Hello friends.
The following is written late on Sunday night. Most times when I write at night I am not at my emotional peak but its nadir.
Wolves of anxiety and paranoia are howling outside and Spot has come to sit beside me to stand guard lest their howls become vicious bites leaving me more useless as a human being.
If you missed yesterday's entry then kindly follow this link. If you are clever then you'd realize there are two links.
With the progression of my years, I learned how pessimism can be remarkably addictive for anyone. The strongest pattern in my life which is actively nurtured during my lowest and most self destructive moments has always been expecting the absolute worst outcome from any situation. Upon passage of that event I am overwhelmed with a sick euphoria that imbues me with a feeling of immortality and can-do attitude that is peerless. My own personal heroin. This is sick because the fix passes so quickly and I return to my usual baseline feelings.
Right now, I feel the lust for that needle and desperately await my fix.
Considering the numerous thoughts flying around my head, the fix could easily be a failed game of Russian roulette.
A few weeks back during the Sisyphean crunch of holiday loan applicants I was a machine. Absolutely nothing about my demeanor was human beyond voiding my bowels and acquiring nutrition to continue my neverending task. One day, one of the busiest days where there were at least two thousand applications, the general manager had come downstairs and was acting all chipper and saying some meaningless platitude of "Boy, are we busy enough?" or some such shit. My response was simply a low "mmm" which may have been more of a grunt. She asked again and I repeated it which garnered a strange look.
Next week, to the best of my recollection, my immediate departmental manager who is the general manager's older sister took me aside wondering if there was anything wrong or if I was unhappy with my job. My paraphrased response, "No. Just busy and I'm ground out."
Even later, during Christmas week, I had a snapping incident. This woman in collections would always come into the office and loudly announce "Morning ladies". The past two months I simply ignored it or bit my tongue but this day I gave her a cheerily sarcastic good morning along with "I'm not a lady". Immediately afterwards I sent my departmental an email regarding how I have personal concerns, my father has had two botched surgeries and compounded by the stress of the holidays hasn't made me the happiest of campers. Plus I griped about the cunt. She thanked me for my candor and that I did open up to her and the matter was laid to rest.
Using a dolly and lugging a heavy plastic Christmas tree is never a quiet task. Add to the fact that I'm the only male and immediately given this labor gives me some annoyance but at least I'm being useful. Once the first load of boxes is upstairs followed by the tree, I'm relieved of my duties and return to processing apps.
One of the requirements for applicants who are applying for $400 or more with our company is to provide a copy of their most recent paystub and their most recent, complete, pre-printed bank statement. One of my applications was for $500, the applicant lives in California so I had to pend it until later since processors can't call anyone until it's 9 a.m. in the applicant's respective timezone. Well 10 a.m. rolled around and I started going through my pendings. Hey, the assistant manager who's into wrestling got the paystub and the applicant's bank statement. I tried printing out the documents but the printer was down again so I asked if wrestling-manager still had the docs after I fumbled through the miscellaneous file. As always, this person was confrontational and took an attitude towards me. I just wanted to end my contact with her at that moment, apologized several times for troubling her with my middling situation and went to my department manager's desk to complain about wrestling-manager but decided to request some aspirin for a headache which had been haunting me since the other night.
Fifteen minutes later, I see that my department manager is coming out of one of the back rooms with wrestling-manager and I'm summoned to the back for a "discussion".
The department manager begins to say "everyone" is complaining about me having an attitude, claiming that I am stomping around and huffing as if I can't be bothered to work there or deal with my co-workers or the customers. A red cunt hair away from saying I'm acting like a little boy.
So I ask who is "everyone" and let her say her peace but she never, ever gives names. She says that the one day where the computer system locked up on everyone and I tapped the enter key loudly a few times (as if that'd fucking work) was a cause for concern. Once again, I reiterated my situation and then I gave my peace about wrestling-manager saying that she's always had it in for me and seems to go out of her way to put shit on me. Then department manager says that when she asked me to help carry the stuff upstairs that she could sense that I didn't want to do it. What the fuck? I told her that's not an issue and I was just surprised. Next she goes off on how she knows that my productivity at work is so important to me and she projects I was upset that I'd be at a disadvantage by having a late start. My counter was that on Wednesday I was consistently in the dumps with my productivity but I ended up at the top of the list at 5 p.m. and Thursday wouldn't be any different!
I was right too. I'm that damn good.
We make our peace, department manager says she'll talk to wrestling-manager and states this isn't something to be concerned about regarding my continued income and employment when I ask her point blank. The entire time I express that I've been oblivious to this and I apologize if I come across this way but I swear I haven't been stamping my feet or deeply sighing or pulling any other bullshit because I want to maintain my job and (more importantly) my income.
Honestly, one of the things I fucking hate is when people are non-confrontational. I'm not talking pistols at dawn here, I'm talking about taking someone aside and asking them what's up and listening to their peace. Isn't this how adults interact with each other? One person talks, the other person listens and understanding is forged or a simple "agree to disagree" is shared.
On my way out of the office, I ask one of the new girls if she's noticed me expressing a temper or being angry around the office.
Her answer, "No."
Of course in her defense, she sits across the room and has little or no contact with me but she's well connected with the world of whispers. Plus I was deferential and simply curious with my query since I didn't want to come across as forcing the answer that I would expect in my favor through intimidation. Honestly, the last thing I ever want to do in this world is intimidate anyone.
The red cartoon devil spivak who sits upon my left shoulder decided to start a farm. He planted a single seed of doubt on his six by three by six plot of land.
The department manager isn't in, she's taken a rare personal day. Usually she's my staunchest defender stating that I'm a quiet person who doesn't want to get involved in the women's world of whispers and simply wants to work without any real interference from co-worker's drama and spite. In fact after our little 'conversation' on Thursday she expressed concern over Friday and the fact she wouldn't be there to stand by my side and bolster my case.
Well she showed up anyway to oversee the move of her desk into her brand new private office. I asked her about how much notice I needed to give to use my personal day on Friday the 13th. She laughed and asked if I was superstitious which I agreed for conversation's sake and that I can be superstitious. This is one of my shames being a superstitious atheist. These aspects go together like chocolate and mayonnaise. Oil and water. Sugar and salt.
You get the idea.
Well I couldn't get the day off and I completely killed my chances of calling in sick on that day and when payroll time reared its ugly head I could humbly ask if my personal day could be used instead of missing out on eight hours. Meh. Live and learn. This isn't earth-shattering.
The entire day I avoided wrestling-manager, made a conscious effort on my breathing and made sure that I walked extra-softly in the office. Plus I forced the peaches and cream attitude and I would like to thank the Academy for their consideration of my role as the overweight male processor in a sea of (mostly) catty bitches.
Lunchtime rolls around and I've already been told that I'm one of the chosen few who will get to go home early. Well, I clock out and head to my little pic-a-nic table to wolf down my two cans of human dog food and chug my sugary drink while reading Edward Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang. Before I flip to my bookmark I get a feeling of dread and think "Shit, I forgot to clock out!" so I get up and walk back into the building. Standing outside the front of the building is the only processor who I speak with on a regular basis and somewhat friendly terms. Curious, I go out to meet with her.
"Hey you get sent home?" she asks.
"Yeah, did you?"
"Nah, but they're sending me home anyway because I'm sick." She frowns, "They wouldn't send me home without an excuse."
"Listen, I want to ask you something." I begin my preamble, "I'm only asking because I do consider you to be a friend and I reckon you'll be straight with me."
She nods and shrugs at me in the way that says "Just fucking ask what you're going to ask" because my preamble wasn't necessary.
"Have you noticed me having a temper or stomping around in the office?"
"No, why?"
"Well the other day I was taken into the back because supposedly everyone's complaining about my attitude and shit."
"Who?"
I shrugged, "I really don't want to say and I really wasn't told. Just that it put me through the wringer yesterday and got me stressed out."
"Nah."
We parted ways, I said hi to the company president's daughter-cum-next general manager as she was going out to share a smoke with the friendly processor. A minute later, I verified that I did clock out and all was right in the universe.
After lunch, having read about the flight of the saboteurs into the southwestern wilderness in hopes of avoiding the posse, I dumped my garbage and figured I had time to sneak in a few more pages before my lunch hour was complete. That's when the collections manager saw me and waved me in.
"Ohmigawd, you have to come inside and talk to this guy because he's a complete psychopath and he's been doing nothing but calling us and asking us for our address and he just won't stop when we ask him to and I think it's because we're female and he's just not listening because of that." I follow her into the collections office while she's giving me her mile-a-minute summary. "So like can you get on the phone and tell him to stop calling us?"
"Sure."
I walked over, caught one of the collections girls repeating over and over that she can't give out our mailing address and saying the customer's been told this by every other person in collections. I picked up the phone, "Sir, you need to stop calling here. The girls have told you there's nothing that can be done and there's too much work to be done right now. Plus we don't need your sexual threats." whereupon I hung up. Everyone cheered and clapped their hands. As I was leaving I had a little sinking feeling. Red devil spivak was deciding that one seed wasn't enough for his plot on my left shoulder.
"So this isn't going to come back on me, is it?" I ask flat out to the collections manager.
"Oh no." and she sounds very sincere and very grateful that I was able to accomplish what they weren't able to do.
Before leaving, I help wrestling-manager and another co-worker carry the department manager's heavy desk into the new private office. Plus I take out everyone's garbage. No one asks me, I just decide to do it because it'd be 'nice'.
As always, I have endeavored to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Dishonesty has no place in my life.
Right now I'm fearing that when I come into work that I'll be summoned aside and let go. Hopefully the lion's share of this entry has proven to you that I feel my anxieties are legitimate even though I wrote them out to assuage any fears and realize they're groundless except in my own head and in the shadow of my hugely exaggerated sense of importance in the world office at large.
I end my evening with misgivings and fears. Here's to a peaceful night's sleep with sweet dreams, as raddidge always wishes to me and I to her, rather than staring at the ceiling until Morpheus remembers that he skipped over my house while doing his rounds with his sleepy sand. Right now I feel like I'm going to perpetuate this anxiety by saying that everything will culminate later this week if it doesn't happen on Monday.
All I can say right now is a defiant, "I just don't fucking care". Tomorrow I'll begin my mantra of "Today is a good day. I will make it a good day." Finally I am going to hope for the best and some peace of mind.
Finally, I hope that I get my fix.
Someone help me, I'm a sick person.
Please.
