The "reassurance speech"

*twitch*


So I was supposed to get the "reassurance speech" from New!Boss today. I was warned yesterday that this would happen, and sure enough he came to my desk today and asked me to come see him in a few minutes.

Consider me not reassured.

1) He told me there would be no changes made to the department until the end of the summer. That's great for the permanent employees, but not so great for me. Still, this wasn't that huge a deal for me thus far. After all, I've had no job security for two years now: why should I expect things to change for me?

2) Boss!Lady is no longer going to be my boss, starting at the end of the summer. Okay, no surprise there. She wants to become a regular manager and not have to deal with thankless administrative shit, and we all knew this. New!Boss is going to be my boss instead. Again, not a major problem. He has a different style, but he's pretty square all around.

3) At the end of the summer, he'll be conferring with Boss!Lady to see which posts the department needs to keep and/or create. As he said, they might need another admin person, but only part-time. To cut a very long story short, it sounds suspiciously as though I may have no job by the time September rolls around.

Okay, I am willing to admit that I may be paranoid about this. New!Boss is very managerial in his approach, and is unwilling to commit to anything that he isn't 100% certain of. I think he really was trying to reassure me that all was well in the department. Unfortunately, he had the opposite effect on me.

Maybe I wouldn't be quite so panicked if I wasn't already having financial troubles on top of all this.

Maybe I wouldn't be quite so unnerved if he hadn't kept staring at me the whole time. Seriously, dude, I don't need that much eye contact. In fact, I am far more comfortable not maintaining continuous, unblinking eye contact. I understand that this is a managerial thing: eye contact is meant to prove that you're honest and sincere, and is meant to be reassuring. I understand this, and accept it, to a point. A little eye contact is one thing, but to have this guy stare at me with his huge brown eyes without blinking EVER seriously creeped me out. I felt as though he was wondering how long it would take to skin and eat me. *shudder*

For you manager-types out there: if your employee is squirming, it might be an indication that you're staring too hard. :P Not that I was squirming: I made a conscious effort not to, although if the meeting had lasted more than five minutes I might have had to find a way around the GIANT STARING EYEBALLS OF DOOM.

Maybe I'm just weird that way.

Work snippet

This whole exchange took place in French. I've translated for the benefit of readers who don't speak the language.


Skinny!Admin: "Hey, mousme, you're good in English, right?"

Me: "Yes. What's the problem?"

Skinny!Admin: "There's a few words in this letter I don't understand. Can you translate for me?"

Me: "Sure. What's causing you trouble?"

Skinny!Admin: "What does 'bona fide' mean in English?"

Me: >_<


She was highly indignant when I told her it was Latin. Apparently it offended her sense of propriety that not only was she expected to know English to do her job, but that she was also expected to know a few basic expressions in Latin to boot. This was the summum of annoyance for her (look! More Latin!), and she complained bitterly for about ten minutes after that.

I swear, I can't make this shit up.

*thud*

Well, the migraine I've had on and off since I first got that phone call from Bell finally caught up with me.

Had a "nap" at 4pm, and just woke up now. Am going back to bed.


On a random note, I've been having problems with Firefox ever since switching over from IE, and I was hoping someone on my flist could enlighten me. When I get my Yahoo! mail, it doesn't let me answer emails. I can open a new message window, but when I hit "send," nothing happens. Any ideas on how I can fix that?

Any help at all would be appreciated, especially from fellow Mac-users. Thanks!

Just a little something special

Okay, so I'm awake. Sue me, my head hurts.


I just found out that A. A. Milne's wife's first name was Daphne. For some reason, that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I am absurdly pleased.


So here's a random question for the flist: which Winnie-the-Pooh character are you most like and why? (This question inspired by borrowedwings' potential new employer)

Spam! (Well, chili, actually)

Okay, flist: I need a good but simple chili recipe. Help?