I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Brother I brought you some silver, I brought a little gold

HERE! Yes, I made it here to Gun Lake for the Feral Writers Retreat. Didn't look like it would happen, and I got lots of 'slaining to do on Monday (that's okay, just thinking about it pisses me off again, and that was seven hours ago).

Yes, after a week of saying, "I'm taking Friday off, and Thursday is only eight hours," work tried to swallow me up. All these important projects (because they're all important) including four rush jobs for a "major client" (hellooo, if we could have combined them we might have made money, as we did it I'm sure we bled cash on each one), an automated project (ha!) that had Epic Failure issues (my quote of the day, "We're correcting in the wrong direction"), finishing up the project I explained earlier, another client gone wacky (not the client's fault, we have to pretend we work in their business instead of saying we're on outside group, so everybody there thinks they can put the finger one us), plus the project I alluded to earlier. I'm sure there were other things in there. Basically, as the one project had Epic Fail happen, another rush job went pear-shaped, after having a large order (we think it's a small order, because there are fewer individual pieces, but those pieces weren't on the business cards that we print 20 up, so yeah, 75 plates later, 3 minutes a plate, that's a huge chunk 'o time) to finish up I was approaching eight hours. I called the CSR to say, "ain't going to happen."

"Is there anybody else that know how to do this?"

"First time this happened. They'll have to build all new forms and be familiar with the project, and nobody has that, because this is new."

"OMG, wez all gonna die!"

So, to cut to the chase, I tell the person who was in control of the Epic Fail part, and they say, "Instruct someone how to do it." Yeah, hello, already ten minutes late. Okay, so I start, enter the briar patch of explanations, and say, "fuck it, it's faster to do it myself." So, yeah, after saying "8 hours and out," I worked .6 hours of overtime.

Which then lead me into Cleveland Downtown Rush Hour Traffic, now with bonus car accident! Then came the Sun In Your Eyes drive to Toledo. Followed by the inevitable delays around Ypsilanti, again with bonus car accident! Then twisty back roads all in the dark, about 2 hours later than I wanted to be there, deer running everywhere (hey, it's rutting season), and finally I'm here, which some of the people did wait up so I didn't have to bang on the door and cry, "Let me in!" and then go sleep in the car. So, hey, something went well today.

But, I left four jobs due this past afternoon undone (yeah, like I had the time, hello, interrupt my normally heavy load workday, add in FOUR rushes for a client, complete inability to understand how we get work done on two other jobs, and the "but we'll all DIE if you leave now," and it was a bad day all around). Which will lead to a bad Monday (where I'm sure I'll have to explain it all back to them, hopefully my mood will have lightened in the mean time because as I left, if someone would have said something to me, I might not have a job from my rebuttal).

So, here's to a productive weekend! Hurrah, writing retreat. Now it's midnight, I was up past midnight last night, and up at 5:30am today (well, yesterday). Time to crash.

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