"And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire..."

- Milton Waddams, "Office Space"

Yeah, that sums it up. I was supposed to go to a mediation hearing in Glendale yesterday for the Hospital. Theoretically, since I'm the HRIS Specialist, I was needed to testify about how our database keeps records and how changes are made to yhe system, both manually and through mass automated actions (such as, "everyone gets a 3% raise", etc). They told me late Monday that no, I wouldn't be needed after all, so I didn't need to drive to Glendale at 9:30am and sit in this meeting all day. However, I had to be ready to grab my phone in case someone called from the mediation with a question about anything, which they did.

Once.

At one in the afternoon.

For something I had to be here to answer (pulling a record from an employee file).

See? Not needed.

Fast forward to 4:32pm. Two minutes after I'm supposed to leave. My coat is on, my desk is cleared, and I'm shutting down my computer when my phone rings. It was a call from the outside, so I thought it was Jen calling to ask me to grab something from the store on the way home. I answer it.

Bad move.

Me: "Human Resources, this is Robert."

My boss: "Hi Robert. How quickly can you get over here?"

*blink* I'm in Downtown LA. They're in Glendale. It's rush hour. I took public transportation into work since, well, I DIDN'T NEED TO GO TO GLENDALE.

Me: "It might take a while - I took the bus in today."

My boss: "Ask Angela (our employment director) to drive you. The mediator needs to ask you some questions about this status form."

Me: "Can he ask me over the phone?"

My boss: "No, you need to be here to be sworn in. And pull these four files and bring them. If Angela's not there, take a cab and we'll reimburse you."

The next ten minutes are spent making frantic phone calls to Jen to let her know that no, I won't be home in time to go out tonight, tracking down and pulling files, and getting my crap together. Not like I was told whose status form I was going to be questioned about, under oath, or what it was in regards to so I could prepare. I run back into my office to grab my keys when the phone rings again.

My boss: "Robert, it's me. Don't worry about it, we don't need you here after all. Thanks for being willing to come, though."

You gotta be fucking kidding me. Thanks for the stress, boss. Not like I'm not getting plenty from our non-functional computer programs, surly employees, or overflow of other work that needs to be done before I leave for vacation at the end of the week.

Spent almost all of today wrestling with our computer system. Programs that were run last week and worked fine, are now non-functional. Others that ran fine two days ago are now producing vastly different results with exactly the same parameters. Yet another that we've been trying to get to work for a month now, inexplicably started to work this morning without any modifications to the database.

Makes ya' want to burn things.