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Damn Demure
May 28th, 2003, 3:19 PM by GoddessShan called it this morning, and damn it, she called it right.
I’d checked in with her to say hello around lunchtime, and she remarked that she had a funny feeling that, like when I went on vacation to Pittsburgh, my useless supervisor Demure would be on the loose, wondering where I was, as I had a pseudo-personal day yesterday and spent most of today at the print shop.
And sure as shit, almost an hour ago, Shan called to tell me that, indeed, Demure approached her to ask where I might be. Shan was annoyed because she was late for a meeting and was scrambling to get her own stuff together. But we wondered, can’t my supervisor keep track of my work schedule, given that I am out of the office two days every month around this time? Although Shan is more than happy that Demure goes to her and not to Cruise Director to ask where I am, she brings up a good point. At any rate, Shan said, “If you’re worried about her, why don’t you call her on her cell phone?”
Demure said no, she’d just wait to see if I showed up at work tomorrow.
When I supervised Incoherent Twit, I gave her a half hour before I found her ass on the days that she was AWOL. Not that I could have cared whether Twit lived or died, but if I didn’t know where she was, I found out fast.
To help me, Shan offered that even though yesterday was my “birthday buck” day, I was in the office for a few hours. And even though Shan knew perfectly well where I was, she suggested that perhaps I was tending to newspaper-printing issues, just like I was doing yesterday. Demure had assumed that I had dealt with the printing while she was out the week before, so she called in the hounds for the day.
You know, Demure has a schedule of what my deadlines and out-of-office activities include. And today is clearly marked “press day” on my yearly schedule.
So, I was bitter but I left a VM for Demure, saying that the paper had just gotten finished and that it was senseless for me to come into the office for an hour, so I was knocking off a bit early. Besides, I mentioned, I was in during my vacation time yesterday, so that should more than make up for it. I called under the guise of checking in to see if anything was going on, but she never picks up her phone. *whew*
I’m certain that Demure is going to start micromanaging me more than ever after this. Shawn said maybe I should just be nice and polite and check in more frequently, even when I am in the office, just so they can feel like they’re doing their jobs. Fuck that — I cherish what little independence I have left, and I’ll be damned if I have to lick dick any more than I already have to. Demure is, unquestionably, threatened by me, because I officially have no need for her intervention — I imagine that she has to justify her job by reporting my activities to Cruise Director. She can, of course, be helpful to me — when I opt to go to her with questions instead of finding out the answers myself, but oftentimes, she’s the middleman who conveys info back and forth between the exec and me.
I am so tired of working for someone else. This is my year — I just know it. This is the year when I break free of ridiculous employers and their micro- and mismanagement. I never fail to come through with the paper, yet she’s always suspicious of what I’m doing and always wants to intervene under the guise of being helpful.
And for the record, I had e-mailed her as well as the exec last week to say that I wanted to take a personal day yesterday, because there was nothing for me to do at work until press day today. What part of that message didn’t she understand?!?!
Use.Less!!!
All over the place
May 28th, 2003, 8:34 AM by GoddessToday is press day for the Veggie Patch Gazette. I swear, the only days I look forward to going to work are when I go to work offsite, so I don’t have to deal with my vegetable garden.
I was in at midnight on Memorial Day, in a panic about possibly sending the wrong copy (i.e., the outdated server copy) of the paper to the printer, but I gave ’em the right one. I did have to fix a couple of corrupt PDFs, but that took all of 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I had made a full PDF for Cruise Director and Demure of the server copy, so I had to make a *good* copy and forward it — timestamped 12:22 a.m. In addition to the promised litany of Cruise Director’s comments when the thing comes out, I can certainly expect my office hours to be on the agenda, too.
Tiff said I must be dedicated to fly to the office at midnight on a weekend in my jammies, but damn it, I needed to be able to sleep!
Although I had taken yesterday as a personal day, I had to go to the Veggie Patch to pick up the printing checks, to the tune of $50K, that were a week late. That’s good, ’cause we wouldn’t have a paper without them! But it sucked to have to go into Club Medicated when I didn’t have to.
While I was there, I checked my VM. Turns out Cruise Director had ripped Ad Angel a new one over some decisions the layout guy and I had made with ad placements. Topping the list is that I ran a paid ad twice, when all he wants are his precious house ads run all through the rag. Unbeknownst to him, I had depleted all of the house ads — even the backup ones I had requested to be made for my convenience — so I asked Ad Angel if she minded if I ran an outside ad twice. She’d said OK.
So now that she’s involved in this cyclone of stupidity, she’s making the thousandth plea to Cruise Director and Graphics Goddess to have more house ads in more sizes at my disposal. I reminded Ad Angel that the last time I put a house ad into an empty space in the paper, I couldn’t sit down for a week, after I got my ass chewed out for running a dated ad. That’s the problem — all the house ads that have previously run have dates for special offers on them. So, effectively, I am damned if I run a house ad and damned if I run a paid ad for free — even though the latter makes our advertisers happy and thus more likely to send more business our way. But I digress.
I am probably gonna hear about it, too, that I ran a two-page ad for one of our rivals as the center spread. Ad Angel had e-mailed, asking me to avoid that at all costs, but after we added a bunch of pages and goofed with the layout, I flat-out forgot the request. Personally, I figure that our rivals will be happy with that, which may just make them more inclined to toss some money our way in the future. But Cruise Director will hit the roof. I’ve been warned.
I was so annoyed at the whole ad situation. Nobody cared that I was cutting paragraphs out of stories and doing last-minute interviews (per Cruise Director) on production day — my adrenaline kept me going, but unfortunately, my head can only hold so much information, and certain details escaped me. Luckily, they don’t know how many errors I made on the print order as well as on a couple of files that I sent to the printer, or they’d really have my ass. The good thing about the printers is that they are working hard to earn our money, so they work with me and help me to get over the glitches quickly and quietly — but at work, when you screw up (even a lil bit), your ass is hung out to dry and your ego is sent packing.
I snarked to Ad Angel that I thought workplaces were supposed to be learning environments. But yet no matter what I do, it’s wrong and the whole world feels Cruise Director’s wrath when it isn’t what he envisioned it to me. He was editor of his college paper (100 years ago) and while yes, he does understand my job better than anyone else there does, sometimes I feel like he just doesn’t get it (like when he asked me to spell out New York in a headline — which is a bad journalism practice!). And then he makes comments about the photo quality as well as who is in the photo (i.e., can we cut a particular person out of the shot — when that person was the one who sent the goddamn photo!). Ergh. I could go on. …
Unrelated, I had an eye exam yesterday, as my glasses have bit the big one, and it’s not even like it’s been sunny so that I can wear my prescription sunglasses when I’m driving. I have my mangled frames taped up so that the left lens doesn’t fall out. 🙂 I’m such a dork. LOL. But I did pick up a new pair of glases, as well as a year’s supply of contacts — both of which will be ready in 10 days. Meanwhile, I am attending “Contact Lens Class” on Monday morning, to teach me how to not poke my eyes out. Heh — I’m so friggin’ uncoordinated, I have no doubt that I will be bleeding out my eye sockets in no time!
I totally forgot — my birthday present to myself is an emerald ring set in white gold. The story was bizarre — I had been traipsing around Landmark Mall with Shan, looking at jewelry and bemoaning the expense of emeralds as well as the fact that they can’t be set in silver because the stone is too hard and the metal is too soft for the two to ever work together. Lo and behold, I suggested we go into an upscale jeweler so that she could get a ring guard for her engagement ring, and so help me, we saw my ring — it was set in white gold and it was on sale too! So yay, I have my first emerald in a silver-looking band — and it’s my birthstone too. I promised Shan I’d give it to her daughter on her 18th birthday (because by then I hope to have upgraded a wee bit!). Now to just get the kid out of the womb — can’t wait till September!!!