2006-01-17

I'm the Only One

If I get one more text message, I am going to run to the restroom, jam my finger down my throat, vomit the potato soup I ate for lunch, drop my cell phone in the mess, flush; and deal with the aftermath of not having a telephone later.
Dude.

And to top it off?
It's freezing cold.
29 degrees when I woke up.
It hasn't rained since August.
No doubt - I live in the desert but this is a little extreme, even for Tucson. My hands and feet are so dry and painful that I am pretty sure they're going to just break off and leave me stumbling around with some pretty unfortunate stumps. I have already lost feeling and we all know what's next... Stumpville, USA!

The other complaint that is closing very high on the day is the fact that some of the vendors with whom I work do not take me seriously. My baby voice belies my knowledge of my job.
I HATE that. There's this lady and she's kind of new to one of my biggest accounts. I need some stuff from her, like last week. She continues to put me off in the double entendre of not calling me back, as well as making me want to send an Electric Email.
Yeah.
I invented these emails in my head that when sent, will cause the recipient to get a mild electric shock that will spur them to respond. My invention also requires hypnosis technology - the recipient would be sent the tiniest bit under my influence, but only to the degree where he or she would be unable to explain the shock sensation and the impulse to provide me with the information or report which I have requested.
Last week.
Three times.
I finally get a hold of her today? She lectures me on how this is a really busy time of year.
I assume an air of freezer-cold precision because I know it's a busy time of year, we all know it's busy. Part of the busy is servicing this big huge client.
The info I am requesting is in order for the client to make a decision, a MAJOR decision regarding your company, lady; one costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. With every passing day of me not getting this seemingly stupid report, your company gets further and further away from retaining the business of this client. Which honestly? Thank Jesus, Mary, AND Joseph if I don;t have to work with you.

GAWD.
I'm having a fucking tantrum over here? Hello?

Digress.
Hold on.
I need a second to cram several cookies into my mouth at once to stop the pain.

Much better.
My thoughts just turned to KitchenGate 2006. The whole entire company got yelled at by HR yesterday for someone leaving a dirty bowl on the counter in the kitchen.
For the record, it was not my bowl. There's the kitchen, and then there's the kitchenette. I work on the kitchenette side of the building and very rarely go into the kitchen, unless there are free leftovers from a conference or something.
I do go in the kitchen when I do dishes, though. I pride myself on being the only person who ever picks up the kitchenette. I'm the only one who takes the dishes in the little sink and loads them in the dishwasher in the klitchen, as well as being the only person who cleans out the kitchenette fridge.

Surprisingly, I expend so much energy and time cleaning the kitchen and the kitchenette at work, that I fail to clean my own kitchenette and when I finally did so last night? I found half of a tuna sandwich from 3 weeks ago in the refrigerator, 3 wine-stained glasses under the sink, and an open bag of Doritos, marked "Best if used by APR 2003" on an upper cabinet shelf.
Duh.
Everybody knows that the wine-stained glasses go on the top shelf.

So anyways, we ALL get this angry email, a P.A. announcement and the final insult, a nasty note, scrawled in all caps, black-Sharpie, and posted by the sink.
Over a bowl.
I was angry. I don't want to be lumped in with the jackholes who don't clean up the kitchen areas. I put effort into cleaning up, thankyouverymuch. Perhaps the HR Rage could have been directed at the departments who use the kitchen? For many employees, like me, the kitchenette is all we ever see in terms of food-related OTJ activities.
Or perhaps I could have been left off of the email list since HR knows that I'm an ass-kissing trouper about cleaning upthe kitchen areas. At least 2 mornings a week, I take the dishes from the sink in the kitchenette and load them into the dishwasher in the big kitchen. At least once a month, I run the dishwasher, complete with a cutesy fake-nice note: "Sarah W. ran the dishwasher at 5:30 pm on 1/12/05. p.s. We're out of detergent! :)" HR sees my notes, they know I pitch in, dammit.

Whenever I am in the big kitchen, I truly make a point to check the dishwasher to see if the dishes there in are clean and thank god, they're usually not so I usually don't have to put them away. I load in any crap in the sink and walk off feeling good for contributing to keeping my work place tidy.
So, as a funny aside, my employer thinks I am a neat freak. It's like the funny getting-to-know-you joke when HR people introduce me to new employees or clients or something. I find this detail to be hil-ARIOUS in its irony.

There's the email and the announcement and the note and it's all over a blue bowl, so I am hurt that I was included in this angry rant. After all, I should be the only person who is sick of being the only person to clean up after herself, her managers, and her lazy-ass slobby co-workers. Pretty simple, right?

I leave hurt, and a little teary-eyed.

I come in to work this morning and what do I find?

Mofos left dirty dishes in the sink last night!
Are they kidding me?

They can't even clean up after the HR Smack Down!

Who do they think they are?

I was so pissed that I had to choose between being the sucker who puts shit away for others and the asshole that leaves it for someone else.

Clearly, I'm the sucker.
I mean, duh.

Fast forward, decision made, and I am trucking the kitchenette dishes to the dishwasher, which of COURSE was run last night and can't be loaded until the clean stuff is put away.

While I am throwing coffee mugs into random cabinets, hoping with every pitch that more and more of them break so that I will NEVER be the only person who cleans around here, since there would be nothing to clean if it's all broken; no less than THREE fellow employees commented in a fake-cutsey way:

"Oh, do you have kitchen duty today?"

I completely snapped. From what I understand, the people who were going to come into the kitchen refused to do so until the howling stopped and those who were trapped inside were rushed to the ER.

We have no current update on their condition.

arizonasarah at 1:54 p.m.

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