back in the shit
Well, what fun! I'm back to being stressed and annoyed at work. I had been thinking 13 parks in 10 days was kind of exhausting and I needed a break, time to go back to work! And sure, today is my second day back to work, but it's sort of like it only just registered to stores today that I am back and now I am getting more annoying emails I struggle to keep up with while doing regular work, with 260+ emails I still haven't even been able to look at. This is mostly because the vast majority of yesterday consisted of keying a bunch of weekly floral skus I needed to send in an immediate batch in the morning because Cathryn had been too busy to get to them last week; and catching up on my backlog of receiving paperwork in the afternoon after lunch.
This would all be so much easier if we still had only, say, 10 stores like we did six years ago. Then Cate the new CEO came along and she decided to expand rapidly, bringing in another five stores over the next five years. That's 50% growth, and it turns out dealing with 10 stores emailing me multiple times each day, which was hard enough to keep up as it was, is a lot easier than dealing with 15 stores emailing me multiple times each day. Okay, they don't usually all email me about the same thing, but you get the idea. Fuck, more than enough of them do. I'm tired of it!
Whaaa, whaa, whaa. I'm such a whiner.
How about I do it some more! This would also be a lot easier to deal with if I could keep the stresses of work versus the stresses of home entirely separated, which is impossible while working from home. Another thing I'm sick of, truly deeply, after months of being basically fine with it—now I am truly over it. I long for the days of an office job where I don't have to contend with yowling and/or puking cats, or a spouse pacing around the house shouting at his own work benefits insurance company. And, sure, there were annoying distractions in an open floor plan office as well, particularly when there would be three separate conversations going within ear shot at once. But at least at the office, if absolutely necessary, I could just move to one of the private phone rooms and get some peace and quiet. I don't have that option here.
Also, it would be one thing if I could just attend to my backlog of work in peace. But no, I keep getting bombarded by email from POS at stores, tons of them for really comparatively unimportant things like updating sizes on shelf tags. Leave me alone!
Should I mention the recent news that experts no longer expect the U.S. to reach "herd immunity," the magical buzzword constantly used in terms of endgame goals about a year ago? It's not like this isn't possible, mind you. It's because this country is full of gullible fucking morons who hear stupid shit from people who are not doctors or epidemiologists and so they resist getting the vaccine shots.
I'm kind of in a mood right now. Can you tell?
Granted, the details in the story behind these clickbait headlines are more nuanced: failing to reach herd immunity doesn't mean we won't still ease back into some semblance of normalcy. It still doesn't change the fact that resistance to both mask wearing, especially in the early days, and to vaccines, are literally what's making this entire pandemic last longer than necessary. And right now, truly the key to getting out of this is vaccinations, and we have people insisting it's "experimental" (it literally isn't) and dangerous (it's not). But then, I'm not sure what else when we can expect in a time when people who literally believe the Earth is actually flat are not just outlier whack jobs, but have found a community.
Sometimes I wonder how truly dispiriting society will be, at this rate, in another 20 or 30 years, assuming I'm even still alive. It was an especially grim outlook when I thought President Fuckwit was going to win reelection. Biden winning was a huge relief, but really only in the sense that he'll generally implement policies which don't eradicate the effects of the abject stupidity we're talking about here, but rather will simply postpone them.
On the other hand, maybe, this too shall pass? Who the fuck knows. It's bizarre to think about how shockingly effective simple propaganda can be, and then wonder, why don't we just implement propaganda tactics with actually accurate and scientifically sound information? It's good to remind ourselves that widespread and organized misinformation campaigns are not new or specific to the internet—and societies have weathered them in the past and come around to more rational thought. I wonder what, say, the 19th century analog would be to a Flat-Earther Facebook group would be? I'm sure there was one. Or twenty.
All right, enough of that shit. I left work half an hour early yesterday so I could get to Northgate Mall on time via transit, and get to my eye doctor appointment on time. I hadn't had one since August of 2019. I naively thought I could get off the bus at the Northgate Transit Center and just walk through the mall—ha! I had no idea how far along they already are with tearing shit up with the massive construction projects underway. It was a good thing I arrived as early as I did, as I tried three different entrances only to be met with construction barriers, which seemed like mixed messaging with all the signage saying "stores and shops are open!" Generally speaking, only select ones, and only ones with their own entrances. Anyway, I walked all the way around the south and west sides of the mall, for the first time walking under the Northgate Light Rail station set to open later this year (I'm still excited about that; and hey—Shobhit could start taking Light Rail to work! I just realized that, although it would still be like half a mile walk to his store from the station). I made it to LensCrafters right on time.
It was the same eye doctor as before, a young woman I think may be of South Asian descent. I had nearly forgotten about her. My prescription is unchanged, so there's that. I had to go over to Big 5 to get the FSA card Shobhit still had in his own walled, drive his car back so I could make the payment with it before they closed at 6:00, then drive back to Big 5 again. But then when Shobhit got off work at 6 himself, he drove me to the PCC office so I could exchange receiver paperwork before we went the rest of the way home and watched the two-episode premiere of season three of Pose, which is ridiculously melodramatic but we watch and enjoy it anyway.
[posted 12:31 pm]