because an anonymous blog is a safe place to be petty
After working till 12:30 last night and sleeping 5 short hours, I had to be back at work at 8:30 this morning for a completely unnecessary and ridiculous all-staff meeting. The one good thing about that meeting, the one thing I was looking forward to, was SK's presence. But I got there just a few minutes too late to get a good seat and ended up stuck two seats away from SK, which meant I wasn't close enough to write her notes, but I was too close to be able to actually see her -- I didn't even get to gaze lovingly upon her!! I just had to sit, one person away from her, for two hours, just knowing she was there, so close and yet so far away.
It was excruciating, as was the rest of the meeting. I don't mean to brag, and believe me this is nothing to brag about, I've been working at this little transitional housing facility longer than anyone else on staff (except one guy who works graveyard, but he doesn't count). I am the veteran. I was there back in the tail end of the good old days, before the merger of mental health providers, before the evisceration of the Oregon Health Plan, before it all started to suck and when it was a really, really fun place to work. I no longer have patience for the little pip-squeak, dipshits we hire who come in like petty-tyrants, treating clients like children, setting up their little micro-dicatorships, creating and enforcing a laybrinth of fascist rules and bringing all their snivelling, belly-aching, bullshit drama into our professional relationships. Our staff meetings tend to lean heavilly in the direction of group therapy, or worse: *family* group therapy, wherein the family consists of a slew of bratty, precocious children who aren't getting enough attention from the over-worked, hen-pecked, spineless dad or the completely absent (non-existent) mother. They kvetch and kvetch and air their personality conflicts willy-nilly like so much dirty laundry and I just want to bang a spoon against a pan and say "shut the fuck up, everybody! Learn to have your personal needs met elsewhere! This is your job!"
Let me share one very specific petty gripe, and then I will end this futile little diatribe. Remember my coworker Grey? (She is the creepy, distasteful fruitcake who bamboozled me into a surprise date with her and then kept hitting on me after I told her I was in a relationship... Yuck.) Anyway, I've never had the highest opinion of Grey and in all the time I've known her, she's never done much to raise it. She's whiney and unprofessional and passive aggressive and her social skills seem to have been permenently stunted in the attention-seeking, shock-value stage of development most of us leave as we leave our mid-teens. Anyway, Grey's latest stunt was to announce at our staff meeting (after much hemming and hawing and wasting our time with her qualifying and explaining) that she is changing her name and would like us now to all begin calling her Zelda.
What. The. Fuck.
Ok, true, she isn't really asking us to call her Zelda. This is an anonymous blog and I don't use anyone's real name, even stupid, made-up "real" names like hers. Also, she's so needy and narcissistic, I wouldn't be surprised if she googles her new name every day and I do *not* want my petty bitching to pop up in her search results lest she tattle to the boss or seek retaliation. That said, Zelda is *sooooo* close to the actual name she has asked us to call her, it is not an exaggeration of ridiculousness. It perfectly captures the spirit of ridiculousness embodied in this new name.
Now, I have always been a little suspicious of grown adults who suddenly start asking everyone to call them something new. Self-initiated name changes (of the first name variety, especially) seem dramatic and a little... I don't know... over-the-top. What? You hit that point in therapy where you realize you hate your parents and everything they've ever done to you, starting with the stupid name they gave you, and now you'd like to be called some crazy shit you made up by rearranging the letters in Emily Dickenson's name (true story -- someone I knew in college)?? Good for you, you fruitloop, but maybe there's more to healing than asking a million people to remember that you have a new, randomly chosen name? Maybe there's more inner work to be done??
I know, I'm in a terribly bitchy mood, which is why all this is going into my blog and why I didn't laugh out loud in the middle of Grey -- I'm sorry -- *Zelda's* announcement. I wanted to say "are you fucking kidding me, you fucking crazy piece of shit?? As if you haven't wasted enough of my time with all your whining and complaining and pontificating about everything else we've discussed thus far, you have to waste more time explaining to me your completely weird and unnecessary name change? Go fuck yourself."
Wow. I'm so glad I have a blog for this. I'd hate to have unleased it on the world... I don't like Gray -- I mean -- Zelda, but I also don't like getting fired. Time to go do some deep breathing and visualizations before leaving for work in a few minutes... (Ok, go to your happy place, go to your happy place...) Sorry if my anger gave anybody a stomach ache.
It was excruciating, as was the rest of the meeting. I don't mean to brag, and believe me this is nothing to brag about, I've been working at this little transitional housing facility longer than anyone else on staff (except one guy who works graveyard, but he doesn't count). I am the veteran. I was there back in the tail end of the good old days, before the merger of mental health providers, before the evisceration of the Oregon Health Plan, before it all started to suck and when it was a really, really fun place to work. I no longer have patience for the little pip-squeak, dipshits we hire who come in like petty-tyrants, treating clients like children, setting up their little micro-dicatorships, creating and enforcing a laybrinth of fascist rules and bringing all their snivelling, belly-aching, bullshit drama into our professional relationships. Our staff meetings tend to lean heavilly in the direction of group therapy, or worse: *family* group therapy, wherein the family consists of a slew of bratty, precocious children who aren't getting enough attention from the over-worked, hen-pecked, spineless dad or the completely absent (non-existent) mother. They kvetch and kvetch and air their personality conflicts willy-nilly like so much dirty laundry and I just want to bang a spoon against a pan and say "shut the fuck up, everybody! Learn to have your personal needs met elsewhere! This is your job!"
Let me share one very specific petty gripe, and then I will end this futile little diatribe. Remember my coworker Grey? (She is the creepy, distasteful fruitcake who bamboozled me into a surprise date with her and then kept hitting on me after I told her I was in a relationship... Yuck.) Anyway, I've never had the highest opinion of Grey and in all the time I've known her, she's never done much to raise it. She's whiney and unprofessional and passive aggressive and her social skills seem to have been permenently stunted in the attention-seeking, shock-value stage of development most of us leave as we leave our mid-teens. Anyway, Grey's latest stunt was to announce at our staff meeting (after much hemming and hawing and wasting our time with her qualifying and explaining) that she is changing her name and would like us now to all begin calling her Zelda.
What. The. Fuck.
Ok, true, she isn't really asking us to call her Zelda. This is an anonymous blog and I don't use anyone's real name, even stupid, made-up "real" names like hers. Also, she's so needy and narcissistic, I wouldn't be surprised if she googles her new name every day and I do *not* want my petty bitching to pop up in her search results lest she tattle to the boss or seek retaliation. That said, Zelda is *sooooo* close to the actual name she has asked us to call her, it is not an exaggeration of ridiculousness. It perfectly captures the spirit of ridiculousness embodied in this new name.
Now, I have always been a little suspicious of grown adults who suddenly start asking everyone to call them something new. Self-initiated name changes (of the first name variety, especially) seem dramatic and a little... I don't know... over-the-top. What? You hit that point in therapy where you realize you hate your parents and everything they've ever done to you, starting with the stupid name they gave you, and now you'd like to be called some crazy shit you made up by rearranging the letters in Emily Dickenson's name (true story -- someone I knew in college)?? Good for you, you fruitloop, but maybe there's more to healing than asking a million people to remember that you have a new, randomly chosen name? Maybe there's more inner work to be done??
I know, I'm in a terribly bitchy mood, which is why all this is going into my blog and why I didn't laugh out loud in the middle of Grey -- I'm sorry -- *Zelda's* announcement. I wanted to say "are you fucking kidding me, you fucking crazy piece of shit?? As if you haven't wasted enough of my time with all your whining and complaining and pontificating about everything else we've discussed thus far, you have to waste more time explaining to me your completely weird and unnecessary name change? Go fuck yourself."
Wow. I'm so glad I have a blog for this. I'd hate to have unleased it on the world... I don't like Gray -- I mean -- Zelda, but I also don't like getting fired. Time to go do some deep breathing and visualizations before leaving for work in a few minutes... (Ok, go to your happy place, go to your happy place...) Sorry if my anger gave anybody a stomach ache.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 2:02 PM
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