[BreakForTheLight]

Home office + construction site next door = AAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH

[rechu]

@BreakForTheLight - I feel your pain. The couple next door has had work going on at their house. I always work from home and my husband has been since mid-March. The guy doing the work not only made a lot of noise cutting tile and all, he also had some sort of bluetooth/USB speaker blasting what I called this 90s dance party mix, think "Rhythm of the Night,", etc. It was the same music every day. He has stopped for now, I guess because of the new municipal ordinance that requires masks everywhere in public. He was mainly doing work in front of the house, so he would be required to wear one. It definitely doesn't look finished, so I am sure my future holds more of "Rhythm of the Night".

[IceCreamKid]

Why yes, yes I was ready at the time you called the meeting. And I am still ready and waiting for you. Sure. Sure I'll just sit here waiting for you to remember you called a meeting. No problem. That traffic must be awful at your house.

[puzzclar]

Had to call out due to health. This sucks. COVID 19 is already affecting my job. Now I don't feel well. I don't need this!!!

[Turtle_Rider]

Originally Posted by IceCreamKid

Might I ask how you knew since you met her that she is the type of person who is too sensitive and unable to accept critics well? Did someone tell you that or did she tell you that? Is it possible that by your thinking that about her, you have treated her in a manner to draw out emotional outbursts?

It's not her first time doing this and I'm not the first person to bear it. Previously, she spoke with the same manner to the HR and boss (it was on group chat btw). She was also being criticized/reminded. But at that time, she immediately deleted those offensive messages before they read it. This time I captured her words before she deleted it. And no, I treated her normally and equally like everyone else. No one has a problem with that, so it's hers. It's not a big problem for me, but she is. If she couldn't accept that, one day she would get in bigger trouble for speaking the same manner to higher-ranking boss or other important persons.

I haven't spoken to HR yet, as I have too many projects to handle and have no time to at the moment.

But don't worry . She isn't as bad as my manager in my previous workplace, although she is not good either. I still can work with her despite the difficulties.

[ARaven0137]

In the magical Kingdom of Dysfunction, we peons and serfs have to perform this ridiculous duty every five to six weeks where we man the phone for the wider organization. It's ridiculous in that one day you may get a doctor to answer and your need is for a mechanic or you get a musician and you need something scientific. No amount of reason or logic with work on the higher ups and this duty is some sort of sacred cow. So, today was my day, but it was quiet. However, it always reminds me of past stupid days.

On my days, I normally get calls about aircraft parts, scheduling, maintenance, aviation charts and weather, but I frequently get calls meant for mental health professionals. A man with Schizophrenia wanted me to resolve his landlord dispute. Another wanted me to do something about his in laws that were eating his organs. Yet another wanted me to stop the voices in his head and convince his girlfriend to remove the TRO. I wonder if they think that it's the crisis hotline, which I always refer them to. Still, many of them just want to chew my ear off and won't take no for an answer. If I'm not busy, I try to swap out my pilot cap for my dusty old counselor hat and listen. But sometimes I get swamped with my real job and I get impatient when the person won't stop talking and thinks that I'm the one to resolve their issue.

It usually goes something like this, "Look, I really can't help you. I told you to call this number for the crisis hotline. No...no, I can't help you, they can. Look, if it involves flying I can help you, but I can't get your inlaws to give you your heart back after they ate it. And no, I can't listen to you all day. You need to call this number..."

Anyhow, minor gripe.

[Have Hope]

I'm severely burnt out on work. I'm at the point where I don't care about one of. my clients who is leaving us anyways. What's the point? I've lost my passion and I just don't care anymore.

[IceCreamKid]

Thanks for answering me. Since you seem to be in charge, I have no doubt you are correct. Being correct doesn't seem to be helping the situtation, but no doubt they'll fire her and then you can say you were right all along which will be further proof that you were right and they were correct to put you in charge.

I have come to the conclusion that I need to "slow down". My last boss was always pushing me to do things quickly and I thought my new boss wanted that, but in his other matters I feel like he DOESN"T want that. He does nothing fast over there... so perhaps he throws things at me to get me to stop rushing him. HE will have to be the person to nag me.. not the other wary around.

I am going to put my work first -- and whatever time I think is reasonable for his work, I am going to double.

[Have Hope]

I hit a wall. I've been pushed too far. I don't even care anymore, but they've pushed me somewhere over the brink. I stopped working at 1 PM even though I have to work until 5. I couldn't do another thing and my brain shut down, along with my emotional tolerance. I've had it.

[ARaven0137]

I am so sorry, Have Hope. I can empathize with hitting a wall and shutting down. Blessings to you and keep well.

T'is time for the torrid tale of Tracy the Tremulous. Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Dysfunction, Prince Kendall the Simple ruled hand in hand with Princess Tracy the Tremulous. They served King/Queen Donutcare the Genderless (nothing against that). Tracy the Tremulous would emerge from her hole occasionally and see if the sky was bright or cloudy. If she saw her shadow, she would scurry back into her hole to wait for a cloudy day. Even the squirrels of the kingdom would laugh at her fearfulness of...just about everything. It was such a good thing that she ruled over an entire province. Nothing got approved, nothing got done so nothing went wrong.

Well one day (I'm not sure how to or if a trigger warning is needed) there was a terrible situation in which people, especially children, were being harmed (I'll leave it vague). A friend of mine was heading up an evacuation plan and I was going to help fly people out of harm's way. Tracy the Tremulous and Kendall the Simple dithered, delayed, obfuscated, confused, obstructed and mangled the effort to help these people. My friend was livid. He told me that he tried to show Tremulous what the people were going through and how horrible it was. Tremulous refused to make a decision and fled out of the room, saying in a panicked, tremulous voice, "I can't, I can't. Don't show me that. I can't look at it." She hid in the basement all day and refused to make a decision to help these people.

King/Queen Donutcare's boss finally came down on them like a ton of bricks, but the damage was already done. The moral of the fractured fairy tale was that both Kendall the Simple and Tracy the Tremulous were promoted, each receiving their own principalities to rule.

And they all lived stupidly ever after. The end.

[seesaw]

Originally Posted by ARaven0137

I am so sorry, Have Hope. I can empathize with hitting a wall and shutting down. Blessings to you and keep well.

T'is time for the torrid tale of Tracy the Tremulous. Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Dysfunction, Prince Kendall the Simple ruled hand in hand with Princess Tracy the Tremulous. They served King/Queen Donutcare the Genderless (nothing against that). Tracy the Tremulous would emerge from her hole occasionally and see if the sky was bright or cloudy. If she saw her shadow, she would scurry back into her hole to wait for a cloudy day. Even the squirrels of the kingdom would laugh at her fearfulness of...just about everything. It was such a good thing that she ruled over an entire province. Nothing got approved, nothing got done so nothing went wrong.

Well one day (I'm not sure how to or if a trigger warning is needed) there was a terrible situation in which people, especially children, were being harmed (I'll leave it vague). A friend of mine was heading up an evacuation plan and I was going to help fly people out of harm's way. Tracy the Tremulous and Kendall the Simple dithered, delayed, obfuscated, confused, obstructed and mangled the effort to help these people. My friend was livid. He told me that he tried to show Tremulous what the people were going through and how horrible it was. Tremulous refused to make a decision and fled out of the room, saying in a panicked, tremulous voice, "I can't, I can't. Don't show me that. I can't look at it." She hid in the basement all day and refused to make a decision to help these people.

King/Queen Donutcare's boss finally came down on them like a ton of bricks, but the damage was already done. The moral of the fractured fairy tale was that both Kendall the Simple and Tracy the Tremulous were promoted, each receiving their own principalities to rule.

And they all lived stupidly ever after. The end.

Seriously, you need to make this a comic strip. And I love that you used obfuscated, lol.

[Have Hope]

Originally Posted by ARaven0137

I am so sorry, Have Hope. I can empathize with hitting a wall and shutting down. Blessings to you and keep well.

Thank you!

[Mountaindewed]

I got a call today saying they have started opening stores again in Europe. Um, ok.

[ARaven0137]

Bring your bodies fair folk and bare your baldrics for the bombastic ballad of Baby Shogun begins.

Once upon a time in the Broken Bakufu (Kingdom of Dysfunction) there dwelt the Baby Shogun. He was vassal to the Red Queen and King Weasel and scratched and clawed, betrayed and backstabbed his path all the way to middle management. He was a man as tiny in stature as he was great in ego and insecurity. With lips firmly attached to the posterior of the Red Queen, he was dragged and carried into nobility where he began his reign of error. When asked to make a decision he would chase his tail for at least half an hour, running round and round, coming to yes then no then yes then no again. The peasants who plead for his decisions became dizzy and fled before his chest pounding and fist pounding and pontificating his greatness as he would become infuriated by the pleas of the lowborn, who would dare to bother him to do his job. He was also known as Sybil of the Multiple Personalities as he could be three or four people in rapid succession. I once watched in horror as he spoke to one of his peasants, saying, "you're working too hard go home and see your family where is that report I want it NOW!" I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself. It's a good thing that such a stable person was in charge of so many people.

Baby Shogun was so very prickly about such silly things. He got his name when he approached my boss and I and butted in rudely. My boss said, "look everyone, it's Baby Shogun" and the name stuck. Watching him bristle helplessly was priceless. Baby Shogun was also a graduate of a public school, which is just fine, but he was so insecure about it he would shake when anyone mentioned that they came from a private school so I made sure to mention that I was a parochial private school girl all the time to him. It was fun to watch him shake and turn red.

Baby Shogun imagined his vassals rebelling at every turn and would lop off heads at the earliest opportunity. The vast majority of these "rebellions" were in his tiny head. But in crushing imaginary rebellions he created real ones. His entire section, save one, gathered in darkness to orchestrate a coup and give him a vote of no confidence to upper management. However, the plot was uncovered because of the one, Wormtongue, who ratted the rebels out to Baby Shogun the weekend before the group would send their plight up the chain. Baby Shogun spent the entire weekend in the office trying to come up with the smallest thing to hang the rebels with. It was Shakespearean. Baby Shogun also had the protection of The Red Queen and the rebellion was crushed in its infancy.

The moral of the story is that Baby Shogun was promoted, but was so stressed over his paranoia that he suffered greatly from shingles and put on a ton of weight. His new name is The Penguin.

And they lived stupidly ever after. The end.

[puzzclar]

Why do I have to go in today?????

[ARaven0137]

Boy, I'm determined to let all of my work madness go. It's rather cathartic to just put it in writing.

Sooooo gentle folk, listen to the long lost lambastic lay of Linus the Minus. In our troubled land of the Kingdom of Dysfunction, Minus was a patron of the proven Peter Principle. He was adequate in his previous job doing admin and pushing paper, making sure that funds and food flowed into the kingdom and that it did so according to banal byzantine bylaws of The Red Queen. He could have been the twin of the Littlefinger of Game of Thrones, a grasping climber, seeking ever higher patents of nobility. Minus and his wife began an exclusive social club in the land, which quickly turned into a soap opera of drama and career ending rumor. However, the debacle allowed him to meet Baby Shogun and Credithog the Younger.

He became fast friends and allies with Baby Shogun and Credithog the Younger, who granted him an audience with The Red Queen. As he bent the knee before the queen he lost his heart...and his soul. He kissed her robes and professed his desire to lead peasants who went out and saved people. He was granted a barony and given a promise of greater power in the kingdom so long as he destroyed that fief so that it could be absorbed into another fief so that another Credithog the Younger might prosper. As luck would have it gentle reader, our Lady Alice here just happened to work in that barony.

Minus rode into his new castle determined to do the will of the queen. He dictated bizarre and counterproductive paperwork and procedures, choking any forward motion in the barony. We would joke that, why do something well once when you can do it five times poorly. He quickly turned the knights of the barony against each other, promising his newfound allies rich rewards that would be pilfered from the defeated. Those of us who stood against The Red Queen knew we were in trouble when Minus began praising the queen with slavish devotion, laughing loudly at her sad jokes and tossing roses in her path. Insurrection and rebellion consumed the land and no one could be trusted. Minus' allies could do no wrong and his detractors could do no right. Skanky Lyn, previously a reject from another section, came to the forefront of Minus' allies and her dagger could be found in the backs of many, including myself. I had mistakenly taken Skank under my wing and mentored her for a year. I could see her turning to the dark side, but there was nothing I could do and so I dove harder into my work. One fine summer day, Minus assigned Skanky Lyn and me the same task. I proceeded with confidence whereupon Skank accused me of stealing her work. I tried to explain, but she would have non of that reality and fled into the chamber of Minus to play kissy face and whisper my name into his ear.

For the next two weeks I would watch Skank scurry into Minus' chambers and close the door. After an hour, she would emerge with an evil smile. Minutes after she left, Minus would berate me for something minor. At the end of the two weeks all of my allies were removed and I was exiled to the Island of Misfit Toys and Skank was awarded my program and all of my projects. With my exile and the exile of the true knights of the barony, the fief collapsed and was absorbed into the holds of Credithog the Younger.

The moral of the story is that when Minus went to collect his debt, The Red Queen told him, "if I do that for you, I'll have to do that for everyone" and Minus was, in turn, exiled into oblivion, never to become an earl. Skanky Lyn burned through a number of the kingdom's husbands and was also exiled when it all blew up in her face. I would be horrified if we were a modern organization, devoted to saving lives, but since we are a dysfunctional kingdom where might makes right, I can accept it.

[bpforever1]

I got a complaint lodged against me but it will work out. Unfortunately, I have to work with this individual student. I did not even had a chance to teach her and she said my introduction was too fast. What? She went straight to the management about me. Whatever!! They were saying,yeah, we are happy to have you on the team but we have to accommodate our customers. Well, that is fine and dandy but why don't you give me a heads up about the personality of the student before you hand them over to me!?? This student is mean as heck. But, so is my mother. Sometimes, you want to escape from your family members and you see them everywhere in life in other people. I will deal with her but she gives me grief. Hopefully, it will work out in the end. But, she did not even give me chance to teach her yet!!! So, I have to be careful about even my introduction. Speak slowly and in rudimentary words for the imbeciles. Sorry, she strikes me as a dummy. But, she probably thinks I am mean although I was trying to be friendly. What a mix up! This East Asian culture is sometimes not my bag of tea. I admit, may be, I drank too much caffeine and was wired but she should give me a chance before she just lodges a complaint to the management. All my other evaluations have been positive. So, this has been an exception. Such is life!!

[Turtle_Rider]

Ugh. We still haven't been paid. It's almost a week late... I really need the money, as this isolation makes some things scarce and inflation.

[downandlonely]

I hope you get paid soon @Turtle_Rider

No word yet on when we will be expected back to the office, but my state is opening up.