Jihad, I’m gettin’ mad

I need to vent, and I’m sorry that you’re gonna have to listen.

I’m need to vent about my job, and that’s something I haven’t felt a visceral need to do since my time at C&S. When I took over as the Receiving Manager at my B&N, I actually used to bring my work home with me a lot. Mostly organizational stuff that I would hammer out in Excel on my own time. That was a my choice, though. Now my work is following me home, unbidden. I’m so fricked off that I can’t stop thinking about how fricked off I am. I could waste more prose on colorful descriptions of my mental stress level at the moment, but I think Mr. Kevin Bacon could dance it for you much better.

Almost as a rule, I haven’t made a habit out of writing about my job. Unless your job involves flying with jet packs, dinosaurs, or, I don’t know, being surrounded by Legos, then your job is very boring and discussing any part of it at length is akin to a non-stop bitch-slap to your poor readers. The minutia of your job is generally not at all entertaining, though it may occasionally be hilarious. However, if that hilarity comes at the expense of a co-worker, then really, that’s their story to tell, not yours, and people have been fired from their jobs for deciding it was their job to tell those stories.

No, my observations on the job-as-blog-fodder thing have always been that people tend to write about what they hate about their jobs. I don’t blame them. Venting is cathartic. You should see some of the journal I kept in high school. (no, not diary. Journal. Only girls keep diaries.) But posting it all for the world to see? That just strikes me as… I don’t know… begging for attention. You’re mad and you just want someone to agree with you, to validate you, to say that you’re right. Well, I already blog, so I’ve got the begging for attention thing covered. And I don’t need any validation, because I already know I’m right. So nyah.

In a nutshell, I’m being asked to change parts of how my receiving room operates so that it falls in line better with company standards. I’ve spent the last two years tweaking my operations to the point that we exceed all the standards by which we’re measured, and not at the expense of any other area of the store. My quandary is that now I have to make changes that will stamp an ugly, muddy boot on those last two years and I’m going to have to put on a smile while I’m doing it and make like it’s a good thing. My integrity is suffering a divide by zero error.

How does one reconcile themselves in the face of, well, insanity? I think I need a clone, or perhaps an alter ego that could do my job in my stead and not be bothered by the contradictions that are giving me hot flashes. (Okay, fine, call it a diary then. Whatever.) This, um, semi-me could go about his day doing all kinds of things and not be concerned about their obvious consequences, therefore taking that burden off of me. He could:

• take a toaster in the shower
• touch a hot stove
• go swimming right after he eats
• dress up like a lemming and go for a hike

Failing that, I’ve always got these ruby slippers as a backup.

Mad Dog, you can stop laughing now.