What a weekend

Thank God I didn't have anything major planned today. After a visit to the optometrist Saturday morning, and forthright's Incarnate game in the afternoon, I toddled back across town to have dinner with tcaptain and his lovely girlfriend.

The plan was to have dinner (fondue, which was yummy) and then go see the festival of lights (I think that's the name). Instead, there was much merriment at dinner, which lasted quite a while. Jess was nursing a very sore knee, however, and we eventually convinced her that it would be a bad idea to walk on it for several hours, and so we ended up staying in with a whole lot of booze. We watched Blades of Glory, which was terrible but hilarious, and then there was more talking, and we finally got around to putting The Crow into the DVD player. In spite of its being a really good movie, by the time we were halfway through all of us were falling asleep, so we called it quits.

Thankfully, they let me crash on their sofa. We were all three sheets to the wind, I had missed the metro and all the buses, and no one was in any state to get me home. Not to mention that I didn't have enough money for a cab.

I was up reasonably early this morning with only a mild hangover. Hangovers for me tend to manifest in the form of heart palpitations and queasiness, and this time has proved no exception. That reminds me: I should really go find some water to drink. Anyway, tcaptain got up around the same time, and we had a nice quiet morning chatting about work, the evils of corporate thinking, and music (especially once Jess got up). When I left it was 11:30.

This afternoon will be dedicated to recovering from yesterday, methinks. Good times, but I'm no longer able to get away with this kind of shit the way I used to.

I'm so mad I could spit

This is a work-related rant. Not my current work, but my previous job. Fitness!Girl and I are still in touch with some of our former coworkers, and the news from Boomerang Inc. is not good.

Long-time readers of this LJ will remember the hostile work environment we had to put up with on a regular basis. ( Background information for those of you who weren't reading this LJ at the time )

So things have not gone well at Boomerang since I left. Half of the security central quit, starting with the entire evening shift (me, Fitness!Girl, and K.), and ending with three other employees quitting in rapid succession after that, not to mention that the people they got to replace the evening shift were all useless and had to be let go after two weeks.

So instead of admitting they had a problem, the director and supervisor decided that heaping more abuse on the remaining employees would be a good strategy to build team morale. One of the two night shift girls is now on medical leave for burnout due to harassment. They bullied her, laughed at her (literally) when she asked for a shift change because she was finding the night shift too hard on her physically, and openly mocked and derided her in front of the other employees. When she brought in her doctor's note for her medical leave, the supervisor yelled at her, and has since called her at home to accuse her of malingering, of making things up, and to yell at her some more.

The only good thing is that her doctor is backing her up 100% and wrote on her medical note "Burnout due to harassment in the workplace and hostile work environment," but that's it. She's had at least one breakdown that she can't even remember because of how badly they f*cked her up.

One of the girls on weekend shift is also *thisclose* to burnout. She's Fitness!Girl's best friend, and Fitness!Girl told me on Friday that she had to pick up the pieces and glue her back together the other day, because she broke down into a sobbing mess thanks to the supervisor. This girl is a strong, self-assured woman, at least that's how I knew her when I was at Boomerang. She doesn't take shit from anyone. The fact that she was reduced to tears speaks volumes about what's going on there.

I am so angry at what they're doing there that I want to go over and break legs. I am halfway tempted to call up the HR guy (the only decent guy there as far as I can tell) and tell him to wake the f*ck up and look into what's happening in the security central. The central was always set apart from the rest of the company, and so no one ever knew what was going on in there.

Gah. There are no words to express just how furious I am about this.

More TV crack

tcaptain lent me the first two seasons of CSI. I am four episodes in, and I think I have a tiny crush on Grissom. I love a man who can be smug about entomology.

Heh.

:::ETA:::

I'm also very much enjoying the various tensions, interpersonal conflicts and external conflicts. In CSI: Miami they try very hard to do it, but basically everyone gets along with everyone on that show, and so there's very little dramatic tension for the discerning viewer.