Good Mood in Current Events

I’m in a good mood today. Right from the moment that I woke up. When I got to work, I’ve been very engaging with everybody that works at the store. Making friends, if you will. My workload, I’m doing it Rob’s way still since Mel, our boss, is not back from her hiatus yet. I found things to do and I like it this way. This does, however, mean that I am creating work for everybody else because I find all of the problems. Everything safety-related I create a priority task for my team to fix. I found a way to sidestep bringing workplace hazard reports to managers and this is it. I don’t like submitting those reports because I either get gaslit or it turns into a fight. If I just add it to the service list for my team, it just gets done.

We had our safety meeting today, I was gaslit so hard. Like, I couldn’t stop laughing to myself after the meeting. Last month, right at the beginning I reported a list of insecure beams that were missing bolts. They can pop right off with the reach trucks if not corrected, it’s kind of a priority and we had a ladder situation at that time. Nobody could reach them except the night crew with their trucks. At that time we were all disturbed by the news of associates that had died in the workplace. Not in our store, not even in our country but it still hits close to home. When I handed the report to Tony who was the MOD at the time, who is also an ASM, he wouldn’t even look at it. He told me to just put it in the bin outside the store manager’s office. That pissed me off. That pissed everybody on my team off. I took a picture of my report because I had a feeling that I should. Turns out my intuition was correct.

In the meeting, they asked if there were any workplace hazard reports submitted. The store manager said no. Shortly after, it was brought up that the reports are not being filled correctly. Tony explained to me that my last report did not include the MOD I handed it off to, which was him. How was there no report but a wrong report reported? The icing on the cake was that the hazards I reported were even corrected. That report was not signed off because Tony made me make it go away. I have the receipts on my computer, I will send them to myself later. My boss returns tomorrow, I will report this hilarious gaslight moment. They obviously tossed the report altogether. No reports of hazards mean the store is safe… it’s the oldest propaganda trick in the book. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Big pharma and politicians do this all of the time. The non-thinkers eat the propaganda up.

I honestly don’t want to bring this up to my boss when she returns tomorrow but she will have to know. The reason I don’t want to bring this up is that all of the managers are being extra nice to me now. This is part of the gaslight but I like it. The new safety issues I brought up are taken very seriously and we are working together to correct them. However, I do need to run this by my boss because I am not technically under their jurisdiction. I work in the store but I am not of the store. It’s a complicated relationship. Essentially I am not to do the store’s job but a lot of the associates there don’t even understand that. We work together in a lot of ways but vendors pay my team to do their vending. The store pays sales associates to service people and the vendors pay my team to service products.

It was just a lot of socializing for me today. I can see why extroverts like it. I had a good day.

Tomorrow I will get up the nerve to book a haircut this weekend. My friend recommended his barber after I mentioned all of the trouble that I have been having. I always have one simple instruction and they fail miserably every single time. Then I go a year without trying again. One time I went 4 years. Then I went in for a trim and they gave me a blunt cut and took off half of my length. Anyway, even if they fail at that one request to keep the length in the front it won’t look horrible if they execute the rest of it properly. Andrew, the friend who recommended his barber, his hair is always well executed so maybe this will pan out? Honestly, anything is better than what I got going on. I’m one month away from being able to tie it up. I wanted to grow it out but I also just want a nice cut. I might even color it this weekend also. White, grey, or silver I haven’t decided. It is something that I always wanted to do. My friend made fun of me and said that I am having a midlife crisis.

On that note, the midlife crisis, I have been having an identity crisis since 2019. Ok, not so much of a crisis but with the journey that I am on I lost a lot of how I used to think of myself. I lost a lot of my identities if not all of them. I am not a gender, I have a gender. I am not my attractions, I have attractions. I am not my ethnicity, I have an ethnicity. I am not my political beliefs, my spiritual beliefs, I am not a legacy, a caste, creed or anything of the sort. I am just an individual consciousness having a temporary human experience. My self-improvement journey led me to discover the self that is not my mind or body. I then worked on developing my discernment just enough to make it all the way down to the bottom of the rabbit hole where I discovered what that self truly is. What my self truly is. That’s my new journey but I can still participate with these identities without having to belong to them. I feel like I am now connecting to them again, in a new way. After my anxiety that followed the detox crisis (flu) that I had a few weeks ago, I am feeling like I am connecting to things that I hadn’t connected to since 2019. My anxiety was triggered because I couldn’t connect to anything. Now I am connecting to proper music, to caring about the way I present myself, I am connecting to new people, I am connecting to my not-forever-job, etc. It feels like I have come back down to earth, so to speak.

Anyway, I am just pushing through this week the best I can until I get to see my niece and nephew on Friday. Those kids always cheer me up. I also need to arrange a time when I can visit Bev with her kids. Her youngest left me a voicemail saying that he misses me. I’m their designated uncle also.

I just hope nothing breaks my stride this week. Fingers crossed!