I probably shouldn’t be writing in my blog today because I’m in a shitty mood. And sometimes when I’m in a shitty mood I say [or in this case write] things I may not really mean. Or at least may want to take back tomorrow. But nevertheless I’m writing.

First, I’m finally coming off of my prednisone high. And I’m crashing hard. I’m really, really tired and I think I just need to crawl back in to bed and forget about today. But dinner needs to be cooked, stories need to be read and a assortment of other tedious tasks need to completed.

This morning I found out I screwed up something at work. Now mistakes happen. I’m a little upset with myself that I made a mistake, but I’m not one of those people who enjoys beating myself up about it. It happened. Nothing I can do to prevent it now.

However, I work for a department where the mentality is slightly different. See my job is about correcting mistakes. So god forbid any of us [who are only human] actually make a mistake. Instead of trying to find a solution we like to find the blame. Why did this happen? Why did you approve that? Didn’t you look at your guidelines? Didn’t you go through the checklist [which was created by me, btw, so obviously I'm pretty familiar with it]? There’s usually at least a couple of days to a week of phone calls and emails to find out “who” caused this and “why” before anybody actually gets to the “how do we fix this part.” And that drives me crazy. Not only does that cause hurt feelings, but it makes you second guess yourself in your job from that point forward. And second guessing yourself all day long does not make for fun work.

But the fun doesn’t stop there folks.

I didn’t blog about this before because I try to somewhat not write about work. I swear I really do listen when dooce and The Sarcastic Journalist speak of never blog about work. Sometimes I take that advice to heart. Other times I could care less.

So I didn’t blog about my issue with my boss a month ago. But today, in my shitty mood with layoffs looming at my company [sounds like a good time to spout off about work doncha think?!?], I’m throwing caution to the wind. Like I said, it was a month ago, my boss and I were talking on IM and she said something to me that I thought [and still think] was disrespectful. I stewed about it for a while and then I emailed her and told her I didn’t appreciate being disrespected. I’m a writer after all. Not a speaker. So people get emails from me. Not phone calls.

I expected her to be upset and even angry about my email. I, however, did not expect her to completely ignore it. She is a manager for gosh sake. If you employee is unhappy or if you are unhappy with your employee, you don’t sit on it. You address it. But not my boss.

So then today, a full MONTH LATER, we were talking on the phone and she goes “I wanted to let you know that I got your email.” Meaning that email from a month ago. Basically she said I shouldn’t send stuff like that on email because it could be misconstrued [hmmmm....much like on IM, huh?]. Then she said she wanted to talk to me about it, but her email was down so she couldn’t look at it right now. But “I wanted to let you know that I got it, but I’m not going to respond on email. We’ll talk about it later.” So basically she’s saying it pissed me off you stupid bleep and I will not dignify it with a response. We so will not talk about it later. It took her a month to work up the courage to even sort of talk about it now. Geez.

And then at the end of my work day I sort of snapped at one of Keaton’s friends. But, in my defense, his friends call over and over and over again until you answer the phone. And that gets so annoying. I’m working from home with this constantly clicking in my ear as I’m on the phone with my boss or legal or whoever. So I had to say “I am working from home. Please do not call over and over three or four times. Goodbye.” I had a tone in my voice, but I think I was fairly polite.

It’s not just one of his friends either. Quite a few of his friends do that. And some of Justis’ friends do it too. When did people forget about proper phone etiquette? When I was little we didn’t even have answering machines. We had to actually wait a couple of hours and just call them back. Now kids have voicemail. Use it! Don’t call, wait 45 seconds and call again. Repeat. This is not a shampoo bottle. This is a phone. Keaton and I have had this conversation over and over again so he better not be doing it too. In fact, we are going to talk about it again tonight.

Which brings me to my final point of aggression…Keaton. Man does he have an attitude. One of his friends called shortly after he got home. Keaton clicked the talk button to answer and then clicked it again to hang up. He told Lee, “Well he calls every single day as soon as I get home from school to see if he can come over and I’m tired of it.” Lee goes, “So tell him no, but don’t be disrespectful and just hang up on in. Now you just made it clear to him that you’re being a jerk.”

I am so on the verge of just getting rid of our phone service. Or at least getting a line with a new number and using for business only. I curse you Alexander Graham Bell.

But, back to Keaton. What can I do about this attitude? Nothing. I can’t shield him. He’s not a baby anymore. I need to give him his own space to make his own mistakes. If he’s going to be a jerk to his friends then he’ll learn the consequences are that he has no friends. It makes me sad to see him being mean and it makes me sad to think that he’ll lose friends, but I have to let him learn these lessons on his own. I can’t call up his friends and say “please forgive Keaton. He’s just in one of him moods today.” I just need to keep explaining to him what’s appropriate and what’s not. He’ll soon learn that mean people are often lonely people.

Well with that said, I’m going to go drink some hot tea and take a breather. I need it.