Labor Woes - Cont.

It is escalating.
I get this pressure in my chest sometimes, as if I had forgotten to breathe for a long time.
And maybe I have. Sometimes I stop breathing when I feel particularly upset.
I don’t know what to do! I cannot play this game!
And it pisses me off because for the first time I felt well in a job. People were nice, there is a nice “rapport” with my coworkers. They tease each other in a harmless way, and there is a sense that you can count on them to help.
And I remember when I was working at Hell Hotel. It was a nightmare; pure, unadulterated misery. My boss hated me and made no effort to conceal it. He took every opportunity to demean me. I was in anguish everyday, because I really, really was afraid of going to work.
When finally my contract expired and they did not renovate it, it hurt economically and I cried all the way home. But it gave me such an enormous sense of relief that I know, positively, that I should have been gone from there long before that.
And this guy is turning this job now and poisoning it for me.
(I suppose I better name him; I cannot keep on calling him “that guy”. I could use his office nickname of The Cookie Monster, earned for his eating habits. But what he really reminds me of is a Vogon, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So from now on, he will be known as Mr. Vogon.)
Stupid things will set him off, and keep him in a dark mood for days, and I know Mr. Vogon is plotting against me as he plots against so many people in here.
Yesterday I was at the company building very early in the morning. I am always the first there, and everybody knows it. I live by my husbands schedule, which means I am at work at 6, even though work starts at 8. They practically open the building for me!
And I was on my cubicle working on an assignment for college. It was 6:30 or so. I was very concentrated on what I was doing; I did not hear Mr. Vogon coming until he slapped the wall very hard to scare me. And scare me he did. Pissed me off, because I almost had the perfect idea to convey a meaning in my translation, and he had made me forget it!
Mr. Vogon said: “Wow! You must get up very early! You get here before I do!”
And I said: “Yes, I do.” I was trying to remember the way that sentence was supposed to go and I had no time for pleasantries.
And he got pissed, and said: “You want me gone! OK, Ill go!” He turned and left He did not speak to me for the rest of the day, but I caught him giving me dirty looks whenever I turned.
And then, today, after I sent him some documents he had requested to his e-mail, he tells me to print those documents and give them to the temp that is working for him now. I ask if I could forward the e-mail to her, so she can print them herself, (as this is what they hired her for and I did not have time to do this right now). He went into a hissy fit, and said : “I will print them myself, then!”, and stomped off my cubicle.
And I’m like, it’s not that big of a deal! You want me to print them? I can print them! I just think that since it’s her job to do this thing, she should do this thing, and their project should not affect in any way my regular functions.


But I am not truly sorry it worked like that.

I am anxious, worried and just plain scared.

I know he will use this in his war against me.

Yet, I want him to understand that he is not my boss and I am not his assistant.

I am not there to satisfy Mr. Vogon’s needs, nor is he there to satisfy mine.

I can help with stuff, just as I help those I can, but I am not here to do his work for him.
I am not here to keep him happy and contented. I am here to do a job, and if his stuff interfere with mine, his stuff will have to take a hike.

I had hoped this temp worker would keep him distracted and away from me. It does not seem to be working out.
And anyways, I ended up printing those document, just because the temp asked nicely. I was handling the phone lines, writing an e-mail, preparing a quotation and searching part numbers, yet I printed those documents and explained them to the girl, because she was polite.