Why I hate my job (sometimes).

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. There are days when I really do despise my job. Not because of the work itself, really. I can deal with mundane repetition pretty well, and this is the best exercise routine I've ever had in my life. It's not even the heat. I've come to get used to the oppression of hundred degree weather pretty well. Not that I'm really okay with it (I still miss cold weather like the dickens), but I can deal with it okay enough.

No, what makes me really despise my job some days... is my coworkers.

Case in point. This week, I have been in charge of the bag room at work. There is a reason for this, which I will get to in a moment, but for now let's just focus on the situation at hand. Today was the third day of this, and as I was looking at a bag to see where it was supposed to go, I noticed a coworker of mine exiting the elevator from downstairs and heading in for work. So, as I'm prone to do, I waved and said hi. He looked at me a little funny and nodded slightly.

"How's it going?" I asked.

He gave me a quizzical look. "Huh?" he asked, as though he had not heard. This is something I'm used to. I have a tendency to mumble without realizing it, so I'm often repeating myself.

"I said, how's it going?" I repeated.

Having realized what I'd asked him, he gets this silly grin on his face and proclaims rather proudly:

"Drunk!"

*fumes for a moment*

Okay. So. Yeah. I basically work with a bunch of drunken slacker idiots, half of which would actually be fairly intelligent people if they weren't drunken slacker idiots. (The other half would merely be idiots. I'm being kind.) The theme of the week, really, has been that of drunken slacked-off idiocy. I'm going to start talking about coworkers now, but I don't want to mention any names for the sake of fairness (although how any of this can be classified as fair I really don't know), so I'm going to start referring to Coworker A and Coworker B. I'm hoping this won't be too confusing.

It started on Friday, which for the work-week is my Monday. I see that I'm in the bagroom and that Coworker A will be running the bag room. I find this interesting. The guy who normally runs the bag room is apparently on vacation, which is why the task has fallen to Coworker A. Okay, whatever, I figure, and head to the bag room to start my day.

As the day rolls on, it becomes evident that Coworker A is not going to show up. He never calls in to let us know why he isn't there, either. Apparently someone called in, but it was not him, and they had to do this for him because he was, quote, "incoherent."

Well gee. I wonder what that means. Whatever the case, the day rolls on, things go generally smoothly, and my supervisor asks me if I'd be willing to run the bagroom for the remainder of the week. I'm more than willing; AICs (agents in charge) get an extra fifteen cents on their paycheck for days they AIC. I'll take an extra few bucks for the week, sure.

Meanwhile, over the course of the day, I end up learning something from yet another of my coworkers.

"So, did you hear about Coworker B?" he asks.

"No, what about him?" I ask.

"Oh, dude. He got fired."

This rather floors me. Coworker B is/was what I would describe as a near-model employee. He was always on time, he gave above and beyond for his job, helped out his coworkers whenever he could, certainly helped me out a ton... except that he had a little problem with authority. Not that he couldn't take orders or anything like that. It was really one boss in particular that he had issues with (but then, we all do). Anyways, I can't for the life of me figure out why Coworker B would've been fired, so I ask what he did.

"Came to work pretty drunk."

This is when I really start to hate my job. Coworker A has come to work drunk many times before. So have several of my other coworkers (including the one I first mentioned at the beginning, who was not, in fact, Coworkers A or B). They've all been very obviously drunk, actually stank of alcohol, and in fact admitted to it when supervisors weren't around. It's seriously a pretty common thing, probably happens at least once every two weeks. And it infuriates me.

Even moreso now. Because Coworker B, who was the upstanding employee, is the one who got called on it.

What the hell. Seriously.

Now, I'm not an idiot. I understand that if they were to fire everyone who's done this over the course of working here, we'd be down about five guys right now. That can't happen all at once. What bothers me is that this Coworker B guy is basically taking the rap that every one of them should've been taking over the course of my working at this job. It's not like we didn't know this was going on. They could've easily weeded people out gradually as these incidents happened.

But noooooooooo. See, all these guys that do this? Nearly all of them are the real workhorses at this job. They pull their weight. They get things done. They understand the ins and outs of the job better than most of us. So management has pretty much just turned the other way because, quite frankly, they probably figure they can't afford to lose them.

Can't afford to lose them. These same guys that come into work wasted, then end up not coming into work five days out of the month sometimes. And I know they're staying home because they either have a hangover or they just don't feel like coming in. And because they know they can get away with it. I know this because they talk about it.

It makes me wonder why I bother taking such care to go to work every friggin' day, even when I am feeling a bit under the weather. I've taken two sick days in the past year. Two. There's probably a month's worth of "sick" days between these five guys.

GAH.

All right. I needed to vent that. I'm okay now.

Unrelatedly, I think I'm going to try to update regularly at least on Sundays. I might update more, but I think Sunday will probably be a pretty good update day for me. Granted, that means it'll be Sunday afternoon, and that's Arizona Time (which, for the next few months, coincides with Pacific Standard Time, after which it will revert to Mountain Standard Time), so it'll probably end up pretty late on Sunday for most of you, but hey! At least it'll be regular.

That's what I've decided, anyway.

Song stuck in my head: Paralyzer - Finger Eleven