Today has been the most glorious of days. I’m at home sick and I’ve managed to create an impressive mound of used tissues next to my bed. The important point is: I’m not at work. Ergo, I am not being bothered or stressed, and I’ll take a cold over stress any day. In all actuality it was long past time for me to take a day off. Yesterday was brutal and I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.
I should have know yesterday when I woke up with the tale tell signs of an impending cold that I should have laid my happy ass back down and called in sick. Instead, I set out on my morning commute silently praying that no one really bother me because dealing with bullshit talking would just further irritate my condition. That condition being, sleepy, sick, and impatient. I know its said that God looks after children and fools, unfortunately I am neither; my hope that my day would go by uneventful and blessedly silent quickly flew out the window as soon as I walked in the door.
I hate it when people ask me questions that either:
A. They should know the answer to already
or
B. Questions that can easily be figured out on ones own
Now, I’m all about helping my fellow-man and being a team player, yaddy yaddy yadda, but there comes a point when grown ass people should be able to make a decision or figure things out on their own. I understand that people are lazy and will often defer to the path of least resistance, but yesterday was ridiculous. I felt like the office Magic Eight Ball, and no not because I’m Black and people were constantly shaking me to get an answer…. Okay well that is pretty much what happened. I guess that analogy works better than I intended. Yay for double entendres!! Either way I was miserable and wanted to be left to do my job so I could get home and back in bed.
Yesterday I felt like the lone Black character on a season of MTV’s Real World. You know the one that ends up living with 6 of the craziest Caucasians that MTV can find; apparently it makes good TV. He/She are constantly having to deal with the screwball antics of said roommate until one day it gets to be too much and the Black Roomie flips the fuck out… then gets kicked off the show because the housemates no longer feel “safe” with him/her around.
I was bombarded all day with these basic ass questions that have relatively easy answers. As if dealing with this crap isn’t bad enough, someone had the audacity to ask me a simpleton question, then QUESTION my answer! WTF. If you think I might be wrong don’t keep asking me. I’M not going to research the problem for you! I don’t mind being wrong. Nor do I care enough about your issue to find out if I’m right; YOU are always free to look it up your damn self. Finally I ended up going off and end up muttering like a crazy person, “I don’t know. Figure it out. Just Figure it out. JUST, I DON’T KNOW, MAYBE PICK UP the Phone and FIGURE IT out.”….. now I look certifiable. You know you’ve flown off the handle when people around you don’t want to make eye contact for fear that you may yell at them too. Great. Now I have to apologize.
Thankfully, I was wise enough to take the advice of one of my sane co-workers and take today off for some much-needed PTO. Which, funny enough, apparently a lot of people don’t know that the “P” in PTO can also stand for “Personal,” but that’s another story for a different Blog.
As I stated at the beginning, today had been glorious, but like any addict or battered woman, we secretly seek that which beats us down. So I decided to check my work emails from home, and boy am I glad I did. Never did I realize how entertaining my office can be…..from the outside looking in, of course. My favorite golden nugget of ridiculous-ness was an email from my Personnel Coordinator sending me the transcription of a classic interactions with Red that I missed out on:
The phone rang
PC: [Company Greeting] How may I help you?
Caller: Yes, this is “Jane Doe” can I speak to “Red”
PC: Yes, hold on one moment
Buzzing Red’s desk line
PC: Jane Doe is on the line for you
Red: Who?
PC: Jane Doe
Red: Did she say what it was in reference to?
PC:…. No, she just said she wanted to talk to you.
Red: Oh (slightly exasperated)..ok.
PC: (hangs up phone and goes back to work)
Red: (yells across the room to PC) are you going to transfer it!?
PC: No, can you just pick up the line?
Red: Yea, I was just trying to see if you were…
PC: (back to work not listening to anything being said)
3 minutes later
Red: *comes over and explains the conversation in its entirety that she had with Jane Doe. Being sure not to leave out the who, the why, the where and how long… because just in case, you know, she was curious about what Jane wanted*
PC: (internal monologue playing whilst Red is speaking “I DON’T CARE I DON’T CARE I DON’T CAREEEEEEEEEE!!!)
Sigh. Glad it wasn’t me dealing with that ish today. Cause I can’t afford to look crazy two day’s in a row.
My other co-worker also told me that I missed our office’s co-manager dropping by to say ‘hello’. She is currently out of the office for the next 11 weeks *CURSE HER!!* on maternity leave. Apparently, she brought her new-born in with her. I was kind of bummed when I found out I missed out on that moment, but glad I missed out on what followed their arrival. I guess my manager didn’t really want anyone to hold her because she was worried that the baby could possibly become sick. She shared the story that her last child caught meningitis from someone shortly after being born, and her baby had to spend 1 week in the hospital. To which Red replied, “Well when I was born they had to put me in an incubator.”……Did that just happen?? did she just one up the “My Baby had meningitis” story??? Fuck that whack ass meningitis! I was in an incubator! Unless your baby has Indian Bird Flu, she aint shit! BOOM!
Yep. Today was a good day. . .
