What a shitty damn week. Last Sunday morning my Wife woke up sick. By that evening she was fine and I was sick. Not sure if we exchanged illnesses or what. So I skipped Monday. This is only like the second time I’ve been out sick from this job, and the last time I was sick I felt incredibly guilty. I did what we probably all do – I felt a little bit ill and decided to stay home. Sure I could have gone to work – but at that point I wasn’t doing anything mission critical. I’ve had tasks here that I figured were mission critical, so I’ve come to work several times when I felt less than 100% in the last few months. Monday, however, I had no problem staying home, since I was sick – no doubt about it.

Tuesday I went to work and when I got home I took a nap – and woke up with 100.5°. I skipped out Wednesday, and went back on Thursday, and came home nearly dead. I had to skip out on Friday. Three non consecutive days off – which is ironic since if I had just stayed home Tuesday I could probably have licked it. The most violent, hacking cough I have had in years, a need to take this horribly bitter Benadryl, an inability to sleep due to the pain of breathing, this bizarre tastebuds trick where everything tastes a little bit like vomit – you name it. This past week sucked.

There’s this guy at work here that I don’t like. Well that’s not entirely true, I do like him – everyone does, to some extent. He’s a real likeable person. Person. Not a worker. He never does any work. I can’t think of a time when I didn’t see him chatting it up or browsing the web. Now, sitting here and making a blog post I figure I’m hardly worker of the year, but this is on occasion for me – this guy does nothing. Then he asks me for help on something he should have had down ages ago. I’ve been here for a year, he’s been here for close to two years, and I know more stuff than him.

It used to really bother me that this guy was still here. There used to be more people working with him but they systematically all went on to bigger/better things. I figured for sure he would get canned as he was “hiding” behind those people, but nope. The part that bothered me was that it seemed to me that if this individual was still here that means that this job doesn’t care what you do – meaning then that it also didn’t notice if you were doing good instead of bad. I’ve recieved enough praise on my performance to let me know that this last little bit isn’t true, but I’m not so sure this job cares about bad performance.

Last August or so everyone got a 4% raise. Everyone but me – as it turns out you had to have been here a year to get it. This means that this person got a raise for no other reason than being in a nice little rut and no one noticing him. It really ticked me off – until the next month everyone got their titles changed and mine carried that 4% raise. Today, however, this person informed me that he has now moved to a better parking lot because – you guessed it – he’s been here long enough. I’m not sure where I stand on that list but it’s just another annoying example of how the system here works – just stick around long enough and you get everything – even if you don’t deserve it.

Perhaps I’ll get that promotion soon. Oh well, it could be worse – at least I don’t have to live in goddamn cubicle land.