On the good news side:

1. We had one small miracle at work this week. Without getting into details, the thing that most utterly upsets people at this time of year (let's say it boils down to "I need X right now or else I lose my future," and we always have to be "Sorry, ain't no way in hell we can make your deadline or expedite it or anything"), well... a few lucky souls were permitted this week to get what they wanted.

This, y'all, Sets A Precedent. We can hopefully work with this. Someday. My area of the office is literally the last priority on the BigBoss’s list (not surprised, but to be fair a lot of shit is more on fire/broken in other areas, my area is just slow and hindering), but at least she definitely gets that there’s a problem.

2. I also got my major project of the week done sooner than later, so that's a yay.

3. Also, a huge busted thing got fixed. There are a billion other issues with it, mind you (the people I share an office with are very unhappy about that), but hey, one thing.

On the bad news side:

1. We had someone quit outta nowhere. I think she'd only been here what, a few months, and she moved cross country for the job. That should tell you something. It should probably also tell you something that she's the second one to do that within the last 12 months and their predecessor was canned before that. At some point I just want to know when that ever seems like a problem to upper management. Probably never, who am I kidding.

2. We are going to have yet another work retreat (sigh) and we have to have a meeting about it tomorrow. Certain People were grumbly about this (not a shocker), but one of them was all, “Are they ever going to do anything about the sexual harassment and bullying?”

Thoughts:
1. Of course we know that’s a no.
2. It’s kind of ironic that you are complaining about bullying when you’re someone I know has been complicit about that shit, and even if you don’t technically do it yourself, you seem fine with it when it’s your friend who does it. (I continue to be amazed at how this dude periodically will get on his high horse about privilege or pronouns or whatever and yet still act the way he does.)
3. Wait a minute, who’s being sexually harassed?!?!

That last one kinda shocks me because (a) we have very few dudes in this office, it’s at least 80% ladies in this field, and (b) almost all of them are very chill and nice and I can’t picture them harassing anyone sexually unless they have a secret split personality issue. Hell, even the not chill ones...to be fair, I can’t picture them doing it either (especially if they’re like, having this conversation.). And yeah, theoretically ladies could be harassing, but same thing: almost everyone is chill and nice and even the least pleasant ones, I can’t picture acting like that. I’m aware of what sexual harassers act like and I really can’t think of anyone acting like that in this lot. I don’t think anyone is sexually attracted to anyone else here either.

And then: I was on my way home when I ran into someone I know in an adjacent office and she said she was job hunting because her boss was “forcing her to do stuff.” There’s soooo many ways one can wonder about that statement. Again, I can’t picture that dude actually behaving in that way--every time you see him he looks like he’s about to pass out from exhaustion and his office, like all the other ones, is in whopping crisis. It could be work stuff for all I know. But after that remark you go HMMM.

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