Seems as fitting a time as any to tell you all the things I DON'T like about my job. They're not unknown to many of you, but I think sometimes I just want to gag on the sweetness-and-light of it all and it helps me (don't know about you) to let off steam every now and then. Usually this is done in the privacy of my own head, certainly my own house, or to a trusted girlfriend who's finding herself at a similar point of despair. But rarely do I see it spoken or written about publicly beyond a mild gnashing of teeth. As if we're all fooling ourselves. Perhaps it's better that way, kind of like the conspiracy theory that the oxygen masks that drop down from planes in a state of emergency are not pumping oxygen into passengers at all but mind-calming gas that stops anyone from panicking. Maybe it's better for all of us if one of us doesn't stand up and start muttering over and over (like the hysterical woman in Flying High), "I've gotta get out of here, I've gotta get out of here!"
SO! At risk of making any of you want to line up to smack me out of it, my list of gripes, in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, is as follows:
• I am (apparently) a Help Desk - with the amount of questions I get asked, you would think I am sitting in a shopping centre at one of those Information booths. But no. I am mother of one, wife of one, although I'd surely be forgiven for thinking I had 29 children and 14 husbands, the amount of questions and help I get dragged into. Sun up to sun down, the weekends are strewn with opportunities for them to ask me. It must be just easier than coming up with a solution themselves. From the five year-old, I can kind of understand the need for most of them. But the 39 year-old? Hmmmmmm... a little more dubious.
• I am (apparently) the Pied bloody Piper - come one, come all, to any room or outdoor area of the garden! Wherever I be, including the toilet, I will have at least one (if not all) set of feet or paws follow me. Wherever I go, guaranteed. So much so that I have been long since accustomed to turning a slow circle and checking behind me before I change direction. Jazz (the dog) considers my toileting her special one-on-one alone time with me. She is your typical middle child (and I say that as a self-confessed middle child), quite capable of attracting more than enough attention but still angling for more. The LGBB assumes and asserts much as she moves about the house behind me. As I live and breathe, the cat is trying to walk ACROSS me. Why?! I ask you. The last to come into the family, the cat gets by largely on Cuteness Factor and is always under someone's feet but gets away with being a pest by doing a few cutesy paw-moves.
• What I say (apparently) goes - with the Help Desk position comes a great deal of (unwanted) power. Not only am I asked all the questions and checked with on ev-er-y-thinnnnng, but I have to come up with the answers! And if I try and cop out by saying I don't know, I'm asked again, in a different way.
• I'm the Chore Divvy-er - it's long since been held in this house that, as I am apparently the only one who sees anything that needs doing, if I want something done all I need to do is ask.... That works fine until days like today when I explode in a fit of fury and "THAT THING HAS BEEN LYING THERE ALL WEEK! How is it that we can all step over/around/through it but I'm the mug who has to either remove/clean/pick it up or ask one of you to do it?" As long as I live, I shall never ever accept any logic levelled at me for that one. That is just bone idle laziness that causes that phenomenon.
• I'm the meal planning, lunch making, clothes washing, hair brushing, house cleaning master of the house. I can deal with all that. It does come with the territory and it must be accepted... if not liked, 100% of the time.
But what I cannot abide by is that I am also the Complaints handling desk! Now, some of you out there will have a Complaints desk queued a mile long, depending on number of siblings in the house. But one or twenty.... there is one thing that just irks me no end and that is whiney complaining. From the husband as well.
Do you have a list - like a ready-reckoner - up on the inside of the pantry door or somewhere else where nobody ever goes (like the broom cupboard or the ironing board... no wait, it wouldn't work being taped up on that because I don't go there either) that can give me some cheat's answers so that I don't have to think for my family? I'm asking for mercy here.
And if you do.... can I use it?
Sincerely,
Over It Today Already.
