Grrr. I’m so annoyed!

First of all…trying to get home last night, I was stuck behind some particularly slow and annoying drivers who could not decide what lane to be in or how to turn on their blinkers when they did finally make a decision about where they needed to go. Getting through a left hand turn at a light one block away from the freeway, I turned wide to avoid being stuck behind the annoying drivers any more and got caught in a police trap. Two motorcycle cops were parked on the side of the road just waving car after car into their roadside snare. Apparently, “someone” had complained about wide-turning-drivers on this particular block, so the cops were taking a day and were doling out tickets. Don’t get me wrong, the cop was totally nice enough and had me on my way in a short amount of time, but being wrong, and getting caught for it, ticked me off enough that I hated his ‘letting me off’ for not having signed my registration…which he COULD have cited me for. Bah. He just seemed sarcastic in my own head. Jon told me later that the cop didn’t cite me for that, as well as for not having a current insurance card in the car, because if I contested the charge and took it to the judge to show him my signature and the current card, the cop would be forced to be in court to accept my claims. That just added to my annoyance because it meant that the cop WAS picking on me in a way that kept him from getting involved. He may not have really had a snarky tone of voice while standing by my car, but I bet he more than made his quota for tickets this month! Grr.

Then, just today, I get a forwarded email from my boss with a note from the woman who does our timecard’s at work. Now, no offence to this woman, she’s always been polite enough to my face, but she’s a complete Nazi shark behind everyone’s back! EVERYONE in the office has Jolene stories about how that woman has terrorized us and kept us in fear. She’s so stern and correct all the time, and no one has ever been able to call her on it, because she IS correct, even if she’s stern. She’s sugar in person, but her emails are total acid. A couple of months ago, I did finally catch her on something that she was being particularly pointed about. How satisfying it was to realize that the issues she kept harping on were due to her own slip of memory. I finally found the problem and pointed it out to her, and her harping emails finally stopped. Ahh. She actually came to my cubicle, put her hand on my shoulder, and apologized for her mistake. Whoah. It was unheard of and unusual, so I shared it with all the other ladies here that wished they could get something…Anything!…to hold over Jolene in response to her being so tough to work with. Maybe she’s been gunning for me since then, or maybe she’s just slipped back into her stern correctness, but the email this morning…again, the email to my BOSS, not to me…said that I had forgotten to submit my timecard to her on Monday, so to make sure that I at least got a paycheck, Jolene had averaged my time from the last three pay periods and any discrepancy would have to be resolved on the next timecard. At first glance, she was doing me a favor, right? She made sure that I got paid. Great. Thanks. I really do appreciate that. But…here’s my question…How much time did she have to spend, looking up my past paychecks, averaging out my time, submitting it incorrectly with the knowledge that it would have to be backed out and fixed in two more weeks, which is just more work in the end, and then sending an email to my boss to let her know what had been done because I’d forgotten my timecard on Monday? Any guesses? Even if she’s REALLY good at her job, maybe it took her ten minutes not counting what she’ll have to do in two weeks to correct the discrepancies. Ten minutes, right? Okay…and all together now…how much time would it have taken her to shoot me an email on Monday afternoon to say, “Hey, Lori. I haven’t seen your timecard yet. Can you send that to me today?” HONESTLY!!!! How much work did this woman put herself through just so that she could feel smug and superior? Yes, it’s my fault. I forgot. I know I’m totally in the wrong and I’m a big grown-up girl with a job and a life and the brains to remember to submit my own timecard. I know. But, COME ON! Really!? I copied Jolene and my boss on an email apologizing for my mistake and I attached my timecard, which I’d filled out on Thursday of last week…so it WAS done, I’d just forgotten to send it to her. Then, a few minutes later I get another email from my boss telling me that maybe I should put a reminder on the calendar so that her staff doesn’t look unorganized to Jolene. Ugh! My BOSS is scared of her too! Or at least annoyed that I incurred Jolene’s attention on Kristy and my stupidity makes Kristy look bad too. Fair enough. But, GAH!!!! I’m having visions of walking into Jolene’s office and having it out with her. In my head, I’m calm and clear and brilliant and she can’t argue with the logic of my case, and she completely changes her attitude. But, then I wake up and I know that it wouldn’t end in any other way but with her smiling serenely with the knowledge that she’d kept me firmly in my place and let me know that it was not her job to remind children like me of their scheduled due dates.

Why do people enjoy being smug more than they care to try being compassionate? We need to bring back all those old adages about vinegar and honey, and the golden rule and such. How much better of a driver would I have been…how much more appreciative of the community of officers…if the cop last night had let me off with a warning? How much better of an atmosphere would we have in the office if Jolene just showed the smallest empathy?…People would love Jolene for her attempts to make things easier on everyone instead of harboring the resentment that everyone does. Why do people not realize really how simple those kinds of things are?! I seriously feel that having to prove your superiority like that is like circling an entire block to the right because there’s a piece of gum in your path on the left. We’d all get further and feel better if you’d just step over the gum. Being human, I realize that the things annoying me right now are my own fault…so really I’m annoyed with myself underneath it all…I get that…I’m the gum in Jolene’s path…but thank you for allowing me my ranting on the idiots I’m annoyed with on the surface.

At least there were free cocoa and donuts for employees of the building this morning.

Although…speaking of adages…if everything comes in threes and I had the ticket and Jolene…can I count burning my tongue on the cocoa as my #3? I don’t want to think about what else it could be.

~ by bylorena on October 29, 2008.