Monday:
(a) Had to go into the office. Lioness called out sick. Apparently a ton of the younger employees also called out sick and they were going to be short staffed BEFORE all of that, somehow. Oh yeah, and Adventure Girl quits after tomorrow. I was in the office with her but frankly, could only stomach talking to her about work stuff when I had to. I just can't feel or fake happy for her right now knowing how horribly fucked I am and everyone else is. I'm glad to be missing her goodbye Zoom.

(b) We were supposed to open the front counter today for walk-ins and this tells you how bad things are: after like an hour we were permitted to close the office to the public for the entire week. They NEVER allow for shit like that, except during the start of the pandemic, and even then they still made us be open to the public but downstairs where they had window shields. Then again, we hadn't publicized it ("soft opening" seems to be the entire building's MO because I only saw one office open and nobody was there), so I guess we got away with it.

At one point I went out and some kid was lurking around making sad eyes at me when I said we were closed. I JUST DID NOT HAVE THE CARE ABOUT THIS. I wasn't going to be all "sure, come in, I'll totally help!" I was utterly fucking fried from the the phones (see below) and I wasn't going to fucking ask what he wanted with no eyes on me to judge me. I do not care. I was on break, I do not give a tiny bit of extra to this job.

(c) Hope and I, being the only ones left, had to answer the phones. Hope got assigned to the 10 a.m. hour (the worst) and hated every minute of it. My boss nicely put me on the 1 p.m. shift, which was also still pretty bad and then there was only one younger employee on the phones until like 2:30 and all the managers who were logged in weren't doing shit, so I still had to be on the phones. Hope was all "log off, they said only one hour," but I was all "my boss is logged in even if she's not doing anything, she will see it."

(d) About 80% of what I got asked was stuff I could not do anything about. I can't fix your schedule. I got a lot of that. I think I got like 2 questions I could actually answer. I got an anti-vaxxer on the phone wanting to know why she can't do online any more and uh....well, GiantOrg has publicized requiring vaccination for everybody even if you aren't physically here and how they're discontinuing online and they've said that since the summer, so....

(e) Oh yeah, and I got one guy who wanted to talk to our finance people. We have two finance people here, the rest of us are NOT trained in their stuff and we are NOT supposed to be giving financial advice. This guy apparently got rejected for an exception in May and said he's been emailing and emailing and calling ("but I have a special situation!") and nobody ever answered his emails and the voicemail box is full. He asked me repeatedly for financial advice. He wanted to walk into the office today, as he was lurking in the building, To which I was all "yeah, there's not a whole lot of people in the building, but those people are definitely not here to talk to" and "well, I can get you a manager if you like, but they can't give financial advice either."

So I finally hit up one of them on Slack and she was all "we answer all our emails within 48 hours, I tell people to email me on my voice mail, and (other guy doing this job)....probably does have full voice mail that he never clears out." I truly do not know what to say to this. She was all "tell the guy to join a Zoom meeting" and I was all "....yeah, I don't think that's gonna go well...." and finally she agreed to call the guy, presumably to reject him again within 5 minutes.

How come the dude is allowed to never call anyone and keep his voice mail full? If I did that, I'd get written up a bunch of times and then fired. But apparently he gets away with that? And also, it's kind of one of the mysteries of the office. Literally anything involving their specialties, you only hear from her. I've never gotten an email from him and apparently he gets away without phones. What does he actually DO? Why the hell did he even apply for this job and does he actually do it?

(f) Then someone wanted Lioness and called me and kept asking me to "fix it" whatever Lioness fixed ages ago, and I have no idea what the hell she wanted.. "She fixed the date." I have no idea what the hell she's referring to. When will Lioness be back? She called out sick, I have NO IDEA.

I hate my job and I hate my life and the only way out of this is death.

On the good news side of work:

(a) The Important Documents came in and I organized the hell of them for 2 hours, but couldn't start mailing them because I'm waiting on the mailing labels. Then my boss was all "Let the younger employees do that" and uh, REMEMBER HOW SHORT STAFFED EVERYBODY IS?!? That's literally never going to happen at least for the next two weeks and I am being hounded every day over this shit.

(b) Theoretically Dianna is supposed to come back on Thursday (i.e. day I was supposed to have to come back into the office for a 3rd day because of her being out). However, I won't believe that happens until it actually happens and I am definitely going to have to wake up at the crack of dawn to ask if I still have to go in or not.

(c) Even though they are utterly swamped and short staffed, they have no choice but to let me use vacation time this week, so nothing will get done EVEN MORE. So there you go. I go an emergency request at 4:55 p.m. yesterday (this shit involves a lot of finances and hand holding and drama) and hit forward to my boss and Hope, being all "SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO TAKE CARE OF THIS." Will it? Who knows? Odds are 50/50!

Anyway, I was utterly fried and feeling like shit. And I've got at least two more weeks of this.

After work, I went to Walt's karaoke birthday party for 45 minutes. It was very decorated and well attended and I was sad to have to leave early. I did get to see the "My Way" video Jim and Ashley made--Ashley made sure to point out she used my funniest bits. Hugged Walt a few times, ate, sang "Gives You Hell" (not appropriate, but I was in an angry mood, obviously) and had to leave.

I kind of felt bad I didn't tell the former karaoke gang about this, but what's the point, they wouldn't show up anyway. On a related note, Ashley was all "I miss Scott and Robert and Janene" and I was all "well, the last two have been here twice, but Scott's never coming back. He doesn't like me any more." I told her what happened and she seemed unfazed.

Mary Poppins, Tech Night 2:

Don from Camelot is going to run the mics from the booth. He hadn't seen the show before so just sat around watching it/reading the script. I think he was pretty bored.

I briefly saw Brian in the building, not sure what was going on there. Didn't really get to have a conversation but did wave.

I saw Dannette (in there to do the program) and she said she was doing fine, has been back at work for 1.5 weeks, mostly just felt like bronchitis that wouldn't go away without antibiotics.

Rehearsal went till past 11:30 p.m. (the parents of the kids finally hit their limit and demanded the kids leave at 11:30, legit) and Kyle the director said afterwards this was the first time they'd been through the entire show (well, they cut the last number short, but close enough). He was VERY nice about being all "I've been in the booth too, I know how it goes." Very sweet.

Light cues....still having issues with that, found ones that were missing, blackouts REALLY DO need to be added in there...per on-comm conversations with Kyle and Kimmie, they're gonna work on that today (Tuesday). I had some good moments and some bad moments and plenty of confusion moments, as one would expect.

I'm a little stumped as to why some scenes are so dark or the spotlights aren't actually on the people? (I note that Mom said similar about Camelot when I was doing the light board).

I admit it's amusing to watch the flying scenes. Especially that Bert (Judah) is literally doing flips in the air. I am both super impressed and super kinda scared watching that after Steve said the first time they hooked him up, the weights were off and Judah fell. Thankfully, not too far and he didn't get hurt, but eeeeek.

I get a lot of crocheting done while watching this show and waiting for my next cue, hahahah.

No mics on but they did have costumes today, they looked lovely. However, there is apparently a super quick change for "Jolly Holiday" that was definitely Causing Problems to get Judah and Jori in and out of entirely different outfits. Not that this is my business, but why the hell would you have them wearing totally different outfits (down to the shoes) that has to be changed in like a minute? I would have just say, added a different layer of skirt, kept the same shoes, maybe put Jori in a fancy apron and a different hat and left it there, maybe just change Judah's blazer and leave the rest of the outfit alone? There was some snark from Kimmie later about certain people in the show being forced to wear clothing from the children's productions and how hard that is to change sets in.

Dogs: there is no live dog in this show, just a fake one. Someone asked Steve if they'd have their dog Barney in it. "No, he barks all the time."

Steve said he heard that the CDC was going to shut down children's theater because of the lack of vaccination. Wouldn't surprise me.

Thoughts on the plot of the musical:

You know, it would make a lot more sense for Mrs. Banks to be a new wife and stepmom to the Banks kids. I know that doesn't work given the age of the kids and this show is clearly not interested in a stepmother plot, but the plotline for her is that she used to be an actress (and now her husband scorns it all) and she's trying to learn the new role of "Mrs. Banks, property of Mr. Banks the sovereign" and throws a party for a bunch of assholes she doesn't know because her husband wants her to, and then they don't even show up. I don't know if there's any official age for the kids in this show (I note that ours are at least legally vaccinated age), but if she's been married to Mr. Banks long enough to produce two children, learning "the role of Mrs. Banks" should not be that fresh and new to her?

Kyle and I are agreed that Mrs. Poppins (and presumably Miss Andrew the evil nanny as well) is a witch. That makes sense.

I do like the plot about Mr. Banks turning down a divey person (with the foreshadowing name of "Von Hussler!") and then giving a loan to a reasonable person instead. The plot is that the the divey person was making some other bank a lot of money and George is suspended for awhile and he's in fear of his job--and then by the end they are all "you saved our bacon, Von Hussler put the other bank out of business with that scam, we're giving you a giant raise!"

I still don't want to be IN the show, per se, but it's growing on me, I guess? I'll have seen it what, 18 times by the time this finishes?

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