Let's just say that I was working on something else, and apparently these fax requests came at the start of my shift, so she was waiting for them for a half-hour, which may not be the correct time, but it is correct when it comes to my involvement, or lack of involvement. Yeah, I've never seen that side of her before. Don't want to see that ever again, but per my principle, I will try my best not to do anything to prevent that being seen ever again, if that makes sense.
And the hits just kept on coming. I think I had a run-in That Guy In Filing; we were running out of work, at least for that moment (in filing, shit keeps coming in, but in waves, so there may be lulls in work), and we both just happened to be in the same part of the warehouse filing things away. I was there first; he came in after me. After trying to sneak a form into a pretty full folder, I broke the ice and asked if I was in his way. He mumbled something like, "You're filing too?" and I said yes, and I tried to work faster, but he just dropped all the forms he had in his hand and walked away. Once I was done I went back to my desk, but not before shouting over his shoulder, while he was listening to music and doing other stuff, that I was done in there.
One of my supervisors I may have royally pissed off, even though I think I am permanently on her last nerve. I'll admit I started off on the bad foot. I came back from lunch. I see that the log, on which we note the folders that we review, was not reviewed for the previous hour. A person, every day, at the top of the hour, drops everything she's doing, grabs that log, and checks on the software every folder that has been reviewed and scrubbed for errors for the previous hour to make sure all the errors have been taken care of.
So I take the clipboard with the log and ask my supe, "Are you doing the log?" She says, "I already did for the last hour." And I look at the log again, and she did. I was looking at the blank space for the current hour, for whose folders have not been done yet and obviously would not be reviewable. Whoops. Most embarrassingly, this is not the first time I have made this mistake. Therefore, it certainly won't be the last.
But I wonder if that prompted what happened next, or if this was a continuing product of our oil-and-water relationship. The shipment came in late, and therefore the work was coming out late, but as the day was ending, people in the lab were speeding out the folders in order to get out of work on time. My supervisor sees a pile-up of folders that need to be prepared, and apparently she asks me to prepare them. But I have my headphones on, as usual, because I want to shut out the outside world. Also, I think she spoke in a quiet voice because she wanted to act as though she could order me around without raising her voice. But I hear her grunting anyway, so I say, "Say what!" To which she replies, "Prep!" And like a sarcastic asshole, I say, "You got it!"
Oh, out of all the run-ins I had this day, this one was the worst, because of the accumulation of previous run-ins with her. Like I said before, I can't outright defend myself and call her a bitch because (and I may be blowing my fuck-ups out of proportion just to give her the benefit of the doubt) I kind of screwed up with both the clipboard log and not listening to her directions when I had my headphones in (which is against company policy), so if she were annoyed by me already, she may have been more annoyed by me yesterday afternoon. But fuck it -- I am doing my best, I just got back from working in another department, I am shuttled between departments by the week and sometimes by the day and sometimes by the hour, and I have a million things in my head, and sometimes I just fucking forget what I'm supposed to be doing, OK?
But in my defense, she plays favorites with the people she likes -- which she makes clear with her comments and actions is not me. Also, she has this stupid goddamn tick of repeating words and phrases; get some fuckin' rewrite already, will ya? I think I annoy her all the time; she annoys me most of the time. And while I sometimes am hurt and sometimes I grit my teeth when I'm within earshot of her boring broken record sayings, the only things that keep me from exploding on her are 1) we are civil to each other when it comes to the work and 2) I think she's resigned to the fact that she can't fire me. That's power, in some capacity -- the realization that we're stuck with each other. So if she thinks she needs to deal with me, I have to deal with her. But yeah, she's a bitch.
---
Oh yeah, the capper. I was late in buying my niece presents, but the two I bought for her (I co-signed my parents on them) came to my brother and sister-in-law's house today. My SIL texted when we could video call so we could see my niece open them. I had the test scoring job this past evening, but I could do it during break.
I go down to my parents' bedroom and FaceTime. I see my niece getting ready to open her presents, which are not wrapped like gifts but are in, you know, Amazon boxes. First my niece says that her father, my brother, will be helping her. But then my sister-in-law, who's holding the phone, says that she will be helping her and proceeds to use her free arm to guide the X-acto knife through the tape. Where did my asshole brother go? Did he run away? Does he really not even want to do this little, ten-minute, simple birthday gift reveal for us and for her daughter? Is he annoyed by me, still, this much, after all these years? I don't get it, but I'm long past getting him.
But tomorrow is a new day!
No comments:
Post a Comment