2002-08-14 - 1:34 p.m.
Oooh, so this is rage....

OMG. No, make that OMFG. I - am - not - a - fucking - child!!!

Sorry. I'm doing my best Impassive Vulcan Face at the moment, so I don't go postal on my boss, but my tongue is getting away from me. Sometimes, despite my distaste for unladylike exclamations, polite language doesn't express things very well ...

She means well. I know this. I hate the whole "empathic" thing sometimes; I'm perfectly aware that she doesn't aim to hurt my feelings, or cut my legs out from under me. But she fucking well DOES. She sits there in her my-way-is-right pigeonhole and automatically assumes that whatever she thinks she remembers is the truth, ergo I am wrong in any disagreement, and her whole dismissive, self-protective attitude about it cuts me to the quick!

I filled out a computer work order for the gal I share cubicle space with and gave it to my boss yesterday, as she needed a network color laser printer installed on her computer. (Holly had implied that there was some Obscure Ritual to setting up this particular printer that she'd have to handle herself, so like a good obedient girl I stepped through the paperwork procedure).

Now, there's another industrial color printer very like this one located on the other floor; they're designated the 850 and the 860, respectively. My cubicle-mate only had the 860 and didn't want to trudge down the stairs. I CHECKED, and so did she; only the 860, her small personal printer, and the office black-and-white were installed. Later in the day, she came to me and said nevermind, someone had helped her to install the 850, so now she had both. It was easy, she said.

Here's where the repeated use of the F-word comes in: when my supervisor came today to install the 850, I relayed the circumstances. She said No, that's not possible, there's too many steps, you're wrong, she can't have done, you had to have overlooked the 850, because obviously she (my supervisor) would have set this particular person up with both printers in the other building.

*twhapping head repeatedly on desk*

Oh, and that's not all. Yesterday, early in the afternoon, she asked me to pull some faxes to go over for the meeting with our DSL contact next week. Today she confronted me and asked why I'd never brought the faxes to her. I raised an eyebrow and said, "I remember you saying to pull the faxes and go over them, but I was under the impression it was to tabulate differences between our records and yours, and prepare to discuss them with our contact next week? You didn't say I needed to meet with you over them yesterday." Oh yes I did, but I don't have time now, so whatever, was her response.

And then I showed her some of the results of my online furniture-search for printer stands that she sent me on. I gave examples, said none of them were wide enough for two large printers, and she said, No, they're there, obviously I'm looking in all the wrong places. Go here, go there, if you're not finding them you're doing it wrong, etc.

How the fuck did I get myself into a job like this? Did I ask to be a whipping girl? (Oh, boo, I'm not being as assertive or as aggressive as I should be, so she isn't getting a clear picture of my competence. Yeah, I've heard that one before. That's no excuse!)

Right about now I want to snatch a baseball bat and go apeshit on something dentable. Of course I won't; I've learned my emotional-rock role too well. Smile and nod. Vacant, half-agreeing expression and lots of Mmm-hm's and I-see's. Excise all "but" and "I thought" from the conversation; become a ghost in the passage unless I see her smiling. But INSIDE ... well, it helps to have an excellent imagination.

You know what a perfect stress reliever would be right now? A racecar and an obstacle course. There's nothing quite like speed and danger to bleed out emotional tension; nothing like a grinning adrenalinefest to get all those Kill-Kill-Kill impulses out of the bloodstream. *sigh* Instead, I have another three and a half hours to live through in the office. Joy.