sometimes parasites are preferable

Besides the joy of having one less day of work to drag myself awake for due to the long Labor Day weekend, I was hoping that I would escape my weekly meeting with Donna, my 'trainer'. Unfortunately, this was wishful thinking, as she appeared on Friday.

As a trainer, Donna is less than ideal. Having worked in the billing department 15 years ago, I'm sure that, at one time, she knew what she was doing...those days are long over, however. Most of the information that Donna has been telling me is incorrect. And when you combine this with the fact that nothing was done on the computer in Donna's day, not only is most everything she's telling me incorrect, but it's also antiquated...resulting in many hand written invoices and notices which then must be manually calculated...the same invoices and notices that I've already made computer programs for that get the work done in a fraction of the time.

Several times over the past few weeks, I've had to call my supervisor for clarification of what Donna has been telling me to do. And each time I've been met with the response, "who told you that? That's not the way it's supposed to be done!"

Apparently, Donna has become aware of the wealth of misinformation that she’s been imparting on me.

"I've discussed this with your supervisor," she announced on Friday, "and we've decided that to prevent any misunderstanding on your part as to what you're being told to do, you will now be required to write up a report on each task that I instruct you on, detailing the specific steps you are to take in order to complete this project. I then want you to drop off a daily task list in my mailbox at the end of each day."

So, due to Donna's incompetence, I now have more meaningless work to do.

After graduating high school, thus ending all attendance in high school English classes, I thought my days of doing pointless essays and reports were over...but then came Donna.

I've been leaving work very tired, drained, and demoralized...with a pinch of really wanting to kick someone's dog added in for good measure. My mom detected this in my voice yesterday.

"You sound tired, what's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing mom, I've just been feeling run down lately."

She paused in thought and, being the practical and non-alarmist mother that she is, told me, "I bet you have a tapeworm! I just saw a report about them on the news...have you been eating any undercooked food lately?"

"No mom, I'm sure that I don't have a tapeworm."

Though I would gladly welcome a tapeworm over my co-workers. I'm quite certain that tapeworms would have a better disposition.