2002-04-24 - 11:43 p.m.
Well, this is just too depressing for words. (Except that I'm writing about it ... but you get my drift).

Well, I was tired and a little upset this morning, but for the most part OK.

Somewhere near 11am my day went to Hell. Not literally, but close. My supervisor called me in to talk to me about a virus message that the server flagged for my machine. She said it came through at 4:27pm yesterday and that I was still here, so she knew I must have seen the warning, and why didn't I tell her about it? It puzzled the hell out of me. I saw no such message, and I told her so.

Now, I'm not always the most perceptive person in the universe, but when I'm paying attention, I'm no slouch at reading people. And the more she talked, the more I was aware that she thought I was lying. Why? I don't know. Why would I lie about something so stupid? Hello, it was a virus. Of course she'd need to know. Why would I not tell her? But she didn't believe me. She said there was no way I could not have noticed the message. And so on.

It didn't really get resolved before the AST meeting. So I tried to send her a careful message later reassuring her that I had no reason to lie, and that I didn't know what had happened.

She called me back into her office near the end of the normal work day. She pointed out a few other things she was wary of in my job performance, and then said I was just making things worse by being defensive. It turns out that the server records every move the employees make on their computers -- what programs run when, what 'Net sites get visited when. That's not so unexpected; I knew server software can do that. I did NOT expect to hear, however, that she actually sits and sifts all that stuff.

Surely, I always thought, if she has a problem with anything I do, she's not going to be all half-assed about things like my last supervisor was. Surely, I thought, she'll let me know right away and I won't end up getting all this "But it should have been obvious to you" and "We need to hold ourselves to higher standards in this department."

By the end of the conversation I think she believed me about the virus thing again. I really do want to know what it came from, because I sure didn't see it, and I told her to let me know what her findings were. That horrible weight I was feeling while she thought I was a liar lifted away; but the rest of the conversation had already done its damage.

I was frustrated with my job yesterday. Now I'm just depressed. It's not just a bad job fit; my supervisor and I have incompatible personalities. She's nice, but she doesn't understand me, and it's hard for me to communicate with her. I think if I stay there much longer, it's going to break me.

God, I hope she's not reading this. If she really is scrutinizing my every move in the server logs, she could very easily have found this site, and that would just be the last straw. I thought there were privacy laws, that you had to warn your employees if you monitored their every click of the mouse. I'm not ashamed of my behavior -- I'm much more productive with frequent short mind-breaks than with boring regular breaks -- but I seriously doubt that she would understand that concept if I tried to explain it.

I smiled and self-deprecated a bit near the end of our conversation, told her that I would try to work on our communication, and that I did react a little strongly at times.

"Oh, I've noticed that," she said.

*beating forehead on desk* That was meant to be rhetorical. I didn't need anyone else to tell me how messed up I am. Seriously.

Anyway, all this means I'm going to have to cold-turkey off the 'Net while at work and find some other way of keeping myself distracted enough to stay on-task. I'm not going away, but I'll have to restrict myself to night-time hours. God help me.

At least I have one friend there ... she tried playing innocent, and signed the card "Just from a friend," but I saw her peek in my cubicle at least twice before the flowers arrived today. It was a lovely basket bouquet, with irises and white roses and other spring flowers, and it helped. When I do leave, I'll miss her. She might be twice my age, but I've never felt the years with her like I do with my supervisor.