More reasons why my job sucks, by Tiffany.

So, more on the soap opera that is my job.

I'm one of those people who are very difficult to read the body language of. The fact that my lips are naturally pouty (and luscious) sort of creates the illusion that I'm scowling most of the time. In general, I’m in a pretty good mood. It’s when people ask me “What’s wrong?” for the umpteenth time that I get sort of salty. On top of that, I rarely show excitement. It takes more than Bossman’s wife buying the office a communal jar of pretzels to get my rocks off. Even when I got a raise I was like, “Yay. Thanks.” No fanfare there.

People never know what kind of mood I’m in, so they leave me alone. Incidentally, during my little chat with Bossman last week he shared with me the fact that the staff is afraid of me. As happy as that makes me in a “Brain from Pinky and the Brain” kind of way, it’s pretty asinine. Basically because I’m not smiling all up in their faces all day long and making small talk they assume that I hate them. My mother-in-law incorrectly assumed the same for similar rationale. It took my grandma around nine years to figure out that I just want to pee then watch t.v. after school – no “blah blah” allowed.

On the other hand some coworkers are piss-poor at disguising their moods/emotions/intentions. I have two female coworkers of around age forty who work on a team together. At the risk of offending my wiser lady readers, I must say that putting that much estrogen within five feet is the worst damned idea EVER. It’s like having two lionesses try to share the attention of the king of the pride. Can you say “Meow!”?

More in the extended entry.

I sit alone in the rear of the office. When my trusty side-kicks come in and sit in my environs, they add testosterone, and testosterone of the wimpy under-the-age-of-22 variety, I might add. No hostility to speak of, there.

If you’ll scroll down to the bottom of the page somewhere, you’ll read of my agitation of a certain staff member getting promoted. Well, one of the lionesses has to report to him now. I know for a fact that she resents having to report to some fool half her age. That’s one problem. The other problem is that this person is the MOST paranoid person I’ve ever met. She believes that everyone talks about her. She believes that she’s being cheated. I’m through with trying to assuage her fears. She’s sapping me dry. She has a history of leaving jobs at the snap of your fingers for feeling like people are conspiring against her. (I used my psych 10 course knowledge to determine this.)

I’ve mentioned that I avoid the morning meetings in the office because 1) they don’t mean a thing to me and 2) people say things that are obviously wrong and I don’t want to have to embarrass them. The lioness has been behaving sort of aggressively against the rest of the, and if you’ll excuse the continued use of this metaphor, pride. Obvious eye-rolling, sucking teeth, general angry body language – you get the idea. Well, today there was an incident that brought the entire problem to a head.

The recruiting staff was given a time-wasting assignment by Mr. Fuckhead which involved gathering around a computer and watching a training video. After viewing the video, the lioness goes outside to smoke. Lioness #2 goes out to tell her she was rude for not staying to listen to one of the pride’s factually backwards lecture on the video. Lioness #2 runs into Bossman’s office and plays tattle tale. Ten minutes later, Mr. Fuckhead, Lioness, Lioness #2, and Bossman are behind closed doors having a group mind fuck.

Lioness is told that her attitude sucks and to either fix it or leave.

Lioness tells me that she’s quitting tomorrow and spends half the rest of the day looking at job boards and emailing her contacts for job leads.

Frankly, I’m sick of hearing her complain about the job and how “sales is sales” and that she did this at Mary Kay. She constantly gripes that she took this job for a lower salary and more hours than her last job. Okay. Her last job was in a church where she was the pastor’s assistant. She worked until 3 and sat in an office with a t.v. This is a sales job. You get a base and unlimited commissions. You’ve got to put in the hours and find your own leads.

Bossman thinks I care if she leaves. To an extent, yes. She's been very kind to me. But damnit, I can't deal with this much drama every day. This is why I have fewer true friends than I have fingers on my right hand. I hope she'll shape up and stop shifting blame. She can do the job, but damn it - these women are going to need to be kept in their cages until feeding time.

Posted by Tiffany at February 7, 2006 10:03 PM | TrackBack