It was raining when I got up at 3:30 this morning and still pouring at 4:30 but at 6:30 when the sun came up the sky was clear. So that was weird at the outset. I should have known.

One of the two remaining functional printers at the office is busted and our most senior client is showing up tomorrow a.m. expecting 350 pages of feminist scholarship to be printed out and ready to bundle up and send to press. For reasons unknown, she expects me to be present at this ceremony even though the assistant editor in charge of the journal is the person who knows what needs to be done, but I suppose that's neither here nor there and mine is not to question why: just give me the paycheck and I'll do the work, no matter how pointless.

So while I was trying to figure out how I’m supposed to acquire and, more to the point, pay for a new printer, the dean got on the e-mail and demanded to know when we are going to hire a new RA and how much we intend to pay. You understand, she hadn't given me the go-ahead to hire a new RA or even confirmed that she could get said go-ahead, so of course I was left with my a** blowing in the breeze and typing e-mails as fast as I could whack the keyboard to make it look like I had some idea what's going on around there, which of course I don't, I never have, and I never will.

So now I escape early to go to Staples and buy us a new printer. The printer saleslady is occupied with this woman who has dragged in a large printer in its original box and is trying to negotiate some sort of exchange and looking mighty aggrieved because the saleslady is trying to make her understand that this particular branch of Staples doesn't carry that model and come to think of it the only outlet in town that does have it is halfway to California. And so they stand around chewing this over interminably and then the customer lady decides she should try to pick out some similar model, which necessitates another long period of chewing things over culminating in the saleslady, who so far has not even noticed i exist nor does she intend to notice any more than i intend to know what's going on around my workplace, traipsing off to the storeroom to drag out a box containing the customer lady's new choice. Printer saleslady resurfaces after having been gone long enough to shoot an elephant in the jungle back there and have it stuffed. More hashing over of the customer's Big Decision ensues, after which the Decision is finally made to buy the thing, and so they toddle over to the checkout line where the printer saleslady tries to explain the deal to the cashier who is arguing that it can't be done and so they yak on a great deal longer.

The manager walks past doing nothing and so i ask him if he could please sell me a printer and he says he'll have to have his Business Machine Sales Person help me but, well, BMSP happens to be the printer saleslady who as we all can see is otherwise occupied. I kill a few more minutes watching the endless conversation at the cashier's booth and then i leave i go home i have a beer and i think if i were the manager of a store that sells $600 office machines i would manage to know enough about the merchandise to sell the junk off the floor when some ninny comes in and asks to buy it but then maybe that's why i'm not a manager of a store that sells $600 office machines.

As evening creeps in the skies clabber up again and it looks like it's going to rain and a big blow comes up and that's when i notice the dog has (again) shat all over the CoolDeck so i have to race out there and clean up that mess but hot DAYUM the last time i picked up dog mounds, which was just before yesterday's 15-hour deluge rolled in, i freaking FORGOT to tie off the bag and carry it out so that the bag and the little plastic wastebasket holding it are now full of brown chowder, and to make a long and grimly grimy tale short i have to ask you what KIND of ANIMAL drops over a dozen loads of spoor in ONE FREAKING DAY????

After a lengthy scrubfest with high-test detergent, i decide to make some hot chocolate so i put a mugful of milk in a pan, add a generous dollop of honey, turn on the heat and then turn my back long enough to chop up some pieces of chocolate and whip some heavy cream and when i glance back over my shoulder what do i see but the milk and honey fizzing up like a can of Gillette's shaving foam run amok and i drop the bowl of cream and grab the hot pan off the burner just in time to have a load of milk and honey bubble up all over the stove and countertop...ahhhh that's what i needed: another gigantic mess to clean up.

now as i sit here cruising the web i'm tired and cranky and have to dream up something to write for another blog post, and i’ve just posted a far more raunchy version of this tale at http://www.asdfjklsemicolon.com/, a black hole whose laconic proprietor has decided that readers should do the writing, thank you. and i think the guy’s idea is good, really good: make the readers write the blog. but will it sell ads?

angst, workplace issues