music in my mind

i keep thinking of that line from i think a sarah mclachlan song, "i'm so tired, but i just can't sleep, standing on the edge of something way too deep. funny how you feel so much, you cannot say a word, yes you are standing in silence...you can't be heard."

or at least that's the way *i* hear it. i'm sure it's quite different, but due to the warping inflicted by my one good ear, that's what i hear.

coincidentally, that's also what i'm feeling. think it sums up the week juuuuuuuuuust fine.

now that the back hallway reclamation is well under way, and it looks like we'll get a free professional carpet cleaning out of the situation to boot, life is looking up. dan found a job. it snowed and is pretty outside. i have the chance to do my laundry tonight. found a good new author (jane feather, but it's all romance novels. however they're quite forward thinking, exceedingly well written, and have characters that i just adore--feminists in the early 1900s who have some real spunk. did i just use that word? ugh, to what has my degree come? LOL)
and it's friday, which is a nod that i've made it through another week of year end.

additionally, at work, we were given our vacation calendars for next year, and my supe let me carry over all the vacation i didn't use last year, which means i can take off about a month and a few days instead of just my normal two weeks. not sure when but that vacation is MINE. i don't honestly care if i just sit around and watch my carpet moulder, i'm taking a week off. asap. in february or march. sooner than later.

and i'm going to find a new car posthaste, so that i can drive around not in fear of things falling off, and find a fricking different job.

this week's work crap-i-sode was compounded by the fact that most of the office, being female, was pms-ing at the same time, myself being no exception. all week long i've been starving, angry, hungry, irate, and on tuesday night, weepy. finally yesterday i got to add crampy to that list. days when i long for a dick.

yeah, sounds cheesy, but if you were curled around a heating pad for an hour and had to take a handful of advil to stop the pain (when one or two usually knock you out completely) you'd be singing the same song i am. in fact, if you're a woman, you might be humming along right now.

sorry to be a bit brash but it's been a long week.

monday and tuesday we were short two and three people, respectively. wednesday and through next monday we'll be short another one. it's year end, so it's very busy, and all my calls are cranky-ass people. if they're not cranky when you start the call, by the time you're done and have told them that because they are stooooooooooooooopid and didn't fix someone's social security number last year, oh, say in may when the employee was hired, it's going to cost them about 105 clamshells to adjust and get all new w2s, they get pissy. i actually had one woman berate the company at large for being "efficient." huh? beg pardon?

so anyway, the reps in my department have all been coming in early and staying late. and on wednesday morning we come in to an email from our supervisor (the same one who rolled my vacation over so nicely...can you say: passive aggressive?) saying that our service level has been abysmal and our region basically sucks with a capital S.

i don't think there was anyone in the department who wasn't pissed.

it wasn't "i can see you're all working very hard, and i thank you for your efforts, but we need to address a few issues." nope. nothing like that. just this diatribe about how maybe we hadn't noticed the reader board (tells us how many calls we've taken, and what our service level percentage is for the day) is telling us daily that we just bite.

apparently he felt he hired some illiterate people because he didn't need to point out our service level--we can all see the reader boards ourselves, and while i can be distracted by shiny bright lights, i can see that the shiny bright lights last week were in the shape of a 39 percent. not so hot. i don't need to have it pointed out for me. i already feel crappy and overworked. to be ambushed and acutally TOLD that we're sucking donkey weiner, that was a new low.

so yesterday we were supposed to have meetings with him. which he changed to one-on-one meetings, which for me are death because i clam up and don't want to say the things i might say in a group meeting, where i feel a little more anonymous. (no, they don't bring bags for your head to the meeting. it's just power in numbers type of thing. might just be me. LOL) so i have mine and i think one other person has theirs, and that's all. i don't know if there will be more today or not. i honestly don't care. right now i just want out.

i did get to have cocktails last night with two of my gf's from work, and that helped soothe the savage worker for a while. one of them pointed out that she figured he broke it out into one-on-ones because if he went with large groups he'd be lynched.

to which we all fully agreed would have been the case.

i'm sure that someone pissed on his tuesday, and that's why we got pissed on the next day, but if you're a manager, you want to INSPIRE your employees to reach their full potential, not beat them into submission. have you heard those milk commercials? "happy cows give good milk." happy employees give good work. whooooooooooooooooooa nelly, foreign concept! to the death chair with this possibly excellent and helpful idea! ZAP!

we've all been comparing work to some type of death camp, but lately, the attitude of my superior has gotten to the point at which i'm thinking about leaving because i don't like the feeling of not knowing where i stand--of being hit with one hand while the other gives me vacation days, softens me up with kindness.

it feels vaguely abusive.

hence the music in my head. tired. can't sleep. have all this shit to say, and can't say it to the people who need to hear it. so instead ya'll get me cranky, crampy and confounded onblog. sorry, and again...it's friday. as both my sister and my cari say, sometimes you need to drink a bottle of wine to put the world back where it belongs. i'm up to that task. (;