2006-06-30
Similar City
I really want to learn to work around the suffocation that I feel, you know from my throat clenching up all day in my cubicle while I am holding back and not saying what I'm thinking.
Sometimes in my job, I'm a hero.
Other times in my job, I'm a bitching post where people can unload about how unjust the system is. These are generally the people who are being sent to collections.
I want to tell them the truth, that there is nothing I can legally do to help them out and then I want to give them a stern lecture about accountability and about opening their mail, not tossing it.
I want to tell them that I have fucked up like that and I had to pay for my damn self, so who the hell do they think they are to expect me to spend HOURS trying to negotiate with parties who don't have to give a shit and who say to me, "You DO realize this is because _______ (fill in self-negligent action on behalf of my client)."
"Well, I know but come on... who would KNOW that? I mean, besides you and me and everyone else who has to figure things out for ourselves? Please."
On and on and on she kept on.
To make things more of a squeeze, parties in my own organization make promises for which I am later held responsible, even though I know that what has been promised is only doable if the planets are in alignment and the eagle flies across the sun at exactly the latitude specified by the Sherpa from that one time four years ago on Mt, McKinley.
In other instances, I score work when someone internally starts something and when that person realizes that there is a big, festering mess of a wound and not a little paper cut, they hand their work off to me.
They have usually chased the wrong rabbit and I have to do a bunch of stuff over and figure out how to explain why there is a new person on guard and why the old person wasn't wrong but at the same time totally effed up everything.
It's not so bad because when I get to be a hero, I get to really be a champ.
Normally.
You know, people are so messed up that I am going to take that back.
I'm trying to think of the times when I have been thanked after I've been blamed incorrectly, told that it's none of my business, and generally bitched at.... the times I've been thanked are kind of few and far between.
I'm always happy to help people but most of the time when I do pull off the miracle and so many times, it's literally a miracle...
So many times when I pull it off, the person goes, "Oh. You would think I would get more. That's just a crappy way to do business. Thanks for all you did but I wish it had gone better.
Hey! I Have another one and I'll send it right over for you! Call me when you get it!"
.
.
.
If people knew how irresponsible they are for their own lives, I wonder if that would make any difference?
What I wouldn't give to have someone call me and say, "I'm an idiot and I let this go and now what can you do to help me? If there's anything you need, bother me as much as you want to because I know it's partly my fault. Oh! and thank you SO MUCH for helping me!"
I've never had a person like that come across my desk.
The people who come across my desk and who make me really feel sorry for myself are the ones who get to go to lunch everyday. They expect that the people around them will take care of the crap they leave in their wake. If real life was a game of The Sims, they would long ago have caught on fire in the middle of a fly-filled kitchen that they macked out using cheat codes.
Sadly, life doesn't imitate art.
If it did, I would be a Kristin Cavallari look-alike, who works as a hand-model, and I would drive a really cute convertible and have a jukebox next to my hot tub.
arizonasarah at 11:31 a.m.