Why I don’t want to hear about the full moon at work ever again.
So there’s this individual with whom I work… Let me back up, and start by saying that I work in state government.
This is a wonderful thing, at least coming from a position of having
several years of rampant unemployment and commensurate stress,
depression, desperation (and subsequently working for a huge asshole
who caused me panic attacks because it was a paycheck)… after all of
that, a steady (union!) job with a pension at the end (assuming the
state remains solvent until I’m retirement age [which is no guarantee
these days]) is a lovely thing, to which I offer no complaints
whatsoever, praise Eris and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for it. But let us just say that the stereotypes about state government
employees, if not even nearly universally true, are based on some
fact. There are a few of them out there, the sorts of people who
basically consider anyone getting between them and their next coffee
break The Enemy. Even if the person getting in the way is, I don’t
know, a user they have to support and a problem they have to deal with
as part of THEIR JOB. And so, there’s this individual with whom I work, who does not
hesitate to complain whenever someone calls in with some bug or some
error in communication between our agency (the courts) and some other
group with whom we have to communicate (for example, the DMV for
traffic violations, or the criminal justice system, or whoever). It is
his job (or part of it) to keep these things working properly, yet
every problem that springs up is a personal affront to him. Fine. I’m not here (solely) to rag on the guy. He’s kind of a weird,
chumpy guy for that, but whatever, y’know? I don’t have to work with
him directly most of the time, so more power to him. What I want to complain about is the fact that every single day, no
matter what, he’ll reference “the full moon” as the cause of people
calling in. I hear this approximately 27 times a day “I swear, it must
be the full moon”. “I think we just had one last week, but I feel like
it must be a full moon again”. “I tell you, what is with this full
moon, all the crazies are out.” This all regarding the same small
group of people who always call him. And I have no other comment on this, except that it makes me WANT TO
FUCKING KILL HIM. That is all.
This is a wonderful thing, at least coming from a position of having
several years of rampant unemployment and commensurate stress,
depression, desperation (and subsequently working for a huge asshole
who caused me panic attacks because it was a paycheck)… after all of
that, a steady (union!) job with a pension at the end (assuming the
state remains solvent until I’m retirement age [which is no guarantee
these days]) is a lovely thing, to which I offer no complaints
whatsoever, praise Eris and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for it. But let us just say that the stereotypes about state government
employees, if not even nearly universally true, are based on some
fact. There are a few of them out there, the sorts of people who
basically consider anyone getting between them and their next coffee
break The Enemy. Even if the person getting in the way is, I don’t
know, a user they have to support and a problem they have to deal with
as part of THEIR JOB. And so, there’s this individual with whom I work, who does not
hesitate to complain whenever someone calls in with some bug or some
error in communication between our agency (the courts) and some other
group with whom we have to communicate (for example, the DMV for
traffic violations, or the criminal justice system, or whoever). It is
his job (or part of it) to keep these things working properly, yet
every problem that springs up is a personal affront to him. Fine. I’m not here (solely) to rag on the guy. He’s kind of a weird,
chumpy guy for that, but whatever, y’know? I don’t have to work with
him directly most of the time, so more power to him. What I want to complain about is the fact that every single day, no
matter what, he’ll reference “the full moon” as the cause of people
calling in. I hear this approximately 27 times a day “I swear, it must
be the full moon”. “I think we just had one last week, but I feel like
it must be a full moon again”. “I tell you, what is with this full
moon, all the crazies are out.” This all regarding the same small
group of people who always call him. And I have no other comment on this, except that it makes me WANT TO
FUCKING KILL HIM. That is all.
In which my employer once again attempts “holiday” “festivities”, which are roundly ignored by Yours Truly
So if I weren’t kind of jazzed about the holidays this year (as a side
effect perhaps, of newly rediscovering my ability to actually be
jazzed about things), I’d start with some kind of horrible comment
about the Holiday Season once again crushing forward, running on the
brutal engine of consumerism and political correctness. Luckily, I don’t have to do that, because my employer’s annual
“holiday” party basically takes care of all the cynicism for me.
they call it the “holiday” party, but it’s not. It’s Christmas, all
right? There’s Christmas decorations, Christmas music, a Christmas
“cheap gift exchange/swap game thingie”, and the only thing even close
to multiculturalism is that Adam Sandler’s tedious Hanukkah Song is on
the music rotation(1). And up until this year, the guy running the
thing signed all the emails giving out information on it as “Santa”.
And I mean, I’m some kind of fucking atheist/nihilist/discordian/zen
buddhist/non-practicing Jew. If anyone were going to get upset about
it, it is likely to be me, and I don’t give a shit. Call it a
Christmas party. That’s what it fucking is. The office is probably 99%
Christians and the rest of us don’t fucking care. Second, the party sucks anyway. First, we get to “party” during our
lunch hour. Granted, it’s a little bit relaxed, maybe up to being a
couple hours. But still, come on. How much partying can I do in the
middle of a Tuesday with no alcohol? In previous years they brought in
some ridiculously bizarre assortment of catered food, for an equally
ridiculous price. Like, how does a “holiday party” involve bad
chinese, bad italian, bad american, and if I remember correctly even
some truly awful indian? Who is this caterer anyway? And this year
they’ve even done away with that, in favor of a potluck. Or you can
throw in eight bucks and they’ll use that fund to bring in pizzas and
drinks and such. So I get to spend my lunch hour, with my co-workers, listening to an
endless loop of Christmas music and eating potluck and/or pizza. And the one fun thing they did used to do, a little poker tourney, was
apparently kiboshed this year. Festive!(2) Luckily, for reasons incomprehensible to anyone, they’ve built a new
training room in another building (in which everything is very
expensive and doesn’t work properly) and so rather than sneaking
around to the training room near my desk for leftovers and gawking at
the spectacle, I just got more work done. Call me a scrooge if you will, but I just can’t get that excited about
potluck with my co-workers. It’s just a deeply weird place around
here, and it’s kind of sad that for some people this truly does
represent festive holiday fun. -
1. Which song I find kind of amusing, but when the “Holiday party” was
in the old training room near my desk I got to hear it like 1,000
times and it nearly drove me mad, so now I’m wary of it.
2. Which you might imagine has something to do with the whole
“gambling at work” thing, but today’s there’s a 50/50 raffle to give a
bonus to our cleaning staff, and a well-advertised Superbowl Squares
game is also running, so who the fuck knows?
So the most common use of the word “training” is when you’re learning where to shit…
And this is basically applicable to my life currently. I mean don’t get me wrong: a week spent in class in the next building
over is another week where I’m not pestered to answer obvious
questions, by people who are both unqualified and unmotivated to do
their jobs. Not to mention, most of whom get paid more than me. So
it’s a good thing. But it’s like, when your class has the word
“enterprise” in the title TWICE, you know you’re in for a week of
worthless shit (“enterprise” being IT buzzword for, basically,
bullshit that is way over-complicated because it sounds good to
management).
learning is useless to me, because I work for the government and we’re
still on the fucking Mainframe, so good luck on us ever using modern
technology. I mean we’re modern-ish and lots of people I actually
respect in the organization are making sure things aren’t totally
decrepit but, it’s a continuous losing battle. And then it occurs to me that like, even if I got to use modern
technology, or do things which are interesting, it’s just a job to me.
If someone would pay me to write, or to make photographs, or to be an
asshole on the internet, I’d jump on it, because I love those things
in a way which I don’t really love programming. It’s yet another part
of my life that I sort of, got into because it was there and because
it worked for me at the time, and now I’m just still with because of
habit, and the reality that it’s what I know and what I have
experience in, and that’s it. Which isn’t to say any of that is a bad thing, because it’s not. I
thank all my lucky little stars that I have a job. I paid my dues, of
course, when the entire IT industry was a clusterfuck and I was
unemployed for months and then probably years. But still, I’m stable
now, and I’m glad for it. Which isn’t to say I’m particularly strongly
tied to where I am or who I work for, or that I wouldn’t try to do
something else with my life… Hell, I’ve changed everything else
around, why not that? But despite the fact that it’s useless shit, I still do like being in
a pseudo-class, and learning. I don’t know that I’d particularly want
to go back, so really I am just being pissy about the fact that I gave
up that chance for no real reason. More sacrifices in the name of
something I sacrificed a fuck of a lot too much for and am now only
being made to feel bad for. I don’t feel bad, though. So there’s that. I did what I did, and now
I’m done. I don’t know what will happen in the future. I have some
ideas but they’re tenuous at best. But whatever it is, it’ll be me. So maybe I’m learning something in this training after all. I just
wish I knew what…
