Long time, no write

So, it’s now November. I was ‘released’ from employment back in July; I’ve been on disability ever since. I spend my days bored as shit, feeling like a useless nothing that is contributing nothing to the world. My doctor thinks I won’t be released from disability until Christmas.

So why haven’t I been writing? This blog used to be my almost daily release, my catalyst. I guess I have been so incredibly BLAH that I cant’ bring myself to say I have nothing worthwhile to say. I keep trying to convince myself I’m ready to go back to work, and then I spend 30 minutes standing in a department store while my husband shops for shirts and I feel like I’m going to die. I’m doing the treadmill, the recumbant bike… and I still feel like shit.

I haven’t seen or spoken to my daughter since March. Occasionally I can get her to reply to an email, but usually with attitude and we just aren’t getting anywhere. At this point it looks like there is no way she is graduating High School, and it doesn’t seem like her or her dad think it’s even an issue. It makes me crazy that trying to care and reach and help her seems to only give her ammunition against me. I can’t imagine what she thinks she is going to do with her life.

My marriage is doing great. I don’t know why, but I feel incredibly guilty about that. I feel like my husband should be so angry at me at this point for still being so helpless, but he’s been better than anyone else at understanding what I don’t even understand. I apply for jobs I know I’m not ready for, and I’m crushed when nothing works out. Sometimes I feel like there is no future for me now. That’s a really fucking depressing feeling.

So why haven’t I been writing? I don’t know. I guess that’s just how dead I feel inside. It really sucks.

Well this has been a roaring success. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or maybe I won’t. I guess we’ll see.

…And she’s back again

Hey out there. I know I’ve been gone for a long time again. This time there’s just been so much bad stuff and I’ve been SO depressed I couldn’t muster the energy to even put it all down in words.

So, in a nutshell:

My boss wants me out. She has been riding me since last October (when without a single warning removed me from salary to hourly over attendance I had never been told was a problem) and had been making a bi-weekly to monthly habit of keeping a little list of all the things I do wrong, saving them up until she has a long enough list to pull me into a little ‘You’re a loser’ meeting. Things like not completing a task that was not in my job description that I had asked for training on repeatedly and was not given… Or not updating her on another project where I was able to prove to her she had received the email and lost it. Everytime, I took the criticisms and swore I’d do better, kept a good attitude and told myself I wasn’t being targeted.

Finally, mostly from the stress, anxiety and a grueling schedule that was hard on me physically, one moning BOOM! I threw my back out big time. My husband called my boss and let her know we were going to the ER. I called her later that day under medication and told her I needed to be off my back a certain time. I guess I mixed up the days, because she apparently expected me back a day before I came back. All smiles, so concerned about my health, she says ‘meet with me this afternoon so I can make sure you’re alright’…

We sit down and she goes over FMLA stuff with me, so nice and concerned, wants me to take time off and get better. Like I didn’t see the blank folder in her hand, like I didn’t know what was inside it. I’m so tired of these games.  SO she finishes off with whipping out a written warning and hitting me with that before telling me to go home.

My doctor insisted I go on full time FMLA. I didn’t want to do that, but EVERYBODY insisted they HAD to hold my specific position for me if I was back within 12 weeks. People, DON”T BELIEVE IT. The very day I handed in my FMLA paperwork from the doctor my specific position was posted. I have had nerve block shots. An epidural. A discography, which TOTALLY sucked. Meanwhile, I am trapped in my house unable to do anything, and my boss hires a SECOND person for my specific position. Evidently I was lazy and unproductive but as soon as I went on leave it was determined TWO people were required to handle the workload… I just love it.

Tell me kids, do you think she’s waiting with baited breath for my return? She’s already cleared out my cubicle to make way for one of the people taking my job, she and the rest of “my pals” packed up all my personal belongings and shoved them under a desk.

So here I sit, waiting for the end of the month, when I will undergo spinal fusion surgery to save a job I know I’ve already lost. And how did I lose it? I did what everyone told me to do, and tried to be nice about it. Yay me.

God, I loved my job. I thought the people I worked with liked me. Not one person in my department has even sent me an email since I left. Apparently it was my evil plan to get hurt to make their day suck. Shame on me.

The pain pills don’t work. None of the therapies so far have worked. I am scared to death of this surgery, we are talking about my SPINE here.

Meanwhile my dear husband juggles work and home, manages everything on one salary right now because there have been repeated ‘mishaps’ with my disability money and I haven’t seen a dime of that yet, and it’s been almost seven weeks. I don’t know how he has managed the stress, and me being a basket case on top of it all. I am climbing the walls here – I don’t go anywhere, I don’t see anyone. Certainly no one cares to see me. And I am losing it.

Wow… big nutshell, huh? I’m exhausted. I need to go lie down, this computer chair sucks. It’s Percocet time.

Yay me.

GRRRRR!!

 

Grrr.

That’s my commentary on the day; Grr.

Grr for the snow that has returned to my finally melted world

Grr for the executive busting my chops over his own oversight

Grr for the cold and that groundhog’s stupid shadow

Grr.

Grr for the auditor who wrote up really stupid findings

Grr for the FDA visit that has to be just around the corner

Grr for my ever shrinking bank account

GRR.

Grr for the laundry

And Grr for the dishes

And Grr for the freezing conditions in my apartment

Grr for the projects I should have finished by now but haven’t

Grr for people who don’t listen

Grr for kids who won’t help out

GRRRRR for the traffic

Grr, Grr, Grr!!!

Bloggers, Riddle Me This…

Okay…  here is a strange question. If you were to change the word “GAS” to a plural word, how would you spell it?

I know… I said it was a weird question. I am reviewing a document for revision in which someone (who happens to be higher-ranking than me) has repeatedly put the word ‘gasses’ where I personally think ‘gases’ is more correct. Spell check accepts both of them, but in research I can find many headlines with the word ‘gases’ and not a single one with the double ‘s’ spelling.

So what would you do? Make a big deal out of correcting the whole document when it’s one outside eyes will rarely, if ever, want to see? Or just let it go, since as I said before, it IS a spelling that seems to be acceptable?

Hmmm.

Why does spelling make me itch like this? I cannot stand misspelled words. They stand out to me like a sore thumb, and once I see one I can’t see anything else. They make me crazy. My husband would write little notes to himself, and although he is a highly intelligent man, spelling just isn’t his thing. I would find these notes and be compulsed to error-correct them, I couldn’t help myself – it used to drive him nuts.

I, on the other hand, was that weird kid who thought Spelling Bee day was the biggest event of the school year. I took second place in 5^th grade… that was my big year. Woo hoo, buddy. Good times. I also took First Place in the school Reflections contest that year… I remember my teacher cried. She was frustrated that only two of her students submitted entries that year. I guess me winning first place kinda made up for it…

…but I digress. What do you think – Gases, or Gasses?

Trying so hard to be productive….

I am trying so hard today to be productive…. But it is just not happening. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s Friday, or because of the impending huge storm that’s coming in tonight that’s supposed to put all of Salt Lake on it’s ear, or because I’m supposed to have ‘movie night’ tonight with my husband and kids, and stay over because I have to work tomorrow for a few hours and the house is only blocks away from work and due to the snow it just makes more sense to stay close by, or if I’m just ready to be done for the week, or all of the above, or WHAT.

Yeah, Im having movie night with my husband. So what? Lately the lines of communication have been more open, and it actually seems like he has been LISTENING to me. I don’t know what that means, or if it means anything, I’m certainly not jumping to conclusions. But we are planning to look into some couples and family counseling at the first of the year. Who knows what will happen. Im definitely not tying my hopes and dreams to anything yet, as far as I’m concerned we have a long way to go before I’m even close to making any decisions, and I’ve made that clear. I haven’t gone through the last several months of Hell just to go back to the way life was before.

But I have learned some things about myself, some good, some bad. And I think he has too. And maybe it’s time to stand back and evaluate. I think that’s at least fair. For us, for the kids. For the thirteen years we will or won’t walk away from.

I have to give him credit; since the day I walked out, any time I needed him, he was there. Flat tire, broken door, money to feed the kids, he was there, and that does count for something.

Funny… if I had been at home, would he have been nearly as quick to respond?

Hmmmm…..

Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

I got this from someone else and copied it.  I claim no credit for this article whatsoever.

November 5, 2007 | Issue 43•45

 DC—According to a groundbreaking new study by the Department of Labor, working—the physical act of engaging in a productive job-related activity—may greatly increase the amount of work accomplished during the workday, especially when compared with the more common practices of wasting time and not working.

An American worker can triple his work output by working.

“Our findings are astounding: By simply sitting down and doing work, employees can dramatically increase their output of goods and services,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlotte Ponticelli, who authored the report. “In fact, ‘working’ may revolutionize the way people work.”

Perhaps even more shocking, the study reveals that not working significantly decreases worker productivity, sometimes even resulting in no work getting done at all. Similar findings were reported in the areas of avoiding work, putting off work, complaining about work instead of actually working, pretending to work, and fxcking around.

“Fxcking around is in fact detrimental to the work process,” the study reads in part.

To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking, staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks. Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.

The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to fields outside the insurance industry.

Typical workplace activities, such as shooting the shit, turn out to be less productive than not wasting time.

“Based on the study, we can safely conclude that if an employee’s job is to process expense reports, doing a crossword puzzle will result in the successful completion of that task zero times out of 100, while processing expense reports will result in the successful completion of that task 100 times out of 100,” head researcher Richard Schoemberg said.

Jon Halper, a Baltimore-area small-business owner, claims that people used to laugh whenever he told them that the key to worker productivity was not checking friends’ MySpace pages for hours at a time, but rather working.

“After this study, I feel vindicated,” said Halper, who believes working is so important that for years he has required all his employees to work throughout the day. “Hopefully, more companies will embrace the idea that employees working on things that they are supposed to do is practically essential.”

A similar study conducted at Harvard University over a period of three years attempted to determine conclusively whether working was more productive than various different subsets of not working. The results showed across the board that working is 100 percent more productive than listening to music and checking e-mails, 100 percent more productive than meandering around the office socializing with coworkers, 100 percent more productive than playing online Sudoku, 100 percent more productive than watching YouTube videos of nostalgic childhood television programming, 100 percent more productive than reading celebrity-gossip blogs while chatting with friends on Instant Messenger, 100 percent more productive than napping, and 98.2 percent more productive than not showing up to work.

Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they still do not feel comfortable working on the job.

“I love coming into work every day,” Arlington, VA sales manager Bryce Davidson said. “I get to have great conversations with [office receptionist] Sandy, challenge myself with Yahoo! TextTwist, and still have time to set my fantasy-football roster. Why would I want to ruin work by working?”

“Everything you’re going to see, is invisible”

I love my job.
I love the company I work for.
A large part of my job consists of hosting audits, where our clients come to our company and audit our laboratories and processes and make sure we follow FDA and ISO regulations in every aspect of what we do.
Most people I work with think I have the hardest/worst job in the company; they don’t know how anyone could spend 3 days out of the week following auditors around, answering their eight million questions and being NICE to them. Personally, it’s my favorite part of my job. Why? Just weird, I guess. No matter how many audits I host, I always get asked something new, I always run into a situation I wasn’t expecting. It keeps me interested, that’s for sure.
I love when our employees come up with statements that they haven’t exactly thought through, like this one:

auditor: “Will I be able to see the aerosolized spores ingress into the chamber?”
employee: “No, everything you’re going to see today is invisible.”

Or this:

auditor: “How do you know the vaccuum causes a vortex of spores around the samples?”
employee: “You’d be able to see the vortex during a smoke test.”
auditor: “So, you’ve conducted a smoke test?”
employee: “No.”

Now, we have a great staff of very knowledgeable scientists and specialists and what not. I guess that’s what tickles me so much when they inadvertantly open their mouths without engaging their brains first. For someone like me, who barley graduated High School (just because I was so scathingly brilliant and easily bored, mind you) it’s always good to know we’re all human.