sight isn’t always necessary

So, Craig works Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And it is in these long stretches, especially the ones that span the weekend, that I realize how much of a loser I truly am.

Where are all of my “friends”? And if I really had some, would they want to hang out at my boring house doing quiet things while my silly child slept? Maybe (probably) some of them would. I probably could call those people and beg them to come over… but that is not my point.

My point, in case you lost it already, is that I’m an old lady mother with nothing to do and nobody to call and it’s really depressing the crap out of me. I met with an old friend today – and I really should have been able to do that alone – but instead I had Connor with me which actually was an impediment to the whole “catching up” thing. I mean, I love my child with all of my heart and soul and blood and whatever other bodily (or outer-bodily) part you could name… but seriously! I’m only 27! What IS this life I have now acquired? Why is it that I am so alone in this realm? Are there other people out there, preferrably ones that also feel the way I do sometimes (regret is a word I rarely use, but could it describe this feeling?), that also are bored and alone on this here wonderful Saturday night?

I won’t be alone for long, and I could lay off the wine to clear my mind and bring me back to reality where life is fun and joyous and fulfilling, but I think I’ll lay here in the mud for a while.

THINGS TO SPEAK UP ABOUT (please, and you know who you are, comment and give me more ideas)

- Being “friends” with management is becoming a way to get out of work. Or a way to make it look like certain people do more work than others, simply because of their friendships with what we’ll call “managers”, but that is really a term I use loosely. That’s gotta stop. Dorks, people who don’t hang out at night, mothers, antisocial but hard working employees – we all deserve to be treated with respect, and when those “cool” people get special treatment, we all expect it too.

- That leads to the next very superficial but very important issue – mingling with coworkers, and the double standard that exists along those lines. Each morning, Ned sits in Mike’s cube for a half hour, or vice-versa. JC stands in Casey’s doorway for a half hour. NO ONE starts working until 8:30. So I come in at 8:30, because that’s when people start to “work”. And I got in trouble for it. WELL HERE’S THE THING: If people are “working” when I get to work, and there’s the expectation that work begins when you walk through the door, I may start showing up earlier. Until people get “in trouble”, or at least the cool kids get scolded, I’m not going to come in before 8:30 ever. It’s not fair that I’d sit at my desk working while everyone else is fucking around – I just don’t care enough about most people here to want to mingle, and I’d rather get an extra half hour of sleep.

- I don’t know how, but that leads to another thing: stop bothering Alicia about talking. FUCKING A. Because she’s worked her forever, and been treated like shit, and if she doesn’t want to do ANY goddamn work any fucking day, she should be allowed to do just that, and nobody should get into her business. The fact that Tates, the stupidest manager I’ve ever fucking met, has any say over what Alicia does really sickens me. I know she probably is not that broken up about it – she’s so laid back that she lets things roll off her shoulders easier than I do. I’m seeing this as a bystander, and the hawk-like watch over Alicia’s movements makes me REALLY fucking pissed. JC sits in Casey’s office for at least an hour, broken up, every single day, and rarely does it sound like it’s work related (too much fucking giggling). Kris never says anything. It’s extremely disruptive.

- Stop bothering Robin about when he gets here, when he leaves, or how much work he does. He lives far away, has a shitty manager, and doesn’t get a lot of positive feedback from anyone. You can’t expect to continually step on a person and have them get up every time with a smile on their face. He hates this place, and rather than constantly fucking around with him (there is a point when a joke goes too far), it would be refreshing for someone to help him along and be a true “leader”. Maybe, just maybe, that would inspire him enough to actually give a shit.

- Tates is the worst manager on the planet, with Casey in a close second, and Kris in third. Tates cannot manage for shit – he can’t even keep a handle on his own work, let alone the work of others. If you ask him a question, he always ALWAYS has to either ask Scott, Ned, or Kris. He knows nothing. He flies around the cubes of his employees looking over their shoulders like crazy, but micro-manages too much and even fucks people over very frequently. When Jay was here, he’d tell me constantly about stupid stuff Tates did to fuck him over. For example, an issue came up with PTV where the account managers sat on an issue related to some web update for a month. When it finally went to production, a day later they posted a follow-up asking for another change. To “teach them a lesson” (sometimes they need to be taught), Jay was not going to act on the issue for at least a day, and I believe he even posted a follow up to that effect. The VERY EVENING he wrote that follow up, because Tates never leaves this place because he’s a big fucking loser, he made the changes behind Jay’s back and put the issue into test. Jay was pissed – it wasn’t even an important issue, but for some reason that idiot of a manager stepped on Jay’s toes and did the change himself. This is wrong for many reasons – for one, it makes Jay look like he has no authority over his own clients, and gives the account people the impression that he’s weak and they can always just go to Tates if Jay won’t cooperate. That is NOT a way to give your employees the confidence they need to do their job well. Jay was one of the best programmers in this office, despite what people may rant about in anger now that he’s gone, and he should never have had anyone doing ANYTHING with PTV because anyone else was bound to fuck it up. Anyway, enough of that.

Casey sucks because she’s a bitch – she’ll be friendly to your face, and then turn around and screw you in an instant. She’s too “buddy buddy” to be an effective manager – a truly good manager can be friendly with employees, but not “friends”. She has all of this money and history outside of this place – can’t she go buy one of her old friends and start actually managing something when she’s here? Rather than being so exclusive in her little club? Maybe it’s partly insecurity – she can’t function around here if she doesn’t have her clique by her side. Who knows. It’s annoying and aggravating.

Kris is just a prick. He’s a lot like Casey. They have all of these secrets, and the way they keep everything hush-hush (a lot of that shit goes on in this company) is so obvious, and yet nobody knows any of the secret details. The little meetings they have every Monday morning are mostly just to blab about the employees here, I’m sure of it. There’s no way Tates has anything useful to say in those meetings (he could go on and on about stuff he saw other people doing, but rarely can come up with solid things he is currently in the middle of doing), and Casey just giggles the whole time. And Kris gets a high off of having the power to take managers into his office and shut the door, and give the impression to anyone around that “real business” is taking place. It’s so icky to see how power can cloud up the brain of a person who may have at one point in time had potential for being a decent human. He probably never did, really – he’s all too obsessed with the way he looks and the shit he has to care about anything outside of those two things. Anyway, I digress. He’s hopeless. Management sucks.

So. I started this post a while ago and can’t remember how all of it started, and I don’t really want to continue it now. So I’m stopping. It’ll continue though – I have to come up with an actually cohesive list of stuff to rant about to these fuckwads. Kris is even harder to rant to cuz he’s such an ass and a two-faced ass at that – at least with Scott he’s just a dick and nobody is really on his good side. Anyway. Enough.

I just found out that my boss is taking a 10-day vacation in “Grand Case, St. Maarten”, or so it says in his shared calendar. In about a week. Now, seeing as how he’s worked for this company for 13 years, I suppose it’s acceptable for him to take some time off. But I still think it’s shitty. For one, he didn’t say anything about it to me, and apparently it starts next Wednesday. It would make sense for a boss to tell his employees that he’ll be out of the office for a long time, wouldn’t it? Not this boss. Probably because he knows he’s an ass for ever mentioning the amount of time I take off from work.

I hate this place. I hate it that I have to compare my life to people with clearly different ideas of what life should be like. I never wanted kids before, now I have one and I really really like him. And I like our life together. I like nighttime bathtime. I like playing in the snow. I enjoy quiet evenings coloring. I love my husband. I love everything I have that is not this shitty ass job. I HATE Scott. I hate it that he thinks he’s so fucking superior that he doesn’t have kids and he has expensive cars and can go on lavish vacations in St. Martin. Oh, how I’d love a vacation. But I’d much rather not be a lonely fuckwad in a sea of fuckwads. I have people around me that love me and care about me and I’m not a piece of shit like him… I don’t know why I’m ranting so much today about this stupid ass of a boss that I have. I’m angry. And I have a headache.

Maybe I’ll post something more cohesive later.