“As a salaried employee in this company, with the benefits and everything that we provide, I fully expect you to work 50 hours minimum every week,” Happy Camper.

Okay.. the week is off to a major bad start. Pissy day, pissy traffic, went home to pissy household, more concerned with food than anything else… and I was one of them. “We should have just made dinner plans instead of drinking plans…” So we stared at each other for a while, before deciding that we were all too tired to cook. So the three musketeers dropped Aoide an IM ditching on Karaoke then went to sit and eat at Sushi Yoko. It was okay. Thought it would wake us up, but it didn’t really. JT almost got excited at the notion of maybe going to a movie, but by the time our dinner was done, everything had started. So, we went home and went our separate ways. Maggoo to work, JT to hide in the cave all night working on the pc, and me to vegetate in front of the sci-fi channel watching Children of Dune. I may have tried to say goodnight before departing at around 11, but I didn’t have the effort to exude to compete with the pc, so I just went to bed. And this morning, when JT had to be at training at 8, I just slept and let him get ready and go. Yeah, we were happy, sociable people.

People kept calling to be let in at the front gate. Who are you people? You’ve got the wrong apartment. Then some Indian chick calls and apologizes for 3 minutes that she misdialed. Cousins from NC without an internet connection call for info on Music Midtown. We’re trying to be hermits.. leave us alone. I just turned the tv up louder.

And now, *urgent urgent* please complete these three reworks by 10:30 am, including “changing a city lookup box from a #3 to a #6” … WTF ever, Jonathan. I’m going to hand you my HTML book and let you illustrate to me what a #6 box is. *urgent urgent* Jonathan, give up the jargon, you’re a goofball. Can you hear me now?

And then, and then.. I get to hear Happy Camper’s quote to Deann: “…I fully expect you to work 50 hours minimum every week” which he repeated with the addition of “if you are a salaried employee in this company…” and raised his voice to the general account management/ operations/ engineering crowd that were around… “… 50 hours”

Bite. Me.

Our benefits include wonderful things like… $10 grocery store gift certificates to celebrate Thanksgiving, unless of course I was a married employee, then I would have gotten $25, a bonus system that is very generous, except we haven’t gotten one since April of last year.. I think mine was $53, a health insurance plan that has changed three times in the last one year, and most recently caused 75% of the employees (myself included) to have to look for new doctors because most of them had dropped the plan. Or, how about the benefit of our new vacation policy where you lose vacation you don’t take in a year, and you start the new year off with no vacation time… you must earn it over the course of the year. And they wonder why everyone wants off in June & December at the same time… and they wonder why they end up denying people their desired vacation time… and they wonder why they have to bend the rules & lie to payroll letting people take vacations in January which were supposed to happen in December.

And they wonder why my shoes practically leave a trail of flames as I flee this place at the end of my 8… that is e i g h t hour workday, which accumulates to a whopping 40… that is f o r t y hour week that I turn in to payroll & timesheet every week. If they want more than that out of me, which they do actually get, it’s on my terms… at home, on whatever weekend day I feel like, or not at all. Deal with it. Hell, or don’t. Option 2… fire me. I’ll hold my breath.

And.. fuck.. forgot to take my vitamin. forgot to pack lunch & it’s a cheese day.