Happy Birthday, sj!

Happy Big 0-ending Milestone Type Anniversary to Bev & DH!

Waiting-ma to Erin, and quick resolution to Kristin's payment issues.

I need a nap and I need motivation to do stuff, but I don't have a lot of time to do both. A friend of mine wants to know if I can massage her and her boyfriend tonight and Do Not Want! but feel like I should do it anyway. Still haven't decided. Ugh.

GC, thanks for the Momo pics. Such a sweetie girl, little burrito kitty.

The Izzard riff had me cackling. I have Circle, don't like it as much--I have to get Dressed to Kill. Must.

You guys need your I-9s notarized?

Huh.

We don't do that.

From way long ago:

J'ai tué le président du Paraguay avec une fourchette.

... comment-allez vous?

Aha, now I have this desire to translate all my favorite Grosse Pointe Blank quotes into French.

Have I mentioned that divorce is a pain in the ass? I really don't recommend it. Years later, I'm still dealing with bullshit legalities, deed transfers, and name change issues. ARGH.

Hivemind lawyer types--does anyone know how I go about getting an official copy of my divorce decree with the court stamp and such?

I need to process the release forms (esp. background check)

dear large private university, east coast. Pay me more money now or I will let it be known that you put me in contact with children before the background check was completed.

Sincerely yours, the Internet.

Oops. Didn't mean to be a threadkill!

Motivation~ma d. Hey, we figured out a way to make the upstairs room cooler.

I feel like I just got hit by a 2 x 4. And I can't stop crying. And I'm eating cold leftover spaghetti with no sauce and thinking I might barf.

Also, I really really REALLY REALLY please do NOT need Craigslist links.

You know how my office is going to 10-hour days? *I* won't be, because my hours (and, correspondingly, paycheck) just got cut back to 32 hours a week.

Let's ignore for the moment the part where I was hired lo these many years ago as a salaried employee, so I don't understand how they can "cut me back" to 32 hours (and give me a corresponding pay cut). I'm not hourly, have never been *told* I was hourly, but TPTB treat everyone as hourly when it suits their purposes.

Anyway, I can't think about that right now.

Three months ago I got pulled into a meeting about how I "wasn't working fast enough." I was never given specific benchmarks for how much work I should have been completing, although, to be fair, I didn't follow up and demand said benchmarks.

So today I got pulled into a meeting with Incompetent!boss, mean!sort-of boss, Big!Boss, and Big!Boss's daughter (who is our entire HR department).

Incompetent!boss told me I still wasn't working fast enough, mean!sort-of boss told me that I wasn't doing a good enough job on the things I *was* completing, and Big!Boss and his daughter just....listened.

Incompetent!boss told me that I was being cut back to 32 hours, which is going to be really obvious next week when everyone is working 10-hour days. WTF am I supposed to tell people? "Work harder, or they'll cut your hours, too?"

The idea, from what I can tell, is that because I wasn't completing enough work in 40 hours, cutting me back to 32 is somehow going to...make me...get MORE work....done. (?) No, it doesn't make sense to me, either.

But mean!sort-of boss even said "We expect you to get as much done in 32 hours as you've been doing in 40, and you really need to do even more than that."

Because THAT'S fair, and makes ALL kinds of sense.

And she said that in front of Big!Boss and his daughter, who didn't seem to have a problem with the insane troll logic.

I asked if we could set a date to re-visit my performance and assess whether I could go back to 40 hours, and mean!sort-of boss said, "Well, we realized that we were getting things done on time even with your lack of input, so we probably don't need you for 40 hours any more."

Hand to god, she said that. In front of Big!Boss.

Mean!sort-of boss also said that I obviously wasn't editing thoroughly because I didn't track my changes in Word. I replied with the fact that SHE TOLD ME NOT TO, SEVERAL TIMES. Her reply? "Well, it doesn't matter, because when I look over the manuscript, I can just tell that you didn't do much to it."

Hand to god, again, she said that, in front of Big!Boss.

It was a no-win situation, because there was no way I could argue back without looking like a baby. What could I say? "Oh, you can just *magically* TELL by looking at a Word doc that doesn't have changes tracked?" That would make me look like an asshole. It's TRUE, because what she said IS bullshit -- if I didn't track changes, how can she seriously tell *everything* that I did and didn't change?

But it doesn't matter that it's true, because it would still make me look like a petty asshole who's grasping at straws.

My problem, of course, is that now I'm only getting paid for 32 hours a week (despite being hired as a salaried employee), and I can handle the pay cut for a couple of months *IF* I know that I'd go back to 40 hours. I can't do 32 hours indefinitely.

My one and only saving grace is Big!Boss's daughter. After the meeting, I talked to her privately just to double-check some HR things, like, does docking my hours mean my benefits are going to be decreased? (No.)

She's very much on my side, and said that she doesn't see any reason why -- assuming I bring my work back in line with some invisible benchmark -- I wouldn't go back to 40 hours after a couple of months.

And I brought up what mean!sort-of boss said, (continued...)