Welcome to the second installment of the job chronicles, by popular request of my zero regular readers. Today, we have more of the same—just like my job. Laugh, cry, cope, seethe—do whatever you feel like when you’re reading these notes, I don’t care.

Day 4

(08:40) – God, I do not feel like being here today. I was actually a bit late today, but no one seems to give a shit, so that’s good.

I’m still not in the computer system—hopefully it’ll stay like that forever—so that’s less work for me >:D

(08:51) – We have off tomorrow for elections, so it seems like a lot of people took today off as well—I can’t say I blame them; I’m paid on the hour though, so I need to come in as often as I can for the most money possible.

(08:58) – Alright, so I can’t put myself down as working eight hours a day in the timesheet software we’re using.

My coworker that does the mail with me left me out to dry—they called out sick for today, so I’m in charge of getting the mail. That’s alright—I can handle the mail just fine—the problem is that I can’t get into the computer system, so I can’t get all the necessary stuff put into the database; I either get into the system today, or there’s going to be two days worth of mail to open and sort on Thursday.

I should have just called out and said my blood sugar was awry. Oh well—at least I’m getting paid.

(09:19) – I don’t even know where to get the mail.

(11:12) – I just spent a while doing mail I’ve been here 3.5 days, and for some reason, my boss has the idea I’m able to do everything—maybe because I’ve done so good learning the regulations—but I don’t know how to tell them that learning all of this without proper documentation is virtually impossible.

The vast majority of this job can be completed with if-then statements—a machine could do this for the most part.

(11:19) – Apparently, I’ll get my computer credentials by 14:00—I seriously doubt it.

(12:00) – I still have no clue what to do about the mail.

(13:00) – I went home. Fuck that shit—I’ll take the rest of the today off.

Day 5

(11:14) – Oh god, I slept horribly last night—maybe five hours max of decent sleep—I’ve been up since 03:30.

Sorry I haven’t written in here yet today—it’s been somewhat busy for me. U had to go and sort a bunch of mail, since I didn’t complete it all on Tuesday; luckily my coworker was here, so it was alright. Not great, not terrible, as a certain (fictionalized) power plant director said.

In some good news, I got into the computer system, finally; bad news is I don’t have all of it yet. I need to wait for IT to get me database and OneDrive access. That said, I have access to MS Office, plus the two NAS drives—probably set up with SMB—that the office and region use.

Good god, those two drives seem truly ancient. The oldest documents on the region-wide drive go back to 2006-04-06, in a directory simply entitled “t”—it was a PowerPoint on the budget; the office’s oldest document is an Excel spreadsheet from 2009 called “diagnostic,” with a bunch of stuff about money I frankly don’t understand.

I feel bad for these IT people—they need to deal both with people like my boss, and work with an ancient network; the database my office uses—on a “temporary server”—goes back to 2008.

(11:32) – I can’t open any of the ancient PowerPoints in K:/t/—they’re that fucking old. The dude that made this directory also made a shortcut to an RTF file, but I can’t access that. I have a feeling whoever made it just didn’t know how computers work.

(11:38) – My boss will be leaving early, around 14:30–14:45—hell fucking YES! Once I get the mail picked up at 15:15, I won’t need to do shit—I’ll be out of here.

On a different note, I feel like I’ve done virtually nothing here but look busy. Even with this computer, I haven’t been asked to do much.

Apparently the office is doing paper reduction, and what I’m doing now—typing up my notes on the regulations—is a huge help according to my boss. They hope I’ll be able to do that for all the books here, about twenty-five binders worth of stuff. I don’t have the heart to tell her doing all that is above my pay grade. Look at me, the textbook quiet-quitter.

(12:54) – You give managers a centimeter, and they take a kilometer. How the fuck does my boss expect me to typeset that entire auditing manual in a few weeks, in fucking MS WORD for christ’s sake.

(13:03) – I regret ever telling my boss I would type my notes up. I’m a fucking idiot for doing that—a supreme jackass.

In any case, a few minutes ago, my boss just admitted to taking naps in here. What would happen if I got caught napping?

(13:11) – God, I am good at looking busy. My physics teacher from high school taught me well—thanks Mr. B!

I need to watch Aggretsuko again—I have a feeling I’ll get it better. Oh, and Office Space too.

(13:20) – I cannot wait to get out of this dump. How the hell do I tell my boss what they’re asking is a multi-person job without reeling other people into this? If only I could ever be such a Machiavellian kinda of girl, but no—I get this shit.

(13:52) – God, Ridley’s monograph is really good.

(14:25) – I wish I could leave early, but I have no clue if my boss will come back to the office.

(14:46) – From an email my boss sent to an IT worker (poor fellow):

Yes, there is.

But, you gave it to her,... w drive; corporate audit.    She will need the one
drive, access to audit scheduling.     Thank

Those poor bastards—I should make them some brownies to apologize for all this shit. If the IT department hates me, I one-hundred percent understand why.

Ironically, the documents my boss gave IT did not request any database permissions. Am I the only one that can file a document around here properly?

(15:03) – I wonder if the next generation will look back at us fondly, like how we do with the early 2000s. Will there even be a real next generation?

(15:23) – Set me on fire!—kerosene!

(15:25) – I just realized leaving early could potentially be a bad idea—there are so many security cameras everywhere.

I’ll just leave at 16:00—it’s not like I have anything to do after then. This whole job is about looking busy, not being busy.

(15:36) – I just made a graphene sample on a piece of tape. Where’s my Nobel?

(15:41) – A few minutes ago, I saw my coworker filing stuff by the front desk. Maybe they already handled all the mail stuff? This will sound petty as hell, but I’ll take it as penance for Monday.

(15:48) – My coworker hasn’t come over yet. If they don’t show up by 16:00, I’m fucking bolting out of here.

(15:50) – I saw my coworker doing some more filing stuff—I think I’ll be alright if I leave early. Fuck it—I’m bolting out.

Day 6

(08:32) – I just realized I can flip this whole book situation—I can make it take as long as possible to get it done. All I need to do is look busy, and my boss will think I’m doing good work.

(09:13) – It’s amazing how godawful MS Word is. A lot of people say that LaTeX is hard—but Word, for me, is damn near impossible. Everything is a menu in a menu, and the software just does this shit I don’t want it to do constantly.

Tantacrul did a really good video on the Sibelius musical notation software, but there’s a part that somewhat irks me—his praise of the MS ribbon. I think that its high concept is alright—dare I say it’s good—but no one does it right. Microsoft’s implementation has things everywhere in strange places. Want to put down a table of contents?—Go to the reference section, same thing with footnotes.¹ Equation editing in Word is strange—everything about the program is strange.

(11:21) – I was helping with the mail, and I overheard my coworkers talking about Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad—I wanted to join in so fucking bad.

Anyway, more ranting about MS Word: Defining a bullet character in it is fucking insane—you have to go through this arcane old menu, where you can’t search for anything, and then go through and dig like a miner to find what you’re looking for. Whatever salary MS designers are getting is too much.

(11:42) – My boss asked me to send them my progress on the regulations in MS Word. If she they do this for all the documents I’m supposed to work on, I’m fucked.

Maybe it’s a TPS report situation? I don’t know, but I’m still anxious.

(12:42) – Why does MS Word feel the need to give me dumb pop-ups every two seconds? You don’t need to remind me a document’s getting automatically saved every time I open it. Moreover, you can only automatically saved with a OneDrive account, so it’s obviously a ploy to get more people to use it.

Also, why does the file menu work like that? Why does it bring up an entire screen when it can just bring up a menu? Why does Microsoft hate humanity?

(14:00) – Everything is a subscription service nowadays because it’s increasingly hard to generate new profits; almost everyone who needs software for something is likely already on a computer, and——fuck it, I’m not writing all that shit in here.

Work is, as always, boring as fuck. I’m able to get around it though—I’m basically just sitting and getting a paycheck right now.

My boss seems to know nothing about the work everyone’s doing, which is how most managers are—they don’t know what they manage, they only know there is something to be managed.

I only have a few hours left, so it’s not the end of the world. Unfortunately, though, my pay will be docked this week since I left early on Monday. It sucks, but oh well—I still have a few weeks here.

(14:12) – Fucking robocallers. Thanks for letting them stay legal, Ajit Pai, you piece of shit.

(14:59) – My life would be so much better if I was Osaka from Azumanga Daioh.

(15:18) – I hope my boss doesn’t do a one-to-one chat with me today—I just don’t fucking feel like it.

For whatever reason, my boss and another coworker keep talking, and they sound like a couple of doomsday preppers—they keep talking about canned food and stuff like that.

(15:30) – Home stretch!

(15:34) – What is a tuteo and voseo verb form? I need to learn more Spanish.

(16:25) – I’m about to get the fuck out.