Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
Yesterday was no good. ....The hours I spent at work anyway. Sure, we
all complain about our jobs, and prove Loverboy right again and again,
but there are degrees. And yesterday was way up at the top end of the
Peter Gibbons scale. It was enough to make a man purchase five
Powerball quick-picks instead of the standard three.
My mornings are dominated by reading and reacting to the pile of email
that's stacked-up since I left the office the previous night, usually at
the hands of people in California bitching in a different time zone.
Then I have to get ready for the conference call, The One O'Clock
Ballbuster. My role is to compile and interpret a load of data,
summarize it all in an Excel spreadsheet, and distribute to every
Ballbuster participant prior to each day's call.
Usually this process takes me roughly an hour. I've been doing it so
long, I've got it down to a science. In the early days it would drag out
for three, sometimes four, hours. I'd be a complete basket case before
it was done; it sucked a whole corral of donkeys. But practice
makes perfect, they say, and I'm now able to knock that shit out in
short order.
Most of the time, anyway. Remember how I said I had trouble writing
yesterday's update? Well, that "trouble" continued for me at
work. I just couldn't get the rhythm going, and twice had to delete
spreadsheets and start over. I was sprinting to the finish line, playing
Beat the Clock, and just a-stressin'. I barely made it, and was bug-eyed
and running my hands through my hair by the time I was finally able to
hit the SEND button.
As they say back home, it was boolshit.
After choking down yet another dry-ass turkey and cheese sandwich at my
desk, it was time to start working on my "self-evaluation." My
boss sent me the forms at least a week earlier, but I waited until the
very last second before I even opened the attachments. Everything was
due to him no later than October 31, and that's the day I first looked
at it. Just like high school....
Have you ever been subjected to a self-evaluation at work? Man, what a
gargantuan waste of time. Our forms are six or eight pages long, and
under normal circumstances it takes hours to complete them.
Applying for a mortgage is a breeze compared to this annual chore. And
it's pointless, as far as I can tell. It's like walking out into the
middle of a field, pulling down your pants, and blowing diarrhea
straight into a strong headwind. It pisses me off just thinking about
it.
But, of course, I take short-cuts. Every
year I ask my boss's assistant to send me my previous year's report, and
basically copy and paste it (with a few tweaks here and there) into the
new report. And that's what I did this time. By the time I was finished,
I had a reasonable facsimile of last year's evaluation, based on the
previous year's evaluation, which was loosely inspired by the evaluation
from the year prior. Time well-spent.
And anyway.... shouldn't these kinds of things be done by our bosses?
What's the deal with this pussified, I'm OK you're OK, self
esteem-boosting, polyester suit human resources seminar crapola? A
self-evaluation! The whole thing just makes me laugh. Like anybody is
going to tell the truth. Hilarious.
As I work, of course, I need to have something playing in the
background. I turned on woxy.com, but the first two songs I heard were
slow dirge-like suicide tunes, so I X'd out of it. I went here and
looked at the current talk radio menu, chose a couple of items, and
promptly sent them back to the kitchen. I finally opted for the 80s
Alternative channel at AOL
Radio, and played that until the first
Depeche Mode song came on (roughly four minutes), then clicked over to
the Big Band and Swing channel. I just couldn't get comfortable.
In times of emergency I usually have the Phil Hendrie archives to keep
me company. But yesterday I had no access, there was only a Coming Soon
notice at his site. Thankfully, it's up and running again this morning.
When I get to work I'll cheerfully send them $6.95, and will have my
security blanket back.
While I worked and grumbled about my evaluation, an email from the HR
department in California dropped into my inbox. It said they show I'm
completely maxed-out on vacation days (50!), and that I haven't taken
any of my "floating holidays" this year. Because they
apparently don't have confidence in their own records, they wanted me to
fill out evenmore forms, and fax them back -- before
October 20. And this was being ordered on October 31.
I looked at the forms, and they were asking me to confirm every vacation
day I took in 2005 and 2006. Then I was to swear that the information is
correct, sign it in blood and acknowledge that I could be put to death
if an error is found. Or something like that.
I felt like I was trapped inside an episode of Green Acres. What
in the thin and crispy hell?! I don't remember what I did yesterday, how
in God's name can I tell them what vacation days I took in 2005? I could
feel my eyes returning to their previous Pat Sajak settings, and my
right hand involuntarily moving up to the top of my head. I wondered
what would happen if I just turned my computer off, and walked straight
out the front door.
But I finally cobbled it all together. Beside my signature I put an
asterisk and wrote "All information reported is to the best of my
knowledge." I faxed it (eleven days late), sent my evaluation to my
boss, drove home and commenced to drinking heavily.
By the time the first trick or treater arrived I was smiling like a
retard and moving a little slower than normal. One little boogermeister
insisted on reciting a long Halloween-themed poem to me, and I could
feel myself drifting. If he'd gone on for one more stanza, we might've
had a situation at the Compound; there's a very good chance I would've
ended up head-down inside decorative foliage. But everything turned out OK.
How was your Halloween? Our old friend Buck has a few things to
say on the subject, right here. What
about you?
--
Yesterday was no good. ....The hours I spent at work anyway. Sure, we
all complain about our jobs, and prove Loverboy right again and again,
but there are degrees. And yesterday was way up at the top end of the
Peter Gibbons scale. It was enough to make a man purchase five
Powerball quick-picks instead of the standard three.