I have never been so glad to see 2:00 in the afternoon arrive as I was today.
Close the books on this one, boys, it’s quittin’ time on a Friday…
These last several weeks have been a constant rollercoaster ride, but this week took that madness just that little bit further.
For one thing, my boss was off doing all-day boss-stuff in a different state for the first half of the week, which coincidentally was right when ALL HELL was breaking loose across ALL the tenants.
Nothing I couldn’t handle, Dog be praised, but it was exhausting. It was one of those weeks where it felt like everybody was just sitting there, gazing intently at the screen, waiting for my little light to go green indicating I was online.
{ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!}
Same thing when I tried to grab even a few minutes to stuff some food into my face.
{ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!}
Eighteen messages blinking forlornly at me. “hey, when u get back, PING ME. URGENT.”
Plus, the meetings. OHmyGAHD, the meetings. I honestly think I spent about 85% of my time in meetings from Monday through the end of Thursday.
Many of them meetings that were not on my calendar when I first got to work in the morning.
In related news, I absolutely despise That Thing where you’re sitting there minding your own business, possibly thinking, whew, finally, a little BREAK in the meetings, I can ACTUALLY get some WORK done now, I’ve got, like, 45 whole minutes until the next one starts!,
…and then suddenly, a meeting reminder pops up as the ‘new email’ sound goes off and that’s right, somebody just dragged you into a meeting that is already going on, which is NEVER good news…
And. It.Just. Kept. Happening., all week. AND-AND-AND! Why were they dragging me into it? BECAUSE! They wanted me to just walk in and basically do presentations about increasingly esoteric parts of systems I don’t technically work on.
{throws laptop across the room}
I’m sorry, we are experiencing some technical issues, please try again later…
And then there was all kinds of Denizen Drama – “come get me I’m sick,” dentist appointments, “can you give me and a few of my friends rides to everywhere, and then back again?” and “hey, can my friend come over because {long, sad story about how her parents can’t even right now and she needs food, shelter and the loving presence of a benevolent parental figure so why the @^*&@ would you have them come HERE, you little twerp?!…er…I mean, of course, darling, I’d be delighted to pretend to be a benevolent, loving mother-figure…}”, AND, being informed of Major School Events the night before they happened, which naturally is after I agreed to swap on-call duties for that night which is why EVERYTHING blew up about half an hour before I was supposed to run him over there for The Big Event…
{rubs temples}
Sometimes, I really do question my life choices. And those times usually coincide with exactly this kind of thing, where something happens in production and I have to drop everything and rush around like a crazy-person dealing with it.
It makes it really hard to maintain a consistent work/life balance, you know? When the system is crashing, I can hardly tell ten thousand users who are trying to provide services for hundreds of thousands of customers that they’ll all just have to lump it, because I’m busy right now.
I coulda been, like, an accountant. Or a bartender. But ooooooooh no, I wanted to go into IT…
All of which was capped off by my boss casually tossing out, “Hey, so, this bunch of boss-stuff that I currently do? Yeahhhhhh, I’m gonna need you to start taking that over for me. And also this stuff. Actually, we need to talk, because I have some plans for you and I think you’ll really like it because, well, there’s a lot of growth opportunity if you want it but anyway, we’ll talk later…”
…and then vanishing so we never actually chatted about it.
Great.
It’s either nothing, or it’s huge.
…I’ll just sit here coming up with increasingly unlikely scenarios all weekend then, shall I…?
Sigh.
Yeah.
I’m really glad this week is over now.
Turn off the alarm. Bring on the junk food.
I am beyond ready.
