Long version: We had two days of furlough, meaning we don't come into work, and we don't get paid. Unfortunately, those were 8 hour days, and we work 12 hour shifts. So, we could either take four hours of vacation and not come in at all, or work for four hours. I decided to work four hours. I came in for an hour, then left to catch a movie, then came back and finished my time. Apparently I was supposed to read my boss's mind and know that that would piss him off to the point that he'd write me up for a rule he'd yet to create.
Arguing with him revealed even more of the hypocrisy. His argument started that it was "common sense" to know that he meant that those four hours were supposed to be contiguous. I then asked if it would have been okay if I'd come in from midnight to 4AM (which I pretty much did, I was actually at work for nearly 5 hours in total). He then revised his argument to say that no, that wouldn't be okay because my supervisor didn't know about it and that I knew he meant I was supposed to come in the first four hours or the last 4 hours of the day. At that point, I asked "If my supervisor mistakenly thought I was going to come in the last four hours and I came in the first four hours instead, would I still be here standing in front of you getting written up?" He wouldn't give me an answer for that, so that pretty much confirms my suspicions that he's writing me up simply because he's butthurt.
I about jumped out of my skin and throttled him when he offered up the classic, "You can choose to enjoy your time here, or you can choose to be pissed off" while conveniently leaving out the fact that management has been little by little raising the temperature of the water and hoping we frogs don't notice that we're being boiled slowly. God I hate that choice argument. It's nothing more than a modern version of scumbag Clayton William's so-called joke: "If rape is inevitable, then relax and enjoy it." Mind you, I'm not saying my job is in any way similar to rape. Don't try to tell me I am. What I am saying is that while the premises of the argument are different in the two different scenarios by an order of magnitude, the logical arguments in the two scenarios are identical. One could just as easily tell a depressed woman to eschew anti-depressants and choose to enjoy clinical depression or tell someone that no, no, it's not that you hate eating fertilized and mostly developed duck eggs , you choose to not like balut and you can just as easily choose to like it.
To assuage my annoyance, I decided to spend a bit of money. I picked up a Me First and the Gimme Gimmes CD that I didn't have and the most recent Owl City for research on whether I should get tickets for him and Brooke Waggoner in October. Yeah, I totally should. Funny how I came to buying an Owl City CD. I heard of Brooke Waggoner only because one of her songs, Daylover, is in the iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge and I really really liked it. So I hear of the headliner through an iPhone app that happens to have the opening act in it. Talk about convoluted.
Ahh, and before I leave, check out this video from local Dallas band Giggle Party:
Giggle Party's "Jason Bought A Hatchet" from Jason Reichl on Vimeo.
And be sure to check out the short web series Anarchy For Breakfast. The videos are typically less than 3 minutes, and there are only 6 of them, so it's not a lot of time lost.
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