And ANOTHER thing...

I have a late-breaking entry onto my Now You're Cursed List. The Boss has aggravated me. I don't want to bog down in too much exposition but I want to give enough detail for this to make sense, so some background: part of my job is receiving sales figures from various facilities operators and compiling them into monthly sales reports. For the better part of February, I've been struggling with this one operator, Company XYZ. They've only been under contract since 2001 so obviously this is still a novelty for them. Anyway, they've sent me the same sales report twice, labeled once as "November" and once as "December", which has to be a mistake because with nearly $75,000 in monthly revenue, they couldn't have the exact same down-to-the-penny sales (and tax) for two consecutive months, just not possible. What I don't know is which month the figure is actually for, and when I asked for clarification, I got the sales total previously submitted as "October" relabelled as "December". I asked for further clarification and got an Excel file with 3 spreadsheets tabbed "October", "November" and "December" but when I print them out, 2 print titled "December" and the one tabbed "October" prints titled as "November". And these are different from the Decembers previously submitted, yet none of them say "revised". So I'm confused.

But wait there's more.

They're also supposed to pay us a percentage of these monthly sales so add to the mix three cheques I've received, none of which are for amounts that match ANY of the sales report numbers. I've e-mailed with questions and received (drum roll) more DIFFERENT Decembers from two different people at Company XYZ. The Boss is supposedly aware of all this as I have copied him on all my e-mails and talked to him about each phase of non-progress.

So this afternoon, frustrated, I attach all the spreadsheets I've been sent over the past weeks and send an e-mail to everyone I've ever communicated with at Company XYZ, copying The Boss, writing that I need help as I am totally perplexed at the duplication of sales figures, the duplication of certain months as title to different reports and the random cheque amounts. I request that, once and for all, they tell me [list of cheque numbers] which cheque goes with which report and which ONE month in real true actual fact corresponds to each pair (cheque + spreadsheet).

Then The Boss calls to ream me out about the e-mail I just sent because "MY" reports are wrong and confusing, I have too many of them for December, the "saved as" names (like Nov05) don't match the headers when you print them and I should pay more attention to detail because this is totally unacceptable substandard work. I should check and double-check things before I send them out because it reflects badly on me, on him and on us as a company.

Erm.

That's right, I'm being scolded because he thinks the crap I've been getting from the facility operator is something I produced. Does he not even realize what my job is?!? I report to him and him alone! He's supposed to approve the damn compilations I produce every month - does he not know from whence they derive or the agonies and frustrations to which I am subjected each and every month in order to retrieve the information necessary to do my job?!? If he doesn't, that means he never reads any of the e-mail I send him and never listens to a frickin' word I say!

I challenge him with this. "Do you NEVER listen to ANYTHING I bitch about?" I whine. "Have you not been hearing me complain about this fuckwittage with XYZ Company for nearly a month?!?"

"No."

"No, what?"

"I never listen to a word you say and I especially don't listen when you're bitching about stuff. And we don't have sex - it's TOTALLY like we're married!"

*********************

"Why'd you hang up on me?"

"Because you pissed me off. And I'm STILL pissed off."

*********************

"Why'd you hang up on me again?"

"Because I'm not done being pissed off yet. I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm going to curse you with something horrible, like genital warts, erectile disfunction and a potentially unbearable case of the crabs!"

"This all goes back to the not having sex thing. For all you know, that might be completely redundant. [pause] And a waste of energy you could better spend bitching at Company XYZ."

[The Boss is absolutely not a perv who's coming on to me. He's making jokes to cajole me out of my pissy mood. - ed]

"I'm still cursing you with all of those things, PLUS male pattern baldness."

"Ha! You're too late!"

"And a fever blister and an ingrown toenail! AND as soon as I get home, I'm telling the whole internet!"

"You wouldn't dare. You love me too much."

Ah, the deluded male ego.