gangstaswan

I called the doctor's office for the results of the bacterial infection test I thought she'd run. Nurse says the lab has lost the sample and I need to come back in. She mumbles something about chlamydia and how that's the test we lost. I freak out. How the fuck could I have gotten that?! I make an appointment for the next day.

When I show up, the "receptionist" (I don't know her title) says she's not sure my benefits will cover me being in a second time so soon. Lovely. I take a seat while she tries to figure it out. I end up going back to the room with the medical assistant. She's really pretty but condescending until I tell her why I'm there, which she took to mean another pap smear. Uh no, that came back normal. It's a bacterial sample we want dummy.

She then confuses the nurse (the one who administered my herp shot) and the doctor. So there you have four women in a tiny room trying to figure out why I'm there. Oi vey. So the assistant and nurse leave. Doctor checks me out again and it hurts but not as bad. She says she'll test me for yeast and some other things and will know in a few days.

So almost a week goes by before her nurse calls. It's apparently nothing. So I've done all this running around and freaking out for nothing. Thanks, doc.

DBED is gone and has been for awhile. The big boss (we call him AA because he's constantly "drunk" or so we think and I made a typo in a gossip e-mail so you know it stuck) was planning to put the Robot (a weekly city editor) in that position permanently and we all pretty much have felt it. My boss, H, is totally awesome and says I should get the weekly CE job. As much as I'd love to have it, I cannot stand to see the Robot in charge of the daily. He's soooooo awful. Here's an incident:

I've also discovered that while working on the weekly, he couldn't handle interns. We had one who knew nothing and was really awful. But the Robot was partly to blame. He'd written the kid off from the first day and never gave him anything to do (fuck if it's that bad, dismiss him or give him something small like rearranging our archives that have been in disrepair for a year -- it'll expose him to the field and maybe give him some idea of what's going on -- in fact I'm going to put that idea in the intern notebook for when they're bored). So the kid's got nothing to do and he just sits at work playing on his laptop. I really can't blame him. He wasn't really a journalist and I wish I hadn't agreed to take him on but he was so enthusiastic when he contacted me.

Then there was the intern who told the Robot she'd need a week off to be a camp counselor. He treated her like she was a full time employee announcing she was leaving for an island vacation with no warning. Sorry dude, she's an intern. We don't pay her so if she needs a week off and tells you in advance, you can't get pissy about it.

He's just plain rude and condescending to everyone but AA. He was CE for our paper up in Glendale and we keep hearing horror stories from them. Not to mention the sources from when he was a reporter and the people he's tried interacting with as the weekly CE. They all say he's creepy.

What it boils down to is we're just perpetuating the incompetency bullshit.

I tried going over AA's head to his boss about all of this, plus some problems with AA (like the brief he wrote and quoted himself in then forgot he'd done so and was upset that someone made up a quote for him). That boss was really nice and actually agreed to meet with me then listened to my problems. Too bad he's been moved to some other division and now we're directly under the LAT editor. I just hope this guy got debriefed and is prepared to do something.

AA's boss told me there's no way the Robot would get the CE job and that he was pushing AA to look outside of our company to get some new blood in. He's absolutely right. In this climate how can we not get the best of the best? Or at least something better than the Robot. I don't care if it hurst my chances of getting the job. I just want someone who is good at what they do and is a good fit.

I really hope that the Robot doesn't get the job. He really should just be fired.

As an aside note, we had to have a meeting about the paper bashing incident. AA said it was handled at the top management level (whatever that means) and both parties apologized to each other. I wanted to say, "So that's it? Apologize and you get a free pass? Unacceptable. [Robot] needs sensitivity and management training. He's unqualified for this job and should NOT be doing it. You're so lazy you can't even do the one job you have." (He' supposed to put together the opinion page stuff and yet he's got the Robot doing it).

During this meeting, he promised he'd hire an education reporter in two weeks. We've been missing someone in that job since April. AA's boss informed us that AA's had permission to fill it for a month and a half. That was honestly so fucking funny that he got called out like that. It's why he made the promise. But now he's telling us late September. That's more than two weeks, jerk off.

Basically, work has still got me down. I should look for something else, but I'm not sure I want journalism. I mean there are days I want to forget I was ever involved in the industry. I'm just not sure at all what I could do though. And in this economy it's not wise to not have something lined up.

She informed me last week she's bought a place and escrow closes in a month. Great. I'm freaked out because seriously I was finally catching up on my credit cards but now I have to possibly pay rent by myself. I have one woman lined up to look at the place Monday. I hope she's wonderful and amazing and wants this place. She'd only be here until January, but that's still five months. She does have two old fat cats and we're only allowed two pets, but then again, who is ever going to see anything? We're on the third floor and you can't see in our windows thanks to the trees.