Thursday, March 7, 2013

Worst. Birthday. Ever.

When you get past a certain age, you no longer expect fanfare or a parade on your birthday. You do, however, expect not to regret getting out of bed. On my birthday that was my first mistake.

Despite all the hype, no school districts in the tri-state area being open, and the federal government being closed, I had to work a full day. Almost everybody I know got a free day off but not me. I had been banking on having that day since I had been out late at the hockey game, was really overtired, and needed the sleep. Despite my shortage in leave, I really should have taken the day.

Between the weather and a big out of state conference, most people were out of the office or tele-working. Since so many people were out, most of the managers treated their staff to lunch. I’m more of a floater which means I do work for multiple departments. Despite that, 90% of my work is for one department. That manager took that department, save me, out to lunch where they dragged their feet for an extra half hour.

So I can process your paperwork, file paperwork for half of your people, clean up administrative nightmares your people make, do the boring bitch work nobody else wants to touch, and attend most of the meetings but you get to forget me on my birthday? Can’t imagine my lack of motivation to be super-employee.

I know my job isn’t big on employee morale. Two and a half years ago they canceled monthly birthday celebrations and casual Fridays out of spite (still haven’t gotten those back BTW). This is low, even for them.

It got to a point where I asked people to stop saying it was my birthday because if it was just Wednesday, it was less awful.

I went to bar trivia which was fine. I got a few happy birthdays and a few people said they would pay for me. It’s a nice offer but it didn’t happen and I didn’t expect it to. It didn’t make the day any worse. I don’t regret going. I didn’t crash my car on the way home. That’s all I was really shooting for.

13 is a number with which I have bad juju. I considered 6 to be a good number for me. My 26th birthday was just such a remarkable level of suck that I expect the next 12 months to be crap and 6 has been disqualified as having any sort of power.

Every year since I graduated college people have always said, “It will get better.” They have been all sorts of wrong. My professional life has completely stagnated and nothing I, or anyone else, have tried in the last 2+ years seem to make it better. Despite my best efforts, I cannot make myself care about dating again. I’m like a little kid about the dentist. Don’t want to, don’t have to, can’t make me.

Therefore, I not only expect the next 12 months to have no improvements on the current situation, I expect everything to get worse.

Some of you are saying, “That’s when everything turns around.” Y’all are full of it and need to watch less Full House. I’ve been hearing that for so long to no avail that the next person who says it gets slapped. Unlike sitcoms, real life is under no obligation to get better.

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