“I’m itching like crazy here!”

"Here, try this one."

"This is cooking spray!" 

"Yeah, but it has aloe in it."

-Rescue Me (Season 1)

  Good day to all.  Spring break is over.  This semester is continuing on.  I got two of my mid-terms back.  I didn’t do too bad, both high Bs.  And that’s fine with me.  Classes are going well.  But professionally and personally, not so much.

  I think I’ve talked about my job and previous problems I’ve had, but for new readers I’ll recap.  I work as a student assistant in the office of a research group here on campus.  Its a small office and we’ve had some people move on in recent years.  Only thing is, we didn’t replace them with new people, instead the duties got tacked on to the rest of us.  I understand though.  In the economic situation the country is in, there isn’t exactly a wellspring of research grants out there right now.  And the research group exists on grants.  Some of our larger grants expired the last few years and we’ve haven’t been able to replace them with grants of similar monetary size.  In any case I’ve taken up alot of the duties of the technology coordinator after she left. 

  Which means that sometimes I end up having to take care of and be responsible for things that are above my pay grade.  I understand the situation, I understand why the group can’t afford to give me a raise and I just hope that when things get better, my work won’t be forgotten. 

  Anyways, when I was orginally hired my boss was the original technology coordinator.  But when she left, it being a small group, I was put with the director’s secretary as my new boss.  This has resulted in problems from time to time.  Its just gotten more annoying as time has gone on.  I get tired of dealing with it sometimes, but its a good job, it works with my schedule, and its right here at work, so I put up with it.  The main problem is that this woman thinks herself more important than she really is.  Besides me and the graduate assistants that work on the survey research, she’s the only hourly employee here.  But she likes try to act like she has some authority over everyone save the director. 

  The director himself is a good man, a great researcher, a brilliant academic, but an awful boss.  He has no nerve to directly deal with situations.  So, because of that this secretary of his has grown to have the opinion of herself that she does.  Coupled with that, she’s losing her hearing and won’t admit to it, which makes communicating with her a hassle.  Plus, based on things she’s said, she doesn’t even have to work.  She could have retired years ago, but she just needs to feel important, which is why she’s still here.  In any case, I told her last week that I was going to take the week of spring break off since there wasn’t really any work for me to do.  What I should have done is emailed it, so it would have been in writing, but I was thinking of other things I needed to do and thought telling her was enough.  I find out today that apparently it wasn’t. 

  She accused me of not telling her I was taking the week off.  Its like not only is she deaf if you’re not right there in front of her, but she also has selective hearing.  After trying to tell her how the whole reason I had checked around the office to see if there was any work anyone needed help with was so I could know if I should take the week off or not and her just nodded her head without listening and then going on with whatever twisted logic she was saying, I just finally gave up trying to argue with her. 

  But I’m still going to talk to the director about this.  I don’t want him thinking that I just slacked off the week and not left notice.  It just pisses me off because no matter what job it is I like to do it professionally.  Like I said, I know I should have put in my not being in all week in writing, but with my previous boss I never had to go this far to have myself understood.

  So that’s work.  I think I’ll be looking for a new job after this semester ends.  I’m really not looking forward to it, I hate job hunting, but I need to be in a better work environment and being paid better for the work I do. 

  Personally, I’m not exactly sure what to think.  There’s no drama going on, but there’s nothing else going on either, if that makes sense.  Sometimes I really wonder…am I really that socially inepit or what?  I’m just not very good at making friends, relating to people, that sort of thing.  It makes me feel lonely sometimes, but I’m working on it still.  Things at home are okay I guess.  I’m kind of glad I have a car of my own now because sometimes I really need to get out of the house for awhile.  My father and I got into an arguement on Saturday that was really useless and I was annoyed that it happened at all.  I don’t know what the point of it was.  We don’t really talk very well with each other sometimes.  Its just unfortunate that its like this because we had been communicating better since spending so much time around each other working on the car together.

  There’s other things I’m kind of confused about but maybe I’ll talk about those later on.  I think the entry has probably gone on long enough.  Good day to all.

-Damien