Coworkers and those who want to slap them!

Ok so I very luckily landed a great job that I love. The people are awesome, it's a startup environment (though with actual money behind it) and a great product. At the same time I was hired, a woman I'll call Audra was also hired. She's the same age as my mom - that's cool, whatever. She obviously had to have some kind of skills in customer service or inside sales because she has NO computer skills at all. None. Nada. Can use email, can use Word (barely) and can do little more than type a column of numbers in Excel. Now at this job we use a CRM tool called salesforce.com. And we use it extensively - every day, all day. She has NO experience using this tool and let me tell you - fuckups abound. We've been there almost 90 days and every day it is something else - she cannot get one order out the door without it being wrong. Not all her fault, surely, but every single customer has a problem. And it's all a big drama deal every time. So she literally cannot get her day to day work done because she puts out fires all day. So I do all the extra sales work, extra accounting work that has to get done, invoicing, special projects, all of it. She does not do one extra thing to help. And any time there is something to be done after hours - she can't make it for some reason. She likes to pull the "old lady" card and I told her to knock it off. That's reverse ageism and if she wants to be treated like everyone else stop saying that. But that's all she's stopped saying. She fucking talks fucking constantly - just yapppppping about nothing in particular and everything in general. And when she gets nervous or excited, she's a fucking fishwife - a shrew. I can't stand it. It's a small place and we are in cubes but I'm ready to kill her. STFU already I'm trying to work! Maybe she's losing her hearing? I have no idea but I have to shush her, like 10 times a day.

And another thing! She calls her boss for the smallest of questions. I would say she calls him no less than 6 times a day. I can go 3 days without talking to my boss - helps he is in a remote office somewhere...but my god the guy is a salesman, he doesn't have time for the piddly shit she calls him about.

We were pretty much expected to be on our own in about 2 weeks and I've mastered the job easily and am looking to do more things within the company but my god if I have to sit next to her for the next 4 years before IPO I am going to lose my shit.

She's a nice lady but can't keep up and should have just stayed where she was.

To quit or not to quit, that is the question.

Ok, here's the thing. My parents made me take piano lessons from the time I was 8 until I was almost 18. I like to play, but hate to practice. Surprise - the Kid is the exact same way. She took some lessons for 2 years at a foofy music school near NGFX's house but did not learn to play a note. So last year I signed her up with a very nice lady near my house where she learned the names of the notes and how to play them. But she has wanted to quit since June last year. I signed her up again but she is miserable. And not fake miserable, really unhappy. And I know how she feels. And I want to let her quit. I'm not a fan of quitting but in this case - where the teacher has a waiting list and where some other student would practice 30 minutes (minimum) a day and give 110%, I can kind of get on board with it. Problem: her father is giving me shit about it. My "I don't feel involved" (Because you moved almost an hour away with your trophy wife to your $600K house, ya ok) is being obstinate about it. I can't figure out why, exactly. Of course neither of us wants her to give up something musical but she is in chorus at school and she likes to just play for the heck of it. Oh yeah and it costs a ton - went up $50/month over last year. It's not like a team sport where others are depending on her. And I told her she could not take lessons for anything else right now. So NGFX and I are in an email pissing contest and I suppose I have to break down and call him today because he has not called here and he will be all sensitive and shit (fucking spare me, you pussy, you left) and deal with it. So now it's weighing on my daughter and it's weighing on me. He says "why do you get to make all the decision" - UM - because I am the custodial parent, I am her mother and I take her feelings into consideration.

The Kid keeps asking when she can make her own decisions and I think this could be one of them. Might she regret it later and blame me - of course, I fully expect it and I can say, "well, when you were 9 and wanted to make your own decisions, this was one of them."

Honestly I wish her father would just drop off the face or move to Fiji or some such.

I'm Baaaack!

I went to dinner with my awesome girlfriends last week. My friend Janet is semi retiring after a year long battle with some health issues and hell, why not? My other friend Christine says "you are a fucking riot, you should blog". Oh yeah, I have a blog and it's inactive, so wtf, start it up again.

Because I am so f'n pissed at NGFX that I can't be rational. So where else, right?

For those of you new to the program - my ex told me he wanted a divorce - one week after I popped the Kid out. Yep, we'd been married 10 years and he had his midlife crisis right on schedule. Nice that we had a business a house, a life that I thought was pretty good. Yeah, did he suck in the sack - absolutely....but my life was pretty good.

Anyhoo - moved on and up and married a great guy and the Kid is now 9. And NGFX is now feeling - because HE moved an hour away - that he is less than "involved". So I think I will start calling him at all hours when she does the most mundane of things, just to see how involved he really wants to get. He goes through these cycles - when his business is off, when his "trophy wife" is being a twat - he decides to take it out on me. And when my daughter asked me tonight "why did he marry you in the first place, Papa should be my real father" - I ask myself the same question.

Fuck you, asshole. You left, you moved away - just keep sending the checks on time.

Betrayal of trust

In my small community we have a regional middle school and high school which serves four local towns. In the middle school this week, a veteran teacher was indicted on 10 counts of child pornography. Video was found on his home computer of little girls, as well as pictures. The investigation had been ongoing for more than a year, while the teacher was allowed to continue working in the school with 6,7, and 8th grade girls and boys. Apparently he had no idea he was being investigated until they showed up on his doorstep with a warrant.

As I think about this issue and try to look beyond my disgust for this person and his behavior, I think about the kids - past and present - he taught and coached. Many many students, former and current, posted on line on the news articles about what a great guy he is - a mentor, a great teacher, an awesome coach - and that they won't ever believe this of him. This teacher/coach had a great positive impact on many students throughout the years.

As I read the posts, it was interesting to see how opposite the postings from adults were - almost 100% negative - very little talk about innocence until proven guilty. I guess once the feds catch you with kiddie porn, the jig is pretty much up. Fortunately (?) his victims were not members of the student population.

But I thought about my nieces and their friends who are in this middle school and other kids I know and these kids who posted - their trust has been completely shattered by this guy. They looked up to him, they trusted him, they went to him with their problems. And for the most part right now they are all defending him. But once the reality sinks in, how does this experience color their futures and how does it not jade them and how does it impede them from trusting another teacher, another coach, another "great guy"?

Besides the obvious depravity of this person's actions, he obviously never even considered what would happen to him, his family - they are far reaching throughout this community and neighboring ones as well - and to his students. It's quite a shame that this person - a pillar of the community, a well liked teacher and coach, a family man (!) has broken the hearts and spirits of those who looked up to him.

I'm a bad liar? WTF?

So the kid has been fibbing...nothing major but easily caught out little white lies. Of course dipshit is in a huff over it, but I know it's a stage and she is SO bad at it. But damn if she did not look me straight in the eye and lie to my face. Which brings back memories of how I used to do the same thing to my parents. And my mother told me this morning that I was a shitty liar! WHAT? I was a great liar....all those times we said we were going to the movies and we drove around the beach all night looking for boys. All the times I said "no I didn't smoke, it was Dana"....c'mon. No way she caught onto that. All the times I said I was sleeping over Nancy's house and we ended up God knows where at a party - (except for that time with the guy with one hand, but that's another story)....she never guessed. She was always asleep when I got home...

Mothers always know...dammit.

Twilight.....

My friend Colleen bought the Twilight series of books when she was going in for her operation so she'd have something to read during recovery - and my niece has read them so what the hell - I'll start the series. And there's hoopla over it - I mean, I see the teenage girls losing their shit over it and all...that's fine. And I started the first book this morning and it seems an easy read and pretty good. And another girl (read: 35 y.o. woman) at my office is obsessed with this fictional vampire, so how bad can it be?

So the kid says to me this morning - "Mary saw that movie". Mary is in second grade. Mary should not be watching movies with vampires, IMHO. I know that the kid never will be.

WTF is wrong with people? I have another friend who took her 7 yo to see Harry Potter - the 4th one, where people DIE. And she wonders why Sara didn't sleep for a week. Stop trying to be friends with your kids, people. You are their mothers, forchrissake.

The Little Sleep

I just finished a "can't put down" book by Paul Tremblay called The Little Sleep. Set in Southie, it's a detective story. Reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, with a little Robert Parker thrown in and a great setting, it's a book you can read in one sitting. Hope Tremblay comes out with another installment in the series...soon!