10:30 a.m. - 2003-04-18
Lifestyles.
Eight of the staff from tech records went out for lunch together yesterday, me included. I quite frankly prefer to go walking for the hour because it is a great de-stressor, it helps my breathing, it's free, and it is good exercise all into the bargain. However, it seemed important to the team that as many of the group go as could, so I did. There are a couple of people in the domestic records side who I really like and would like to know better anyway.
The restaurant is across the street from work and features a menu with Western, Chinese, East Indian, and Tex-Mex fare all at a reasonable cost. I usually just have soup for lunch, so a lot of the dishes were way too heavy. I chose the quesadillas with a spinach salad. Still too much food but it was very well prepared.
Conversation flowed freely but I listened most of the time. Most of the staff have lifestyles and incomes that I have never experienced, so I don't have a lot to contribute. There was talk about families and children, which is in my purview, but there were two staff there who, by their comments, want children and can't have them. I tend to go light in such cases, because I know how it feels to be outside of the conversation. Besides I know in other situations the fact that I have six children has caused some resentment or distress. One comment was that the childless person was in a much better financial position to care for children, but I pointed out that was because they were childless. Children are very expensive to raise, especially if you stay home with them. One income doesn't leave any room for savings, let alone investments, so there is no cushion if problems arise - like illness or marital breakdown. Stats for North America show that single moms often experience a drop of 75% in their income. I'm not certain how that could be so, but that's statistics for you. At one point D asked why I didn't consider a housekeeper. He seemed to be concerned because I wasn't looking well and when he asked I always noted that the weekends were for housework and errands. Trouble is of course I work to pay my bills and feed and clothe my guys - there isn't enough left over for that kind of luxury. Even if there was, I'd likely invest it in fixing up my home or treating my guys or myself more often. A stress free vacation comes to mind - one where there's enough money to play and no loss of income occurring. Not likely to happen anytime soon.
Back at work B came by. C had found a lot of the material she had worked on and filed the past few days missing when she went back to add more data. She told B and B went to T2. T2 asked both of us to provide our documentation for the past while on missing records. It is good that it is finally being looked at, but frustrating all the same. I've been raising my concerns since I started in February just to be put off or be told I'm paranoid or incompetent by turns. Two days after C started, I had a number of files missing or showing tampering and B's response was to check with the security staff about strangers getting into the library. Of course the problem is is that it is obviously staff that are doing it, and because the records disappear almost as soon as they are recorded, it has to be someone with enough seniority that they can go into the database and pull off the daily stats. Anyway, when security told B and T2 there were no unauthorized persons traced B yelled at me for causing them the inconvenience in front of C and D to boot, throwing the same old charges of paranoia and incompetence at me. Fine. E-mailed A to let him know the latest and left it at that.
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