Drama: Work & Women in New Beginnings

Yeah, I expected to at least finish out the year with my company. I’m skeptical that will come to pass. The powers that be have decided that they want everyone in my group to become a contact for at least one customer for the purposes of soliciting feedback. I’m an accountant in the finance department; I’m not a sales person. They want each of us to go to two of the plants each year and conduct a safety audit. Isn’t that why we have an Environmental, Health, & Safety department? What are they getting paid for. I mentioned in a previous entry that they were discussing having each of us go to the plants and work a shift to “gain a better understanding of how the plants operate.”

However, it’s more interpersonal stuff that’s really straining me. Last week, my manager and my manager’s manager asked me to prepare a depreciation forecast for the next three years. For those with limited financial experience, we buy equipment and depreciate the cost over a period of years. I made a spreadsheet that showed just that for both equipment we already own and equipment we’re going to buy by the end of this year, 2017. It took me two days, but I did it. Thursday morning, right before our meeting, my manager asks to review my spreadsheet. I show him what I did, and he says, “Where’s the 2018 equipment?” I don’t have that information. I won’t have it until we do the 2018 budget later this year. Nevertheless, I was apparently supposed to include that information despite the fact that I don’t have it. My manager was irritated with me, and I tried to do damage control, amending my file to include 2018 equipment, which I estimated as a repeat of the 2017 budget, but my manager opted to ignore my work, instead creating his own file from scratch. What irked me the most was his comment, “I thought it was obvious,” regarding that I was supposed to estimate next year’s equipment purchases. In my past five years for this company, I’ve done at least a half dozen depreciation forecasts, and I’ve never had to include such an estimation. I don’t see how it’s entirely my fault.

Changing gears, I would expect that being single would at least spare me some relationship drama, but such is not the case. To provide a quick review, I dated a lovely woman named Hollie for several weeks last December. It didn’t work out due to some incompatible flaws on both our parts, though I was much more willing to work on my issues than she was to do with hers. We stopped seeing each other, but she’d initiate a text conversation every few weeks, which was always pleasant. I got the feeling that she was trying to keep me in her orbit, like she had her issues that kept her for wanting to be with me, but she understood that I was a good guy in a dating pool where decent men are a rarity, and she didn’t want to completely close the door on me.

Until a few of weeks ago, her mom lived in a nursing home a little over an hour northwest of Atlanta, and her mom decided she wants to live with her. I offered to help move her mom’s possessions to her apartment. I have a truck and body healthy enough to move some moderately heavy items, so I was glad to help, and we did just that yesterday. I’m getting a head of myself, though. Last Sunday, during one of our text conversations, Hollie asked me if I would still date her knowing all the stuff that’s going on in her life. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable discussing that because I didn’t want to dredge hurt feelings from a few months ago and make the Saturday move awkward. She interpreted that as a “no” and awkwardly dropped the subject.

The subject came up again during the move. She confessed that she didn’t think she had treated me very fairly, and she regretted closing the door so quickly on me. I came clean and told her that I have a problem with her smoking. I didn’t want to say anything because doing so always sounds like an ultimatum. More problematic, people don’t really change for others, they change for themselves. I’m afraid that if she tries to change for me, it won’t take, and she’d eventually resent me for trying to do so. She said she had given it up a few months ago because smoking was causing her stomach problems, so we’re kind of dating again.

She wants to pick up right where we left off, or actually a little a head of where we left off. Apparently, she’s decided that she really fancies me. I wonder if this is more a response to all her stress, she wants something, or someone, to make her feel better. She’s saying all the right things, though. She said she’s all for moving back to Athens and getting out of Atlanta. She said she’s for eventually foregoing a wedding and using that money to take a honeymoon every year. She even said that she would be willing to accommodate my…ahem…fantasy that she was originally put off by.

I’m a bit more reserved. I mean, I’m all for giving us a second chance, but we both got really attached really quickly, and I want to take things at a slightly slower pace. There are also somethings now that bother me. I mean, her mom is probably going to live with her for the rest of her life. Not that I would ever be against helping my future wife take care of her mother, but her mom has a bit of a hoarding problem. She’s nowhere near as bad as my dad was, but the prospect for signing up for that again indefinitely gives me pause. I’m also wary about her financial discipline. She does alright managing her money, better than a lot of people, but some of her spending habits make me uncomfortable. I’m also concerned about my current job situation. If I leave my position, I’d consider moving back to Athens, and being involved in a relationship might interfere with my objectivity. All that said, I’m actually dating someone again. I hope everything works out, one way or another.