Take This Job And Shove It

So I had to return to my day job this week after eight weeks of sick leave.

Let us all have a moment of silence for my happiness.

After going through a mental checklist of body parts I still have that could be removed

• gallbladder
• appendix
• tonsils
• kidneys and lungs (I only need one of each, right???)
• liver (technically, you can survive with just part of it)

  I had to accept the reality that they don’t just send you a paycheck for coloring swear words in your pajamas, indefinitely.

On my last day of freedom, I made a mental list of all the things I’d rather do than go back to Satan’s Butthole my job:

• have a Tabasco enema
• pop somebody else’s zit
• eat the Cheeto that rolled under the sofa and is now covered in hair
• listen to anything by Justin Bieber
• watch The Kardashians
• go hunting with Dick Cheney
• take a drive with Ted Kennedy
• drink water in Flint, Michigan
• watch “Paul Blart Mall Cop” on a continuous loop for 24 hours
• listen to Rosie Perez read “Fifty Shades of Grey” out loud
• go to Walfart
• smell my teenager’s clothes hamper
• watch a mouthbreather eat
• clean out a house on Hoarders
• run a marathon in hooker heels
• go back to high school
• eat a can of Veg All (thanks, Mona!)
• French kiss my dog after she goes outside in the winter and eats one of her own frozen “poopscicles”

This is not the complete list. I’m sure I’ll think of others later on.

I should point out that I spent a great deal of time during my sick leave looking for employment elsewhere. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you are probably aware that a little over a year ago, we were told our office is closing permanently some time in 2019. Everyone has either been scrambling to get a job with the company in another city, scrambling for a job here in the Tulsa area, or just sitting around waiting for a severance and/or retirement.

It just so happens that just in time to return to Satan’s Butthole work, I was offered a position with another company, doing basically the same thing I did for the first thirteen years at Satan’s Butthole my current job.

And they need me the following Monday.

So I put on my Big Girl Panties and went to Satan’s Butthole the current job with the intention of giving a whole three days notice (one day for each good year I had), because that’s the kind of loyal employee I am.

First, I had to open my work email, which is when I discovered just how much bullshit important news gets disseminated via email over eight weeks! It took me at least an hour and a half to delete everything without reading it carefully peruse the info and glean the important nuggets. However, the very last email was from that day, advising us of a building-wide meeting at noon.

The last time we had a building-wide meeting, we found out they were closing our building, so we all pretty much figured they were finally going to give us an exact date for closure. Which they did, sort of. They gave us a month but not a day. Then they opened it to questions.

However, I would like to give a shout-out to the lady in the front of the room who asked four VPOs and a bunch of Section Managers if they could provide snacks at the next meeting.

You, Madam, are my people.

I decided after the meeting was a good time to submit my resignation, but first I had to find a supervisor to resign to. My own supervisor is out having surgery, and all the others are either getting ready to move to other jobs, have already moved on to other jobs, have retired, or are finding out how to change their names and leave the country.

I finally located one of my fellow Claim Reps, who was voluntold for an “acting” supervisory position. I walked into her cubicle with a whole memorized speech about this last minute opportunity, appreciating my time here, apologizing for short notice, yada yada yada, because I don’t usually like to burn bridges. Especially if I’m still standing on them.

However, what actually came out of my mouth was something more like:

Then she was like:

So I had to kind of roll it back a little and give her some of the niceties I had so carefully crafted earlier.

Less than an hour later, I got a call from the temporary supervisor in Austin who is handling my actual supervisor’s desk in her absence. He was really nice when he said:

And this was my response:

So I texted The Husband Dude to come help me carry seventeen years worth of shit down to my car and then tried to make the rounds and see as many people as I could before I left because nobody knew I was leaving.

Until the first person found out because then the grapevine gets going and by the time I made it around to see my friends, they were all, “I just heard!”

THD felt like a rock star because everybody kept saying, “You’re The Husband Dude! What’s your real name?”

Or possibly because one of my friends literally said, “You look like a rock star!”

And of course, I had to introduce THD to my gay work husband, Judy, and they promptly hit it off and started talking about Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch because apparently, that’s what happens when both of your worlds collide.

The thing that THD and I noticed above everything was how excited everyone was to find out I was leaving. It was like I was being paroled and they were cheering me from behind the bars.

Incidentally, I didn’t get to see everybody I wanted to. If I missed you, I’m sorry, but I was kind of doing this toward the end of it all:

Once I was in my car and I was actually driving away, it hit me that I just quit my job of seventeen years, two months, eleven days, nine hours and twenty minutes (but who’s counting?!?). And me being me and hating change, I started to feel that trickle of anxiety, even though I have another job lined up.

I turned on my 80’s station on Pandora and it started with “Call Me” by Blondie, which I thought was a good sign, since I just saw Blondie and it was a whole birthday thing for me!

I was still feeling that nagging, “What the fuck did you just do?” feeling, though, when the next song came on and it was “1999” by Prince.

Ok. The 80’s gods are telling me to “Party like it’s 1999”, so that can’t be all bad, right? And that’s when I saw it. The final sign. Literally a sign. Or rather, a vanity plate on someone’s car.

Dude, I’m not making this up. It was in the next lane over and about three cars ahead, while we were stopped at a light.

All was well.

Until the next morning, when I was driving Shane to school. He brought up my change in employment and I thought we were going to have a deep discussion about jobs, careers, life changes, etc.

I was wrong.

Shane:  Well, Mom.

Me: Yes?

Shane: Now that you’re unemployed…

Me: I’m not unemployed, technically. I’ve been offered and accepted another job. It just hasn’t started yet.

Shane: Well…now that you’re not technically unemployed…can you do something for me?

Me: Sure. What’s that?

Shane: Can you put my laundry in the dryer? I forgot to yesterday.

Leave it to your teenager to remind you that the world revolves around them.

Now I know why animals eat their young.

Until next time…stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.