Blue-Footed Musings

• I am officially on vacation until next Tuesday. Woohoo! It’s an awkward time for taking PTO, though, because I still don’t know if I’m going to get laid off. The axe could fall at any moment. Oh, well. I have no control over the situation or any ability to predict the outcome. All I can do is live my life, same as always. But I’ll probably check my e-mail every evening to find out if anything terrible has happened at work. Otherwise I don’t think I could handle the suspense.
• A couple more packages arrived today. One package contained new comforters for my bedroom. The comforters had looked pretty online. In person, the colors were different and the fabric felt cheap. Too bad. I guess that’s why God invented returns. The other package contained two bathing suit tops. One top was too tight and will have to be returned. The other fit fine. I think I’ll keep it and make it my back-up. (This may sound silly, especially as someone who swims so infrequently, but I prefer to always have two swimsuits, just in case something happens to one of them).
• I’ve been sleeping so poorly that I finally decided to try melatonin. I tried 3 mg for a few nights. No effect. So I tried 5 mg. Still no effect. So I tried 10 mg. Nothing. In fact, I slept worse each night that I took melatonin than I usually do, and that’s saying something. The only reason I’m not going completely insane from sleep deprivation is that when I can’t sleep, I can at least rest. But summer is almost over, and soon I won’t be able to rest either….

• As I mentioned earlier this month, I had another eye doctor appointment. I hate those appointments. It’s a long drive for very little purpose. There’s nothing the doctor can do for me except tell me my condition’s “better,” “the same,” or “worse.” When they take pictures of my eye, they use colors to show the degree of splitting. Cool colors are good. Warm colors are bad, with red being very bad. But there is a color worse than red: white. My left eye has had a big white splotch in the middle of it for a while. At Thursday’s appointment, the white splotch was slightly smaller, so that’s an improvement. My right eye was stable, and actually tested 20/20, which was good. But, the doctor did nothing for me except renew my prescription, so what really was the point of being there? To some extent it’s just a money-making scheme for the doctor. If I hadn’t already exceeded my giant deductible for the year, the appointment would be pricey. Even with the deductible covered, I still have to pay 20%. Healthcare in America sucks.
• Speaking of healthcare suckage, that hospital bill (the one for my knee) has gone to collections. I spoke to the collections people. They work for the hospital and are trying to collect on the hospital’s behalf (i.e., they did not purchase the debt). So, there’s no negotiating with them either. I explained to them why that bill was a scam, and they said, “We have nothing but your word for that.” Okay. So now I’m mentally sending a bit “Fuck you!” to the collections guys, too. I’m not going to pay that predatory bill. I mean, not only was I not informed that I’d be charged a premium for having my scheduled, non-emergency visit at the doctor’s “other location,” but the bill is higher than any other medical bill I’ve ever gotten, excepting surgery. It’s more than an emergency room visit. It’s more than an MRI. How dare they charge me thousands of dollars just for being in the building! As a person who prides herself on always paying her bills, it’s irking me not to pay, but damn it, they crossed a line.
• Oh, and a couple of days ago I received a notice from a second collections agency that’s trying to collect on the same bill, also on behalf of the hospital. So one wasn’t enough, and now it’s a free-for-all? Geez. What the hell is this country coming to?

The bombshell finally dropped at work. The company is offering severance packages to anyone in my department who volunteers to leave. The offer is one week’s pay per year of tenure, up to 26 weeks. It’s not a very good offer for newer hires, but 26 week’s pay would be pretty generous, which suggests to me that it’s the long-term employees, such as myself, that they’re hoping to unload. The scary part is that if they don’t get enough volunteers, they’re going to stop asking and start axing.

My knee-jerk reaction is to hold on and hope for the best. I’m a good employee, and they’d be stupid to let me go. But, I wish I knew how many people they’re going to cut, how they’ll decide, and how much severance pay will be given to those forced out. Obviously I’d rather leave of my own accord with a half a year’s salary in my pocket than be kicked to the curb with less. So, I’m not 100% decided yet. I will be giving it a lot of serious thought over the next couple of weeks.

P.S. I’d like to remind the Evil Genies AGAIN that when I said I was bored with my job, I also CLEARLY stated that I didn’t want to be forced out of it.

P.P.S. I should start looking for a new job, or at least start looking into how to look for a new job. But I don’t wanna. 🙁

• Livia can solve the Rubik’s Cube, and I’m impressed. She tried to explain how, but I didn’t get it. Rubik’s Cube is a puzzle that I’m never going to be able to solve, and I accepted that long ago, back when I was younger than Livia is now.
• The kids’ swim lesson was canceled this week due to the weather. The sound of thunder could be heard in the distance, and indoor pools, like outdoor pools, get closed when there’s any chance of lightning. Their swim instructor, who is apparently a paleontologist with multiple degrees, had promised to give his students megalodon teeth to reward their progress. He kept his promise, handing each kid a giant shark tooth as we left. He said he had found the teeth himself in North (or was it South?) Carolina. Very cool!
• Today I had a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. I was so keen to spend time with the kids that I convinced them to keep me company for the trip there and back by offering to get us all an early dinner at McDonalds. Marshall said yes. Livia had to be coerced. To make it up to her, I let her get a McFlurry, and then I had to let Marshall get one, too, so everyone got something special out of the deal.
• At work, there have been no new layoffs so far. Whew! And I was right about the systemic problem that I found in my work project: it had happened before. I’m just the only one who noticed. Not surprising. Still no word yet on whether I’ll have to start over again from scratch, though.

Somehow, though it’s not my favorite book or film genre, I’ve been on a bit of a horror kick lately.

• The other night I watched a French shark-attack film called Under Paris (originally titled Sous la Seine). I’ve seen my share of shark films (Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, The Meg, and probably a few others that were forgettable). This one fared well in comparison. Story: a scientist tags a shark and monitors it until it unexpectedly turns violent and kills her whole team. Later, the signal from the tag is discovered in the Seine river in Paris. What is a marine animal doing in a fresh water river? Though still struggling emotionally with that grisly event in her past, the scientist joins forces with the police to find the shark before it hurts anyone else. The film had just the right amount of ridiculousness, it escalated perfectly, and it had a spectacular climax, not to mention that it was in French (subtitled, not dubbed). I loved it.
• After the shark film, I starting watching Stranger Things on Netflix. I’m late to this particular party, I know, but whatever. I do things when I want to, not when the rest of the world thinks I should.
• I also recently read a Southern Gothic by T. Kingfisher called A House With Good Bones. I struggled with the book at first. The author’s descriptions were confusing me. But, since I had preordered the book as a way of showing support for the author, whom I follow on Twitter, I felt a strong compulsion to finish it. With perseverance, I got past the communication issues, letting the story wash over me without focusing too much on certain details. There wasn’t much to the story: entomologist Sam Montgomery is temporarily out of work and goes to live with her mom in her grandmother’s old house. The mom is behaving strangely, as if terrified, and weird things are happening around the house, all seemingly linked to something dark and mysterious in the past. I’m not not sure that I love it as a horror story, but the main character keeps up an entertaining patter of bug trivia mixed with amusing observations on life (“snarky mundanity,” one blurbist called it). The book is worth reading for that alone.

P.S. I liked the phrase “snarky mundanity,” so I looked up the author who had used it in his blurb for A House With Good Bones. His name was Travis Baldree. I figured that if he’d written anything that sounded interesting, I’d consider seeking it out. As it turns out, I need look no further than my own bookshelf. A friend gave me a copy of his book Legends & Lattes as a gift. It’s just sitting there, waiting to be read. How serendipitous!

I’ve been having a rough week at work. Yesterday I pointed out to my boss that, through no fault of mine, there was a massive flaw in the computer-generated project I was working on. She forwarded the info to her boss, and his reply was that we’re probably going to have to dump what’s been done so far and start again fresh. Ugh.

Funny thing is, they reacted like, “Oh, no! Suddenly the computer if malfunctioning!” But it might have been working that way for a while, only nobody else bothered to look into it. And in situations like this, I’m never quite sure if I’m the good guy or the bad guy. I mean, I hate being the nit-picker. And sometimes I think that maybe things would be better for everyone if I just quietly did my work without worrying too much about doing it right. Other people do that, and they get away with it. But not me. I keep finding problems and making more work for everyone, myself included, because I don’t know how not to.

My boss had been on vacation for two weeks, but she finally returned Monday. This could have been a cause for celebration, because she’s a great boss and she usually has all the answers. But, the first e-mail she sent upon her return was a notification that three people in another department had been laid off while she was gone.

This sounded really scary, my coworker and I agreed over IM. These were long-term and reliable (as far as we knew) employees. There was no reason to let them go except as a cost-cutting strategy. We wondered if our department might be next. My coworker audaciously e-mailed our boss, asking, “Are jobs in our department on the line?” Her reply: “I don’t know.”

So we continued to speculate. We both feel that the groundwork has already been laid for downsizing our department. There’s been a huge push to use recycled material, which requires less time to edit and fewer people to handle the supply chain. Today, we got notice that six projects per year are going to be cut from our department. That confirmed it for us. That’s just a touch more than one editor’s yearly work. They tried to pass this change off as freeing time for us to work on “special projects,” but A) We don’t have that many special projects, and B) The largest special project involves beefing up a database that could later be used to eliminate yet more workers.

My theory is that we’re going to lose two editors: one from my department, one from neighboring Acquisitions. My coworker thinks three, divided in some way between the two departments. Whatever the plan is, I expect it will be revealed soon. There’s no reason for the company to draw this out. So, at least we probably won’t have to wait long to get the dreaded news.

Though my coworker and I doubt we’d be the ones on the chopping block, we can’t be sure. We are among the most highly paid, by virtue of having been there the longest (we will both hit our 30th work anniversary next year). And we are both terrifyingly aware that by staying in one job so long we have effectively put all our eggs in one basket. The idea of having to get a new job is almost inconceivable to us. My coworker said, “I got this job by answering an ad in the newspaper. Nobody does that anymore. It’s a whole different game now!” Tell me about it.

So, whatever the outcome, this episode has made us sad and wary. Working all these years for a family-owned company, we’ve been insulated from so much of the nasty stuff that happens at other places. Now our trust has been broken. Money is money, and right now, like it our not, our worth is being evaluated in strictly monetary terms. So now might be a good time to mention that I specifically said in a previous post that while I might be bored with my job, I do not want any Evil Genies forcing me into something new. That still stands!