Caterwauling

I manage to piss off two people today.

One by saying I don’t talk to my ex-BFF anymore because she voted for Trump. (Which, that was just the final straw. And there was a whole box of straws.) I am guessing the one person who recoiled voted for the asshole.

Another by saying anyone who watches Fox News is a Trump-loving nitwit and that’s the main source of fake news in this world. I know this person is a Trump lover and so is his wife. And one day, I hope she can tell me in very small words someday why women who don’t work hate Hillary so much.

In any event, there may be a third person I hurt somehow and I didn’t mean to if it was in fact my stupid ass fault.

There’s a lot of shit going on right now. Obviously the work is drying up and we’ll all be out panhandling soon enough. But there’s a lot more that I am keeping to myself. Like, my friends who got the boot a lot sooner are dying for the gossip, yet I don’t reach out and touch anyone about it. And I dodge when they do inquire.

I was even telling a friend today, I hear news and retreat to my corner. Then I watch my phone and wait for the texts to roll in. Someone gets fired, give it two hours till an old friend knows and lets ME know. The assets get sold, I guarantee one of my West Coast friends will know before someone down the hall can walk to my desk to fill me in.

There’s another friend I don’t gossip with. At all. But in conversation, I earnestly said hey you might be able to get something useful out of this event, if the stars align. Sit tight and wait.

I trust said person will behave. But I’m not sure if they did here. Because everyone stopped bailing water out of the boat and started rearranging their deck chairs about this particular topic. Because, of all the information spreading around the continent like wildfire, THIS is what concerns them.

The problem is someone got in trouble over it. I don’t *think* it’s my “fault,” as if something so dumb should be assigned any fault. But either way, no matter whose flap was yapping, folks really need to find their zen.

In any event, politics was the theme of the day. If I had the choice to eliminate the kind that runs our country or the kind that ruins our workplace first, I honestly don’t know which I’d pick. I hate me some Trump (obvs) but damn. This stupid shit is less pervasive but so much more personal.

Anyway. Tomorrow I’m not speaking to anyone. I feel like I regret it every single time. I only try to help all parties (and it would in fact help all parties), and it only ends up in a flaming ball of poo.

Now that the unemployment line is staring me in the face, everyone either responds with:

A) OMG what are you going to do?!!?!?!?! #panic

B) Great. You were too smart for that place / it was killing you anyway. Now you can do what you really want to do. Dream big!

I’m not sure which reaction bugs me more. Probably the first one, as it forces ME into a role of trying to comfort THEM and assure them no, I’m not going to drive Stewie into the Intracoastal and meet a watery end. Don’t make me reassure you when I’m the one who’s spinning out. Give ME some hope that the job market really isn’t abysmal, eh?

A friend who used to work with me a lonnnngggg time ago reached out on one of the social media thingies and said she always wondered why I stayed. Too smart for all that, she said. I laughed. I said I stayed because we had amazing people like you hidden in the ranks. It was easy to be a leader when you had people who actually cared about your, and the company’s, success.

I can’t find a job like mine anywhere on the planet. The company that’s supposed to be hiring all of us, well, isn’t. And that was my best bet.

I don’t want to be unemployed. But I don’t want to lose my title or pay, either. That’s why I stayed. Seniority, yo. You get really good at your craft in a niche industry. What happens when you have such specialized skills that they just don’t translate directly anywhere else?

Basically I achieved my dream. So when folks tell me to dream big, well. I set that bar and I met it already.

Look, I’ve been worried about losing this job for six years. I figured it would be my longest-running boss to toss me. He never seemed to “take” to me. And I wasn’t planning to stay anyway. Just wanted to leave for the right thing.

God knows I’ve had offers. Just didn’t hear the right one over the years. Now I’m left to wonder do I go crawling back … or do I dream something up that is completely different — and could completely suck in its own special way?

How do you dream when that’s your mindset? (A little help here, please …)

As if it weren’t bad enough that we are selling assets to my old company and I am working with people I left behind anywhere from 7 to 10 years ago …

Now I get to dazzle other people who are lucky enough to have jobs. Reminds me of when I was interviewing begging for this job. Looking around and trying super-hard to not recognize that I could outshine any of them, if only anyone would give me a chance.

I got some good news yesterday. The owner personally asked me to stay on an extra month. So I am very happy and relieved to have two more paychecks than I planned.

(I mean, I planned on being employed for as long as I wanted to be. So this is just meeting my expectations for 2017. But still. Consider that expectation bar on the ground, or perhaps in a ditch, for next year.)

The owner also asked me to make a Sophie’s Choice and pick just one helper. The answer was easy. But I feel sad anyway.

And not only did my newest boss (the guy who promoted me) get walked out of the building yesterday, but I ran into my immediately previous boss at a cocktail reception.

Jesus Christ. The guy who unfriended me when they put him on the curb. In the flesh.

I spent the evening avoiding him. But he came up to me at the end and we made peace.

Seeing him killed me. The man’s been out of a job four months and counting. FOUR MONTHS. From the same role I am wrapping up. Am I in for another 11-month stretch without a job like the last time?

To be fair, he wasn’t a fit for the role and he knew it. I love to manage. I love the day-to-day. I hate writing because this field has killed my love of it, where he still holds on to that love.

We could have been a good team if we had been in each other’s roles.

Seeing him jobless and hearing that another colleague I liked is also still on the unemployment line killed me

And none of this really felt real till 30 of us were standing around the (mercifully) open bar at a cocktail reception. Some of us clamored for the attention of the basically three people who didn’t have an opening per se but who were humoring someone important and meeting with us orphans. Most of our employees huddled together, watching the rest of us with wide eyes.

I told the HR director at the hosting company (an old friend of mine, although not sure how much that helps me) it was like the Puppy Bowl. I walk well on a leash and I love car rides and going to the park. Pick me, yes?

The good news is, I knew the hosts and it was good to catch up. (And I hope they took my dinner suggestion — they would love me.) I tried to introduce my folks and say a nice thing or two. As if my reference could make a difference.

I couldn’t sleep after that. I mean, the wine (very good pinot noir. Go, Marriott) knocked me out for two hours. But Kadie had me up at 3 a.m. yesterday. so I consider that as appending Sunday night’s fitful slumber.

I dreamed that Mom was healthy and happy and out of pain. We were out doing something fun in the sun and I said, momma, you’re keeping up with me! She said yes, honey, isn’t it wonderful?

I went to pay for something in the dream and realized holy shit, I do not have a job and zero prospects for one.

That’ll get ya out of bed at 1:12 a.m. Just sayin’.

My agreement to stay is also a devil’s deal. I can’t leave if I get a good offer. Or a bad offer. Or any offer, really.

What I’m hoping is that the universe will work the way it always does, and I’ll get 10 offers because I can’t walk out when I’m ready.

The owner says he knows I’m going to get multiple offers. Don’t take the first offer, Goddess, he told me yesterday. Make them compete for you.

I just hope the money comes. Offers have always been fairly easy to come by. Offers that keep you above the poverty level, not so much.

And looking around at people who gave 10, 20, even almost 30 years — thinking this was where they’d gain seniority and maybe retire from — just makes me sad that there are so many of us with the same wish.

Sadder still that this probably isn’t the last layoff we’ll ever endure, if we can even get through this one in the first place.

I won’t lie — I never felt “safe.” Not even working 75 hours a week, juggling more projects than my five counterparts on the other side of the company who collectively did ONE of my jobs.

It was a shitty review (how do I get 2s out of 5s for dependability and output. HOW?) and the death of a friend (no doubt from overwork) that helped me scale back to 60 hours.

Still, I fretted.

Then the person who would have fired me left, and I got promoted. Go figure. Someone who judged me on reputation alone (obviously by everyone else’s view) would be the one to elevate me. Best decision they ever made, probably.

I still never felt safe, though.

And now that living in my car is all I want for Christmas, because that implies the car is still running, there’s a certain level of relief. They can’t hurt me any more than they already have.

I mean, yes, now the worries are much bigger. But it’s not like staying two extra hours these days will save the whole operation. Too late to make a difference. If it ever did.

And call me crazy, but I’ll find relief anywhere I can get it.

That time when you lost your job, your apartment, your mind AND your car.

And when your car died in the middle of 95 and you could literally SEE YOUR OFFICE as the cars whipped around your dead fucking fuel pump ass.

And when you called AAA and said yes this is an emergency and OMG I AM NOT IN A SAFE LOCATION and they still had you wait an hour.

And when you called Florida Highway Patrol to give your coordinates and say please please please send a squad car to hang out with me OMG GONNA DIE HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW HOW FLORIDIANS DRIVE and they say call us when there’s a real accident.

And when you CRAWL OUT OF YOUR SUNROOF and jump onto the truck bed so you don’t get kilt on the fucking highway.

And when YOU FEEL YOUR PERIOD START as you grab your coffee and laptop out of your passenger seat as you kneel on the not-so-strong hood of your car.

Meanwhile you’ve been coughing up a lung for a week and a half. And you busted both your big toes wearing new shoes to Disney two weeks ago and the nails look like janky eggplants.

And when you have to pay over a hundred bucks to get towed to your mechanic BY YOUR HOUSE 30 MILES SOUTH omg why did I leave the house whyyyyyy.

And when your mechanic’s discount still sets you back a grand.

AND YOU STILL DON’T HAVE A JOB OR A PLACE TO LIVE so you pay it because you’re about to be living in that fucking vehicle.

So you’ll have to forgive me that I’m a little focused on the negative right now when I know I should be grateful that I lived … that no one hurt poor Stewie … that I had a terrific AAA driver … that I have an awesome mechanic … and that I didn’t have to look at those sad sack motherfuckers inside that building, although I did end up fighting with the one idiot all goddamned day long because he has never been able to follow instructions and, with two weeks to go, doesn’t apparently plan to.

I tell everyone we can either tell a tale of fear or triumph. This is all setting up to be one of those stories that no one will believe I could (eventually) overcome.

Right now, unfortunately, the only one who is unsure I will overcome all this bullshit is me.

Homeless, jobless, sick and Trump’s still president.

What a great fucking day.

Had a salad at the mall with one of my boys, as is our Wednesday tradition.

We figure it’s a good supervisory session. We sure talk about the thing our jobs revolve around an awful lot. And it’s nice to do so as we power-walk and wind up in Starbucks for our afternoon java.

Today he asked what my title is. I mean, he knows it’s “his boss.” “But what does that mean to them?” he wanted to know.

He’s not trying to be anything other than curious. Because my boss and my boss’ boss called a meeting with him this afternoon. Why am I not a part of it?

If it were anywhere else, I’d wonder and worry and lobby to be in with the in crowd. But here, if I’m not babysitting everything else, someone would start playing with matches and burn the place down.

When I got the title, it was basically, “Just keep doing everything you’ve been doing for the past six years.” You know, under a lesser title.

I mean it about the babysitting though. I told him a string of six stories from today alone — from having to tell someone that you cannot spell it “thrown” in print when it’s what a king sits on, and that you should know how many newsletters Guy XYZ writes, and that if I ask you to do something and you ignore me without giving me a reason why you don’t think it’s a good idea, you don’t get to be mad when I assume you just don’t read your emails in full — and he was like wow.

As in, wow — all those ideas in your head and brainpower and knowledge and HISTORY … sitting idle.

Yeah I’m not going to take over the world at this rate. But at least the poop and throw-up I clean up is mostly metaphorical. And it beats doing it all by myself. And when the time comes that that changes, I am pretty sure I have the power to make that happen.

Today marks six years of my captivity, officially.

The first day of this month marked six months in the current incarnation of said captivity.

Ran into an old friend on Saturday, from my earliest days. He has a job he loves and an offer pending that came in out of the blue, and at a higher salary.

Good choice to have. Not a Sophie’s Choice, like I tend to attract.

I was thinking about how happy he looked, as sickness from too much “peopling” washed over me as thick as the dread at the daily peopling I didn’t miss at all Friday and Monday.

And then one of my truly favorite people on this earth paid me a visit.

And then another came in, armed with fresh macarons from Paris for his favorite editor.

It’s probably safe to say today has peaked.

Otherwise, I can’t escape today because I lost my stupid pass to get in and out of Fort Hard Knocks. And I am due for a visit from the fashion police lieutenant.

But I’ll be OK.

At least a couple people have my six, and I have theirs. And today, that is enough.

Today marks six months of my captivity.

A girl reminded me of a conversation we had on my first day …

Me: “Nice to see you. How are you?”

Her: “Living the dream.”

Me: “This is like no dream I ever had.”

I heard from quite a few people shortly afterward how “negative” I was. I figured out the connection real quick. Eventually she got to know me and realized that sarcasm is about the only speed I have. Now we’re cool.

In any event, my response on Day 1 was dead-on. No dream I ever dreamed could have have prepared me for this. To say the least.

The very least.

#toostressedtofeelblessed

Every day, it’s the same.

Fix insane amounts of other people’s fuckups.

Get cryptic email from owner.

Spend an hour interpreting it.

Field at least 20 interruptions from people who know better about things they should know better about.

Give email to at least two other people to get their interpretation. They interpret it completely differently from each other AND from me.

Spend another hour implementing owner’s request as I understand it.

Return to fixing others’ fuckups on other unrelated projects.

Spend at least 15 minutes apologizing to the owner for the part that I misunderstood … the part someone else fucked up in helping me implement it … and getting four more instructions that I’m certain will get fucked up despite my best intentions. Like military time. How do I get all the complicated shit right and yet fucking schedule something at 1500 hours when I knew in my head, heart and soul that he wanted it at 1600?!?!