Friday, July 22, 2011

TGI Friday What Fucking Ever

I think I have run out of patience.  I'm hoping this isn't altogether, or forever, because that will make the rest of my life exceedingly difficult.  But I know for sure it is for this week.  And unfortunately, I will have to continue to interact with humans during the course of the upcoming weekend.  So I will either replenish my reserves during whatever meager downtime I have over the weekend, or my head will explode.

I think it started out this morning, when I went to leave the house for work only to discover that Linda had once again placed a whole bunch of crap on the kitchen counter that Meredi had obviously just cleaned off.  This particular location seems to be the collective point for all of the things Linda is either to lazy to put away or has no place for.  My parents have a counter top like that.  When I notice that Meredi has recently done a big downstairs clean, I remove all objects of mine that seem askew or out of place, because I truly appreciate when she cleans down there, as I have neither the patience or the rationality to clean down there because I am not the one messing it up.  Neither is Meredi, and I have my own moments of compassion, but if Linda would just pick her goddamn stuff up after she initially sets it down there, or puts away the food she's purchased at the store, or replace the dog vitamin supplements in a non-visible location after using them, I wouldn't get so aggravated.  But she seems to have no sense of empathy for the fact that two other humans have to live in and around the messes she makes, and that it might be nice if she cleaned up after herself.  I am almost getting to the point of voicing my disgust over the state of our shared bathroom.  If I get one more of her long, black, nappy hairs stuck between my toes, I might lose it.

And then I got to work today.  I am supposed to arrive at 7:30am to allow time for myself to get the kitchen set up, and to make the three pots of coffee I am required to brew every day that I come into work.  It is nowhere in my job description that I am to let people into the building who are arriving for an 8am appointment with one of our tenants.  We have one tenant (the lady who complained about me previously) who has 8am meetings on a regular basis, and she has been told that it is not my job to man the desk and let people into the building for her meeting (which is not actually related to the business she runs here in the building), and that if she wants to be hospitable to her visitors, she needs to stand at the door to let them in.  It's not my job.  That wasn't this morning, though.  Another financial adviser had set up an 8am meeting with clients.  The door to the building automatically unlocks at 8am on the dot, every morning.  People relentlessly come up to the door (even people who work here on a daily basis!) and attempt to throw the door open (it doesn't latch), only to discover that it's still locked, and then either knock on the door or rummage around for their key-card to get into the building.  It's the early-arrivers that drive me nuts.  These clients tried the door at 7:57am, and I was so tempted to just sit there until the door unlocked and let them look at me and wonder why I'm not getting up to let them in.  There seems to be a simple solution to this problem, right?  Placement of a sign on the door that says that the doors don't unlock until 8am.  However, the building owners and my boss have agreed that a sign with that information on it might actually prove useful to those intending to cause harm, and therefore no sign has been placed.  One day, I really am going to just sit at the damn desk and watch people watch me, wondering why I'm not getting up to open the door for them.

One of the biggest points of annoyance for me at my job are the clients of one particular law firm.  I think I've previously bitched about this, but this week has been grating on my nerves to the point of raw.  This is one branch of a nation-wide law firm that specializes in divorces, further specializing in the male side of the divorce.  Almost all of their clients are men.  When a client looks to obtain counsel in a domestic matter, and they call this particular firm, they get the firm's corporate office.  It is through the corporate office that appointments are set up, not through this location.  Apparently what happens is that when corporate sets the appointments with the potential clients, they tell the clients to go to this building, and that the office is in suite 301.  However, the way the whole thing works is that new clients are requested to fill out informational paperwork before they are brought up to confer with the attorneys, and I am the one who has that paperwork.  But because the potential clients have been told to go to suite 301, they don't stop at the desk to check in with me.  I understand this dynamic, I really do.  In order to facilitate smoother operations in terms of this dynamic, I created a sign that sits on the counter of my desk informing visitors that if they have an appointment with this firm, to stop and check in with me first.  However, as they have not been receiving new clients in the last couple of months, and because my boss thinks the sign is too big (of course it's huge, I want them to SEE IT and READ IT before they walk past me, get lost in the building and have to come back and ask me where the hell 301 is since it doesn't have a number on the door), we've removed the sign.  Gloriously, this week has included a slew of new clients needing to fill out the paperwork, but no one from the law firm informed us at the desk of this, and so the sign has not been replaced.  I have had no less than three people walk past me today, go up to the third floor, walk around, and come back to ask me where they are supposed to be going.  What the hell.  When I walk into a building, wherein a reception desk is located literally AT THE ENTRANCE, I stop at the desk just in case I need to check in.  Out of courtesy, and intelligence.  It also doesn't help that these people, the clients, often have no idea what the name of the law firm is and so they come up to the desk and go, "I have an appointment with a lawyer," and then don't know the lawyer's name.  Guess what?  I have 13 attorneys in my building!  If you don't have a name or a company name, you're shit out of luck.  Because I'm a reasonably intelligent individual, I can usually glean from the minimal information I'm given which attorney or law firm the person is supposed to be meeting with, but if I weren't, WHEW these guys would be in trouble!  It's incredibly inefficient and ass-backwards.  It makes me look stupid and unprofessional when I have to ask questions.

This day has literally creeped by.  I have been bored out of my mind pretty much all day long.  I watched a couple of movies (The Big Lebowski, which as it turns out I hadn't actually seen all of), and Ghostbusters 2.  I have read and read and read what feels like just about anything of interest to me on the internet, I finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and played about 12 games of Cubis.  I have a sort of work-buddy who is a paralegal for the only securities law attorney we have in the building, and she's really cool.  She's super nice, she's really compassionate, and she's totally sharp, and I love having conversations with her, for the most part.  But today, I have mostly just found her to be kind of annoying.  She's a pretty talkative lady, and usually I'm up for conversations about stupid people with her, but as the day has progressed, I have totally isolated myself because my mood has gotten so bad that I don't want to expose others to it.  Unfortunately, her boss left for the day at about 3pm, and as it is Friday afternoon, she is feeling overwhelmingly unmotivated (a feeling I more than share), but I just don't feel like talking.  And she does.  So I'm forced to converse.

So those are my points of contention for the day.  I know for a fact there will be more as I am going to my parents house for the evening and I am bound to be annoyed by something or everything there.  I'm still on the stupid cleanse, but I'm supposed to be doing a full cleanse tomorrow and as grumpy as it made me last time, I know it's going to be equally as bad this time and I'd really like to isolate, but unfortunately both of my sisters are working (a phrase I never thought I'd say) so I'm it for extra help for my parents with the kids.  So I'm assuming that's what I'll be doing for most of tomorrow.

Kill me now.  Suffice it to say, I'm not exactly looking forward to this weekend.  Hoping for a pleasant surprise.

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