The Marci Rating System

After I posted my 'workplace makes big announcement on April Fool's, confusing everyone' story yesterday, I laughed a little, thinking 'ah yes, that was so long ago. Surely NO WORKPLACE, EVEN MINE would do such a thing these days.'

AND YET

In fact, what should happen yesterday??? Email from the CEO announcing that one of the executive team is leaving, effective immediately, wishing them well, searching for a replacement, all of that.

And I thought:

1. oh, an executive leaving, I guess not too surprising
2. but wait... it's April 1st
3. surely not
4. but maybe???
5. no, it must be real
6. ...right?

STOP MAKING ANNOUNCEMENTS ON APRIL 1ST. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON YOU COULDN'T WAIT A DAY TO ANNOUNCE STUFF.

It's still not Friday??? HOW CAN THAT BE?

I will be spending the day working and doing a bunch of chores I couldn't do while I was stuck in the office yesterday. I would like it noted for the record that I have almost 300,000 words of fic waiting to be read in open tabs, and I am awarding myself a GOLD STAR for not (yet) succumbing to that temptation.

Still not over my absolute favorite in-office interaction last week.

THE CONTEXT:
The office has two individual bathrooms next to each other down a hallway. (It's weird, idk, they remodeled? That part doesn't matter. There are other multi-stall bathrooms in other parts of the building, but obviously NOT sharing a bathroom is better, plus they're the closest to my desk AND close to an outside door. You know, in case I want to go for a lil' walk.)

ANYWAY I walked out of the individual bathroom last week at exactly the same time TWO people were exiting the other individual bathroom right next to it. They were talking to each other. I thought nothing of this. If I had thought anything of it, I would have assumed that since both of them are at least adjacent to safety/facilities roles, probably they were checking something?

(SIDENOTE: it's freezing in that bathroom, PLEASE could someone check something?)

But THEN one of them stopped and looked at me and said, 'That wasn't what it sounded like,' and I was all '??!?!?'

MY REACTIONS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER (I did not say any of these things):
*I have no idea what you said that 'wasn't what it sounded like,' but now I'm curious

*I wasn't listening, because I don't care

*If you wanted to get up to something in an office bathroom, you should have picked the other one; it's warmer

*I have total confidence in your ability to be better at a clandestine meetup than whatever this is

WHAT I ACTUALLY SAID (it was even true!):
*"My brain is looping Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Cut to the Feeling' at high volume right now, I didn't hear anything."

IN CONCLUSION
If return-to-office can't be useful or logical, at least it can be funny???

This week has been an interesting case study of 'flexible interpretations of the in-office rules.' No one wants to get fired for not showing up on a required office day, but also no one wants to get in a car accident driving on icy roads because they were trying to drive in a snowstorm.

Today I'm testing out the 'what if I worked from home for two hours, then drove to the office for the rest of the day' strategy. I have not checked with my boss about this. (But they're 100% remote, and generally they don't care what we're doing with our office time as long as we're getting our work done and no one is complaining to them about us. Also someone else on the team did a similar thing back in December, so there's a precedent.)

It's... office Wednesday, I guess? This month has been kind of weird for office days, but that's the plan, unless the plan changes. Again.

Which means ::drum roll:: it's time to take my old laptop to IT and get my new one! (It took some dedicated effort, but I managed to figure out which of the mess of cords under my desk belonged to the laptop AND I remembered to put it in my bag!)

(I'm definitely not planning to tell IT that it's been working fine ever since they told me they couldn't fix it. Some things should just stay between me and the internet.)

Okay, but the 9 am Monday meeting was rescheduled (multiple times, but this is the latest update) for TODAY at 2 pm. WILL WE FINALLY HAVE THE MEETING???

(Note: there's no real need to have this meeting. The meeting is to tell me to do work. I am aware of the work. I have access to the list of work that needs to be done. I am not aware of the deadline for the work, but to be fair that's more out of willful not-checking on my part than lack of access to the information.)

But if there's ONE thing that could be said consistently of my workplace for all the years I've been there, it's that it LOVES MEETINGS. Even when they are in a phase of trying to reduce meetings, they hold meetings about reducing the number of meetings!

(Note2: It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the company has found one (1) method that consistently works to deflect&diffuse responsibility, and that method is holding a meeting. But it's much more fun to say they LOVE MEETINGS, so that's what I'm going with.)

Last week, one of my coworkers decided it would be a Great Idea (TM) to schedule a meeting for 9 am on Monday morning. (NOTE: This is never a Great Idea.)

[NOTE 2: The LAST time someone scheduled a 9 am meeting on Monday, I promptly forgot about it and didn't log in for work until 9:15. This wound up working out fine for me, because the person who scheduled the meeting was out sick and had cancelled it. But it was still kind of stressful for those few minutes between realizing 'oh no the meeting!' and 'wait actually it's fine.']

Given this historical evidence, I put '9 am monday meeting' into my habitica tasks, and have been looking at it every day since. UGH, WHY. (is what I think every time I see it)

BUT NOW IT IS MONDAY. GO TIME.

lol I'm going to go for a walk. Sure do hope I don't forget to come back in time for the 9 am Monday morning meeting!

Approximately once a year, work events conspire to arrange themselves so that I feel compelled to wear something other than a hoodie or t-shirt to show up in. (Usually meeting with outside vendors. There's no official dress code, but I generally try to hit the 'neither most formally nor least formally dressed' sweet spot.)

(PS: Yesterday one of the vendors wore suit pants, but with like, an ath-leisure top? This was distressingly similar to what I wore (non-jeans pants and a company-branded zip-up jacket). I say distressingly because the vendor immediately pinged my 'I do not like this person' sensor, AND we wound up sitting next to each other. I'd like to claim I pulled the outfit off better than they did, but who knows. I can say for sure that mine had more cat fur on it, and at least that's something.)

ANYWAY the original point of this post is that I have approximately two outfits that meet these incredibly vague 'looks like I tried but not too hard' standards, so it's a good thing we only have two days of meetings per week. Tomorrow: RETURN TO HOODIES.

Unhelpful or inadvisable things I managed NOT to say at work this week! (Giving myself a gold star and a hug, thx.)

Coworker: 'This is so stressful.'
THING I DIDN'T SAY: 'Have you considered reading fanfiction on your phone to relax?'

***

Coworker: 'This is a list of all the upcoming projects.'
THING I DIDN'T SAY: 'I mean, there's a good chance at least half of them will fail, so that'll really reduce the work load.'

***

Coworker: 'Please review the process I drafted and provide feedback.'
THING I DIDN'T SAY: 'The process is fine, but no one is going to follow it, and there will be no consequences. Are you new here?' (Spoiler: they are new.)

***

Coworker: 'This is Daniel.'
THING I DIDN'T SAY: 'Right, we've met.' (And it's a GOOD THING I didn't say that, because it turned out I've met a DIFFERENT Daniel. Why are there THREE DANIELS at work right now???)

Thank goodness we're now required to go to the office two days a week, to do Very Important Office Things like everything on today's schedule!

1. drink the free coffee at work instead of home coffee

2. breakfast (enjoy the fact that they're still bribing us with free breakfast on Tuesdays)

3. end of year team meeting with the team we've been temporarily loaned to (okay, it was more like 'take these people off my hands I can't deal with them right now,' but you know, think positive)

4. end of year holiday lunch with new team

5.Yankee Swap with new team (apologies to the old team which is not getting a party)

6. go for a walk with any office folks who want to go outside

7. hour-long meeting about a thing none of us want to talk about and which could have been an email

8. wrap up the day, because that's more than enough productivity for me!