the past two days were really hard, and i've told this story twice this evening so i don't really feel like getting it all down. can't i just upload my thoughts already?
yesterday:
i woke up with the same headache i'd went to sleep with, plus intense fatigue. it was a very tough day, the headache didn't go away, and then in the middle of it the snaky manager interrupted a perfectly positive discussion with her team to aggressively and unpleasantly interrogate me. it took everything i had to keep my responses even and then reset the vibe to continue and finish the discussion.
i kinda meant to call her aside to discuss it, but i didn't get a chance, and in retrospect it was probably for the best. but the cost of that was carrying that shit experience with me out the door, where it directly tied into my experience back when* because the more i thought about it, the less comfortable i was approaching her and the less comfortable i was approaching my boss.
* which i didn't understand at the time was the beginning of me being steered into a trap
i met up with gd and mr smear at home, began writing the message to my boss that had been burrowing into my brain, suddenly realized with horror that i'd been writing it into a message box that i could have easily sent accidentally, so i cut and pasted it somewhere else, and then we all left to catch a bus to meet up with kibbutz cousin's sister and brother-in-law for dinner.
the bus took us most of the way there, and we would have arrived at their hotel on time if i hadn't made a wrong turn... but we made it there not too late, and what followed was generally a very nice and interesting evening. and mr smear mostly behaved quite well, especially considering the fact that he was bored out of his skull and has lost all his screen privileges for the week**...
* he did lose an additional day later in the evening, though, which kinda sucked
the ride home was complicated by the tlv night run locking down most of the city, but we got home in the end. bedtime was a bit rough, though i kinda managed to rescue it a bit.
...
my cousin was found dead from a stroke / heart-attack in his car yesterday morning. after years of struggling, he was literally a couple of weeks into the process of finally turning his life around right before his 60th birthday. i remember stories of his shenanigans (he was notoriously a getaway driver from a botched bank job when he was younger), and a well-known clubbing personality (bar owner) in cape town, and it was partially thanks to him that i could never go down the cocaine rabbithole (when you see what it can do to some like that, you think more than twice). what a fucking crazy thing.
today:
i was tired enough to get some sleep, but i did spend a good chunk of the night lying awake running through scenarios with my boss and the snake manager. i woke up feeling shit, but definitely better than yesterday, and i'm still feeling quite weak and a bit faint. anyway, today was definitely better than the day before.
after handling some chores i walked to the post office to pick up another parcel for gd (another 70 NIS for customs for another item that we just learned needs to be returned :/) and then caught a bus to work.
i arrived at the building just in time for a meeting i hadn't been aware of, and just as two others from my company were discovering that the elevators were out of order. we spent the next few minutes arguing with unhelpful security guards, following directions to nowhere, and eventually jumping on an elevator in the hopes we'd get close enough to our floor to walk.
the two floors up was looooong. in my present state, i was completely buggered halfway up and felt faint at the top, but it took a while for a rescue mission to arrive.
the meeting turned out to be the two guys who displaced me teaching my teammate to use their magic new tools. one thing i couldn't shake was the new manager's bored affect with his chewing gum, very much reminiscint of megaman.
unfortunately for them, the new tools aren't really working, but more unfortunately for them my new manager came in and had to explain to them all the things they've been dismissing when i've tried to help them onboard and understand what we're doing. and then he found out that what they've been promising is very different to what they're delivering...
... i found out later that there was a very intense dressing-down from the boss that took place after, and i have a feeling that they're doing a little of the FOing after their FAing. as it is, i later found out that they've somehow managed to block most of the team's work for about three days already due to their lack of understanding of what they're working with, and i re-bonded a little with one of the other captains over our happiness at not being on their side of the complaints table :P
before lunch, i managed to catch my boss for a couple of minutes, but i didn't have a script and i had no idea what i was going to say until i said it; i just knew i needed to make sure that he understood that something untoward was happening and that i was trying to deal with it. and in a way that didn't project whining.
ultimately, things went awkwardly but - i think - well. unfortunately, during the conversation i learned that our tech ops guy has been fired, which really strung. we knew he was a junior when we hired him, and this dude has been working his ass off and grabbing every opportunity with both hands. he's also been a really fun person to work alongside.
i had lunch with the brit, who i'm sad to say may well be incapable of keeping his head down until everything sorts itself out. i've warned him with what the boss said, but he's really struggling and i totally understand him. i really hope he doesn't get himself shunted out, because he's professionally amazing both in technical terms and in bigger-picture wisdom.
the afternoon was constructive, and i eventually got a chance to take the snake manager aside.
now, i don't know how much of her behavior was performant, or real, but she claimed she had no idea what she'd done and that she hadn't intended any malice, and she apologized profusely for speaking to me like that.
whether it's honest or not, i accepted it graciously and i hope that's the end of it.
the end of the day was good. just good.
i came home, realizing on my way that i'd forgotten our obligation to the class picnic tomorrow. i quickly dropped of a plate of happy hour "leftovers" for mr smear along with my bag, caught another bus to the nature store, found what i was looking for and receiving embarassingly condescending responses from the teller, jumped another bus home, ate a little with my family, got mr smear through some more of his history homework, saw him brush his teeth and shower and get into bed in record time, and read a little to him until my eyes started shutting.
we spoke to my mom for a bit, and then i went hunting for a story that i saw on facebook (which means i have no way of finding it), and now i've done what i was kinda dreading doing and gotten all this down. and now it's late, and i'm beyond tired, and i'm going to be going to bed very soon.
