their previous contact in their records but tell them that (person C) no longer works there so uh, find someone else. X calls (person C), who in turn calls me with concerns that her ex-office is “going to throw me under the bus” to serve X. To which I said well, the priority is that X gets their thing, not what status we are buswise, you know how it goes here.

Y needed proof for a job by Tuesday, which would be fine if they were finished fulfilling requirements. They are NOT DONE with this, and even worse, they are doing work for dual offices. I point this out and Big Boss is all, “they just want proof saying that they will get the job if they finish their requirements.” I am all UH OH, OTHER OFFICES NOT GONNA BE KEWL WITH THIS, and indeed they were not because asking them to do that opens a giant can of worms that they will all need to argue about at their next meeting. Meanwhile my boss and BigBoss are all “look, just make an exception here.” So that’s ....a day or whatever of email arguing there.

I was still pretty drained Thursday, but I at least had enough energy to go to Dawn’s and hang out after work.

Friday: Explosion Central!!!!!

Other offices finally caved and agreed to give Y what they wanted in exactly the nonstandard format they wanted it, so that drama was done by around 10ish a.m. Thankfully, I don’t go to the committee meeting they will all be arguing at later. What will probably happen is that we will have to make exceptions like this in the future again and again because folks get vicious if they don’t get what they want. Sigh.

As for X, I got even more pleading emails for me to help X from the Big Boss at 8 a.m. X did not mention yesterday that they just got a job at Super Awesome Out Of State Location and need to have proof by....3 p.m., Other State’s 5 p.m. time.

I wrote a very long email to everybody explaining that hey, OTHER OFFICE has to do steps A and C and X needs to do step B and hey, if you guys really want to do Special Exception Thing That Needs Approving By Our God (which would bypass a lot of this shit), I would not count on that happening in one day since all of the things I needed God to approve in the last month took them 1-3 weeks, so let’s prioritize A through C, but SERIOUSLY GUYS I AM THE LAST ONE IN THE WHOLE LIST OF THINGS, Y’ALL GOTTA DO STUFF BEFORE I CAN, OKAY?!?!? I can do my bit in five minutes but YOU keep needing to approve my doing it, so you go do that!

So, Other Office and X and Other Office again all get their shit together (yes, C was “thrown under the bus,” definitely happened, unshocked) and X gets what I will refer to as placeholder proof (kind of what Y got) sent by 11ish a.m. Huzzah, right?

Right after that, Z calls wanting yet another expensive rush document for someone in China, which I do constantly. I deal with Z off and on and he was the easiest one to deal with that day. I pointed out that China is evil and makes you do a ridiculous number of proofs so he needs to check with his client he’s doing this for before we finish this. We agree to regroup on Monday after he’s presumably heard back.

I figure all is well to go take off for a few hours for lunch and an interoffice ice cream social.

I come back and OH NOES, X’s job has rejected his proof, it is NOT ENOUGH, he will be canned, he’s already moved out of state and has no money or job, only getting Special Exception From God will fix this problem.

I give mad props to Other Office on this one: somehow they got a Special Exception made from God by 3:30 p.m. I don’t know how they did it, but this is like the biggest miracle I ever saw in this job.

I heard back from X one more time saying he left messages everywhere, but is going to have to wait in suspense all weekend long now. Sigh.

This shit is why I came home and drank after work. Kind of a lot.