Aug. 20, 2022 - Artemis Day
This day last year was my final day of a short-lived stint working for a particular bottled-water company, which I'll call... Niue. Sure, Niue Water, after an island nation in the south Pacific.
I hesitate to say that my job at Niue Water was the worst job I ever had, but that's just because superlative statements are cheap, so I tend to avoid them if I mean to be taken seriously.
Side note, would it surprise you to learn that a company of that size handles their beverage distribution entirely in Excel? I sure as shit was surprised. Manually-prepared Excel spreadsheets, every day. Blew my mind. And how do people within the company share data with one another? Screenshots of those Excel spreadsheets. Sadly, there was no underlying explanation other than mind-bogglingly rampant technical illiteracy. This is not to say that I categorically expect everyone to have a certain level of technical literacy, but if your job involves handling, tracking, manipulating, then internally sharing said data for further such use, you better at least recognize that an image of a spreadsheet is fucking worthless. Side side note: I quickly learned that Niue's purported workplace culture of "teamwork" could be represented with the words "That's not my job, it's someone else's problem."
I did do a lot to make things more efficient, at least for things over which I had direct influence. I automated a lot of my recurring stuff (things previously done by one of my three bosses, things that I was hired to take off of her plate because the whole department was largely short-handed), adding in some well-received improvements. By the encouragement and express instruction of Boss Two and my bosses' boss, I pushed for read-only access to our own databases, at least until Boss Three contradicted the encouragement with a curt "stop asking."
What made it really terrible, though, was Boss One. Being that the main reason I was there was to take on some of her stuff, I had to rely on her for most aspects of my job. Questions while I'm learning? Ask Boss One. New situation I've never seen before? Ask Boss One. Boss One says I'm taking on new work and provides no further information on what I'm expected to do? Ask Boss One. Boss One says, "You're here to help me, not the other way around! No one even likes you!" Cool. Mature. I didn't even make that second part up; that was a real thing that was said to me when I tried to get what I needed in order to do my job.
This is the part where I compare face-lathering to the job at Niue or to Boss One, right? Not today. Niue Water is awful, and even the water itself is gross swill that they try to justify being so overpriced by putting it in a stupid square bottle. "Fantastic" pistachios, too; same company. "Fantastic" my ass.
So last year on this day, I walked out and left that cunt to deal with all her own work, with none of the automation and none of the improvements. I later found out that Boss Two, who himself had been at the company only a few months before I came on, also quit later in the same month; it filled me with joy to learn that they were surely left in even greater disarray when he left.
Anyway, that brings me to what I really wanted to talk about: When I left that day, I went to pick up my cat and bring her to her forever home. Today is Artemis' Artemis Day! The broad strokes (more story and kitten pics here) are that she had been living outside, and then had kittens in a shed/garage before my landlord brought them all to their office until such a time as the kittens could be adopted. The last of the kittens was taken to their respective home, so I brought home Artemis to live inside with me!
What else? Oh, yeah, the blade isn't shaving all that great after nearly three weeks of use, but it's also been that way for a while, I think. Just ten more days until a fresh blade.
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