Chaos Attraction

I'm In Trouble Yet Again

2020-06-03, 9:37 p.m.

Today was awful and tomorrow will be worse.

I can't even talk about the politics or the riots or any of that shit.

I got In Trouble Big Time at the morning meeting. Here's what I did wrong: A computer program is busted (and, I found out later, not getting fixed this entire week). This Is Causing Drama, which I was unaware of since from my POV I was all, "can't they wait a few days? They have a month and a half to sign up to do the thing on it." However, Another Problem came up from that. I got some random email saying, "Can you do X thing for me?" which is something I get asked all the time but the tech team has asked me to Not Do. I said as much and he said, "I called and they told me to call you." I asked on the Slack channel, could people please not do that because tech team has told me not to do it.

HORRIBLE MOVE, I SHOULD HAVE NEVER SPOKEN UP, because I found out the next day that it had been decided for me that I should be doing all of those manually when asked, and it was really bad that I told that guy no, and I should have done it. I asked if this was a dire emergency and was told YES IT IS, so okay, fine, I have to do it.

I was not in a happy tone of voice when this news was dropped on me, so my boss said I was offensive to my coworkers and they could hear that I was stressed in my voice and we have to have Another Jennifer Shaming Meeting tomorrow. Right before I have rehearsal, unfortunately. I seriously considered canceling, but that's not fair to do to other people because I will still probably be sobbing my head off at 5 when the show is next week, they are on East Coast time, Mel can only go until 6, they can't really rehearse without me, etc.

I really should just go out and lick a bus pole and catch COVID already. I may not be able to go out on stress leave, but if I'm out for months sick with COVID, then they can't do anything to me and they can't get a lick of work out of me and then what will they do?

Other fun news from today!

(a) We are all literally forbidden from physically going into the office at all unless you are one of the people who was granted permission. My boss got into trouble for going to the office to give someone some wipes. Also, now they are out of wipes and they haven't received new ones in the mail yet, so I guess they are SOL!

(b) On a related note, it has become a Dire On Fire Emergency to force Tigress to go into the office ASAP to remove stuff that she left in the filing cabinet because they are taking away the filing cabinet to remodel the office for distancing. Don't ask me how the permissions thing is going to work out. Tigress also pointed out that her last day to do actual work in the office is the 25th because she has to bring back her computer and clean out the office on the 29th, which also caused Teh Dramaz with the boss somehow?

(c) Lioness called out sick yesterday and slept for 12 hours. She was perky in the meeting and bragged that she somehow has 92 rolls of TP because she went to a supplier, if anyone wants some.

(d) We were told that BigBoss is coming to the Monday meeting. Lioness BEGGED people to ask questions so she's not the only one. Someone said something about questions being asked out in the open for all to hear and I said "yeah, that's what I have a problem with." Another thing to be shamed about tomorrow. I knew I should have stayed on fucking mute the entire time. But seriously, I wouldn't ask that woman a question if I was being paid a million dollars and I could just ask something innocuous like "Is the sky blue?" I don't even want to say hello to her any more. I'm done with her. I will be polite when she emails me to do something and otherwise, that's it. I have nothing to say to her, I don't want to have a conversation with her, I don't want to be told more platitudes. Whatever, lady. For whatever reasons, things are not improving under your reign and I’m tired of it and I can’t muster care up no more.

(e) Tigress brought up her family reunion in Oregon on the 4th of July, but "I think we might defer it to another date," because she has reservations. I said "please don't go."

(f) Penguin Girl said that after all the protests and Memorial Day, she will be very suspicious of the government if the number of deaths doesn't go up. "If it's all a scam, I'm going to Disneyland."

(g) We have over 900+ emails in the portal! All we can do is yell, "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" about it!

(h) The new job was immediately taken down this morning! Coworker Sarah complained about this and got it put back up. She said she's going to work on the job application with her sister tonight. Is this a bad sign? OF COURSE IT IS.

Oh, speaking of hiring:

(i) Someone has been hired from another giant org to work with the Shark Tank team! Good luck to her. I am going to avoid the shit out of her and hope she manages not to piss them off.

(j) Per the new giant org initiative....well, frankly, it sounds like some other kind of temp agency is now being run to employ people that would otherwise be laid off. People are permitted to ask to employ one of these people for six months. Per that, the scheduling unit has been allowed to get a Special Temporary Temp, and then they are allowed to hire someone permanently after 3 months. I am unclear as to whether or not that means they are losing Hannah, but I would guess probably (sigh).

(k) Is there any news as to whether or not our department can do that? Nope!

After lunch I had to warn my group that tomorrow I have to go be shamed in the afternoon, so no training for me. They were very nice about saying that they didn't find my behavior offensive, not that that matters. Earlier in the first meeting they were talking about all the riots and Tigress said that it was getting so extreme because people need to be listened to and it's not happening. In this private rant time (Tigress has given up on trying to train us for the first half hour because it is Rant Time every day), she said that we are trying to communicate to them that we are stressed, but what are they doing? Are they listening? This is why it's getting so extreme.

I seriously wonder if I am just going to burst out into a hysterical crying fit or worse tomorrow. Not that that would do any good either. Tonight my mom was trying to encourage me to tell the truth about how I am doing and I pointed out that they are literally shaming me for sounding stressed in my voice and can't hire anyone anyway. Even if they wanted to help, which is 50/50 at best and fuck if I know there really, they can't.

Then there was some rumored gossip. Super Big Boss's assistant is apparently leaving. This was not actually announced to anyone publicly. What WAS announced was that our current temp working as BigBoss's assistant was getting transferred into that assistant job, which brought out thoughts of: (a) we're glad she's still staying employed, and (b) wtf happened there? It still hasn't been announced that she's leaving or what she's doing or anything--my boss had to email her privately to find out she got a drastically different job--and oh, we found out today that her last day is Friday. This is utterly shocking since both she and SuperBigBoss seem like friendly, amiable people and it's shocking to think that somehow they did not get along enough for this to happen. Especially a job switch during a pandemic when there's a hiring freeze?! How the fuck did that even HAPPEN?!? That literally should not be possible, I've been told. This does not sound like a good thing about SuperBigBoss to drive someone lovely like her out, y'all.


On a funny note apropos of nothing: I found this notice on the Diaryland back pages: "Anyhow, hope everyone is well with the virus stuff." Wowza. It was dated beginning of April, for the record.

I did sign up for some various online cons going on. Tor is doing a con, Llewellyn is doing a con, I shall try to catch some lectures here and there over the next few weeks. One of the silver linings of coronavirus is getting all these online opportunities.

At least tonight's Storytelling 201 class went great tonight. About half the class was my old classmates from April and the rest were people from the May class. We were to come in with pre-written stories and then workshop them in this class:

Story A: a story about traveling before cell phones when you didn't know where people were and couldn't contact them, also looping in a story about doing the dishes for people as a favor and forgetting to mention it to them and then oops, there was some drama. Best lines in it were whether or not the words 'San Diego" translate into "whale vagina" (no), and "Are San Diegans obsessed with pandas at the zoo? Yes!"

Story B: a story about racism. The lady in question primarily talked about her friendship with a black kid in the 1960's and getting shamed by the school administration for it. It hurt the heart.

Story C: me, we'll get back to me.

Story D: the same girl from the last class told this awesome story about the book covering contest again, but she reworked it even better and people were Quite Delighted. Quotes I wrote down from it:
* "She was beloved by her family." (Note: the teller of this starts out with saying that she was totally neglected by her own parents.)
* "My parents never made me shower."
* "The thing about (name redacted) was that her projects were always the best in the class."
* "Goddamned stupid cake map." ('Nuff said about that last sentence?)
* "I was definitely almost showering once a week."
* "It was all worth it to see (name redacted) cry."

Story E: This was from a girl whose mom is a total narcissist/stage mom and she has Obviously Been To A Lot Of Therapy About Her. She told a story about being in "Manteca Idol" and her mom being a stage mom about it. Quotes from this one:
* "It's mommy issues that lead to serial killers." (One of the best openings ever. And most disturbing.)
* "(mom's name redacted) "wanted me to be Michael Jackson."
* I couldn't write it all down, but she had a very descriptive description of the place they held Manteca Idol in as looking like a 2-story version of Applebee's except the only memorabilia was clown memorabilia.
* Regarding the lyrics of the song she was singing, "When God Fearing Women Get The Blues:" "I loved in Manteca, I didn't know what Neiman Marcus was."
* After she finally loses, she's trying to be perky and cheerful and ends up accidentally smelling her rival's hair. "I was just zany at that time."

As for my story, I told a "problematic" one I came up with during the last storytelling workshop, about how I almost stepped on a butterfly while in a butterfly garden and was phobic about going into one of those for years. Lisa (instructor) gave some really good advice as to how to shape that one up.

Anyway, it was a good night (except for Mom calling to check on how I was doing, obviously that call didn't go well).

Tonight's tarot reading (deck 1) says he's very depressed. Join the club.


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