Sent the rest of the emails. Got about 50ish responses this morning.

Today I got forced to email a bunch of big shots asking if they need help with (thing I literally KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOW THEY DO IT). I don't know why we do this since I can't actually offer any assistance if they have trouble, and I don't like being forced to offer my help on something I know even less of than the people do. I feel like it's a nag email, and people seem to treat it as such. You get a lot of emails of "I'll have it turned in on time" and a few cranky asses who don't appreciate being sent a nag email. I didn't draw the cranky ass today, that was Hope. I only ended up having to email four people because I was still digging out of international email, but guess what? One of them NEEDED ACTUAL HELP and wanted me to GIVE HER A CALL to help her! Fucking shoot me now. Somehow somebody managed to do something that they shouldn't have been allowed to do and I have no idea about any of it. I emailed my boss a lot.

Today's office trainwreck: BigBigBoss got another job and put in his 2 weeks notice today! I will note that BigBigBoss was (a) supposedly in charge of recruitment for a new BigBoss and (b) supposedly, we have to ask BigBigBoss as to what he thinks about letting anyone work from home. I SEE HOW WELL HOW THIS IS EFFING GOING NOW. Dianna kept saying, "Is there something going on that they know about and we don't?" I suspect not--obviously BigBoss hated it here and wanted to go home, and clearly BigBigBoss got recruited by another giant org. But BigBigBoss was also interim-ing for another office at the same time, so I SEE HOW WELL THIS IS GOING HERE. Who's above BigBigBoss? The second in command of Giant Org, according to my boss. Ruh-roh. Well, at least that person got hired within the last year, so theoretically she's not leaving yet. Dianna asked our boss if she was leaving too and she said something like, "actually someone offered me a job at SiblingGiantOrg, but I said hell no." I don't think it was a serious offer, more like a "hey, I'm leaving my job, you want it?" though. But SiblingGiantOrg is even more drama than here, so nope. It's just another office trainwreck, isn't it. To some degree you can't even be shocked any more. I figured Grandboss was just going to end up making the decision anyway, so there you go.

Seriously, we'd be fine if not for the in-person requirement, which annoyingly people are clamoring for in my emails. "When can I come in person to pick it up?" they keep asking me. They think we're open next month and all the important documents will be here, ready and waiting for them, hahahahah. I keep saying "we are closed indefinitely, we have no set plans to reopen" (which we don't), "please just give me a mailing address unless you want to wait several months for your Important Document." Most of them, of course, do not.

We had a conversation with my boss about it all, which was not reassuring in the slightest. Supposedly the remaining management still wants to make us come in twice a week, but with five people rotating that, what happens when they all call in sick, I asked. "I guess we'll all be forced to come into the office every day," my boss admitted, though she doesn't want to have to either and said we shouldn't need to make 5 staffers + 3 managers come in every single day. Except, y'know, where they will, of course. Even boss was all "what if I want to work from Lake Tahoe on my in-home day? Will I always have to be on call?" and I said uh, yes, both of us especially will be on call because we're the ones that live the closest to here. You know what'll happen, we're supposed to work from home 3 days a week and we'll be in the office 4 days a week because people called in sick, and what about vacations? What about doctor's appointments? "You'll have to schedule them on non-office days," she said, but if it's extremely unreliable as to when we have in-person days, how well is that going to work? And of course the rest of the office will be allowed to do whatever they want because they don't directly help people. GOD, WHY COULD THEY NEVER TAKE ME IN ANY OTHER AREA OF THE OFFICE?!?! WHY CAN'T I EVER GET AWAY FROM HELPING?!?!

I said multiple times that I know how this office goes about these things and I AM REALLY HOPING YOU PROVE ME WRONG HERE ABOUT THIS. I do not want to be right about my assessment that there's no way in hell we can do it. No comment, of course, other than "I guess management has to figure out what happens when three people call in sick."

The only concession Grandboss is willing to make is "because all the other offices in the building are only open to the public from 10-2," we can also only have our door open from 10-2 instead of 10-4. That is fucking HUGE for our "service oriented!" office, lemme tell ya. Unfortunately, since we are the most accessible, we get the most people. My boss said that yesterday's phone onslaught was because the financial office briefly had their phones broken, so people called here instead EVEN THOUGH WE CAN'T ACTUALLY HELP YOU WITH FINANCIAL ANYTHING SO THAT DOES YOU NO GOOD TO CALL US. Seriously, I don't understand this logic, which led to me mentioning all the times we got random calls, like the guy who called us BECAUSE HIS APPENDIX BURST. We ain't even CLOSE to a medical office. Phone hours, alas, will remain open for most of the day still.

During therapy today, I griped that I was basically a fucking hero for emailing nearly 500 people individually and saved my office an enormous amount of money replacing lost Important Documents, but I absolutely can't say anything to my boss about how the comm didn't go out and I needed to do that, because if I kept insisting the comm didn't work, I'd get in trouble and if I admitted to emailing everyone I'd get another writeup and an hourlong lecture from Grandboss again, but if I didn't do it we waste an enormous amount of money and have drama and screaming and crying and hell for the next year when everything is lost. My work is just so fucking insane. I'll be lucky as fuck if my review is all 2 stars instead of all 1 stars this year, because I suck at service and that is all they care about. My therapist was all, "tell it to me like you would tell your boss, so you won't tell your boss." Which I did. It helped. I managed to not blab it during the meeting, anyway.

Then this whole thing turned into another 'talk to your inner child" session, me crying, etc. and her saying that my inner child runs the show (even though little me and big me both agree that neither of us should be running anything) and she's trying to persuade my inner child that I can get a job in something else, since big me is pretty well convinced I'm stuck at this point after years of wasting my time trying to leave and feeling shittier job hunting, because I could never get any jobs the reasonable way and I'm not willing to do unreasonable (play the lottery, start my own business, quit and never get another job again, move somewhere for some other crap job). So I don't know where she's going with that one. Also, while I am unhappy with my particular section of Giant Org, they are a good and huge employer and I'm not willing to leave them and the cushy benefits you don't get anywhere else, like Covid safety. It's just so fucking stupid that I've never been able to find any other area of Giant Org that would take me, though.

She said I'm not the worst person in the world, and clearly not, but at work I am the worst one of all and they've made it clear that I can't do anything good enough, especially communicating with others. Inner child doesn't like that I have to feel like shit all the time in order to survive and stay employed. However, inner child also doesn't help me whatsoever and just cries and cries no matter what, so yeah.

After work, I took the advanced Crossword Puzzle Design class, in which we watched the puzzlemakers put a puzzle together and gave suggestions for an In The Heights themed puzzle, which is fun. In The Heights, Anthony Ramos, Musical, Lin, Miranda, Jon, Chu, TacoBar got plugged in.

I note that the program they were using (Crossfire) actually suggests words for you, which sounds super convenient! Heck, it even plugs in like, ghost suggestions if you like! Why even need humans any more for this, I suspect. They said it'll go up on the blog of one of them most likely, but might have to change it if they wanted to sell it.

Fun fact: "bra size is not accepted as an answer."

Where they were really doing the work is the clue writing, which they didn't use suggestions for--I'm not sure what they had popped up for that anyway. Then they ran into problems trying to describe "Lin" as a clue (even though the audience was all, 'first half of the name of the composer" or something like that, so they changed it out entirely, darn it. "Killer whale is fine, we don't have to get creative."

Other fun fact: I took Benadryl last night but no Claritin this morning and my foot started swelling up again tonight. The fuck? Not that bad, but I guess that answers part of the question of 'do I really gotta keep drugging up here?"

I also got a few texts from Robert tonight, who sent me a pic of a weird...dodecahedron steampunk knitting gadget thing? Sounds like my weekend, I said.

Shrek rehearsal: this time those playing fairytale creatures + guards had to be dressed for the quick change practice.

"My name is Steve." (everyone else) "Hi Steve." Someone else: "The guy from Blue's Clues?" "You look like a doppelganger of yourself." -Steve to me. Me: "Yeah, I thought about sending pictures of myself out saying this is what happened in quarantine." Someone else: "Why is the stage not green?" Steve" "It's not easy being green." "You're a good boy, yes you are." -Steve to Baby Bear Judah tried skydiving and will not do it again, saying it's painful: "The harness was unpleasant, especially if you're a fellow." "So righty and lefty became lefty and righty?" -someone else "I found my mother's dive log and I said, "Mother, would you explain this?" -Dannette. Me: "jump out of plane, whee?" After Morgan mentions seeing some kind of disturbing skydiving incident around Lodi: "If you're going to go skydiving in Northern California, avoid Lodi. They will kill you." -Judah. "That's why I stay in my swamp and avoid large crowds." -Adam Jan points out that playing Peter Pan "looks like fun until you put the harness on" and you get black and blue marks on your thighs. She tried it ONCE. "Who are you playing with the Chaka Khan wig on?" -Judah to Hugo "My costume is amazing." -Morgan in her flannel and gym clothes. Carter and Aubree are now billed as "sum bers" on their Zoom name. 'I feel like I should say you chose poorly." -Arthur Hugo left his luggage in the car and has his wolf costume on: "If I go out like this again I'm gonna scare somebody." I note that Arthur's cooking prop during the "guards threaten Gingy with swords and kitchen implements" scene is a milk carton with Gingy on it as being "missing." "I have to kill--kiss my true love." -Morgan fumbles a line, a bit ominously... "I hate this line!!!" -Morgan "This one's so hard!" She's also directing Shrek Jr. and says when the lines are different between each show.... We're all "we're not judging you!" Morgan turns on green lighting at the end to be Ogre Fiona. "Oh, that's right, I AM in this show!" -Jan on us having a long wait in the middle not doing much.

The big deal of the night was timing the song to figuring out how long it takes people to get out of their fairytale creature costume and into the guard outfit. Answer: 1 minute, 44 seconds, which is doable when I have most of the guard outfit under the pig outfit. (Should I even bother with the pants?) Unfortunately, there was some stalling around with playing the music and thus we started changing multiple times and were told not to...Finally Mary shows up in the guard outfit and was all "I was already naked, I was too far gone."

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