Spider....spider...go away

In case I never told anyone, I HATE bugs. HATE THEM....as in I don't care if they're a 'good' bug or a 'bad' bug. They give me the heebie-jeebies. Spiders especially. To this day whenever I see a spider I will freeze and scream bloody murder until I have someone rescue me from the impending doom of the spider. Which of course means SQUISH AND FLUSH (SOMETIMES DOUBLE FLUSH) so it is not going to return.

So you can imagine my chagrin and horror as I get a call from a co-worker this morning telling me about the MASSIVE, HAIRY ARACHNOID sitting outside the office and the non-cooperation of MALE co-workers to dispose of this menace. You can imagine my shock when another coworker E-MAILED ME THE PHOTO of this menace.

Anyway, in this horror and during the terror-reign of said

arachnoid (at right) this is the e-mails shared between Claire and myself. Please note this insect is still at large and FREAKING us out.

The e-mail:

Claire:There's a great big giant spider in the hallway. If you zoom in, you can appreciate the effect.

Me; WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

WHY ARE YOU TAKING PICTURES OF THAT THING?

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY WHY ARE YOU SENDING ME THESE PHOTOS? I AM AFRAID OF SPIDERS!

Claire: So am I! BUT NOW IT'S MISSING. MISSING!!!!

Me: WEEEELLLLLLLLLLL,

WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE FROM YOUR DEPT KILL IT WHEN IT WAS THERE?????

NOW IT IS ROAMING FREELY IN THE BUILDING ABLE TO TERRORIZE INNOCENT PEOPLE.

AND WHY ARE YOU TAKING PHOTOS OF IT? SHOULD WE POST THEM IN THE BUILDING AS MISSING? I WONDER IF IT IS RADIO ACTIVE. (LIKE YOU KNOW…AS IN SPIDER MAN?)

Claire: I like to take pictures of freaks of nature. You know, for posterity. We didn't kill it because we would have needed a shovel. You're right - now it's roaming freely, planning its attack in taking over the building. and eating all of our faces.

So if anyone would like come to our office, hunt wrangle and kill this 8-legged freak, please feel free. Because now I'm envisioning this thing launching from the ground or ceiling, and chewing our faces off.

Recognizing the signs of hating my job

Everyone has good and bad days in their career. Some people are blessed to LOVE what they do for a living, and where they work. Some people HATE their jobs and having to do what they do for a paycheck. And some people just don't give a damn about where they work, what they do as long as they get a paycheck. I used to fall in to the category of being someone who loved their job.
Used to. Those are the key words. The entire first year at my company, I loved getting up and going in to the office. People used to be able to say 'hello' to one another without worrying about getting caught saying 'hello'. You would be busy all day, and be able to goof around with a coworker. If you had been assigned a project, and needed an extension on it...you didn't mind working late to finish it up.
The second year of being at my company brought about A LOT of changes. People are not allowed to talk to people in other departments without a comment being passed. Management does not crack jokes or even allow you to crack jokes any longer. Conspiracy theories and back-stabbing have gotten to become so out-of-hand it is pathetic. Salary increases are not coming down the pike, and employee moral is down. Hiring freezes, and company globalization has taken hold at my location.
Come August, I will be with my company for three years. And every day I pray to have the strength to come in and give a damn about my performance. But it is getting harder and harder.

• Annoying co-worker is still as annoying if not more so. But it doesn't effect me as badly as I just tune him out, because I DON'T CARE.
• I don't plod along in my duties at break-neck speed like I used to, or stay late every night like I once had.
• Each morning, I dilly-dally at my home until the last possible minute before leaving for the office.
• Co-workers who need me to type items for them, annoy me as they just don't care if I am working on something else.
• I try to avoid walking through the building (to go potty, or to the mail room, or for tea) to avoid seeing people who work in the building. Because they want to socialize. And I DON'T WANT to.
• I am exhausted every night and worn down every morning from the stress of working in such a negative atmosphere.
• And I call in sick just because I don't feel like going in to work. And I don't feel guilty about it.

The bulleted items above have made me realize how UNHAPPY and how much I HATE my job. And now I have to face the decision on either staying and being miserable or making the move, and moving on. But I am all but positive my mind is made up...and it is time for me to move on.

Working in hell does not even allow you a day off in peace

I don't even know how much of this to post as it is mainly all on speculation. Yesterday I woke up late for work (when on summer hours, I need to leave my house between 7:30-7:40 to ensure I get to the office for 8am.) Yesterday, what time did I wake up? You guess it, 7:30am. At first I rushed around like a chicken without it's head, then said what the hell. I'd take the day (although it was a crappy one, because I had time to do it, and plus I had hoped to sleep.)
Well, sleeping in wasn't happening as mom and Ida wanted me to run errands with them (which was fine.) And by the time we got home, at like 2 in the afternoon, I went upstairs and took a 3-hour nap. So I DID get my sleeping in.
But then this morning as I called a co-worker to alert her to traffic problems, we got to talking and I found out that there was only ONE office support person (and I call her that as she is not an admin. asst. AND because she is only a part-timer in the office. I called in sick, and the other girl who works in the office with 1/2 of the bane of my existance had a scheduled day off. OOOPPS! My bad! But in all fairness, when I called and left the message saying I wouldn't be in, told them to call the house should they need me.
However what is totally weird is that people knew I was out sick yesterday. People who really don't need to know or shouldn't be effected by my being out today. One of the mucky-mucks was in my office this morning when I came in, and he asked me how I was. I found it odd, yet nice that he had asked me. It was very alarming. Then I heard 'The Chief', my boss on the phone with someone whose voice I didn't recognize ('The Chief' was on speaker), and the other party informed him that two other people and myself were out yesterday. So my question is: just how many people know I was out? And why do they know? And who told them I was out? I'm not THAT important to the department, that everyone needs to know my daily activity. Or am I....and they're just keeping it a secret so as not to blow my ego up?
Either way you look at it; even those of us who commute to hell to earn a living are not allowed to take a day off in peace. So I guess that means I really am working in hell.

Craziness in the work place which is filled with crazies!

So I was driving home the other day, and thinking about my blog and how I have been able to update it more frequently, after practically abandoning it. Then it hit me, what had started out as a venting spot for me about my job and co-workers has not had any gripes about what is going on here. So here we go, because I’ve got a bunch to catch you all up on!

1. ‘Big Bad’ (my old boss) will now be referred to as ‘Big Dick’ because; well he can be such a dick. And it’s sad because he used to be so nice, and a really great person to work for or with. But he has these back-stabbing, underhanded ways about him. And he thinks that everyone is like him. For example, one of the departments in my company has food provided for them (such as bagels or cookies, or snacks) and one day there was an excessive amount left over. Well the bagels were brought in to ‘Big Dick’s’ office, and when a co-worker of mine went to snag one for her lunch…there were NONE to be found! Where did the bagels go? Because they didn’t leave the office, and the fridge there was crammed with jellies, and butter and cream cheese. He smuggled the bagels out to bring home, and this wasn’t the first time he has done something like this.


2. But that’s nothing. Because ‘Big Dick’ does this walk-thru thing thru my office. Another example: we have two doors in to my ‘cave’, (1) from the parking lot, (1) from the warehouse. And what ‘Big Dick’ does is come in from one entrance, and just walks thru the office and out the other door. No stopping to fax, copy, or talk to anyone such as my boss (the nice boss.) ‘Big Dick’ just does this to see what we were doing, if we were socializing or goofing off. One day he did this 3 times within a ten-minute span and even my boss was like ‘what the hell is that?’


3. When I had started working here, I would make cakes for peoples birthdays, and we would have small get-togethers but then some freaks on the second floor (who must have been deprived of birthday parties growing up) made it such an ordeal that for the past year Claire and I have tried to STOP the cake festivities. So what happened now? Well ‘Big Dick’ decided that we should have a bagel party for a PART-TIME employee who used to be ½ of ‘bane to my existence’. She still does nothing. I mean she SO DOES NOTHING, that she has people walk down her paperwork for her, from her office to mine or vice versa. So you can understand my griping that she should NOT have a bagel party to ‘celebrate her five years of hard work.’ Well Orelinde made a boo-boo, a BIG one. I had e-mailed a co-worker of mine a comment, and she had replied, but somehow it had gotten back to me and ‘Big Dick’. So now ‘Big Dick’ is actually shunning me, for the past two days because I was the one who passed a comment. He will not talk to me or look at me. If he does his walk thru, he actually makes a point to talk to everyone other than me. Like this hurts me. What am I five? Am I supposed to cry over this? I don’t think so….but this just proves that ‘Big Bad’ has turned in to ‘BIG DICK’.

4. I have a crush on someone in my company. And I don’t know why. I also know that once a certain someone reads this blog she is going to flip-her-lid. There’s a man who works for my company in a management position. He is not sociable, and does not even has people skills for the most part. Many people outright dislike him, and say he has NO sense of humor. In fact when I had started working here, ‘Big Dick’ tried to convince me that this guy was trying to cause problems for me. And perhaps this guy who I’m crushing on was. But this man has been in my building on special projects for about 8 months, (not on a daily basis) and we have a nice relationship when he is here. I even get him to laugh (which as rumor has it, he NEVER does), and he has even joked with me and my sidekicks. Has he changed completely? Absolutely not. And I’m not dumb enough to think that he is all sunshine and flowers, because he is very quiet, and ‘all businesses for most of the time he’s here. He’s older than me, as in old enough to be my father probably…and also is married. SO THERE’S NO WAY I WOULD EVEN ACT ON ANYTHING. If there was even anything to act on. Because there’s not. But I still have a work crush on him.

5. Claire is no longer in my department. She has moved on, in the company to a different department, and even floor. And I’m happy for her. But I still miss her.

6. I still have the other half of ‘bane to my existence’ sitting in the cube next to me. He’s as loud as ever and just as annoying, if not more so. I have found that I can tune him out from time to time which may or may not be good. He sings, whistles, drums, and makes siren noises. He sings and whistles so loud, that if he leaves the office, we can hear him for some time. ‘Bane to my existence’ thinks he is the shiznit but really he’s just a peon. All he does is complain, complain, and complain about all the work he does…yet he was the one who begged for it. Now he wants to hand payroll back over to me to handle. And if that’s the case fine. But I’m not volunteering to take it off his hands. In fact I believe he will now be referred to as ‘Bane to my existence’. I think he’s earned that full title.

And that pretty much sums it up I’m sure there will be more crap to talk about in the future about the crazies I work with. But I think you guys have enough to digest, and maybe even pity me.