cookie cutters and automatons

((sigh))

Yesterday I was ridden hard and put away wet.

I met M1 for breakfast and I thought everything was going okay.  She had a personal item of mine in her car and after breakfast we went to a store.  I was getting antsy about the time because I had to be at work in about an hour and I told her I needed my possession.  She gave me her keys but it bothered her that I was in a hurry.   I went to her car ad got my item.  Her purse was sitting on the seat.  I moved it under a jacket and told her when I brought the key back to her.  She got mad.

Nobody listens when I am right.

I was robbed in broad daylight.  Somebody broke the window of my car and took my good dreams away and made me lose sleep for a long time afterward.  I tell people not to leave valuables in their cars. 

One of my co-workers had the same thing happen to her in our parking lot.  I was the one who saw broken glass and reported it to her.  She had left a purse on the floor behind her seat in a mini-van with tinted windows. 

When we ask people for ID, many times they say it's out in the car.  It is not a safe world and there is danger in the places you think are the most innocent.

I felt like M1 had tried to make me react in the way she wanted me to. She seems to want me to behave just a certain way and I have consistently failed.

I went to work and thought the day would be okay, but then the interim manager called me to come talk to her.  She had started weekly evaluations of the least of us co-workers, me being one of the two.  She handed me a paper punctuated with ones.  Ones!  Out of a scale of 3!

You know, you bust your butt in a place, work hard, try to do everything and then only later do you find out, if you're lucky, that you are not doing things the way they want you to.

I am being interpreted and analyzed.  Geez Louise.  Why didn't the manager have the consideration to ask me what I was doing or why I was doing it the way I was?  She is a woman I have guided along at points myself because she does not know how we operate.

She is older... in her 60s or 70s.  She was called from retirement to help out though she is not degreed in our field.  She is an ex-foundation member and has served for decades and so they asked her to be temporary.  She is good because she has the ears of people in high places and is bringing the workplace up to higher standards, including the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) which I applaud.

What I don't like is that she has been watching us like a hawk and simply kneading her eyebrows at us instead of saying anything.  Or if she has said anything, it is because she disapproved of our regular and actually pretty efficient practices. 

She has managed to create more work in some instances, and to create a backlog of tasks.  However...  I am willing to roll with things.  Though I do have an uptight streak, I can also be quite flexible. 

Still, ones?  She said that I have accepted changes she has asked me to make "beautifully."  She said "there are days when you are my best worker!"

She pointed out that I am not consistent in attitude.  You know what?  She's right.  I'm not happy.  I need to fake it.  I need to find a level she can live with and stop trying to have a personality.

She said that my attitude comes off as "flippant" to some people.  Okay.  No more trying to make the customers smile.  I know what she wants now.

She needs a quiet, mild-mannered, subservient who stays in one place until everything she sees as needing to be done is done, someone who uses phone etiquette face-to-face.  (Even though people come to me for service again and again because of my good nature, I will change.)

And because they think so little of me and because there is only movement within through competition or nepotism, and because I am barely surviving on on-call pay though I work 40 hours a week... I will keep looking for a job I can live with.