Today I am very angry. Last night I had another weird dream, unfortunately I don't remember any of the details. I woke up around five, decided to go back to sleep, and my alarm jolted me out of a dream state that took me a while to recover from. I laid in the blankets wishing I could call in sick, but I've done enough of that lately. I don't know where I'm at as far as the point system at work and I really don't care except I would like to avoid future meetings with my boss and management. I'm almost never in at nine. It's a great time to start work, I missed most of traffic, I was able to sleep in a bit, I would love to start at nine more often, but usually I have to take my daughter in to school and I'd rather drive from school to work than back home and out to work again. It will be wonderful when she can drive and that headache is off of my list. When I got to work my boss gave me a hug and told me my birthday present was waiting for me and I should tell the front end if I didn't like it so I could switch it out for something I did want instead. On my way into work I had been thinking that I should stop at the store on the way home and pick up a new calendar. She bought me the same one she had purchased for her daughters, I almost started crying it was so beautiful. It isn't anything I would have bought for myself, last year I went with a black, white, and gold theme that I really liked, but this one is more meaningful because it came from her and I know she doesn't usually spend this on gifts, and what was really cool to me is how she mentioned that it was an impulse gift, but it felt right.
When I got into work we were talking about my role as my friend's Romance Coach. She joked that she had signed up for my program, but had never gotten the guy, and I told her that she was confused if she thought that the job of a romance coach was to get the guy. When she asked what the point was I told her that any coach should be able to see beyond where you can, and help you reach heights you may not have been able to achieve without your effort combined with their vision. It's never about getting the girl/guy. It is always about getting to a point in your life where you are able to meet your needs on your own; to live a full and interesting life as a single person, and to invite another person in only when this person is adding depth, richness, joy, perspective, or other positive qualities to the ones you already possess. People should be able to meet or interact with you and say, wow, this person is really cool, I'd like to spend some of my very valuable time getting to know them better. Often I hear people grumbling and saying things like, well so and so has this or that, in my friend's case she's bemoaning the single life and looking at all the couples she knows. But when I asked her how many of those people were in healthy relationships, she nodded at me. Later on my boss told me I was right when I had said that two of the women we work with are having emotional affairs with men at work. How is that good for anyone?
She's told me that I'm the friend who has the most fun, and the next time I talk to her I'm going to remind her of that. We don't need men in our lives to have fun, to enjoy work, to go out, we really don't need them to do anything for us which is probably one of the reasons neither of us has anyone special at the moment. I get my intellectual needs met through conversations with my online friends, I read, I write, my children are complex and have a variety of interests, they're very intelligent and most of the time I would rather hear their take on a situation than half of the adults I know. My real life friends are affectionate, I can go to museums, the theater, PT, I can take classes on practically anything and learn things that way, logical people have a larger place in my mind and thought processes because I admire and value them in a way that I can't explain, but it's different than the way I value and admire the S types. I have a very small need for romance in my life and can easily meet that need on my own by traveling to a small town and walking through mom and pop type shops. I could be better about managing my money, but this is another thing I can do on my own. It would be great to have a partner, but that person doesn't have to be a male I'm attracted to, it could just as easily be a friend or one of my siblings.
Today my boss and I worked on our inventory. When the assistant manager title came back the woman who has the job was tasked with reducing inventory. My boss asked that everything in back get stickered with a price and that everything that could be put on the shelves, should be. This is part of our daily job and why I would argue against anyone being promoted to take over these duties, because if people are ordering strategically, people are following our red dot system, and they're facing the way that they've been trained, inventory management becomes everyone's task and not just the job of one person. I'll take some of the responsibility because I failed to see where I could have done more. This is why I just love working with her. She's so ridiculously logical and efficient without condemning me for things I didn't do that I could have. When I apologized for not doing more she told me I work circles around people who are there four times more than I am and I know that this is true because the full time people were there today, and I couldn't really point to anything that they did the entire time we were all there. They acted like they were doing things, but even when they saw my boss coming out with products to see if we could make room on the shelves they found ways to avoid being helpful.
A guy I work with asked how I was and I told him I was angry. He gave me a look that said he didn't believe me and then asked me as if to verify that I was in fact, actually mad. I told him I was and then he said I could vent if I needed to, I told him it was probably an unrealistic expectation to rely on people who were hired to do the duties that were in their job description. A vendor that few of us love came in yesterday to take down the blue rack that our former General Manager had said she could install on the edge of our desk. They screwed it to our desk and then she was upset that I didn't have instant access to an electric screwdriver. I have pretty strong wrists for a woman my size, I couldn't get that screw to budge and neither could the GM we have now who is taller and stronger than I am. Before the rack came down she wanted to walk through the aisles and see where we had placed her products. I don't understand why whoever put in for shelf tags left a single item on the shelf instead of migrating the rest of the products over, but maybe they ran out of time. I hate being controlled. I grew up with very controlling parents, this is something I watch carefully in myself because it is a terrible thing to do to another person. I have no control over where things are placed on the shelves and do not make changes unless I am asked to unless the change is fairly minor and I think it will be approved and even then I'm careful because I've gotten into trouble for this before.
When my boss asked the assistant manager to call this woman so we could get a check, her assistant balked and that is the definition of insubordinate behavior to me. When your immediate superior asks you to do something, you do it, and you do not argue with this person. I have trouble with this type of thing myself, my boss had told me to take the products up front, I told her I was going to file the paper I had first, retrospectively I can see that I should have left the paper for later, or asked instead of telling her. I think the main difference here is I was explaining why I wasn't immediately cooperating, I wasn't trying to get out of the work I was being asked to do, or shoving the blame on someone else. Later on the assistant asked me which number I had used to call, I explained that the woman had been in the store and I hadn't needed to call her. I had done what had been requested of me, I had made it clear that we would not be accepting new products until we received credit for the old ones, I probably could have signed for what she had brought, but this woman has made our lives so unpleasant and has proven herself untrustworthy so I decided that we needed credit before getting billed for anything new. I wasn't going to let product leave without a check, and I wasn't going to let her dictate what sits on our shelves. I was polite, but firm, and she did thank me when it was all said and done.
This woman has serious issues and I hope for her sake she gets some help. At first I wondered if it was just me, but apparently nobody else really likes her either. She's very arrogant, condescending, controlling, high strung, self absorbed to the point of me thinking she is actually narcissistic, this woman has absolutely no warmth in her, she's aggressive without being assertive, and everything about her gives me an extremely bad feeling. Be competitive, but play fair. She's sneaky, underhanded, vain, she probably has a degree of intelligence, but so far nothing she's done has impressed me much. One of her products burned my face when I tried it and the other one she tried shoving on me smelled so bad I refused to touch it. I have an acute sense of smell, her products smell the same to me, she thinks she's done something cool and maybe I'm not giving credit where it's due because she developed these products and was apparently somewhat successful marketing them to our former GM, but none of them have impressed me on any level since they're all things I could make for myself at home using the same ingredients she does. I'm done for the day. I have tomorrow off, I'm going to pick up treats to take to PT and use the rest of my day to sit back and just relax. I'm debating whether I should just drive home now, or stop back at the store as long as I'm out and the sun is still shining. I feel calmer than I did before. I needed to write. Thanks for listening.
Until next time,
Jessica
P.S. I'm really proud of myself for telling someone how I felt when they asked. I'm even prouder of myself for getting my work done despite the raging inner storm. My unicorn friend was sick and now I'm worried about her. I hope she's okay.
j
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Me: "If I'm this upset, I can't imagine how furious you must be."
Her: "I signed up for this." I looked over and saw two of the other people in my department just standing there chit chatting. That broke my heart.
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