Hello, my peoples! It’s been a while. I had a bunch of little things to do last weekend and didn’t get a chance to post at all. Sorry if I made you worry.

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What’s been going on in my world? I have a new boss. To recap, for the past two years, I’ve had a management tag team made up of a mom and her son. Mom took a month off, supposedly under doctor’s orders, because of stress. She gave two day’s notice. After a month, she came back, and within two days, she gave one week’s notice that she was planning to retire. Way to be responsible, mom.

When someone leaves my company, a running theme is to not replace them, but make everyone else absorb their work. That’s what happened for the month that mom was gone and we thought that’s how it would be. Then, we got notice that a new boss had been hired.

We had a welcome lunch (A welcome lunch? Who does that?) with him where my coworkers were a little more open with their banter than I would have been, e.g., one of the topics at the welcome lunch was “favorite serial killers.” It was a trial by fire. At one point, new boss interrupted the conversation to tell a witty anecdote that wasn’t all that witty. Crickets and awkward ensued. Hoo boy.

Over the course of the week, we had individual meetings with him. Mine was enlightening, and proves that just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.

I gave a bird’s-eye summary of everything I do. Taken aback, he said, “So, you determine which products to feature?” Yes. “You talk to vendors?” Yes. “You do the art for the website and two email blasts a week?” Yes. “And you produce two different catalogs?” Yes. “So, you essentially do everything [boss’ son] does, but for two different brands instead of just one?” Yes!

He seemed confused. Apparently, he was under the impression that I spend most of my days finding the most comfortable position to sit with my thumb up my butt instead of actually doing twice the amount of work that boss’ son does.

“I’m not sure how you’ll take this, but I’m sensing a bit of favoritism here,” and he pointed at one of boss’ son’s projects. A thousand times YES!!!

With the dawning impression that someone in management might just be on my side, or at the very least, impartial, I said, “I am the redheaded stepchild of this organization-an afterthought. [Boss’ son] has an office, a parking spot, and most likely makes more than I do. For example, you got a welcome lunch. When my brands were sold and I moved over here, they gave a dusty cubicle with someone else’s belongings in it. I had to clean it out myself. Not much has changed since.”

“Do you two get along?” He asked incredulously, as if it was impossible that boss’ son and I would be anything but mortal enemies given the circumstances. “We do.” Boss’ son and I do get along personally, but professionally, I secretly know that he and his mom have been taking credit for my work and making me look bad. The fact that new boss was under the impression that I did not much at all was the proof.

The meeting lasted an hour and a half, during which time, he brought up all sorts of ideas for my brands, most of which I had already tried. I ran back to my cubicle and grabbed some projects I did before my brands were sold to this shitty company. “This is great! Why aren’t you doing this now?” “I tried to make it happen two years ago, but I lost the battle. I was told we weren’t able to do these things here, because of expense, limitations in our in-house inventory system, or because that’s just not the way they do things. [Mom] wanted everything simplified.” In the end, without wanting to come right out and say “nepotism,” I ended up shrugging my shoulders. He read between the lines and with an exasperated pause, said, “I know just how difficult it is to work with family members when you’re not family.”

I walked out of that meeting feeling like a million bucks. I felt an unfamiliar sensation akin to something resembling hope. How strange.

It was only a few hours later, when I saw boss’ son in with new boss that I realized perhaps I shouldn’t have been so forthcoming. Maybe I should have been a little more reserved and politic, since there’s really no way to step back from “redheaded stepchild.” I don’t regret laying it all out like that, but maybe I should have been a tad more cautious in my word choices. It’s still too early to tell whether it will come back to bite me in the ass, but I ain’t worried mostly because, in the two years since I was sold like a cow, the company I work for has systematically dismantled the few fucks I did give about my job.

I suppose I need to come up with a new moniker for boss’ son since he isn’t anymore. Yay! Got any suggestions?

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In other news, fuck corporations. I am so goddamn tired of them forcing their shitty changes down our throats without any rationale, warning or explanation of how to do things now. They take away features willy-nilly, then don’t tell us how to do the things we’re used to doing until we complain that we can’t do them anymore. “We’re going to force an update on you with way less and/or more complicated features, but hey, look, we changed the background color!”

Some of you who know me well might be wondering if WordPress did another godawful update without you noticing, since I’ve bitched a blue streak about them doing exactly what I described above, but no. Today’s hot seat occupant is Apple.

I own five Mac products: A tower, laptop, iMac, iPhone and iPad. I really only use three of them: the iMac (on which I’m writing this), iPhone and iPad. The Macbook Pro needs a new graphics card, which it will probably never get, and I only use the tower for downloading and storage. I own Mac products, because I am a graphic designer and Mac is still the industry standard for my profession, and I like all of my devices to communicate. Silly me.

I have three Mac products that I need to work in concert, and they did until the other day. Since IOS 10, everything is botched. I have spent the better part of the last day and a half yelling at digital devices while trying to get all the things I used to be able to do on all my devices to work.

I still can’t get my Mac mail to work on my desktop, though I did manage to get it working on the phone and iPad. This is not some third-party email like Google that I’m talking about; this is Mac mail–an email address I’ve had with them since iDisk. (Anyone remember iDisk? It was cumbersome and slow, but at least it worked.)

You read that right: I can’t get my Mac mail to work on a Mac. What an awesome upgrade! Fuck you, Apple. How about a little support documentation? “Here’s how you email now since we broke everything…” Is that too much to fucking ask?

/end rant.

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I’m going to get back to the great sticker project now. I have too many boring, white, utilitarian items in my bathroom, such as these:

The white thing on the left is an upside down tray that I use as a toilet paper holder. I use the cylinder to store extra rolls right next to the commode, which you may have already picked up based on the actual toilet paper inside. You’re so smart.

Too boring. Too white. So, I bought an ass-ton of random stickers and I’m covering the boring white like so:

Still a work in progress obviously, but already significantly better than boring white. If I remember, I’ll take pictures of the finished products.

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Speaking of evil corporations, has anyone else noticed that you can no longer add new images in the wp-admin post editor (the only one I use), but have to do it through the media library? Every time I try to add an image in a post, I get this message:

Fuck you, WordPress.

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There are more embarrassing and awkward stories I could tell, but perhaps we’ll save those for another time. What’s been going on with you? Would you like a refill?

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