Welp, today was a petty kind of suck!

1. Woke up and found out that my cell phone refuses to charge because there is "moisture" in the USB port. There is NOT actually moisture in the USB port because the thing has been nowhere near water, and also I blowdried the port for quite a while. It continues to do this shitty error message and refuses to charge.

2. I wanted to tell my boss about this and bail out of work early to go drive to the nice cell repair place I found in the next town over, but he called in sick, so I couldn't.

3. No, I don't know why the (redacteds)* go missing even though they should, by god, be in the box. I have no secret stash of (redacteds). I have literally not even touched this year's crop of (redacteds) and my assistant who did isn't here today but I checked and he doesn't have a secret stash of (redacteds) either. I have no explanation for this and never have. The damn (redacteds) disappear like evil fairies ate them at times. I can go through and nitpick to make sure every (redacted) is there and then a month later some will just be fucking gone. I DON'T KNOW. The shitty little things disappear in the mail and even in our office and I DON'T KNOW WHY I SWEAR I DIDN'T FLUSH THEM DOWN THE TOILET.

* I don't know why using (redacted) is amusing me so much, but I'm in a bad mood right now so let's just go with it.)

4. This one actually kind of became comedy once I was off the phone... I got a guy calling because guess what, he hasn't received his (redacted). I looked and hey, guess what, looks like he never actually earned a (redacted) in the first place! But, but, he was in the (dog and pony show, i.e. party intended to celebrate earning redacteds) so that means he earned a (redacted), right?! I can't find any reason in the computer why he wasn't permitted to earn a (redacted), I can only assume he signed up for (dog and pony show) and then never got around to signing up to finish the paperwork to get his (redacted), because some idjits cannot read all of the websites saying that just because you sign up for one doesn't mean you are signed up for both, the dog and pony show does not mean you signed up to get checked for your redacted and vice versa, etc. Dog and pony show has much looser requirements and are essentially all "eh, if you finish within a year, we're good with you joining the party." Note this for later.

Only guess what, his mommy is stalking him on the phone and hops on the phone, where she asks me the same questions over and over and over again and is reminding me hugely of Jackie's mother, which is not helping. Not that I have spent any time arguing with Jackie's mother, but this sounds like the sorts of arguments she reports having in her family, except this time it's over redacteds and not getting money out of each other. I point out to both of them over and over and over and over again that they need to call this other office that can hopefully explain to them what happened and how he can qualify to get a redacted. Other office is the office that actually gives stamps of approval for these, we just print and store the things for them. Mommy claims they already called over there and were transferred over here. I can't explain why they did that, though it occurs to me after the call is over that he probably called the other office asking for his redacted and that would be why they sent him here since we store the damn things. Assuming he did, of course, because this dude might be lying like he's in a House episode (see below).

This is like 20 minutes of agony and repetition with mommy and trying to get her son back on the phone to take care of his business. I can't actually blame mommy for riding his ass (see below) because apparently he doesn't do that. At one point the mom wants to know why we allow people to be in dog and pony shows when they haven't earned their redacteds and I am all HELL YES I AGREE WITH THIS IT'S REALLY STUPID (more on that later) but all I can say is that the dog and pony show and the redacteds aren't linked, we don't run dog and pony show and we have no control over the fact that they let people into the show without having finished their work or even getting close to it.

After this shiz is over, I e-mail some folks at the other office to say "heads up, you're gonna probably hear from these people." One of them writes me back to say that the guy not only isn't that close to finishing all the requirements to get a redacted, he's...well, let's just say he's not going to get an opportunity to do so any time soon either. My contact finishes up by saying something like, "I think he needs to have a conversation with his mother." Bwahahah.

I do have access to peek at the main website the other office uses to stash their notes (didn't bother while on the phone since I was too busy goddamned arguing, also the other office does that stuff and it's their job to deal with it and talk to the guy about it so not really mine to share) and HOOOOOOO BOY. Dude was doing a flake and bail for years, basically said he stopped caring about doing his requirements, they were trying to gently suggest he do something else entirely, doesn't sound like he was super in the zone during conversations, and has a list of requirements he has to do for the redacted that he still hasn't done yet. BUT AT ONE POINT he asked if he could join the dog and pony show and the other office was all, "I dunno but you meet the minimum requirements to be invited." Those are the crucial words here!

So what I have deduced here is:

(a) Dude has no interest in redacteds for whatever reason, flakes and bails and doesn't do his work.
(b) Dude only shows any interest in redacteds when, I am guessing, his mommy starts nagging him, makes promises that he flakes and bails on. Other office gets reasonably fed up with this and stops giving him second chances.
(c) Dude gets the bright fucking idea to sign up for dog and pony show, knowing darned well his mother won't know that he never finished his work and it LOOKS like he did! I'm sure his family was so delighted!
(d) Dude moves home with mommy, out of state from here apparently.
(e) Today mommy starts wondering, where's the redacted? I don't know mom. She probably yelled YOU GO CALL AND FIND OUT!, and here we are today.

I had a shit day today (see below) but I am confident that whatever shit I had today, this guy is having a much worse night, and he deserves it. Enjoy the new holes mommy is making in you tonight, kid!

I am also going to bring up to my boss when he gets back the fact that one can actually pull this stupid sort of shit with the dog and pony show legitimately and mislead his poor mommy and why doesn't anyone else think this is a problem? Not that that is under our control, mind you, so it'll go nowhere, but at the very least I can then rant.

5. I'm signed up for an improv class in my town--they are starting a new drop-in series that runs once a month. It starts at 6:30. This gives me about an hour to run to the next town to try to drop off my phone for fixing. This place was kind of hard to find in the first place, it's located on the main street of town which is very long and has everything on it and was hard to find, so I print out Mapquest. Except I got the wrong cell phone store and got one that is, I am guessing, on the opposite side of the very long main street. I'm desperate, so I go in anyway, and get this awful bitch--

Look, I know I'm HOOOOORIBLE AND THE WORST at customer service, everyone tells me so and since I am so horrible I should not critique and nitpick everyone else. But there's "not good at it" and then there's "flaming deliberate asshole" and that's what she did. "Oh, it's an Android, right? We don't do that." Now, if this boiled down to "we only fix Apple phones," that's not great but that'd at least be an acceptable reason, but I don't even know if that was the case because then she goes on about using rice to dry out your phone and I'm all, it's not actually WET, at all, it's just claiming that it is and I know damn well it isn't wet--then she bails to yak on the phone with someone else for a few minutes and I'm all, I should just walk out right now, but I stupidly don't, and then she's all, "Well, what do you expect ME to do about it?" in the perkiest fucking tone.

"Who wants to be the last fool grasping at decency? Nobody else seems to care about it, so why is it up to me?"

I was all, "thanks a lot!" (not perky) and stomped out. I wanted to be sooooo much ruder. Why do I have to be nice to everyone who's a shit to me just in case what, they get even shittier at me?

So that was a waste of gas and time. I tried driving all the way down the long street to find the good store, but couldn't find where the hell it was with no GPS.

6. I go to the improv class, only two others show up, the teacher decides she can't really do a class with four people and it's canceled. I ask how many showed up in September (when I was on vacation and couldn't go) and she said seven guys, which would have been doable. This is when I remember that the last time anyone tried to teach improv in this town, we never got more than four people and then they all quit because "I have midterms!" and this is why I had to leave town to take classes, because you have to go to a big city to get enough people to show up.

So I rearranged my schedule to take this, which ruled out that oh, I could have taken another improv class out of town that's running on Thursdays (I did find that out too late to switch though), except now I'm volunteering then. So as usual this is not fucking working.

SO HERE I AM DRINKING.

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