Cloud9Shopper

People who plan work meetings during the lunch hour (12-1). I’ve gotten two invites the last week for meetings at 12 and 12:30 when I have a full afternoon of other meetings and have to have a lunch break. Throw me a bone here…

I don’t want to go back to any kind of frontline customer service job, so I don’t want to be a call center rep or a receptionist or similar ever again unless there’s no option (would have to be out of work and needing anything for an income). I do like the project work and training new hires, but I don’t enjoy having to deal with performance issues from current employees. (I do coach someone on a task they took over from me and because they’ve backslid, it’s requiring a lot of time and I have to be firm with her now that she needs to start performing at a higher level. That said, I’m not her direct supervisor.) I hope it will get better once I fully transition my old task, because I haven’t been able to do that yet for a variety of reasons (my boss has said that’s not my fault), and once I don’t have to coach so much in real time. I also have to handle some escalated customers who require response and resolution within 24-48 hours, though most times the volume of that is lighter than it was on the frontlines. I’m going to give it six more months once my old role is fully off my plate, and if there’s still no improvement, I’ll start looking again for a less stressful job. And I don’t want to manage or coach other people in my next role; I learned that the hard way. I want to be responsible for my own work again and not have to coach or nag people who don’t care or don’t want training.

I can’t believe how much time they spent on Graham coming back over these two episodes. Part of me wished he would’ve died in that building. Oh well. At least Gerard is going bye bye but I won’t be back for Season 9.

Well trust me on this…I’m not co-signing anything for any family member ever again. I don’t care what her excuse was short of it being some dire emergency she didn’t tell anyone about. It’s ultimately her loan so she can take responsibility in coming up with the money.

Many years back (like 2008) I co-signed a small student loan for my younger sister. She went to undergrad one semester, dropped out, and while she at one point failed to make payments for a while, she was paying for several years and things were fine with my credit. Especially because I was working on rebuilding mine and I was in a “good” credit rating. Well, the other day I noticed my credit dropped like 55 points. I didn’t know what the issue was and I assumed it was because I got a credit card and a personal loan in the span of a month. Turns out my sister (who may I add is working as a nurse, so this isn’t because she’s been out of work, and she hasn’t had any medical issues or anything that I’m aware of) has not paid on her loan since March. But! She sure has been traveling around with her wife. Yeah and not bothering with her obligations in the meantime and ruining all the hard work on my finances.

It’s not really something that ever left, but I do kind of miss the days where I had shows to look forward to new episodes of for at least one day of the week. I only say that because with streaming, now you can watch anything whenever and the novelty of tuning in to Must See TV or TGIF or whatever else it was called back in those days isn’t present anymore. Besides, I find the cable selection these days to be fairly meh because I don’t care about the umpteenth seasons of The Voice and SVU or having to watch three One Chicago shows to understand one plot. I’m not really into binge watching personally (I watch 2-3 episodes of something at a time and then want to change gears), so I kind of try to get into this by rotating a few shows on specific days. Like Monday is The Resident (rewatching), Tuesdays I’m trying to find something, Wednesday is The West Wing, etc. Then when I finish a show I replace it with something else on my watch list. Like I finished another watch of The Golden Girls a couple weeks ago, so I started the show Mom and will pick up Golden Girls again on Sundays once I’m ready to start over.

I like Carol too. I was surprised as well by some opinions when I got back into online ER spaces a few years ago. Like all the Carter hate. I still think Carter overall is more good than bad but can now see he has his moments. I’m also surprised Abby is such a beloved and popular character people identify with and see as an inspiration, and that her relationship with Luka is widely considered one of the best on the show. Even when I get into new shows, it follows me. 🤣 I just started watching The West Wing earlier this year and I feel irrationally annoyed with Danny Concannon (a White House press corps member who is obnoxiously infatuated with CJ), but then I come online and everyone is talking about how wonderful and romantic he is, and all I can think of is how fast I’d be complaining to my boss about his inappropriate behavior if I had to deal with that. (Thank God I don’t.) I’ll save more of my ranting on that for West Wing forums though. Either I have no taste or I just happen to always have the contrary opinion.

People who leave garbage in shopping carts. Even though it’s not food or dirty garbage or anything I don’t want to clean up after you when it’s my turn to get a cart! It’s not that hard to get rid of the sale flyer you don’t need or a disinfectant wipe.

I really enjoyed Night Court, at least what I was able to see of it. The Irrational I only saw a couple of times and wasn’t that impressed.

This is similar to how I watch ER and SVU when I want to. I have been through all of ER one time and that was enough, so now I just watch Seasons 1-8 and skip most of the middle before picking up S15. With SVU I don’t really acknowledge much beyond Season 20. (Which, how is that still getting renewed?) I’m so sick of the Buck/Eddie will they/won’t they swallowing this show. But funny enough, the other day on Reddit, we were discussing how much Buck is babied in the show and by fans. He kinda lost me a few episodes back when he was throwing a fit about Eddie moving away.

Anyone ever get a promotion and then realize it’s not what you thought it would be or that it’s actually a bad fit? I’ve been in my new role for six months now, and I’m finding it a lot more overwhelming than it was on paper or what I thought it would be when I was interviewing for the job. My workload is very high and my boss expects that everything is going to get done no matter what (to the point where we have to fill out report cards every week so she’s aware what was done and can check them), and a lot of times, my priorities change so much to the point where it’s impossible to really dig in and make progress on something. I’m basically expected to design and present training (sometimes on very short notice, like my boss will say we are asking this person to do X task and you need to train them ASAP, preferably tomorrow), update our resources when policies change (again, sometimes as in “right now” or “as soon as possible”), monitor calls and emails in real time (or do monitoring and reviewing every week; we have some people who are prone to frequent mistakes in their work and need more hand-holding), and somehow answer my own emails and handle my regular ongoing projects. I also have to do coaching when issues come up. I very rarely have an uninterrupted day to focus on my work and really get things done because it seems there always ends up being a fire to put out (I also have to do some escalated customer service) or someone who needs hand holding and coaching right that moment. I just feel like I’m always behind and will never get everything done even though my boss expects that. My coworkers have told me they get overwhelmed sometimes too but they also seem more successful and capable than me. They somehow juggle everything flawlessly and are good at the job. I just don’t have whatever skill they have to deal with constantly changing priorities, spend sometimes multiple hours a day in training and coaching, and handle their regular tasks. At this point, I’m going to try to hang on for another 6-9 months so I don’t look like I quit as soon as things got hard and hurt my resume. Nine months from now, I will have been at my company three years, so job searching with that tenure and a promotion on my resume will hopefully help me. I think I just need a job where I’m not firefighting all the time and can work on projects with more long-term deadlines and goals. I just feel so miserable and drained and I wish I had foreseen these issues sooner.

What was I even watching and why am I still here? Although to say one positive thing, at least here I can get away from constant obsession and speculation over when Buck and Eddie will get together. I hate when shipping stuff eats a fandom alive, and I have favorite couples too, but it’s getting to be a bit much and tiresome.

Just started watching the show Mom last night. I was looking for a new sitcom after finishing at least my third or fourth watch of The Golden Girls, and this one hits the spot. I laughed most of the pilot. I’ve also been enjoying Allison Janney in The West Wing so it’s nice to see what she can do in a sitcom. She was brilliant as usual.

I’m pretty vocal about how much I don’t like Abby Lockhart on ER but I do like her character best when she’s not in a romantic relationship and is focused on work and seems happier and more relaxed. Her and Neela’s NICU rotation had strong moments for both of them and Abby and Carter have a nice interaction post-relationship. It’s one of the few episodes of the later years of ER I enjoy and like her in. Since I just complained about Danny from The West Wing in the Characters we Hate thread, I will give him credit for trying to stop Josh from doing the press briefing in the infamous “woot canal” episode and his “you’re not going to do this. You really don’t want to do this” speech. And then he absolutely goes to town snarking on Josh with “I’m sure we all join the president in his joy about the economy” remark. If we got more of that Danny and less of him trying way too hard to sleep with CJ, I wouldn’t be complaining about him as much.

I took it that way as well when I was watching the other night, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t make me a fan of the relationship. (Even Jed told CJ he knew it was never going to work.) I agree with @Bastet that he’s just too pushy for my liking. But perhaps that played better in 2000, I don’t know. I didn’t watch the original airing. All I can say is that if I had to work with Danny in 2025 and he were behaving that way on the job I’d have his ass hauled to whatever HR he reports to. But again, only my opinion. I also read that this happened in real life with Bill Clinton’s press secretary back in the 90s, the first woman in the role who met her husband when she was the press secretary and he was a reporter. I don’t know a lot about either of them but I hope that male reporter was less persistent and antagonistic.

Things no one asked for for $200, Alex.

SVU gave Mike Dodds, a recurring character who was in two seasons if that, a better send-off in the episode Heartfelt Passages than 9-1-1 gave to a Bobby, a longstanding well-loved main character. Insanity. It’s almost disrespectful. I’m done with this show. Good timing anyway since I plan on cutting down my cable subscription soon to start paying off my debt.

To be honest, I read some fanfic of C.J. in relationships with other women, or even being shipped with Toby, that were more enjoyable than whatever she has going on with Danny at this point in my watch. I’m more of a Josh/Donna and Jed/Abbey fan right now.

I feel like this will get my fan card revoked (that’s sarcasm and not something I deeply care about, BTW), but Danny Concannon on The West Wing. I read he and CJ end up together and I just feel like someone like her could do way better? Right now he strikes me as too desperate to be with her and just gives me overall “try hard” vibes where he’ll wear her down and annoy her if it means he eventually gets to sleep with her. It reminds me too much of some of the men I’ve encountered in my dating life who don’t understand why I didn’t like them and don’t want to take no for an answer. I may walk this back later only because I’ve only seen Season 1 and seven episodes of Season 2, and I must be missing something if so many female fans of the show are swooning over how wonderful he is and saying C.J./Danny is their favorite relationship. But right now, my opinion is that if The West Wing were airing today, his character wouldn’t be seen as so charming. I think the only time I liked him when he was trying to warn Josh out of doing the press briefing because we do all know how that went. 😂

I watched “And It’s Surely to Their Credit” tonight, and I find it both sad and eye opening that we don’t have good enough health insurance in this country (and didn’t even in 2000) that Josh is being saddled with having to pay $50,000 of medical bills or have his credit tanked. I guess even back then federal employees weren’t immune from being one medical crisis away from financial ruin. (Note that even if I had seen this at the time of the original airing I was 15 in 2000 so wouldn’t have understood this.) Hated the way Ainsley was treated in this episode too until the last scene. On a lighter note, I would love to be a “deputy deputy chief of staff” a la Donna. As long as I don’t have to placate people with White House keychains. 😂 The bad joke about the horseshoe is very much my style. Mostly I just think the fancy made up title sounds nice enough LOL. Finally, if I can toot my own horn a little bit, I wrote my first West Wing fanfic tonight if that’s your thing. It’s C.J.-centric and is a what-if/canon divergence of the Season 2 premiere where she’s more seriously hurt than we see onscreen. It was just something that stuck out to me that I wanted to experiment with, and here’s my end result: And All I’ve Got is Your Hand

I’m on my millionth rewatch (or so it seems lol) and have about seven episodes left in the series, and I just realized I don’t really care for the episode when Dorothy and Stan get taken to court for being slumlords in the apartment Angelo was staying in. There are still a lot of great episodes in the last season and this one just seemed out of place and unnecessary. It could’ve been done a season or two earlier or cut altogether.

One from The Golden Girls (an overall funny show for the majority of its run, which is rare these days) is when Blanche sings at The Rusty Anchor. I’ve seen the series all the way through multiple times and still lose my mind laughing as soon as she lies back on the piano and kicks her shoes off, and it just gets more hilarious the rest of the way through the song.

I just signed back on to Facebook after getting home from Easter Mass. It was my first time on after a month and a half since Lent started and I will say it was a valuable experience. Just from an initial scroll through, I have not really missed much but I did realize I get a lot of useless notifications so I’ll have to fix my settings so I get less of them. One friend of mine got engaged…but she also had given up Facebook for Lent so I didn’t miss anything with her announcement since she didn’t post it until today. Other than that, though, even looking through my fandom groups, it’s the same old, same old discussions and posts. So I don’t think I need to go through all 40 days of activity from the last month. Going forward, I’m not going to apologize for opinions I have (as long as they’re not discriminatory or hateful to someone, as I know I went too far with some things I said in heated fandom discussions), but I will do my best to state them more civilly and back away if someone is getting mean or nasty with me. I also need to exist more in the real world and am trying to set more no-phone limits for myself, although this part is a bit harder, since I still tend to retreat into my phone at times when I don’t really know the people I’m interacting with (like at a family gathering that has a lot of people I really have no close relationship with). And I could definitely use my evenings after work better instead of scrolling my phone and worrying about writing fanfic, even if it’s being more absorbed in a TV show (another time I just should put the phone away if it’s something I’ve never seen before) or reading a book. I’d probably do this again, and it’s making me think about what social media platforms I really do want and need.

I was watching a Season 3 episode on WE today, the one where dispatch is held hostage, and it makes me miss the old show and not this new version that wants to be SVU (which also is very long past its prime) or something else it just isn’t. (I’ve never seen The Rookie so can’t comment on that.) I think when I rewatch I‘ll stop at the episode before Maddie gets kidnapped.

New one, and not related to my previous post a couple of days ago. People who treat even minor mistakes as deadly serious. I made the mistake of posting in one of my fanfic communities that I used ChatGPT as a Google-like tool to ask it some questions for a story I’m working on. Someone got upset and said “please be very careful” as if I had posted that I was committing tax fraud or planning to kill someone and it just made me feel like…it’s not that deep? Especially given the amount of mediocre to bad fanfic that’s published and isn’t always true to reality. A lot of authors don’t even bother doing any research and some readers and writers say explicitly they don’t care about researching or reality in fic. I also wasn’t planning to use AI to write the story for me (I test ran it just as an experiment/out of boredom and hated the suggestions anyway). For the record, I was asking ChatGPT if it’s OK to have Character A, who works with Character B and is a doctor, read Character A’s chart under HIPPA and ChatGPT gave me some answers about informed/implicit consent and said technically it’s not OK unless one of these things is true. I wasn’t planning to apply that info to real life and try to get unauthorized access to a friend’s medical records or looking to plagiarize for a school paper. It’s just a fictional story, and even professional TV writers come up with unrealistic and ridiculous storylines that people eat up for other reasons. I don’t think my fanfic is going to spawn real world outrage and legal consequences if Character B gives Character A’s consent to read her chart as long as I elude to something like B signing a written consent form or what have you. Honestly, the whole thing with having to be so careful all the time (I get these lectures at work even when I make a small mistake, and my work isn’t the type of job where people’s lives are on the line or essential to keep the world turning) and making every misstep or pique of curiosity seem like a huge deal gets stressful.