My life at Jericho, or why I want to set random things on fire

Hi!

How's it going? I'm doing fine.

Oh wait. No I'm not. I hate my job. And the people who work there.

A lot.

A whole lot.

Much of my frustration comes form a bunch of little things that keep piling up. Stupid shit that stupid people do. There's only so much you can shrug off before it starts weighing on you. I've been trying to calm down so I can type this, but 2 hours after the end of my shift, I'm still pretty incoherent. Let me try to take this one thing at a time.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but most of the people at Central Traffic/Comm Desk are gossipy bastards. The Comm Desk has an added feature of the large majority of them being slime balls. No one can say anything without everyone else knowing about it within a day. You would think that this wouldn't affect me, because why am I gonna be talking to these people? However, if I sneeze and it sounds like someone's name, that person is suddenly wondering why I'm talking about them. It's so bad that people act as each other's eyes and ears when they're not around. There was one day where one of them said something about another person leaving angry at everyone. Within 20 minutes the person making the comment was getting angry texts about it from the person the comment was made about. That time frame is not an exaggeration. It was literally that fast. So this is the kind of environment I have to work in. It's extremely unpleasant and its really starting to wear me down.

Now some of this is going to be about Heather, but surprisingly, she's not my biggest irritation there. Its just that she had a busy couple of days and so its fresh in my mind. I've come to expect bullshit from her, but my other coworkers who aren't mentally disabled are acting in really retarded ways and that's really getting to me. But back to my story...

Heather is a big fan of telling stories that other people have no business knowing. She keeps telling the same story of me being drunk one time, and she doesn't tell the whole story each time, so it sounds like these are all separate instances. Now, because of this crap, I'm pretty sure that my coworkers think I'm a fucking alcoholic. I cannot talk to anyone about going out to any sort of social setting that would normally involve alcohol because of this. I get knowing looks and comments about how drunk I plan to be. When I came back from Electric Zoo, several people asked me how much I drank (not at all, thank you very much!) and one guy even asked if I did a lot of drugs (none for me, thanks!). I'm sure you can see the potential problems with this.

She's also decided its fun to speak to me like I'm some kind of retarded child. This is a particularly galling character flaw of hers for several reasons, which I shall now enumerate:

1. She is weapons grade stupid and is the last person that should talk down to anyone else.
2. Typically, she's wrong about the things she gets this way about, only adding to its irritating qualities.
3. I don't like to talk about this too much, but there's something about myself I don't think I have shared with you. When I was in school, it was strongly suggested that I get my IQ tested. My parents thought it was a good idea. I scored a 147. The average person scores between in the range 85 - 115. IQ changes with age, so maybe I'm not as smart as I used to be, but I figure I'm still in that general area.

Really? Is she really gonna talk down to me? Is that what's going to happen? It's questionable if she even qualifies as a sentient being, and she's gonna come at me like that? Yeah, OK. That's not the height of absurdity. There isn't a "roll eyes" graphic big enough.

Remember when I said the Comm Desk was filled with slime balls? I will admit there's one or two who seem like they're OK. They're able to carry their end of a conversation and share similar interests. Sometimes I talk to them! Apparently, one of them is a guy that Heather wants to nail. I know, I know, who doesn't she want to nail! Anyway, this guy seems to be a top contender. It turns out, that when I talk to him, this counts as me cockblocking her, and this is something I've been doing for weeks. Last week, she got all cranky with me about it, and said, and I quote, "Wait till you find a girl you like! What I'm going to do to you!" I look at her and say "What are you talking about?" She responds with "You know what I'm talking about." Since I don't, I tell her, and now I'm getting annoyed because she's giving me some stupid ass look and getting in my face about it. She says "Yes you do!" and I say "No, I really don't." She says "You're a cockblock!" I respond with "What are you going on about?" She then demonstrates to me why her doctor needs to up her meds. She says "I was just kidding. I don't know what happened to you on vacation, but you need to drop the attitude. I've decided I'm not talking to you for the rest of the week." Each sentence was accompanied by a different emotion, each more irrational than the last. I just looked at her and said "OK" and went back to work. Hilariously, about two minutes later, she had an issue with her computer, which I very carefully didn't notice. After about a half hour or so of fiddling with it, she fixed it and was all cranky that no one offered to help her.

I just chuckled to myself.

Her resolution to not talk to me was surprisingly easy for her to keep, because she made it with an hour left to go in the shift, and it was her Friday so I didn't see her again until yesterday, at which point she was acting like nothing had ever happened.

I could go on about the other people there, and some of the stupid ass shit they do, but I'm running out of steam & its getting late, so I'm gonna move on to some of my work frustrations.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that my supervisor is useless. It turns out that at Central Traffic/Comm Desk, you have to pick the date of your alternate holiday. I got an e-mail yesterday asking me why I hadn't chosen my date yet.

WTF? What are you talking about, you waste of space? I ask someone else there, and they tell me how it works. Since I have a certain social engagement this Saturday, I ask for that day. I get told that I can't have it because there's only 4 of us here that day. Do you want to know what I did last Saturday? I'll tell you.

I overclocked my fucking phone.

I sat there, at my desk, while on my shift, looked up the procedure along with device specific info, downloaded & flashed the overclocking kernel, downloaded SetCPU, and overclocked my phone.

So that killed about a half hour. Still had another 2.5 hrs left in my shift at that point. I wish I could say this was abnormal for a Saturday. It's not. So yeah, wouldn't want to leave Central Traffic short staffed on Saturday, clearly one of our busiest days. Oh, and in case you're interested, the phone normally runs at 1 GHz and I got it up to 1.4 GHz. It wasn't stable there, so I stepped it down to 1.3 GHz and its been running like a champ at that speed with no noticeable effect on battery life.

Last week, Alfred, one of my coworkers told me that he had to show me the various reports that have to be run for Bartow. I was surprised by this, so I asked what the occasion was, since its not like we get training here. Turns out that Patrice told him to train me because I'll be running Bartow this week. Alfred normally does it, but since Jessica is going on vacation for 3 weeks because of her wedding, she's had Jessica give him a crash course on all things TSG so that he could take care of that. Since he's going to be doing TSG, she's having him show me the Bartow reports, so I can flounder around wondering what else I'm supposed to do in Bartow, since each call center operates differently and all I'm being shown is their reports. He shows me the reports, and they're simple enough. I come in this week, check the posted schedule and see that I'm on Bartow, as expected, but there's a super happy special surprise for me. Turns out, I get to keep running Melville while I'm running Bartow. Wonderful! I get the 2nd and 3rd largest call centers to do on my own! Words cannot express my joy. Everyone else gets a single site except for Ken, who is on "Backup/CAC Reports" which basically means he gets to dick around all day. This will be the shape of things for the next 3 weeks, until Jessica comes back from her wedding & honeymoon. Good times!

I do kinda want to rant about other job frustrations and some of my other idiot coworkers some more, but I'm drained. Besides, the other stupid stuff about my coworkers is just variations on the theme of them being very gossipy and telling stories where they distort the truth & say inappropriate things at inappropriate times. And the other nonsense at work fits in the established pattern of "minimal planning, maximum destruction!" I don't know how much more of this crap I can deal with. It's another week until I hear whether I got into the next round or not for the supervisor position and I'm really trying to stay positive and stick it out. I really hope I get it, because I don't know how much longer I can last. Between working with morons, a supervisor who doesn't have the slightest clue of what she's doing, and the general atmosphere there, I am really, really stressed and that's not really something I need right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Getting this all written down has helped me vent and I feel much better.