Help, My Boss May Be OCPD, too! January 31, 2008

I call her the matron mother. Friendly on the surface, but fiercely stern and controlling at the core. 
 
As an OCPD person myself, I like rules, but somehow when she makes them, I find myself seething with passive-aggressive rage.
 
Examples of work rules I could do without:

• Thou shalt not eat at your desk and store food anywhere but in the kitchen
• Thou shalt not use touch your cell phone at all except before 8 a.m., during your 30-minute lunch break, and after 5:30 p.m. This includes not glancing at it even if only for a nano second or keeping it anywhere within sight. (Should this rule be broken, a new rule will have to go into effect in which all cell phones will have to be placed in a big black box upon entering the premises.)
• Thou shalt not make or receive any personal calls on company phones
• Thou shalt not use the internet for personal use (including email)
• Thou shalt clear your desk at the end of each work day (or Matron Mother will get on your case non-stop until you clear it)
• Thou shalt clean/dust your desk every Friday with Windex and a duster
• Thou shalt write with green pen only
• Thou shalt not bring smelly foods to work (i.e., fish and blue cheese are out)
• Thou shalt write a to-do list for each work day and share it with your boss and coworkers at every morning meeting, supposedly so that “everyone” knows what you’re going to be doing all day
• Thou shalt not take any vacation until you’ve been employed at least one year
• If though shalt take more than 4 hours of sick/personal leave per day thou shalt not be paid for the time off 
• Thou shalt work 45 hours a week, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and always arrive and leave ON TIME
• Thou shalt come to work even if case of floods, blizzards, earthquakes, and other natural disasters
• Thou shalt not have an attitude with verbally abusive customers unless you’re the boss (in which case you can – be as mean as need be and even hang up the phone in their face)

Rules that are not officially written, but might as well…

• When you’re at work, no life exists outside of the office walls. You are the company’s hostage
• You’d better leave everything in the office in its proper place and do everything exactly as is expected or ocpd boss will freak (the f*ck) out and give you a hard time
• Keep busy at all times; you never know when the boss is going to be standing right behind you, checking up on you
• When boss pays you one of her frequent surprise visits, you’d better be doing something useful and be able to convince her of your usefulness
• Forget you need to pee or hold it in as long as possible. Makes you look more hard-working.
• Gobble down your snacks as fast as you can – before boss starts to wonder what you’re up to and finds the need to come up with a rule to limit snack time.
• Don’t be surprised when new rules are created. You can’t expect to have fun in prison.
• Don’t try to hide anything under your desk – boss will go through your stuff and find it (that’s how she found my snacks and passed the no-eating-at-your-desk regulation)
• It’s okay to be a neat/organized freak. In fact it earns you brownie points.
• The boss’ word is law. Don’t EVER break it. Or she’ll pass more laws to make sure the original law is enforced.
• Company outings/trips are not optional (even if boss may claim they are)
• Do not mistake your boss’ friendliness for leniency. Leniency doesn’t exist as long as she’s around.

The woman is driving me crazy. Just two weeks on the job and I’ve already been looking at ads for payroll/accounting positions I might – finally - be qualified for in 1? 2? years when I get out of this prison ward. I guess all will depend on how long I can stand living under Matron Mother’s autocratic rule. Bleh.

Goodbye, Good Old Job January 4, 2008

Today has been emotional. It was my last day on the job. I worked there for over 3 years and although I hated it almost the whole time, I miss it now – and it hasn’t even been 6 hours since I locked my little office for the very last time.
 
I’m going to miss my office, my own private space. I’m going to miss spending hours on the computer, on the internet specifically, checking up on my bank accounts and my credit card balances, hitting the reload button every five minutes to see if any new emails have come, reading useless, random stuff… I’m going to miss the independence, doing my own thing, working with little guidance, having the office to myself most of the time. I’m going to miss my boss. He was by far the BEST boss ever and I know I am NEVER going to be lucky to get another boss as great as he was.
 
Oh, I really had it good at my old job. I was really comfortable with what I was doing. I felt like I was in my element – on my own mostly, no pressure, few deadlines, just taking it easy. Every week I had a day off, Mondays usually. For the amount of work I did, the pay was decent. Save for the long, oppressive bouts of boredom, which drove me insane (and sometimes even triggered suicidal impulses), it was pretty much paradise at work.
 
Now it’s all over and I can’t believe I took it all for granted. I can’t believe I whined so much about how bored and miserable I was with it. On Tuesday I’m starting another job, a temp-to-perm one this time, with an American company (I was blessed to have worked at a European organization), and I can already see how drastically different things are going to be. I’ll have to be at work every single day, 1 1/2 hours earlier and ON TIME, for longer hours, and I will actually be BUSY, running around doing all kinds of things, I imagine, rather than quietly, comfortably sitting at my computer all day long waiting for time to pass. I can say goodbye to dallying around on the internet or on the phone, sneaking out of work early to go to the movies, or enjoying a siesta while the boss is away. I will finally know the meaning of work as those bloody workaholic Americans know it. (Will somebody, something, a hate mail, a snow storm, a non-functioning traffic light, an accidental lethal combination of vitamins and allergy pills pleeeeeease kill me before Tuesday?)
 
I’m dreadfully scared. And sad, too. I don’t like change. I want my good old job back. I need security, familiarity. I’m going to this new job, which I really don’t know much about, and I’m so terrified at the prospect of being around new people, doing new, challenging things, and having no place there to hide or find comfort. At the new job I will have to deal with people, something which dead people are probably better at than I am. The new boss will most likely not be as cool, laid-back, patient, and understanding as my old one. Sooner or later everyone will realize they made a big booboo in picking me. 
 
I don’t know why they did that. What a grave mistake. Did I do that well on the phone interview yesterday that they didn’t think anyone else fared better than I had? I find that impossible to believe. I shouldn’t have taken that Xanax one hour before the interview. I shouldn’t have been that relaxed, that friendly, that unusually verbally articulate. Who the hell was speaking on the phone? For Christ’s sake, I am a socially anxious, stuck up, awkward, reticent wallflower. I am not cut out to be an executive assistant in a customer-service oriented environment. I belong in a hole. This cannot be real. 
 
I shouldn’t have prepared interview questions and answers in advance and consulted them as I spoke to the interviewer. I shouldn’t have had my resume, my current job description, and everything relevant to my current position all laid out in front of me either. It’s all a cheat. A fraud. A big scam. A HUGE mistake. And it will all blow up sooner or later.
 
I should have failed; that’s what I am used to. That’s what I do best. Success is so foreign to me. I’m a failure. Where did this sudden, unexpected burst of success come from? What did I do to deserve it? I expected to go days, weeks without a job. This is so terrifyingly bizarre that I would have something lined up so soon.
 
If I somehow convince myself not to listen to the voices that are telling me as we speak not to show up at my new job on Tuesday, I am certain the people there will quickly realize I’m not the right person for the job. I’m ready for it, crossing my fingers for it, but what a humiliation it will be to show up there and disappoint like that. I so hate disappointing people; it disappoints me tenfold.
 
I wish I could turn back time and make sure this never happened. All I’d like to do right now, other than bawl my eyes out in panic, is to crawl into a tree hole and hide there for milleniums until this has all passed and my memory, and the memories of all the people involved, have been wiped clean of every trace of this unfortunate occurrence.
 
Am I out of my mind for not congratulating myself at having been accepted for a job, for not being thrilled at the idea of getting a paycheck soon, for wishing I had failed? How can one possibly be in a celebratory mood under the circumstances? I feel like the end of the world has come and Judgment Day will be here on Tuesday and I will fail and I will be punished and I will go to hell and I … could go on and on in that doomsday trajectory because I don’t know what else to do so I’ll just shut up and pray for the worst… 

Food Diary #7 – Discipline Is Key November 22, 2007

I am feeling dreadfully guilty because I ate a little tube of M&Ms today while I was at the movie theater with my mother. My mom had this kid’s tray that came with soda, popcorn, and candy. Since she only wanted the soda and the popcorn, she gave me the candy and foolishly I accepted it. What a fool I was indeed.
 
Now that it’s somewhere in my belly, probably getting absorbed as fat, guilt is hanging over me like a millstone over my neck. Though I’ve already exercised this morning, I am half tempted to exercise again to burn the enemy down. Go away, you filth, get away from me!
 
How could I have been so stupid? Where was my discipline? Considering today is eat-your-heart-out day in this land of the fat I live in, I behaved surprisingly well at lunch. All I had was a moderate portion of turkey, green beans, grated carrots, and brown rice with just a square of dark chocolate for dessert.
 
So why, goddammit, did I have to eat these M&Ms? I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t need them. Every once in a while I don’t mind eating a couple of small scoops of slow churned ice cream. Eating candy, however, is big no-no for me, the worst offense, the ultimate sin. It just reminds me of the sugar addiction days of old when I had no self-control whatsoever, no discipline. I don’t want to go back to being that person anymore, that loser, that girl of no self-respect. I’ve worked too hard to get this far. I simply can’t let myself go again.
 
DISCIPLINE. That’s really all it takes to lose weight and keep it off. It’s not that difficult, but only a matter of setting down the law for yourself and following it NO MATTER WHAT. I mean, most of us have no trouble following the laws other people have set for us. Setting rules and laws for ourselves for our own self benefit should be a piece of cake next to that.
 
And let me tell you something. It is. When you put discipline first and foremost above all things, it’s really not that hard to say no to bad foods, bad habits, bad judgments. So why then did I not say no today? I thought what the heck, today’s a holiday. I thought this can’t hurt me, not just this one time, this small thing. But the truth of the matter is that it IS a big deal. I broke the law. My own law. And I deserve punishment.
 
The fairest punishment I can think of, other than to exercise harder tomorrow, is to eat a very small dinner to make up for those unnecessary calories. Only when I know that there are consequences to my actions will I be able to achieve and maintain discipline. Only when I have achieved discipline will I be a true master of myself. And that, my friends, is of quintessential importance to get that perfect body of my dreams.

I Wish I Were A Man Just for the Week November 6, 2007

A heavy lassitude is gradually reinfiltrating every cell of my being. Is it almost time to hibernate, I wonder? I sure wish I could have stayed bundled up in bed today.
 
I have a cleaning gig right after work and dear God have mercy on me, I’d give anything not to have to do it. Why oh why did this gig have to fall on the first day of my period, the day when I feel the absolute worst in the entire month, the day when I curse God with all my might for making me a woman?!
 
Tonight I will have to get my body through three and a half hours of exhausting physical labor. (I could bawl my head off just thinking about it.) Without a moment of respite, I will have to stand, reach, bend, kneel, stoop, contort because a lazy, not to mention cheap, bunch of young working professionals waited six fucking weeks to call me back to clean their filthy mess of a house! 
 
(Thank heavens I didn’t forget my bottle of Ibuprofen pills. I sure am going to need it.)

Just Shut Up And Listen October 31, 2007

I can’t stand don’t-give-up comments – these optimistic, sugar-coated notes people leave to encourage you not to lose hope when you tell them you’re at the end of your rope. They make me want to run to the nearest toilet and puke.
 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thousand times if I have to: why is it that people always feel the need to come up with useless rosy crap when they talk to someone in despair? It doesn’t make the recipient feel any better. It doesn’t change the situation. If anything it sounds forced, ridiculous, and, if we could only tell you without offending you, so tedious to hear.
 
I think people should just shut up and listen. Sometimes there really isn’t anything you can say to make the recipient feel better and that’s okay. We understand you may feel like you’ve been put in a tough spot; we understand you mean well and only want to help; however, that doesn’t mean you have to say something just for the sake of saying something.
 
As long you’re there and you care, that is enough. A listening ear, accompanied by a hug or not, is often all you can give someone when they face times of distress, and believe it or not, it can go a long way.
 
So please, do that someone a favor and just listen.