Dear Journal (yep, one of those posts, much rambling ahead),

Lord is work kicking my ass. Or at least, it's about to. One of our promotion producers gave his notice and his now gone. But that leaves us down one person just when we need to be full staffed. November Sweeps starts next Thursday and we've got great momentum. Just have to last past Thanksgiving... I can do that...

Being one producer down, the other producer and I have had to take on extra late shifts. I still work Sunday through Thursday, but on Monday and Tuesdays, I have to produce the daily news topicals (12p-9p). You know, those promos you see where the news anchor tells you what's coming on. It's not such a hard thing to do, but 2 extra days of topicals (I work the late shift on Sunday) means I only have 2 days to do EVERYTHING ELSE. There's radio spots to download, tag and upload again. There's special news sweeps pieces that will need promos. That's about a day of work. Then, there's the hosted movies on the weekends. Those take about a 1/2 day to a day of shooting depending on what's needed to be shot and about 2 days to edit.

On top of all that, my supervisor has not shown any interest in picking up a few projects. Well, at least not until the big boss probably told her she needed to give her producers a hand. So, while me and the 4-to-5 month preggo producer are killing ourselves to just survive the sweeps period, she apparently was just going to pile job upon job to us and not do much of anything.

When the guy quit, we divided up the topical days... 3 for me and 3 for preggo producer. The supervisor wasn't going to take a day to do topicals. That's total bullshit; we were (and still are) incredibly pissed that she wouldn't take one fucking day of topicals. The problem arose the other day that the preggo producer had already planned to take this Friday and another Friday is sweeps off. This was okayed before the guy left us. So, the supervisor gal wanted me to work those two days, which I really normally don't have a problem with. But, since Fridays and Saturdays are my weekend to do with as I please, my family had plans to go out of town then. So, I can't work the latter Friday. I said I can't work then, but I probably could work the first Friday. I told my supervisor I would have to get back with her after I checked with my family at home, just to make sure we didn't have plans then, too. She walked off and straight into the bosses office, when we think she was told she would have to pick up alot of the slack, too.

When she got out that meeting, I told her that I could work the first Friday and asked what she was going to do about the Sunday I was giving up to work the Friday (5 day work week, folks, not 6). She, in a bit of an aggrivated tone, simply said she would just have to take both Fridays. No skin off my back... And thank you for picking up a little of the slack...

The boss has told us producers that we can lean on him and the supervisor to pre-produce stuff, like writing scripts and gathering footage, etc. We'd take the tapes and edit them. And we are definately gonna take advantage of that... probably abuse the priviledge. Hey, maybe if we annoy the supervisor enough, she'll quit and I can get a promotion. That would be nice. So, part of me just wants to keep doing things that will annoy her enough into quiting...

What I and others at work can't figure out is how she's stable enough to keep working here without being fired or quitting. I am completely sincere when I say there is not a single person in a 80+ person office that has said one nice thing about her. Where ever she goes, tension follows and I have heard the words "hate," "looney," "fucking ding-bat bitch," and "fucking fruit loop" used in reference to her (one of those by a bigwig department head). No one can figure out how she can stay in place where no one likes her. Seriously, she'll walk into the office in the morning -- three of us already there -- and not one of us will acknowledge her. I think we do that on purpose... I could go on about her, but really, I'm getting a headache. Sincerely, I get a headache about 5 minutes after she walks in the door and it magically goes away when I leave work...

But, you know, playing what I think was charades with what I am pretty sure was a young girl with down syndrome who didn't speak much English (we were at Tae Kwon Do and many of the Korean children speak in their native tongue) is now a cherished memory and I will no doubt try to put myself in her mind when I need to de-stress. I mean, she wasn't just talking to me and the wife, she wasn't just playing charades with us... she was talking to her invisible friends who seemed to help her perform her charade. I didn't think what a weirdo she was. I thought, she knows. If I were in her mind, then I'd know and see that all of the above doesn't matter... Just that flapping my arms meant bird and NOT flying, lying down on the ground meant sleep, not sleeping or laying down, and my best friends, only those that know can see...