Water works

I hate emotional people.

I have yet to understand the purpose of breaking down in to tears in any situation, ever. That being said let me tell you about Danialle, she has no higher function in life than to produce tears and overreact. I’m not saying she cries non-stop, but, if you were to sit her down in the middle of your yard during a drought and hand her a dead puppy, you’d have green grass till winter.

Enter me, I am the exact opposite, hand me a dead puppy and you’ll get “Dead Puppy Puppet Theater” for the next 2-3 hours. Now great things happen when the two of us happen to be in the same space. Take my first day back to work for example, I moved just fast enough with my cane to catch the elevator before it closes. Inside I get to share my ride to the 22nd floor with no other than the weeping Danialle.

She looks up from her tissue enough to notice my cane, wide-eyed she asks me what happened. Not in the mood to deal with her I quickly reply, “I had a stroke.” At this point I can already see the tears begining to well up in her eyes. I’m waiting for the water works to begin, but she surprises me and asks another question, “I thought a stroke only affects your brain, why do you need a cane?”

I had to admit, I never expected a semi-intelligent question out of her, I tell her, “Despite having a mild stroke, the part of my brain the tells my left leg to move got damaged. So I need the cane to support myself and to help me walk.”

She nods her head, and 3… 2… 1… queue the flood gates, “Oh you poor thing,” she corners me in the elevator, arms stretched out, “I had no idea it was so bad, if you need anything, and I mean anything, please let me know.” I try to hobble away from her but she closes the gap, gives me a hug and a soggy shoulder. “You are so strong to even have left the house with a disability like that, I would still be sitting on the couch bawling my eyes out.” Not much surprise there, she continues sobbing, “I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye but I’m here for you if you need to talk.”

The elevator doors open and she exits the elevator turning around to sob one last time then takes off to her desk.

I hate emotional people.

A Long Reprieve

I hate shit.

I hate fans.

I hate all combinations there of.

As you may have guessed, the shit hit the fan and that’s why I haven’t been posting. In my absence from the web there has been a few life changing events that have taken place. First being my wedding, something I know many of you disapproved of but too bad, it’s down and over. I’m hitched and thats not going to change anytime soon.

I now have my own office, so I can practice my satanic beliefs in private. It truly is a funny story, maybe I’ll blog about it as a flashback or something. Also the Blue Oyster incident was ruled gang related. I guess someone felt they weren’t getting their fair cut of the local drug sales.

But the most life changing (yes bigger than getting married) is my learning that I have an issue with high blood pressure. I didn’t learn this from a doctor, no no, my own body told me in the form of a stroke. The stroke occured on the right side of my brain so luckily I still have my wonderful language skills to convey my story to you, but it does mean I suffer from vision problems. Beside impairing my motor skills, my license has been revoked, so I have gotten to discover a new hell, public transit.

My posts may still be intermittent as I have a lot of rehab to go through, but I’ll try to fulfill your selfish need for entertainment, so don’t worry about that.

13th Floor

I hate Human Resources.

I’m on the elevator on my way down to the 13th floor. They couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate floor number for where I’m heading. Someone had to understand the irony of such a decision.

“Let’s place the most soulless department in the company on a floor number so feared by previous generations that they would simply just skip it when counting floors.”

Regardless, on the unholiest of floors resides the dreaded Human Resources department.

 

When I arrived at work today I was greeted by a sticky note on my monitor. The note simply stated, “HR needs to see you.” Thus I quest into the belly of the beast.

The elevator doors open to reveal a floor like any other, but I’m not fooled. Evil dwells here and it has business with me. The hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I exit the elevator. At the end of the hallway is a receptionist, there is something not quite normal about her, I just can’t figure out what. Maybe it’s her ability to smile just a little too big in this hell hole. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t seen her blink yet. She looks like she is about to check me into some back woods hostel where I’m going to be hunted by rich execs. I know that’s not the case because that’s on the top floor.

She asks me, “Name please.” She still hasn’t blinked. “Jason YeahRight,” I reply. “Please have seat.” She gets up and walks out.

I sit down and wait for her to return. Only she doesn’t return. Instead Kenneth the HR Douche came for me. I don’t want to say Kenneth is stupid but I have to. There is no other way to describe him. I would bet good money that if he ever attempted the SATs he would get a negative score. I really am not exaggerating, he is merely a crap in/out machine, a flunky for the demons of floor thirteen, a familiar of the HR blood suckers.

I hate Kenneth.

He asks me to join him at his desk, I don’t want to, but it’s either this or “production support”. We reach his desk and sit. He has pictures of his family all over his desk, God they’re ugly, looks like “down came baby” and it hit every ugly branch on the way.

“Jason do you know why your here?”

“Nope.”

“There have been to complaints about your wardrobe.”

I hate it when they draw it out.

“Some members of the staff seem to believe that you’re satanic.”

Bingo! I’ve heard this one before. You see, I am rather fond of Hot Topic and their “club shirts”. They really are nice shirts, they button up and have a collar, which is all the dress code requires. What HR has a problem with is the designs on the shirts. Things like skulls, flames, dragons, etc…

This little dance happens once a month, at least, they try to find something in policy to force me to wear clothing more suitable of a code monkey and I just ignore them.

“Do I complain that they look too Christian?”

“No.”

“Then why do they harass me for my life choices?”

Harass, that magic word that makes HR all soft. They don’t want to touch anything labeled harassment.

“Well, I can understand your point of view. Please have a nice day.”

Kenneth shows me to the elevator.

Now I’m not satanic, I’m actually agnostic, but letting people believe that I am means that I usually don’t have to deal with the users that are religious nuts. But something about today just struck me funny. Maybe I’m just more bored than normal or something, but I think I’m going to have to show them just how satanic I can be.

I hate Human Resources.

I hate Human Resources

Solemn Results

I hate local news.

It’s been four days since the Blue Oyster incident and not one peep about it on the local news.

The claim to be “fair and balanced”. They only way the achieve that is by reporting on bullshit no one cares about. This become even more evident when there are tourist in town like this last weekend. Have to dress up this shit hole so they come back next year. I listened during my morning coffee as they droned on about improvement to the local sport stadium and mal-nourished chihuahuas that need my help.

I hate chihuahuas.

It has nothing to do with being attacked by one as a child, I can deal with that. They just look like god was loaded off his ass when he made them.

“Okay now make the eyes stick out, and give it a head that weighs more than it’s body. Oh! And make it shiver in 100° weather! Well that looks like shit, oh well just put them in Mexico no one will find them there.”

And honestly how can you tell when a chihuahua is mal-nourished? Don’t they all look that way?

Anyway, I hate local news.

I feel sorry for Jesse’s friend and family, how are they going to find closure when the rest of the city is ignoring that it happened? Meanwhile, no one knows I was there so it’s back to the usual grind for me. Who cares that I watched people die there are “production support” issues to be dealt with.

I hear Jesse’s funeral is Saturday, maybe I’ll stop by.

Don’t Fear The Reaper

I hate this part of town.

It’s about 6:30 when Jesse pulls into the parking lot of the Blue Oyster. I’m leaning against the back of my piece of crap Saturn waiting for her. She is just as stunning as always, she gives her hair a flip as she exits her car and walks over to me. She’s wearing a white silky v-neck top with a plunging neck line, and just to drive the point home you can just barely see the edge of a lacy white bra peeking out around her breath taking cleavage. I don’t remember much beyond that, no reason to, I could see everything that made her special and that was enough for me.

“You ready?” I ask her. “Always” she replies with a “come get me” smile.

We head in and take a seat at a booth in a dark corner of the room. We order our first drinks, a whiskey sour for Jesse and a rum and coke for me. As the night presses on the drinks get harder and more plentiful.

Some time during our third or forth round of shots we here screeching tires outside the bar. I play it off as someone who was just to loaded to drive had caused an accident, but before I can down another shot gun shots begin to fill the air. The windows, doors, and bar patrons are riddled with holes. In a state of pure shock, I can’t move, speak, or notice the warm splatter on my shoulder.

The gun shots subside and there are more screeching tires.

The dust settles and those who can still move begin to. As I start to process what had just happened and I look over to see if Jesse is okay. She’s not. A stray bullet caught her in the temple and she had already faded away. Not knowing what to do, I ran. I ran to my car and speed off towards my home.

I heard sirens in the distance.

Jesse didn’t deserve this but the last thing I need was to have to explain to my fiancée why my car was on the evening news at a bar when I was supposed to be at work.

Luckily my fiancée had decided to go to a movie with her girlfriends. I change my clothes and burn the evidence in the chimnea out back.

This fucking town: 1
Jason: 0

I hate that part of town.

The Request – Part 2

I hate management.

After what seemed like hours I finally convince management that not only was Jesse’s request a good one but that it was in fact a vital change. Of course no self-respecting manager would accept a request without adding a change of his own.

Turns out my manager is color blind, greens look white to him, and that makes the menu hard to use. Go figure, someone finally came up with a legitimate reason to have the menu color changed. I assured him that I would change it to any color he wanted, he chose fire-engine red. I’m sure some other user will find a way to complain about that with relative ease, I think I just need to add an admin setting to change the whole site color so I can keep the idiots happy with little effort on my behalf.

Another good thing that came out of the meeting is that my manager wants me to enter change requests for each of the departments that will be affected to get them involved. This is helpful because I will actually enter the request correctly so as the users flood the system with production support request my request will never see the light of day. I’ll never have to on the request because the other departments will never know about it. Jesse will be upset but at least she can’t blame me.

Speaking of Jesse, our date is still on for tonight. We’re going to a bar on the outskirts of town call the Blue Oyster. It’s in an area I usual avoid like the plague but so does my faience so no chances of her seeing my car there.

I told my fiancée that I’m staying late at work because we’re overloaded with production support issues. She did seem happy about it but I’m sure she’ll get over it.

I love forgiving fiancées.

I love rum and coke.

The Request

I hate interdepartmental projects.

I really do, that’s why I try to avoid them whenever possible. Unfortunately that’s exactly what I told Jesse that I’d be more than happy to do. She wanted changes made to the reporting system that would impact at least two different departments in the company. Now I would try to slip this change in stating that I was simply un-aware that there was any impact to the aforementioned departments, but I’ve play that card too many times this year so that leave one option, management approval.

I hate management.

I have a meeting scheduled after lunch to meet with my manager to try to convince him to sign off on the request. While management relies on codemonkeys for technical expertise, they are quite stubborn about approving any change from a codemonkey. They are paranoid that we are trying to play the system to gain access to internal systems so we can achieve some sort of global dominance.

While I have only done that once, this change was different, if he blocks it I look like a liar and that wouldn’t help my chances with Jesse. But since Jesse never entered it in change control there was no proof that it was her request and not mine. This is going to take finesse, it is going to take a subtle hand, it is going to take eloquent word play to cram this request down managements throat. The important thing is that when management regurgitates the idea, they think it was theirs all along.

I’ll post how it goes later. At least I have drinks with Jesse to look forward to.

I hate interdepartmental projects.

The Fiancée

I hate commitment.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned something that I doubt any of you knew, mostly because I hadn’t told you yet. I am in fact engaged, while that is one of those who gives-a-crap details in and of itself, it becomes even more plot centric seeing as I now have a date Friday night.

While this blog is about my hell at work, my hell at home is outside of the scope of what I’ll talk about. But I will tell you that the situation with my fiancée is complicated. I know I want to marry her, I just don’t know that she is the only woman I want to be with.

Well I guess it isn’t that complicated although it does serve as a slight moral dilemma, it’s something I am completely willing to live with.

I hate commitment.

P.S. Still haven’t gotten an email from Jesse yet. Wonder what she wants me to do?

Humpday

I hate Wednesdays.

On Wednesdays users interrupt me as I listen to one of the few podcasts I actually like. While I hate users on every day of the week, I really hate them on Wednesdays.

Today was like any other Wednesday as I got out my iPod and started listening, daydreaming about a new job where I could actually use the advice in the podcast. Without fail there was a knock on my cubicle wall. At this point I have two choices, either turn up the podcast and ignore them till they go away, which would result in a ding on my performance review, or turn off the podcast and listen to the torrent of stupid that is about to spill from this user’s face. I was only just past the intro so I paused the podcast and turned around.

I was now at eye level with the greatest rack to have ever graced a blouse I had ever seen. She had the first three buttons undone and a pendant necklace nestled gently upon the top of her cleavage. I quickly turn my attention to her face before my longing gaze turned into a creepy stare. Did she noticed how her amazing tits had drawn my attention? Yes, but she appeared to enjoy it.

Looking at her face, while not as fun as her chest, is still just as amazing. I knew this user. This user has a name, one that I momentarily had forgotten. Without double checking with myself I blurt out, “Hello Jesse.” Oh god, did I get it right? She smiles and giggles at me and returns the hello, I was right.

Not actually caring I ask her how I can help her. She begins describing the nature of her problem and I go back to examining her amazing body. Jesse dresses very sexy, usually blouses although in the winter time she’ll sweaters and nothing makes me weaker. Somehow though she always seems to wear skirts that end just above the knee with a slit up the back that you would stare at all day in hopes of a glimpse of something to make your day worth while.

Wait, Jesse is a user and I’m a codemonkey, the two don’t normally talk. That’s what change control is for. This must be really important, so I try to no avail to pay attention to what she is saying but her body is just too distracting.

She finishes and asks me, “Do you think you can do that for me?” Panicking because I have no clue what she just said but I attempt to appear confident and reply, “Sounds good, just email me all the details.” She smiles, giggles again and thanks me before turning to walk off.

Kicking myself for not saying more to her I do some thing my fiancee would never approve of, even though that wasn’t enough to stop me. “Jesse,” the words just escape my face like cum from the homeless guy on Satan’s Cock, “would you like to go out for drinks this week?” She turns around and with a smile asks, “How’s Friday?”

I hate Wednesdays.

I like sexy users.

Change Control

I hate users.

I define a user as anyone who is too dumb to use my software but tries anyway. Which is just about everyone in the building. The main form of communication between the users and I is our change control system. The change control system is a software written by another code monkey that the users love to abuse.

The change control system allows the user to choose the nature of their change, production support, reporting, etc…, and then fill in a description about what needs changed.  They hit submit and the request flies away to queues to be worked on by the code monkeys. The system is perfect because it queues work by importance and you just work through your list without having to worry about the order, that was until the users got ahold of it.

In a rare moment of intelligence a user figured out that anything labeled “production support” goes to the front of the queues. It had to be like cavemen discovering fire, all the users gathered around another user’s desk, the “oohhhs” and “aaahhhs” as the user submitted a UI color change as a production support issue only to find it landed in the queues ahead of everything. After that pivotal moment all change controls have been complete and utter crap.

Production Support Issue: Why doesn’t my middle initial show up?

Production Support Issue: Can the menu be green instead of red?

Production Support Issue: Can you add a total to the end of report X?

Production Support Issue: Can you create a folder named X in Outlook?

I hate users.