redhedlvr2

So, I keep getting these telemarketer calls supposedly wanting to do a survey on leisure time. 

Right. 

Last night's caller's voice was deep and dark and so smooothe that I found myself talking to him before I realized I really didn't want to.

Him:  Want to take a survey on how you spend your leisure time?
Me:  Sure, but I have to tell you up front, I'm a single woman over the age of 50 who lives alone.
Him:  That's cool.  Everybody's opinion counts.
Me:  Ok, let's do it.

We run through the obvious questions/answers, no there aren't any people in the house working for an ad company or under the age of six.  Yadda yadda.  Then we get to the kicker.

Him:  What is your age.
Me:  I'm 54

Cue crickets...

Him:  Well, thanks anyway, but we've filled our quota for people in that category.

I laughed.  WTF anyway!  Nothing like being reduced to a quota to make a gal's night.

So, since my last post went so well, I thought I'd give another a try.  Topic?  Work rant!  What else?

I have ranted many times over the years about how insane my Boss is.  Here is another example.

His family used to own a hardware store.  He KNOWS everything about hardware.  He is The Hardware King!  And cheap, have I mentioned that yet?  So, whenever one of the toilets here breaks, he makes our lab assembly guys fix it.  No, we aren't plumbers or in the plumbing/hardware business, but the lab guys must drop whatever they are doing and fix the john when demanded.

Now, we have two toilets in the ladies' room.  Both tend to get clogged easily and frequently.  Two clogs ago, we were down to one john for THREE WEEKS!  The women in the building were stockpiling pitch folks and blunts objects for a little party they were planning later in the week and I told Boss I was calling a plumber because the guys in the lab couldn't fix the issue and I wanted to live to see the weekend.

The plumber came in, fixed the issue in like ten minutes and was gone.  Boss grumbled about how the company was losing money and I was taking his kid's college education away from them.  Whatever.

The next clog came, I stated "I am calling a plumber!" and did.  Boss had a huge fit, sent nasty emails to all involved about losing money and told me from now on, to call his personal plumber, Bill.  Which was fine.  It let the lab guys off the hook and would get the issue resolved with Boss's blessing.

Until last week.  The company's VP said to me, "The men's room is leaking".  I said, "I'll call Bill the plumber, not to worry".  Bill wasn't available (are we shocked?) so I left a message.  I emailed all the involved parties so everyone knew I was on top of it.  Then Boss came in, read the email and hit the roof.  Why are you calling a plumber?!  Make the lab guys do it!  Don't waste money!  He could replace anything in any toilet in the world, and it was the easiest thing and don't I know how much money the company was losing?  The sky is falling and the world is coming to an end!! 

The man has serious issues.  I feel sorry for poor Bill the plumber.

I just finished reading Tom Clancy's Dead or Alive.  Has anyone else read it?

( Cut for bookish spoilers )

My gaming life is, well, I'm not sure I can describe it.  I've gotten 3 toons up to level 85, one of which has finished her Cataclysm loremaster achievement, but now I feel like, what's next?  I don't raid and I've never done much as far as grouping due to much trauma early in my WoW career.  Their tradeskills are maxed out so I don't feel much urge to log on the game except when the guild is on.  It's my daughter's guild and we boast a whopping six members.  We only really are able to group on Saturday or Sunday afternoons and then I'm playing a warlock alt I made just so the guild would have one of each class.

Anyway, so Rift has a new patch, which I've not downloaded yet.  I'm thinking of taking advantage of the free server transfers and getting one of my three mains off Wolfsbane and on to a lower population server.  Except...I downloaded Everquest II, the free version, and have been playing that instead.  Even though I had to pay for the race/class I wanted.  Greedy bastards.  I really liked playing it last year until my WoW got hacked and Daughter-Type got the guild going.

Finally, my father, who is 80, is moving out of the house we lived in since 1966.  Talk about your traumatic experiences.  I have mixed feelings about the move.  There are just so many memories tied up in the place, both good and bad.  He's buried two wives living in that house, one just two years ago in July.  He has to be feeling conflicted as well.  My sister has been there every weekend to help.  But he is NOT listening to her.  She schlepps boxes, old half full paint cans and other toxic waste and minds the burn barrel in addition to general cleaning and the like, but whenever she ventures an opinion he shuts her out.  To me, this isn't new behavior, but he and I have a different relationship and always have had.

Anyway, he finally closed on a condo nearby and he is going to settlement on his house mid-July.  However, he doesn't want to part with the eight dining room chairs, both leaves for the dinning room table or any of the filing cabinets (six) to fit into his new, two bedroom place.  I have visions of the movers stacking up in the hallway outside the place with all that huge furniture going, "Where ya wannit buddy?" and not being able to get in the door.

Finally, our prima donna sales manager here at work has allegedly resigned.  The rumor mill has it that one of his prima donna sales team has caused him to have to do extra work, since he did not enforce proper returns policy with said sales dweeb, fondly dumbed King Baby.  So today, Sales Manager is absent, although the rumor mill does not believe it's a permanent thing, just a temper tantrum of some sort.  This place is just a laugh a minute, that's for sure.  One of these days, when I grow up, I'll have a real job at a real company, with a Ranger and Morellie dilemma like Stephanie's.  Oh well, dream on, right?

Or maybe just whine.  Actually, let's go with whine, since I feel rather tired and peeved and just generally whiny.


There's the usual HATE MY JOB whine I could indulge in, but here are a few specifics.  Staying in whine mode of course.  Our receptionist, who is new and fairly nice so I really shouldn't be too hard on her, is annoying when she announces calls.  The PA system makes two beeping sounds before you can actually talk and she never waits for the second beep.  So all of her announcements are cut in half and we have to call her and ask who that last call was for.  I mean, nobody had to tell ME to wait for the second beep!  Whine, whine.

New Boss is still an ass.  Actually, he's a well paid, baby-boomer male in a cushy job and he has a slave (ME!) to do all the un-glamorous tasks.  This year he is apparently the one seaching for new healthcare insurance and I have nothing to do with the process except face the unhappy employees when they have questions.  And of course he's wedging his buddy-buddy insurance broker in and my trusted and longtime guy is out.  Bastard!  I know, dangerously close to a rant here.

My A/R clerk (at least I thing she's still mine, New Boss might have sole her too) will be on vacation tomorrow.  This means all the whiny, pushy sales people will be lining up at my door tomorrow begging to let their deadbeat customers buy just one more thing.  They'll pay on Monday, I swear.  Yeah right.

My dog decided to not wait for the treat I give her when I come home for lunch just to see her friendly face and have a nice petting session and ate a blue pen.  Right in the middle of my living room rug.  Waa waa.

I don't want to go to class tonight, see first line, even though we'll be getting our second test scores back tonight.  I did ok, so I'm not really worried.  I just want to go home and wallow in my whiny-ness.

( Cut for WoW whine )

Ok, now I have to get ready to talk to the ADP guy about how much they screwed up our timeclock and payroll system.  For anyone thinking of going with ADP, don't!  They are the most disorganized group I've ever had the misfortune of working with.  I could do a whole rant/whine just on how they screwed up our local taxes.  But, I'll save that for another post.

Well,here I am at work, early since this is audit week, and there is no connectivity of any sort to be had. I can' get on the internet and I can't log on to the system at all. This wee post is brought to you via my brand new Droid. I just love new toys. Anyway, today will be the day the auditors want mountains of invoices and I have no way to look anything up because the whole system is down. What I want to know is who planned this clusterfuck in the first place. The maintance not the audit.

Anyway, since I have nothing I can do I thought I'd share my thoughts on some of the things I've been watching this summer. Always riveting I know.

Somehow I've gotten back into anime. I blame Daughter-Type because she wanted to take my Rurouni Kenshin and YYH dvds and there is no way I'm ever parting with those. So I started watching RK progressed through to Inu Yasha. Thank God for Netflix. Let me just say for anyone on the fence about anime, give Death Note a try. Yes yes, you have to just accept the shinigami aspect but the story is so gripping and tense and down right creepy at times. Good stuff.

I also watched Sword of a Stranger which is an OVA not a serirs that I know of. Its your ronin ex-samurai who swears never to kill again story who meets someone in need of protection along the way but there's no giggling girls and no outrageous magic. I liked it.

I'm also working my way through D. Gray Man but it's a little harder to take as it has a bit more of the giggling stuff that I'm not so crazy about.

So that's it. Still no connectivity and my thumbs are tire of typing.

So I went to the eye doc a few weeks ago because I was having trouble reading road signs and driving at night and generally not seeing well in general. He fitted me with progressive lenses, cause I'm an old coot and have that trombone reading distance thing going on in addition to being near sighted. Ugh. He tells me they have a new lense out now for folks who work on computers long hours everyday. So I'm thinking between work, reading fanfic (sometimes at work) and playing WoW, that these lenses would be really nice to have.

I guess I'm not a patient person because even though he said they would take some getting used to, I can't see squat with these things. I've moved the screen closer than I like because the distance portion is really tiny and up near the top of the frame. My head has to tilt down to get that really tiny area where I have computer range vision lined up with whatever I'm trying to see and it's making my neck ache. And I still don't feel like I'm see clearly. Just UGH!

He told me laser surgery costs about $5k. I think I'm still young enough to get my money's worth out of not having to buy glasses every few years.

What the flock is going on with Comcast?  I usually check all my e-mail accounts at work and now it's telling me I need Comcast internet to sign in?  I don't think so.  Let's see how fast I can switch back over to my FREE aol e-mail account.  Buggers!

Every morning for the last, oh I don't know, DECADE, I've stopped in at the same Wawa for breakfast. I get practically the same thing every day, and pay with my mac card every time. Each and every time (practically) the same girl (she went to school with my youngest so I think of them both as girls) rings me up. Our conversation always goes like this:

Her: Goodmorning
Me: Morning
Her: Will that be all?
Me: Yes, thank you
Her: Debit or credit (Now I'll give her that because it never pays to second guess the customer when it comes to money)
Me: Debit
Her: And this is where it kills me each and every day. PLEASE ENTER YOUR PIN

No crap enter my pin. I do it every day. You know I do it every day and you know I know to do it every day because you tell me to so why waste the air it take to utter that sentence. Lord Almighty, it takes every ounce of maturity I possess to not make some stupid smart ass comment about how I had forgoten since yesterday that I need to enter my pin. I know from first hand experience how boring it is to be a cashier, but please, give your REGULAR customers a break and assume they know about entering their stupid pin when making a debit purchase!!!!!!

Ok, I feel much better now.

Dear Co-Workers:

I'm really very envious that the rest of you in this company are so obviously independently wealthy that you don't need the meager pay we get bi-weekly. I mean, why else would you all make me chase you down with repeated calls, e-mails, faxes and siccing threatening managers in your faces to get off your collective butt and send me your timesheets. Now I know it's hard to remember that bi-weekly means every two weeks and that marking the date such info is due on a calendar somewhere is a very tiresome task, but sometimes it is necessary to put forth the extra effort in today's busy business environment. I'm also very sorry that I may have missed the handholding phase with you folks in other states and time zones, but in my own defense, I have three children and three grandchildren of my own and am not looking to adopt at this time. Perhaps using some of that extra cash you have laying around to invest is some type of automated time keeping devise might be useful.

No love,

Me