Sailor Soldier of Love and Justice

This past week was a week from hell. At least the first half of the week

The week before, we had gone back and forth a million times on how much renewal stock to reorder. On Monday of this past week, we finally got pricing for the pieces. Just skimming them, I could tell they were too high, but there wasn't much we could do about that because the quantities were too low to get a good price. We were already ordering out to 6 months, so we were already stretching as far as we could in terms of quantity.

So I brought my concerns to my supervisor (I'll call P) who snapped back that she didn't even want to look at it unless I could show her how these costs compare to what we've been spending. I then wasted a good couple hours trying to find a cost sheet that would break down how much we were currently paying for each component so I could plug in the new numbers. At this point it was 6pm, already way after work hours, so I went home.

Tuesday morning, my assistant took my calculated numbers to P who then yelled at him because I didn't include postage, data processing, or consultant fees in the numbers. She then called me up and yelled at me a bit about how I needed to show her we could afford to mail this package as compared to budget.

Well, I KNEW we weren't going to be able to afford this mailing if we're going by budget because P had low-balled the budget.Even the reforecasted budget! She had written the costs as $0.60 a piece when in the last six months we have really been spending about $0.90 to $1.00 a piece. And the high cost wasn't because of printing costs. It was because of data processing. We hit the minimums every month.

Anyway, I pulled together all the numbers she wanted and how they compared to budget, PLUS the actual costs for the last six months AND the actuals for LAST FISCAL YEAR. That way I could go in there and say, "No, we are not going to be able to stick to budget because the budget is too low. We are budgeted to spend less than we actually spent last year and based on actuals for this year, we are likely going to end up spending about that much again." By that point it was 6 pm again, I had worked late again, and I was tired so I went home.

And then it was Wednesday. I spent all morning trying to grab P to go over my numbers but she was too busy to see me. Finally at around 4:30, I grabbed her in her office and told her the situation. SHE TOTALLY FLIPPED OUT. Among the things she screamed at me about, the top ones were:
1. How did I let our actuals go so high over budget.
2. Why didn't I tell her we needed to reprint before she wrote the reforecasted budget.
3. I needed to fix this because she doesn't have time for this.
4. Why didn't I get these numbers to her sooner.
5. How I never did my work fast enough.
6. How I never give her what she asks for the first time.

When she was done screaming at me, she told me to get pricing for 12 months out (ignoring my earlier point that it's the dp costs, not the printing costs) and then stormed off because she was going on vacation for the holidays. (P is the some supervisor that went on vacation for two weeks right after I started working there and dumped ALL her work in my hands with no explanation on what to do.)

As you could imagine, I was pretty upset by this. I don't appreciate getting blamed for mistakes I am not responsible for. I'd beat myself up over mistakes I really made, but this situation is totally not my fault and I am doing the best I can to try to sort it out.

I stormed out of the office and walked through the hallways for a bit, then washed my face because I was starting to cry. Then I closed my office door, called ben, and vented about how much I hate P and was going to quit if I had to work with her anymore. I felt a tiny bit better after that. Tiny bit.

While I was focusing my anger towards getting stuff done, the women from HR came in and asked if she could have a private talk with me. She told me:
1. P has a history of outbursts like this so I shouldn't feel like I was being singled out.
2. Her outbursts are NOT tolerated and she has been spoken to about it in the past.
3. That was her last chance.
4. HR and the president of the company are aware and addressing the issue.
5. I won't have to work with P much longer after the holidays are over.
6. Please don't look for a new job over the holidays.

I only feel a tiny bit guilty hoping that conversation means P is going to be fired.

So on Thursday, P was off on vacation and I was still left with the ongoing disaster. Ordering out 12 months like P suggested still wasn't going to get us to budget and I felt it was stupid to order that much stock in the first place because it would cross fiscal years. (And thus tie our budget down to what we've always done rather than look for new ways to mail the message.)

The only thing left to do was to go to P's supervisor, the president of the company. I brought her all my numbers, explained the situation, and suggested we print just for the next mailing since it was in progress and incurring costs already. Then I made the recommendation that we mail this package less frequently (right now we do it every month) because the big costs are the data processing minimum charges.

The president was very understanding and agreed with my recommendations. She did have a lot of questions on why the budget AND reforecasted budget were so off, which I had to tell her I didn't know because P preferred to handle that on her own. The pres. then contacted the client and made nice with them to get them to agree to print for just the current mailing while we look into ways to reduce costs in the future. The client likes reducing costs, so they agreed. I ordered the pieces we needed and felt a huge relief until I remembered P will be back on Tuesday and will probably start yelling at me for going over her head.

Our new strategy person (who started Monday) has now been tasked with making sense of the budget P wrote so the president has a better idea on where everything went so wrong. I spent much of Friday answering her questions. Unfortunately most of my answers were, "P did not include me on this, so I don't know." She discovered that the budget differs depending on which tab of the excel sheet you are looking at. THAT'S reassuring...

I'm really glad this week is over. I want to have a nice relaxing weekend with Ben and the dogs. Hopefully by next week, I'll finally stop having nightmares about P. (Last night I dreamed she showed up at my wedding and started yelling at me because the dinner course was taking too long to get to her.)

I was hitting the candy basket by 9:30 this morning at work. Our marketing agency has caused me to develop a bad teeth clenching habit. I've been chewing on candy to try to prevent me from cracking my teeth.

They sent me art of a May package. One piece of the package I had approved already because it required a longer production time. It was included with this art, they said, just to show me the full package. But the piece I approved looked nothing like it should have. And I started to worry they went off and printed whatever they wanted, totally disregarding what I told them to do.

In the end, they had just sent the wrong art to me. But that's just another problem I have with them. Our account reps don't review anything they send over, so there are constant mistakes. They are going to kill me with stress.

The whole day was like that. One crisis after another, because the marketing agency is too dumb and careless the check what they are sending to me.

At the end of a long, long day, I finally got to go home. But of course there were tourists to battle against. And then it was pouring raining. It was raining so hard, the park and ride flooded and I had trouble jumping over the river of water to get to the car.

The only good news of the day is that ben fixed roomba. He had been sick, making a clunking noise as he cleaned and then stopping early to demand a brush cleaning. He couldn't even clean one room. Ben replaced his brushes today, which appears to have fixed the problem. Aside from getting trapped in the bathroom again, roomba did a perfect job cleaning this evening.

Yesterday was a stupid day. Ben got a call around 10am that something broke at work and he had to come in and save the day. I figured that would take an hour or two at most. Ben got home after 9pm. I was not happy.

I tried to kill the day with sewing. I started making a loud pink and skull skirt for work. All was going well until the waistband. The illustration was incorrect. I need to go back and cut a new piece of fabric to correct it. I'll try to get that done tonight. Once the waistband is done, I need to hang it up overnight to set the bias correctly. Then I can hem it, which shouldn't take long at all. If all goes well, I should be able to wear it by Wednesday.

Ben and I were going to go to a chinese buffet yesterday, but by the time he got home it was much too late for that. So we went to the diner instead. I got a salad that tasted good, but smelled like citrus kitchen cleaner. I wasn't able to finish it. I got ice cream instead.

And then we got home and it was bedtime. What a stupid dumpy day.

Today we had a really awful meeting at work. It was supposed to be two hours long and map out how costs are managed and paid for each project. The new exec vp is a big fan of ridiculously long meetings for things that could easily be answered by email.

The accounting dept ended up derailing the conversation about 45 minutes into the meeting. They became obsessed with one tiny detail that they couldn't wrap their heads around. And so they argued with us for the entire rest of the meeting, plus an additional 30 minutes.

So it was about 2 hours of straight yelling the whole time. I wanted to cry.

To make things worse, my crooked spine makes it nearly impossible for me to sit that long. I had forgotten to take some medicine beforehand, so I was in agony by the end.

I'm not going to get any work done for the rest of the day. I feel mentally exhausted. I might even leave early today.

There was an aggravating chatty woman on the train today that could not accept that 1. I don't want kids, 2. It's none of her business.

She kept telling me I'd change my mind. And that I if I had one I'd change my mind. What if I didn't? It's not like you can return the kid to the baby store for a refund.

She was pushy too. I kept telling her that it really isn't up for discussion but she just kept going on. I was so incredibly relieved when I finally got to my stop.

That was just one tiny part of my awful day.

Things kept exploding at work. I tried to calm down by hand delivering a contract to a company a few blocks away, but I was locked out of their building. I had to call to be let in.

The president of the org snuck up behind me while I was goofing off. Metro was broken down and I missed my bus. I tried to cheer myself up with strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream, but I dropped it.

I kinda hate everything right now.

So the wii is being shipped back to nintendo where hopefully they will make it work again. At this point, I think the problem is with the laser.

The wii was just one small part of my day of failure.

Ben took me to the reston festival because I had expressed interest. It was a big disappointment. None of the foods were especially exciting and the booths sold nothing but pottery, jewelery, and dresses made in china. I had hoped for fresh made crepes, but that booth was not there this year.

When we got home, I attempted to make pudding but it came out terribly lumpy. I knew I should have dissolved the corn starch in the cold milk, but the recipe said otherwise. From now on, I will know better. NEVER dissolve corn starch in hot liquid, no matter what the recipe says.

Plenty of other little disappointments piled up throughout the day. I ended the evening by breaking down into tears. I felt a bit better after a good long cry.

Thinking of going home early. Feeling very down and have no desire to embarrass myself by crying at work. I wish I didn't have two more meetings to sit through today.

Ugh.... Today started out pretty decent too....

But then I found a big mistake in the reforecast budget. It all went downhill from there. I've been yelled at a lot today. The person keeps telling me she's not mad at me and doesn't blame me. So why is she yelling at me!?

I wish I could have just pretended to overlook the mistake. But then I'd probably just get yelled at later... *sigh*

I want to go home. Where I don't get yelled at and I have a little dog that loves me.

Bad days are dumpy. Yesterday was a very dumpy bad day.

Tuesdays are normally pretty hectic for me. I have a meeting every Tuesday morning that I have to prepare for. It's a production status meeting, so I can't prep beforehand. Normally that isn't a problem because I set aside time in my calendar for uninterrupted work time to get it done.

Yesterday morning though, several people in my dept had a meeting right after that meeting and for some ungodly reason thought I should be the one to do THEIR prep work. So on top of my normal very busy morning tasks, I had to do the tasks of 4 other people. I was angry and stressed. I was also late to my production meeting.

And I forgot to bring my breakfast, which I didn't have time to eat at home because I was running late. The time change is killing me. I had meetings straight through until noon. I was starving by lunch time.

After lunch, I had a meeting where I was supposed to work with someone on the budget reforecast. I've never done a reforecast before, so this coworker is supposed to walk me through everything. But instead of doing that, the coworker basically said, "Yeah, just do what the instructions say and let me know if you have any questions when you are done."

I learn better by actually going through the steps, so I didn't really understand the instructions in the first place. What should have taken me 30 minutes took 2 hours and 30 minutes as I tried to figure out how to do the calculations.

The budget sheet was due by the end of the day, but coworker never looked over my finished work yesterday like she was supposed to. I am totally throwing her under the bus should anyone ask me why everything is late. I was so angry yesterday I started to cry at my desk.

Best part is that during our meeting where she didn't help me at all, she told me I had to make time for this budget work because it HAD to be in on time. (I had snapped at her that I had set aside that 30 minutes to work on it with her and she was sending me off to work on it outside the meeting when I didn't have the time for it.) If it was so important for it to be done on time, why couldn't SHE make time to review it like she was supposed to?

Anyway, for the rest of the day, everything I was working on was late. I was getting angry calls and emails. It was frustrating. I was glad when the day was finally over.

Unfortunately the train was a vomit train. The driver kept breaking and accelerating hard and often. I was very very sick by the end of the ride. I had to sit on a bench before my stomach could even handle the escalators.

Then my bus broke down. That was extremely upsetting after such a long bad day, but thankfully the driver was able to get it started again after a few tries. It managed to stay running all the way to my stop after that. I hope they take it out of service to fix it.

Ben had d&d last night, so I was home alone with the dog. I tried to go to bed early, but I couldn't fall asleep so I watched star trek. I thought it was funny how star trek on spike has commercials for cleaning products and yogurt while star trek on syfy has burger and electric hammer commercials.

Somehow I had completely forgotten that wesley crusher had the power to control all space and time. I hate him more now.

Ben came home for about an hour, then had to go to work. I was sad. I went back to bed and was able to fall asleep this time.

Of course today started off on a great foot as well. 40 minutes to catch a train. And I paid peak fare for the privilege. *sigh*

Today was a failure day.

I fell asleep on the bus and a woman sat on me. I must have slid a bit into the seat next to me. Rather than poke or tap me to wake me up, she just flopped herself right on top of me. RUDE!

The metro was no better. I did my best to stay to the sides of the walkways away from the fast crowds, but I was never out of the way enough. I kept getting pushed and shoved all over. It was sad.

I tried my best to get through work, but I had a terrible time concentrating. I did manage to get a couple easy things done. I was sent home early though when I tried to give my boss my fortnightly (because bi-weekly is confusing) status report and wasn't able to make a complete sentence.

I was wearing my glow in the dark shoes today and fell down as soon as I got into my dark apartment because they were so shiny and I was so dizzy. Ben sent me to bed after that.

He woke me for dinner. Mashed potatoes again. Then my mom called and complained about my lack of food variety. Like I have a choice? I'd love a big slice of pizza or a burger, but that's not going to happen until these gums get their chance to heal.

I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. My mouth hurts so much. Will it ever get better?