March 26, 2006

No Review, Big Brother, and an Eccles Cake

OK, I can only hold out on complaining about work for so long. On Thursday, the head of my department emailed me:

"Do you want your review through email or on your voicemail?"

Is he KIDDING me with this? I wrote back:

"Are you kidding me with this?"

HIM: No. Email or voicemail?
ME: I guess email; I'd rather have a paper trail.
HIM: Fine. You are a good hard worker. Done.
ME: Are you kidding me with this?
HIM: [No response]

After 15 minutes, I wrote: "So does this review also mean a pay raise? Are we going to discuss this? My review was actually due in November, so will the raise be retroactive?"

He wrote back: "Now there's that sense of humor we've all come to love."

Sometimes I feel like my job is the setting for a really unfunny sitcom.

On Friday afternoon, he emailed me at about 12:30 telling me to call him so that we could do my review over the phone, so I guess he WAS kidding me. So I called him immediately and got his voicemail. I called again 10 minutes later - same result. I emailed him and told him that I called as instructed and he was unavailable. No response.

I called the receptionist to see if he left the building, and she said that he was in his office with the door closed, not taking calls or seeing anyone. I never heard back from him. Since I'm in Virginia and the office is in Rhode Island, it's not like I could go break the door down or smoke him out. I just don't understand why he's wasting his time fucking with me. Doesn't he have anything better to do? Like my review?


After work on Friday, CD and I met my brother in DC for dinner. This wasn't just any brother, though...this was my FAVORITE brother, TC. I'm the youngest of five kids, and he's the oldest...and he is AWESOME. He used to live in DC, but he's semi-retired now and living in Asheville, NC. He was in Washington for his rotisserie baseball draft (!), and it was so excellent to see him. It's weird that there's a difference of 14 years between us, and he moved out of the house when I was 8 years old, but he totally gets me and doesn't think I'm weird like the rest of the family does.

CD and I actually used to live with TC before we were married, and those were indeed the salad days. TC's an attorney (though he doesn't like to admit it), and he let us live rent-free on a floor of his house just 'cause we all had a good time together and I used to clean the house once in a while. This all got ruined when he hooked up with the MOST vile woman ever, but that's a story for another day.

Seeing him was good because he's the only member of either my family or CD's that we really dig, and he's the only one with whom we're 100% ourselves. With everyone else, we're always having to censor ourselves or just not call them on their hateful shit so as not to start family battles. TC's someone we can just sit with and talk to while we stuff ourselves silly with Peruvian food.

Now I just want to leave you with reason # 3,745 why I love my husband: I was complaining last night about the fact that some schmuck I knew in high school actually wrote a few collections of short stories, all of which are complete ass... but the boy continues to get published. CD argued that anyone can get published these days. He said, "For instance, you may not know it, but I'm quite the prolific writer. I'm the author of 'Three Nights in Nigeria,' and 'What To Do with That Leftover Hambone.' I also wrote 'Where the Eccles Cake Falls,' which I feel is my deepest work."

He always manages to say this shit with a straight face.

|

metanephros at 6:58 pm

previous | next