Bad fish day

Yesterday was, to put it mildly, a bad fish day. Or, at least that's what we called it around the office.

Emilio is alive and well, thankfully, but the foul smell hovering in our cube (that forced us to work on couches in entryways and scattered among the empty desks farthest from where we usually sit) turned out to be the death-scent of the occupants of all the other fish tanks. You couldn't really even see the bodies for the cloudy water.

And on this day, of all days, my manager chose to spend our meeting together not just asking why I hadn't gotten more work done. This time, he thought it prudent to mention that some one of my coworkers had come to him with the claim that I hadn't followed up on some unnamed action item. He even went so far as to insinuate that my reputation as a reliable coworker was at stake - what if, for example, I had planned band practices and then just not shown up week after week? what would people think??

Wow. Way to play the wrong card, sir.

When pressed, he was unable to come up with a single example of a specific thing I had not done - with the exception of a large project that we'd discussed months ago was not going to be finished by now. Instead, he insisted that I knew best what it was that I hadn't accomplished.

He asked what I was doing that was making me so busy and unproductive (not in so many words, of course, but that was the gist). I replied that I'd been sick for the past seven months, which is true (as I'm about to dash off, sick again, to the San Francisco Botanical Garden <3 this morning) and that I'm rather busy outside of work, which is really none of his business. I think it's entirely possible that I am not doing as much work as my coworkers. I work 8 hours a day and their lives are consumed by work only. I am not shy to admit that I haven't given myself the flexibility to work the amount of overtime I had been working before. I am also not willing to rearrange my schedule to be able to do that again. So, if we want to have a discussion about the fact that I'm sick because I feel pressured to work from home instead of taking sick days and that I'm getting poor reviews because my manager has a vague feeling that I'm not working as much as people who work more than 40 hours a week, I'm up for it. Not only that, I'd like to get it in writing.

In any case, I returned to my desk and made an attempt to finish a few more things before heading out for the day, which I did. And then missed my shuttle. The one shuttle to my stop.

Of course, the next bus to Civic Center was an old bus that could fit only half of my leg in the amount of space between seats with no possible reprieve due to immoveable seat backs. I don't think I've ever been on any mode of transportation with that little leg room.

But the day is over now, and I'm going to do my best not to think about it at least until Monday.