[Nerull]

My gripe is with my work. I work with mostly women. Well, they like to come up with "fun little things" to do to liven things up. Well, a few weeks back, they come up with the idea of everyone turning in a baby picture, then they post them anonymously and submits their guesses. The winner gets a gift certificate to a local restaurant. Well, I refused to participate, stating (truthfully) that I had no pictures of myself as a baby. I don't speak to my father and my mother lost her copies in a fire, so nothing to turn in. Also, I wasn't all that terribly interested in participating (just didn't appeal to me). Finally, I ate at that restaurant only one time, and got bad food poisoning, so absolutely refuse to eat at the place. So, I declined to participate. I might as well have farted in the middle of the room. It became this big deal to all of them, that I would not participate in their idea that they spent time coming up with.

Well, a couple weeks after that, my yearly review came up (which determines my raise for the year). I sit in the room with my boss, her boss, and her boss's boss (all women, specifically the ones that came up with the baby picture idea), and get told how great a job I am doing, and how good I am at training people, helping others with problems that occur along the way, etc. Then, they have the gall (after telling me how well I was doing on those things) to tell me that I need to work on my teamwork and participation, and knocked me down a notch on my raise for it. I was pissed! They cut down my review rating just because they got their feelings hurt because I didn't participate in their little idea, even after explaining to them why I didn't. And then they wonder why I don't like dealing with them beyond a work relationship.

Oh, and yesterday was real fun, too. I don't own any green clothing (I just don't have any), so I just wore regular clothes to work for St. Patrick's Day. ALL DAY LONG, I took abuse about not wearing green. Every time any of them walked by, they started crap with me "don't you know you are supposed to wear green today" and roll their eyes or express their disappointment). There's one that was especially obnoxious about it, and I finally just told her that if she was willing to go buy me a green shirt then I'd wear the thing (sarcastically, of course). Her answer: "I'm not buying you anything. You should KNOW that you need a green shirt on St. Patty's Day". I guess maybe she thought I would roll over, but I just asked her, "are you so pathetic that you have to try to make people feel bad just to feel good about yourself?" She done nothing but give me dirty looks since, but she's kept her mouth shut, which is really all that I wanted. The others pretty much backed off, too.

Still, I don't like this work situation, and am going to be looking for a new job when the semester ends (speaking of semesters, sorry to hear about your class, Six. I've had jerk instructors like that, and what infuriates you the most is that there is very little you can do about it but take it).