You ever have one of those days?

a blah blah blog from 2008 I just now am posting.  Funny to see this all these years later.
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I remember back when I was 14 my best friend at the time Phil said "you ever had one of those days where it seems like everyone hates you?" Simple enough, almost a cliche, but at 14 I thought "Oh my God, you feel that way sometimes too?". So it's stuck with me all these years. When I have "one of those days" I always think about the first time I was aware that I am not the only one who has them. I guess I have Phil to thank for that. At least that was one discovery not made alone.

Today was one of those days. It was sort of a build up from the previous week. It started with my 2008 performance review. The manager who originally hired me almost three years ago left the company abruptly last summer. And when I say abruptly I meant was escorted off campus by security. He was a visionary, a think tank type of personality. There was always the next big thing to work on. Unfortunately he got sort of an ivory tower mentality and isolated himself and his group from the rest of the department. Even though I am "one of the nice guys" I got caught up in it. I was, without trying, part of "his" group. For all his faults he took care of his better employees when it counted, and I was one of his better employees. But a lot of people hated him and by associated resented me.

After his demise I was assigned a new manager. This new manager is an aging cheerleader. She cheers you on but not much substance, well unless you cross her then she's all business. She is very meat and potatoes. She could care less about the next big thing, has many more people under her, and well I just got rolled up into the very mediocre middle. This year, for the first time, I got a disappointing "meets expectations". Of course there was no substance in the review. Nothing tangible. It was a nice way of saying "you are nothing special".

Meanwhile ... our company has been under threat to be gobbled up by a much larger company. This has been going on since July, they made an offer, our board rejected, the economy got funkily dunkily and I guess we thought it would all just go away cause they could not get financing. Last Thursday they went hostile. "You thought our original offer was too low? Well fuck you we are offering you less" kind of hostile. Sort of Joe Pesci in Good Fellas. "Am I here to make you laugh? Do you think I am funny? Funny how? Like ha ha funny?"

Mergers like this are huge in that my boss' boss' boss doesn't even know what's going on. Larger than all of us put together. Everything that we know, how we exist, well fuck you I want more profits! bang bang bang!

Then on Friday I went out with my see-him-twice-a-year-friend from high school for drinks and he spent 30 minutes apologizing for not being able to invite me to his weeding 3,000 miles away. Of course I wouldn't really want to go 3,000 mile away, but he made me feel weird when he kept apologizing, like I was supposed to feel bad because in the end we are not that good of friends. It was one of those "measure of a man" moments. How important am I really? What is my true worth? When someone I know is giving his thank you speech of life will I get a mention. Will I have influenced anyone, been a good friend? No probably not. I doubt he, nor many other people will miss me much, or care if I am at their wedding.

Then this morning a co-worker, who sat on a project for 4 weeks before handing it over to me last week, sent me an email and cc'd a bunch of other co-workers asking "when will I be finished, it's been 5 weeks already?" I refrained from cc-ing back and told her not to do that again. I swallowed my anger. I hate the silly cc email wars people have. Don't they know no one gives a shit except of the two main people the argument involves.

Meanwhile, one of my functions (not related to the above project) is to produce a score card for how well my department is doing. This score card is sent out globally across the company. I manage what it is we measure ourselves by and get approval from our leadership team. The new score card goes out this week and wouldn't you know it, despite distributing many drafts to the entire department for months, despite presenting to the leadership team for months on the new format, despite everyone knowing when this is going out, everyone this week is finally getting the idea that, yes it's for real, the score card is going out. Now would be a great time to give you feedback. Just use you magic pixie dust  and make it all better. Why the panic you ask? Well our department is not doing very well in meeting our goals and somehow, cause I'm the guy to tell them, somehow I just know they thinks it's my fault. We're talking hour long meetings to debate 1 percent of the score, yes 1 percent. I spend a lot of time defending my numbers, explaining, running new reports, listening to people whine about it. What do I do all day anyways they ask. Now I know how my brother in law feels this time of year. He does tax filings. You should hear people complain to him, everyone turns into a baby when it comes to the report card. Are you sure you did the filings right? Did you miss any deductions? His job, like mine, is all very cut and dry. Just the facts ma'am.

Back full circle, my new manager is cheering me on but with no substance. I am required to take managerial risks but of course, I do not get managerial rewards. This is all fine and good cause you get ahead by acting ahead, but after 3 years it turns into a carrot on a stick.

Even people we give money to were hating on me. We are in the process of refinancing our house. The mortgage company called and said, if you want this loan to go through you BETTER fax us you latest pay stub in two hours. Whoops! Not our fault they didn't ask for this yesterday but it sure as hell is my problem to solve. Cause you know a lot can happen in the 15 days since my last pay stub that they have. "Fuck you send me your stub or no loan."

Then the wife calls and says there is a mandatory parent little league meeting at 6 PM. Fuck! 6PM? Guess I'm leaving work early. But before I leave I got to finish that project that is already 5 weeks late even though I've only had it for 1 week. Oops can't post the project to the website cause Johny hot shot 20-something is out sick today, and instead of a simple system of ftp-ing files to a web server we got to use some thing called subversion that never seems to work. I asked him very nicely over email what was that one step thing I do to create a new repository? He gave me a one word answer, then I ask another question this time a one word answer with "read the manual!!!". Of course doing website maintenance is not my main gig, it's his. I'm just annoyed I cannot do a simple ftp because, you know, subversion will store every copy of the website you ever created. Huh? what? I need to post this project, I'm gonna be late. So that did not get done.

As I'm on the way home I call my wife and tell her Ill meet her at the Moose Lodge, yes an actual Moose Lodge, for the little league meeting. She's giving me heavy sighs cause she worked 2 hours, took a nap and watched Oprah and well "I guess I'll give him (son) a bath and feed him dinner before the meeting". Jesus fucking Christs! After all that I'm getting an attitude from the wife. And I don't even like baseball. My dad never got me involved in sports and even though I suck at it I feel obligated to at least give my son an opportunity to suck at baseball at a much earlier age than I did. We signed up 3 months ago and haven't heard a word. It turns out my son is on the one team with no coach yet, oh yay! this is gonna be fu fu fun.

So here I am feeling stuck in a job I hate in the worst economy ever with a merger hanging over me, a manager who doesn't get or care what I do, late to a little league practice (which in itself puts me out of my element) and a wife doing the heavy sigh on the phone. I go home in time to pick up my son and my wife is asking me something, but I do not hear her, my head is swimming in all my manufactured stress. She asks again "are you gonna have a pita bread thingy" not her exact words. She had prepared dinner and I said "no I'm late to the meeting". And she .....

heavy sighs! shakes her head. I'm not eating the dinner she spent 20 minutes preparing cause I'm late to go to little league whatever ....

"Not now B (I'll call her B), cant you tell I'm having a bad day?"

heavy sighs again "whatever something or rather" blah blah "first thing in the door" blah blah blah

So I'm thinking to myself "no really, not ... to ... day". This is the point where I wish I had a safety word like they use in S&M "avocado" or something. You know throw me a bone, not today, tomorrow sure, but not now, I don't look it but I'm down. I know we do this all the time, but today just for today can we not.

So I scream "Not today. I'm having a bad day" at the top of my lungs. Now I hear jerk, asshole etc. I question her very existence. We got so far from anything that slightly resembles what I expected to get when I said "not today". In fact it was the exact opposite of "not today". It was today and we got into it. She kept pushing the buttons and I kept thinking "why? can you just stop, not that button".

I get to the meeting and it's a room full of Kevin Fedderline looking wanna be baseball jocks. It was disorganized and when I went up to sign the sheet with two columns "parent" and "team" I said I don't even know what team we're on. We haven't heard a word. "Is your Son doing t-ball?" Yes. "He's on the team with no coach". Oh extra yay! I'm out my element, the team's got no coach and even if I did want to volunteer I'm away the first 3 weeks on the season.

We get back home and I am sulking in my home office, in my chair. My son tentatively approaches me, I hug him, and I said I'm sorry I'm having a bad day. I go on to say "It would be nice if on these days you and mommy could just..." he cuts me off by making a heavy sigh sound ...

So thinking back to that fateful day in high school I am reminded of my friend Phil who said "have you ever had one of those days when it feels like everyone hates you?" Yes Phil, yes I have.