scrubjayspeaks

Man, come on…

Mum’s phone factory reset itself. While there is some small chance she managed to press the correct series of buttons with the right timing just by squashing it in her pocket, that seems...impressively unlikely. So we’re classifying it as a software issue and getting the service to replace it.

It wasn’t backed up, because we weren’t really interested in letting Google have access to everything we’ve ever done on the devices. So she’s got years of data and contacts lost (though not everything, because we wrote paper lists of contacts when we first got the phones because we couldn’t transfer data from the old ones). We’ll eventually manage to get most of the numbers back. It’s upsetting but not, I suppose, the end of the world.

All the same, I find myself wracked with guilt about it. It feels like, every time something goes wrong at home, there’s a voice in my head saying, why didn’t you keep this from happening? I’ve always had an overdeveloped sense of personal responsibility, but it seems to get worse year by year.

I am reminded of the passage from Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

“Did you know,” interrupting the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a stern look, “that Betelgeuse Five has developed a very slight eccentricy in its orbit?”

Zaphod didn’t and found the information hard to concentrate on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.

“Er, no… look,” he said.

“Me spinning in my grave!” barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down and pointed a quivering, stick-like see-through finger at Zaphod.

“Your fault!” he screeched.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written, August posts queued

Day job: 42.75 hours

Reading: The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg (arbitrarily searched Libby for books set in Sweden, which of course means murder mysteries, there’s a lot of shitty “appearance=morality/worth” messages coming from all corners, but I am *reluctantly* invested enough to want to read the next in the series)

Watching: I’ve been doing a casual sort of liveblogging of weird moments from New Scandinavian Cooking on tumblr, which continues to be my obsession du jour

Listening: An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (always a bit sad to learn about someone cool because they died, but I will enjoy the discovery nonetheless), Braiding the Stories by Gaahl’s WYRD (metal-ish, Nordic-ish, another rec I can’t remember the source of)--as a side note, it sucks that getting into folk music and metal both means navigating a minefield of Nazi shit from artists and/or their fanbase and always feeling reluctant to mention a new artist I’m listening to for fear that I’ve missed some incident or dogwhistle

Clock Mouse: 1431 words--wow, that added up rather nicely

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.