Today's Keyboard Smash

Ah. We've hit the "random crying jags" portion of our exhaustion programming. Fun.

So big news at work today! They might actually intend to ENFORCE their own rules! Amazing! Such bravery! Such determination!

*muffled rage sobbing*

There's an update to the company covid readiness plan. It's not...it's not really an update, though, is it? It's just them actually saying, oh, no, we really did mean it when we said you needed to wear masking while moving around the building. Really. They've clarified a few things, but the concept itself isn't new. It's just that no one much has bothered to comply, so now they have to make a fuss all over again.

I say no one, but hey, this loser here has been complying. Pretty much as soon as they made masks routinely available, I've been wearing one any time I move through spaces that might have other humans. They've now specified that we can't even take it off when at our workstations in the cleanroom, which I suspect has to do with the air filtration process being used, so I'll have to start doing that. But I already wear it at all other times that I'm not sitting at a break table, by myself, actively putting food or drink in my face hole.

Rules! I understand them!

I am very much alone in this. No one else has been wearing them much at all on the production floor, and walking down the narrow hallway has been only marginally better. And now? Now I have to watch a bunch of people--including people I rather like, as far as coworkers go--having tiny child meltdowns about it. One of them is rules-lawyering the whole thing, because they think they're so fucking clever and will somehow get out of it if they find the right button to push. Another--again, this is someone I've grown to really quite like--is making a point of not wearing it over their nose until someone personally, individually tells them they must do that too. Just fighting every step of the way, making a point of absolute minimal compliance until directly ordered.

It's like watching children hovering their finger half an inch away from someone and saying, "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, I'mnotouching--" because they've learned the distinction between the letter and the spirit of a rule and intend to exploit that difference whenever possible. It's just so petty and ludicrous. After months of watching them do this to a lesser extent--or perhaps just doing it without quite such clear instructions to the contrary--I found the last of my respect and tolerance draining away.

What assholes. Just. Goddamn. What petty, childish, pointless behavior. None of them have any reason NOT to wear the masks except an overabundance of contrariness. They just don't want to. Don't want to be told what to do. Don't want to be inconvenienced or made even slightly uncomfortable. (Which is the same reason some of them haven't stopped having gatherings with extended family. Or going out with friends in whatever ways haven't been actively outlawed.) It's not fun. It's not what works for their lifestyle.

I blame the company, in part. They made the decision at the very beginning, when they couldn't source PPE for us, that staying open and maintaining their profit margins mattered more than our safety. They chose their priority, and their employees heard it loud and clear: this doesn't matter enough to shut down, to send us home, to take drastic steps. They TRAINED these dreadful children for this exact moment. Trained them to think all precautions are mere formalities and meaningless gestures. Trained them to be as apathetic as the company was. The damage to morale was done months ago.

Still. Still, I want to take some of these kids--and they are kids, at least a decade younger than I am, who are kicking up the biggest fuss--and shake them until their brains rattle. All this time, I've been working right next to you, wearing a mask while you blithely inform me that you will not do the same. All this time, I've been exposed to you. And I've got ~preexisting~ conditions out the ass. An immune system modified by medication for a disease that probably makes me more vulnerable. Lungs likely weakened from multiple bouts of bronchitis growing up and as recently as this past winter. Internal organs that already like to freak out even without the excuse of a virus that likes to fry your insides.

All this time, I've been next to you, and you haven't given a damn. You are the thing I have to survive. Because you don't feel like wearing a mask. You don't think it does any good. You're not into this.

It's been a while since I hit that recurring wall of "oh shit, humans are worthless fools, aren't they?" But wow, I am right back there in my bad, hope you all die in this plague, leave me to my animals and plants, misanthropic place.