Thar he blubs!

Yeah, there was light blubbing. I finally boiled over at mid morning and suddenly faced with critique of my performance I stood up, said I was too stressed to be there and walked out the door. I stalked around the picnic table under the tree just up from where the smokers lurk and stood there steaming mad and tears welling. As I went back in I then had to spend 10 minutes hissing out that I was beyond stressed and that I did the job of two people. theBoss complained it was because I'd taken on work that wasn't mine even though that work wasn't being done and if it was it was done poorly and someone had to step in and fix it then pump it out due to time issues. That and my tooth hole blazed with pain from the yanking not less than a day before and it added to the froth of stress.

I was told by theBoss to go home and de-stress but before I could I was dragged into the meeting, now a monthly effort, where we typically endure 90 minutes of work talk laced with occasional banter but as I sit there I'm in the presence of people who either don't like me or don't like what I do. It's a pretty brutal atoms to be in. About 15 minutes in two stress tears leaked off my eyes, having welled as I sat in saddened hunched anger. 

At the end, a blissfully short meeting since theBoss stressed we had business to do, I anger-saddened walked back to my desk. I should have just packed up and left but there was still some must do stuff to complete before I could hand it all over. I finally embedded the last of the report edits then tagged out midday, sending an email with a quick link to where the document sat.

After I left I drove off to try and sort out my credit card issue—it kept being declined—only to be told by the bank of two people that I needed to call telephone banking to sort it all out. So I left and went home and then I called the bank and found out my tele-banking rights had been suspended four years before when I'd tried to tele-bank and couldn't prove who I was. So in order to fix my card so I could tele-bank it meant another trip to a bank to sort it. I went in and they re-activated it and unblocked my tele-banking rights, gave me a three digit pin, and directed me to a self-serve phone from which to tele-bank with, my needing to log in right away to reset the temporary pin. After seven minutes I got through only to fail once more to prove my identity—I needed to know what branch the account was set up at over 16 years before or what our credit card limit was—and the person immediately blocked my tele-banking rights even after I'd told her I'd literally just had them unblocked not seven minutes ago. 

All up it meant four separate queings for assistance over the space of an hour, including a test run at a supermarket to discover my card still didn't work. In the end they reported the card damaged and shipped me a new one—eight day wait—but I suspect that card will still have the issue where my card is declined. 

I'm trapped in a drowning bureaucracy of madness. I couldn't prove who I was with my date of birth but only by knowing what my fucking credit limit was. As if that's common fucking knowledge? Jesus, fuck. 

But I ended the misery of my horror day with an awesome sit in a café with theWife and theBoy with coffee, milkshake, diet coke and chips and a session of frantic scribbling where theBoy and I competed at doodles. I drew a totally awesome car. I should get my mum to send it to NASA! (1).

BANK: 487 (2)

(1) That. Happened. Year three, drew pics of rocket planes and my mum sent them to NASA (to their design department). I got a packet that had a 'hey, kid, nice pics!' letter and a stack of kewl cardboard info sheets about the moon and rockets (and shit). This was the '80s; cardboard info sheets from actual NASA were kewl. 
(2) You know what? Credit where due. Here I am, a brutal horror of a day (admittedly a first world one; my actual real needs met), and I still rode my allotted time plus another five. Take that, genetic destiny.