duck-shaped pain

Actually, work in the tasks to do and tasks completed sense has been fine. Sort of dull, sort of busy, but nothing to really complain about.

But I can always find something, and the number-one topic in my mind right now is L., my awful co-worker, otherwise known as Evil Stupid Lady.

Prior to yesterday, I hadn't spent time with ESL for about three weeks. I was in Denver for two of them, and when I came back, she was gone for a week, so all was honey and bliss. But since she returned, storms of sourness and discontent hang over the office as she makes up for lost time.

On Monday, I dressed up for work, which is sort of a meaningless term, since in my head, "dressed up" means "wore tights." I wore the brown dress I bought in Denver during H. and I's mall fest, and it looks better with tights than with bare legs, especially when it's 30 degrees outside. Anyway, since I was wearing a new dress, had a new hair cut, [3] had re-dyed my hair and also gotten a full night's sleep, I was feeling pretty good. Then I walked in the door and there was ESL, acting all happy to see me and all.

"Oh, hello," she said to me. "Oh, that's a nice dress."

"Thank you," I replied.

"Where did you get it?" she asked.

I told her where, and she seemed genuinely surprised, replying thusly:

"Oh, I didn't think they sold clothes big enough for you there."

You might wonder why I didn't hit her. I was too stunned to hit anyone at that point, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, there was no one else around to react for me. It's not like I'm enormous or something, but ESL always does her best to make me feel that way.

After that, the day was pretty much shot. Ain't no way I'm feeling good or sociable or generous after that.

Today, no remarks about my appearance, just a lot of passive-aggressive mindfuckery.

We're in the midst of trying to put out a bunch of reports about some wells we drilled for a client this fall. [4] Thankfully for myself (and unhappily for others), I've been gone for most of this process. But I came back to horror stores, whispered to me in the hall by those not ESL, tales of things printed much too early, files lost, erroneous data, all sorts of mini-crises that they thought I might be amused by (or, alternately, felt guilty about -- it might not have happened had I been there, you know -- but I refused to feel this way).

Since I hadn't been around to proof things for a while, The Employer asked me to take a look at one of the reports this morning. "Take a look" is a pretty casual term, really -- this was a pretty thorough job, requiring to dig up the original field data and check everything line by line.

I grabbed a copy of the report, assuming that they were identical, since that's the way things have operated the two years that I've been working here -- all copies of each report are assembled simultaneously, so they'll all be in the same state of completion or disarray at the same time. Well, I was wrong. Sometime in the last two weeks, ESL decided that one of these reports was the Master Copy, [5] the only copy in which any corrections or revisions can be made. I was not told about this, and there was no note or other mark to indicate which of the copies was the master.

So I grabbed a copy, the wrong copy, and started working on it. I found many errors -- things wildly misspelled, data entered incorrectly, and a few things that were total stumpers. Two and a half hours elapsed, and I was only a third of the way through the report.

ESL sat quietly across the room from me during this entire time, doing something vaguely productive, perhaps. The Employer was in his office while I was working, on the phone, as usual.

He got off the phone and walked in the room to fetch something, and right after he walked in, ESL pointed at me and said, "She's not working off the master copy like she's supposed to!" It was a real tattle-tale moment, like I had pushed her off the swings or stolen her pudding cup or something.

Mind you, this is the first mention I have ever heard of there being a master copy. I pointed this out, and she said, "Well, there is a master copy, and it's in on J.'s desk." (J. is one of the other scientists in the building.)

This statement suggests that she knew that the master copy was in there all this time, and she had been aware that I had not been working on the right copy for the last two and a half hours, yet had not said anything about it until now.

She came over and looked at the work I had been doing. "Now see, all these corrections have already been made in the master copy, so you've been wasting everyone's time for nothing," she said.

No, if you were aware that I had been unknowingly been doing this for so long and did nothing to stop it, I think you were the one who wasted everyone's time. Had you said right at the beginning, "oh, you need to work off the master copy," that would have been okay. But not after I've put so much careful effort into what I was going.

The Employer didn't say much, just a stammered, "Oh yes, master copy." Later, he told me that he realized I hadn't been told about it, and that all was well.

So I went and fetched the correct copy and started over. I usually try to rise above such things, but there was one small victory to be had here, and it was that none of the errors I had found had been caught by anyone else. It was the bad sort of good feeling.

So that's how the last two days have gone. Tomorrow and Thursday, we don't have the mediating influence of The Employer, so we'll see how it goes.

I am reminded of something that ESL told me when she started. "I don't like working with other women, because they're always so catty and evil and backstabbing." Hmmm�maybe it's just you.

Such has been the drama at work this week that finding out that I have to spend $80 on a used Spanish textbook was not a trauma. Yes, I went and priced textbooks yesterday, and I have to buy a lot of them. Most of them are not expensive, save for the aforementioned tome, but in such a quantity, it adds up. I have two classes this semester (unless I drop one of them for unrelated reasons) that each have seven required books. I don't mind too much, but goodbye leisure reading, at least until June.

So that I don't totally depress everyone, I close with some cute dog pictures. My dad bought himself a digital camera for Christmas, so I borrowed it to take some pictures. So here is Hoover, my dog, in various poses. Also making a cameo appearance is my trash can.

(Click on the pictures for a larger version)

[1] Although, who couldn't use some more fun-time goodness? [2]

[2] Possibly the stupidest footnote I've ever written.

[3] A really good haircut, one where the stylist did exactly what I wanted and then also did some things that I didn't know I wanted. There's a picture here, if you'll pardon the odd expression -- one epidemic to all those who try to take their own picture with a digital camera while sitting in the dark.

[4] Longtime readers might notice that producing reports seems to be the only thing my company does, and they would be more or less correct. It's a real three-ring-binder-stuffed-with-crap factory.

[5] Unfortunately, the rest of the reports were not referred to as the slave copies, which would have been at least mildly pleasing.

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