“You Spin Me Right Round Baby…”

          At some point I am going to learn to accept I have no control over anything other than the worlds I create in my stories. I am feeling very uncomfortable with some things going on in my life. I don’t mean to imply things are bad or that I am expecting doom and gloom. What I am driving at is I hate it when my tight little world is disrupted and I am forced to adapt to it as opposed it adapting to me.

            So Josh, what the fuck has crawled up your butt this time?

            Don’t be a smartass, you know I’m going to tell you whether you want to know or not. I am nothing if not consistent in my bitching and whining. But really isn’t that why you people love me… or at least loathe me?

            The number one bee in my bonnet is work.

            No not the real job, the writing job, the job that actually means something to me. Writing is actually going pretty well. Not only am I cranking my short stories like a machine I’ve jumped feet first into a new novel. It is a lovely little tale entitled “Frankenstein, King of the Dead” and unless you are confused I am writing it so I can have Frankie smashing zombies!

            No what I am pissed about is the day job, the boring job, the job I do because I have to as opposed to wanting to. I know you are all tired hearing/reading about my work woes and all I have to sat to that is this… ahem,

“I am not making you read this!”

            Sorry, didn’t mean to yell but I think that needed to be said. I may bitch, whine, and moan about everything and anything I admit that. But you people need to take responsibility for being voyeuristic and enjoying my trials and tribulations. Admit it. I’m not judging you for liking my misery. It’s all good. I mean you aren’t the one causing my pain. You aren’t secretly hoping with every essay that I will learn I am the child of gypsies, just like my mother always told me, and that my gypsy parents have returned to inform me I was promised as a third wife to a rich Turkish merchant.

            You aren’t hoping for that are you?

            Do you promise?

            Okay, on to the day job (at night) and what I am pissed about this time. Kelly, my former supervisor and friend, was one of the most organized people I’ve ever worked for. No fuck that noise she was THE most organized person I’d ever worked for. Her office was filled with message boards loaded with important information, filing cabinets containing the necessary paperwork and files for the departments operation, and binder upon binder or relevant papers. Despite the way it sounds her office was well organized and didn’t feel cluttered. Now the office where I take my breaks and do the bulk of my writing looks like cold shell of what it once was.

            I expected the bitch manager, our “oh so wise mountain gorilla”, to change things. What I didn’t expect was the way my coworker joined her in this bullshit.

            I have a coworker, let’s call him Alan, and he is at his core a good guy. But he is also kinda fucked up. Alan is an admitted unmedicated obsessive compulsive and obvious alcoholic. He comes to work reeking of the booze he consumed the night before and he spends the day shaking, checking door knobs, and making sure water facets are turned off. I am not being a shithead and I really like Alan but god’s damnit he knows all of this and refuses to attempt to make any changes. It’s his choice and he is still one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met, but damn is he irritating sometimes. For five years I’ve been able to laugh at his eccentricities and get along well with him.

            Now I’m pissed at him.

            I get that Alan is mad at Kelly for quitting. He hasn’t said that but I can tell he’s not happy. That being said I thought they were friends. Kelly spent the five years she was the supervisor protecting Alan and bending over backwards to make sure he had a more comfortable work environment. She has put up with more of Alan’s crap (he bitched about her having live plants because they belong outside, he bitched about the way she wanted the inventory done every two weeks, and she allowed his to use large segments of HER office as a storage area for his shit) than everyone else put together.

            So guess what he’s spent the last week and half doing?

            Go ahead and guess… I bet you can figure it out but I’m gonna bitch anyway.

            He has gleefully sided with the bitch manager, whom he has spent the entire time I’ve known him damning as an incompetent busybody. They have thrown away all of the carefully organized paperwork and files, not even bothering to check and see if they would be useful or not. Alan has started doing the inventory the way he wants, I looked at it when he proudly showed it to me declaring that was the way it should be done and Kelly’s way made no fucking sense.

            Wow… maybe an autistic genius can understand his system… maybe.

            Alan has also moved even more of his things into her office. So really the empty spaces left after his purge are getting filled. The only thing he wasn’t able to do was deal with her plants. Kelly took all of her pants home with her and when she did Alan actually bitched about not being able to take them outside where they belong. I am not sure what he thought he was going to do with them considering its FUCKING WINTER!

            I get that I am bitching about nothing. I get that it’s not my office, it’s not my job (and boils and ghouls they can’t pay me enough to take it either), and it really doesn’t affect me on any significant level. Yet still I am seriously pissed off. Kelly earned loyalty from the people under her. She treated them well and had their backs. She deserves better than for the person she was there for the most to gleefully remove every indication that she ever lived.

            Kelly deserves better than this.

            Alan should be ashamed of himself.

            And the “Oh so wise mountain gorilla” needs to piss off.

            This job isn’t fun anymore.

            -Josh