I shouldn’t be so nice.

Nor should I confuse “nice” with “moral” or “Christian.”

But sometimes I do.

I had three days of much desperately needed vacation (sanity!!!) time scheduled.  So with my luck, according to Murphy’s Law, one of my co-workers had to leave and will be out the rest of the week because his Dad died. There went my Brickleberry DVR marathon and road trip to points TBA.

I could literally watch these episodes all day. And I was going to.

Granted, death sucks, and realistically, you can’t expect someone to care about work in that situation, but mustering up sympathy is pretty hard for me when I’m stuck covering for this same guy through his kid’s endless sports events and various other frequent bullshit call-offs. It’s like crying wolf.

This is how I feel about this guy:
Now you have a valid reason to be gone, but you blew both your vacation time and my patience a long time ago. Save the calling off and pawning off your work on me for real emergencies – and maybe I’d be more understanding when you have an actual crisis.  Your kid’s ball games and your conflicts with Time Warner and your cable boxes, and whatever other stupid shit you come up with to get out of work shouldn’t be my problem.  Then again, I am not the boss.  If I were, there would be no calling off for bullshit- if you wish to remain employed.  It’s simply not fair to everyone else.

Technically, I could have went ahead and taken my vacation- but it would have put other people in a bad spot as well as giving me a first class ticket on the guilt train.

But there is a bright side. If I’d decided to go ahead and take my vacation time, I’d have been trying to escape from Jerry and his endless to-do lists, and pain in the ass micromanagement- all while feeling miserable that other people have to do what I should be doing anyway.  Even so, I’m screwed again.

It’s almost sort of sad when one is better off just staying at work.  Then again, it beats running Jerry’s errands.  I’ve not forgotten the 20 mile (one way) road trip to score him KFC in the middle of the night whilst in the middle of nowhere, WV.  If only I could just get paid for it, but not actually take vacation time, that would be moderately OK with me.  Unless of course, I can take an actual solitary vacation, which I don’t see happening.

I know, forgive and forget, and know that I’d have been strongarmed into forgoing any attempts at rest and solitude anyway, and it was better to volunteer for the inevitable.  It either makes me look “nice” or just affirms that I’d rather avoid conflict than stand my ground.  Either way, the outcome would have been the same.