Annoyed. in The Devil Beneath My Feet

Work has me stressed all the way the fuck out.

I’ve been planning on asking for a raise lately but procrastination has bitten me in the ass. I was recently moved into a little back office, which is nice but also not helpful in the line of getting that raise. It’s a lateral move, nothing special. Not a promotion of any kind, I’m just taking a back seat from dispatch and focusing more on billing - still dispatching but more backup than anything. We hired a new guy to take my old spot in dispatch, and we ran out of desks. So, I moved into a little back office.

My job has a history of giving people an inch like this and they take a mile, it’s left a bad taste in the mouths of management and normally I wouldn’t give the slightest fuck but again, im trying to ask for a raise. Nothing insane, im not looking for a promotion, just a cost of living raise but the company I work for is family owned [read: toxic as fuck] and they’re fuckin dickheads about shit like this.

Gotta play the game to win.

So all my guys - techs and drivers and even the fuckin delivery guys - see that I’ve moved into this little space and are like “oh shit, moving up in the world!” “Ooooooo got your own office now, big shot?!” And I have to keep deflecting and responding with “yeah they got tired of lookin at me so they threw me back here,” “yeah my torture devices haven’t arrived UPS yet,” “nah I just require cool temperatures and low light like a fungus,” loud enough for my boss to hear me.

I’m familiar with navigating management and how to accurately test the waters around this place so I’m biding my time.

Also work related, this shit pissin me the fuck OFF. My coworker, we’ll call her Barb. Barb’s got a shit ass husband, we’ll call him Todd. Todd’s generally a dickhead but Barb loves him for some fuckin reason despite the fact he treats her like an indentured servant. Well, Todd’s got COPD pretty bad and all of a sudden Todd develops a blood clot in his leg.

This blood clot hurts like a bitch and it takes 3 separate trips to the ER before they’re like “ok let’s do a whole ass battery of tests just for tits and pickles here,” well, now they see Todd’s got a blood clot in his leg, another in his arm, and another in his lung and also he’s got spots on his lung and his breathing is dog shit.

So, they biopsy, do a full scan, news is bad. Metastatic lung cancer stage 4, already moved to his adrenal gland and his spleen, it’s in his lymph nodes and oh would ya look at that it’s in his brain now. Not great.

This was all discovered about a week before Thanksgiving. Barb has been out of work since. When the shit hit the wall, my boss extended an, in my opinion, ABSURDLY kind offer and simply said, “Listen. You have a desk. You have a job. You get things sorted, and it will be here waiting for you.”

Now, that’s all well and good but I’m guessing she didn’t expect Barb to be out until FUCKING FEBRUARY.

Winter is our most insane, busiest time of the year. I understand timing can’t be helped but she spent the entirety of December and January sitting in a hospital 24/7 watching him sleep. The fuck is the point of that? Give me a break. I would lose my mind, at a certain point you’re just wallowing now. What are you gonna do for him?

So spoiler alert, Todd dies towards the middle of January. She’s STILL NOT BACK.

5 days is the average bereavement time at my job, after that you start burning vacation, sick and bank time on your own. She was supposed to come back TODAY, 2/1, and at 5:30pm yesterday texts my boss she won’t be back until Monday 2/6 now.

GIVE ME THE FUCKING STRENGTH.

Look I know I don’t view death like most folks do. I know I’m the weird one and I’m fine with that, but this is fucking ridiculous. This has put so much fucking strain on me and my other coworker because we’ve had to pick up all Barb’s slack on top of the craziness of winter AND train a fuckin new guy, you’ve been out since fucking November and you’re telling me you need MORE TIME?!

This is feeling very “taking advantage,” and again - normal circumstances? I don’t fucking care, take this place to the fuckin bank, I don’t give a shit. If I pull in tomorrow morning and find the fire department putting out a pile of smoldering embers ima laugh and go get McDonalds breakfast, I ain’t even gonna slow the car down. But this is just plain unfair to me and my other coworker, because NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL would either of us be given the same treatment. Not a fuckin chance, but because it’s BARB we’re supposed to roll over? Nah dawg.

So now I also have to bite the insides of my cheeks when people ask “I thought Barb was coming back this week..?” So I don’t snap back “YUP US TOO.”

Annoying.