Sleepless on the Bayou

It is very rare that I do not get a goodnight's sleep. Typically, my head hits the pillow and I am asleep within five minutes. This hasn't happened in the last two nights. Last night I got ZERO sleep. This may have happened only five times in my entire life. And every single time it was because I was angry about work.

Anxieties about my personal relationship AND an impending showdown at work this morning created the perfect storm to where I got absolutely NO SLEEP. I felt sorry for Jack Shrew, Pierre and Boudreaux. I kept switching bedrooms and tossed and turned the whole night. Fortunately, my roommates were not home and they were spared my sleepless night.

So, it is 4am. I am still awake. I report back to our headquarters tomorrow morning for a Battle Royale. It has something to do with a misunderstanding about my role in the company. See... I filled in for a person that quit at another branch. Instead of letting this employee give her two weeks notice, the company let her go immediately. This was at the absolutely worse time because all of our employees at this branch were on a big job at a large refinery. So, I stepped in and answered the phone lines, sold products and handled repair work at the front counter, wrote sales and service tickets, did all the purchasing, arranged the shipping, ran credit card transactions, and did everything I had to do to keep this branch running smoothly. In addition, I had to bring my work over from our office headquarters because no one at our company could do my work.

Yes, I was a trooper. Sometimes it would take up to an hour and a half to make it to work because of a traffic accident. Most times it took just an hour. The drive back was bumper-to-bumper traffic that took an hour to get home. The best part was that there was no lunch break. I could not physically leave the building at all because I was the only one there. The branch could not be closed and the phone lines could not go unanswered. So... I had to either eat out the candy box or order pizza. Sometimes I couldn't get pizza delivered in this PoDunk town, so I had to eat out the candy box. I sacrificed for the good of the company so operations would flow smoothly.

After four weeks, we finally hired and trained a replacement. I was ready to go back to my office at the headquarters. Or was I? The powers-that-be let it be known that they had ideas of an extended stay for me at this branch. The trouble is... what they had in mind was totally beneath my rank in the company, my education and my skill set. My pride was injured at the misguided new career path that they had haphazardly chosen for me

So, today, I will walk into our corporate headquarters like a timebomb. The slightest wrong word choice will surely set me off. I will NOT yield to these dumbfucks. Hell hath no fury when my pride has been so injured. My knuckles are already cracked and I have my can of whoopass already open for this confrontation.