Chillin’ and Distillin’
Twenty-six straight hours of work went by rather well, and I was almost out the door when Demure trapped me.
She was none too happy about the hours I worked, the lateness of the paper, the fact that she didn’t see the final draft … blah blah blah. I was in no mood for her shit. Save the fucking complaints for when I’m not so frustrated that I would happily crack the nearest talking head off the nearest jagged rock. Grrr.
Kumquat stopped in to see me first thing this morning. Looked me up and down and remarked, “You never left, did you?” I said no and told him the final two items I was struggling with. I was distilling my Quark files into individual PDFs when I realized that Mac Guy had pulled an ad from the January folder, and as i was not overly coherent, I was trying to fix it myself because no one was in the office at that godforsaken hour. He at least slipped out and told me to call him if I needed anything.
He and Demure are pissed that they aren’t seeing the paper before it goes to press, and that’s the sort of control that Her Royal Pretentiousness at the last job demanded to the point of having things being sent out late so she could piss on it, somebody could shit on it, and somebody else could straddle it. What none of these ninnies can understand is that I am, if I say so myself, brilliant at the last minute. I had ingested four Ginsing iced teas, two liters of Coke, a pint of ice cream and two slices of pizza (hurrah for those who deliver beyond midnight!), so I was pretty much good to go … till Demure cornered me. Gaaah.
You know, I literally lost an entire day of my life, having spent it at work. I am certainly not asking for a gold medal, by any means, but what I do expect is a little bit of room and maybe even respect for working 26 hours in a sea of colleagues who take an eight-hour lunch break every single day. Now, I KNOW that they will be coming the paper with a fine-toothed comb when it hits the stands, so I have to be prepared to warn them that, when you increase the size of your publication by nearly half, then you’d better expect that many more boo-boos. But I’ve already been ordained to meet with Kumquat and Demure next week to strategize on how I will prevent this lateness from happening again. (Note that Demure threw so many roadblocks in my way about hiring an intern — free labor, BTW — that I gave up the idea and resorted to avoiding the issue at all costs.) How can we prevent this from happening again? Blow me.
At any rate, I did well, and I am the only person (next to Shan, of course) who will say that I — as usual — pulled off a mighty feat. And that’s too bad, because this is how morale at companies plummets.
I was snark-o-licious today with my barbs. But I’m too tired to write anymore, so I may update this entry if the mood strikes. At any rate, I canceled my nail appointment for today, I just took a nice leukwarm shower (no hot water, as usual), and I’m about to crawl in bed and hope to die … for a few hours, anyway, till the publishing house calls with a crisis. 😉 Again, weep for me.