Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Lesson 1:
When bad things happen, it really hurts to not be able to talk to your mate, or your former mate, as it were. This break-up stuff is really new to me, being that Shawn was my first real boyfriend (I don’t know that the 4 month long-distance thing really counts as a relationship, but if it does it certainly pales next to the 41/2 years I spent with Shawn).

Well, I guess it’s just you and me diary...

Today at work I got another healthy dose of working with a gaggle of women, and it sucked. I work for the state. I try to help people (customers) and also make sure that all the help they receive is within the confines of state and federal regulations. Working for the state is not a difficult job and it's hard to get canned, so being here for the past 4 years has not been challenging, but it (barely) pays the mortgage.

The worst part of this job is dealing with the lifers who cannot put what we do into perspective. I’m not saying a monkey could do what we do, but a monkey would certainly not get their granny panties in a wad over the stupid shit that people think is important around here.
Case in Point: Someone just got a monetary award. Yeah for them! Only, they have already taken out a loan for the maximum that they can receive. Well, when the monetary award is added, this person has received OVER the maximum they can receive. It is incumbent upon me, on behalf of my office, to contact this person and let them know that while they cannot receive the award outright, it will be going towards repaying a portion of the loan they had received. Great! Everyone’s happy! We are within regulations! The person has a portion of their loan repaid, which they will not owe back plus interest at a later date! All is right with the world!!!! Or so Hans Christian Anderson would have us believe.

It takes 6 people a better part of a whole workday (about 6 hrs) to assess that the student CAN receive the monetary award. And why, you ask, would we make it a practice to bend rules so that people can get more than maximum they can receive? Because some folks 'round these parts have the power to say so, and when one of the witches from the coven wants to assert themselves, they must band together and frighten the peasants with e-mails sent far and wide. To publicly castigate the peons is to show the world who is the boss of whom, and that makes some people feel great about themselves and forget about their pathetic, inferior little lives. Nazis, Skinheads, and most of the executives in the state office I work for; we must pray little children. Pray for their shriveled little souls. (While you all are doing that, I think I’ll go flatten their tires, then check out the classifieds.)