More depression

She looks awful. And she's not eating or drinking well. I'm glad I have her back, but I hate seeing her obviously so achy and unhappy when I can't do anything to fix it. I went in to give her her antibiotics, and she yipped at me a little bit, and then I gave her her antibiotics, and I guess it burns her tummy, or made her feel a little nauseous or sick, or something, 'cos she just became very quiet (for her) and droopy-looking, and made loud meows a few times. :-
Puff never actually meows. She yips. I've always chalked it up to a part of being generally sort-of defective. So it was surprising to hear her flat-out meow. I guess she is in pain, I mean, I'm sure she is in pain, but... I just feel very inadequate, because I can't help. I can't do anything but give her antibiotics and hope she gets better quickly. This sucks. I'm neurotic enough that if the vet's were open, I would have run her back over. I guess I'd be a neurotic parent with a kid, too.

When I worked at an answering service, those parents used to annoy the hell out of me--and all of the other operators. We'd have to listen to the parent(s) complain, chirp, kvetch, and whine that their child had a "high fever" of 99 degrees, when our doctors had left clear instructions that anything under, say, 102 degrees for two hours was not an emergency, and if the parents disagreed, they were free to take the kid to the emergency room. But no--these parents want the Dr 24-hrs a day, 7 days a week. I even had one tell me to quit being a bitch and just go back and wake the Dr up for her to ask a quick question--as if we had all of our Drs sleeping on cots in a back room, or something!

Sigh.

Now, don't get me wrong; I understand (kind of) where they're coming from. They have this critter--in their case a child, in mine a cat--that's doing stuff they don't understand, and they just want it to (1) not die, and (2) stop doing whatever it is. I get that. I have empathy, and I had it back then. I just couldn't *do* anything about it. When a Dr says no, that means no, and if you don't understand "no", they'll find an answering service that does. It's that simple. Plus, I know enough people that are doctors to have been really good at it while I was there--I got the girls to understand that no means no (also known as, "Ancodia's lecture to the point that physicians are people too, and need their sleep, just like you do"), got them to understand that they can't give out medical advice (christ...when I started there, they were awful about that), got them to understand that most doctors wanted the point of the message in a clear and understandable manner, rapidly, sans opinion, and don't want to give out free medical advice. Sure, we had exceptions to that (I had one that came over for coffee all the time, and another that I talked with probably more than I did my friends on a daily basis about opinions, current events, etc.; I could go on), but you let them come to you, you don't seek *them* out, and convincing the girls of that was not easy. I got the job and came in as a Supervisor because, in a roundabout, obfuscated way, I was over-qualified, had low ambition at the time, and was a friend of a friend, as it were. So I tried to merit the consideration and made up their first (and only) training manual, guidelines, and standardised their system of abbreviations (as well as message format). Some message formats they already had set up, like consults, but other stuff they majorly needed help on. I think it's telling that over half the staff (when I started) gave (by alpha pager or fax, where it's read, not spoken!) well-baby notifications with "Apgar" spelt "Avgard", "Ampgar", "Atcard", etc... In short, we looked like morons.

And I don't care if someone has issues with the spelling of diarrhoea (or diarrhea, as you wish). That's understandable, and to that end, I also posted at each station a list of commonly misspelt words. And before I start to sound like too much of a controlling buttinski, I need to mention that one of the reasons I was hired was to do exactly this--the manager was overwhelmed with two other offices (where we instituted the same procedures after using my office as the guinea pig environment), and the assistant manager was one of the most god-awful spellers (and message-takers, and message-givers, and client-sleepers-with) imaginable (but believe it or not, this was all forgivable because she was this pretty, funny, really nice person, and no, I'm not kidding). But oh my lord...the misspellings and misunderstandings were beyond description.

One of the funniest ones was a group of messages I faxed over (taught me to proofread before sending!) to one of our physician's offices with a message (I assume about a terminal child) from "Jane" at "Give Kids A Whirl".

No, I am not kidding.

I asked--I *had* to!--the operator who took the message if she was under the impression that, inferring from the name, this was some little-known outfit that lends out children for uncertain potential parents to test out for a week or two. I would think that, even if you had not heard of "Give Kids The World", that you'd write "Give Kids A Whirl", read it, and think "Ummm, probably not," and then ask ol' "Jane" to please spell. I mean, good christ; which is more preferable--to take an extra (maybe) two minutes, or to look like an imbecile?

For the record, at first the manager wanted them to not take the extra two minutes, and for Ancodia to correct them. At first. That changed after I gathered up the entire bulk of messages (probably around three to five hundred) from an afternoon shift, printed them, and deposited them on her desk to correct, telling her I had to leave, but she could print out the evening's messages and correct those also, in another two hours.

And then I left.

After that, we had a better understanding.

So she agreed that we needed to all work together to correct our errors, and all was well in the kingdom. Well, for the most part. I could write a small epic novel detailing all the stuff that went on in that place. Answering services are funny places; I've worked in them in three different states, and they all seem to be the same or at least really similar. In a way, I miss doing it sometimes; I felt closer to the girls (and a few guys) there than I do at like, Eviljob (or even Stupidjob for that matter). They were basically good people. Some of them I really loved. At the first place, there was this older lady who I became really close with; her station was right by my desk, and though I didn't take calls (when I worked days) unless it was really busy, I did take client calls and message pick-ups, and complaints, and did some dispatching, etc... Well, she had the habit of saying "Surely!" a lot, as an interjection, or type of acknowledgement. Ok...needless to say, a few days into it, I started answering her by saying "...and don't call me Shirley!" Then I started doing it all the time, because she thought it was hysterically funny, then even after I quit, she'd say "Surely!" and then start laughing. Oh--and she threw pencils at me. :-) I even got her to rent Airplane! and watch it--she liked it, and said the "...and stop calling me Shirley" part had her in stitches. So the place was moderate stress, but mostly fun. Or it could be made fun. And I liked getting to tell people off when they went too far; people like callers and clients, I mean--the sort of thing that is NOT allowed at Eviljob, for example. But , like with talking to employees, I'm a firm believer in telling someone they've fucked up when they fucked up, and if they're the type of personality that can hear, "Sally Sue, you've not done as you should; let me walk through this coaching issue with you, and let's see where you can improve," then great. A lot of people can learn that way. But an equal or greater number of people need to hear something more along the lines of, "you really fucked up; watch carefully how I fix it because if you do it again, next time you're fixing it yourself." It's *this* difference that I think of as your proverbial 'different learning styles'.

And I liked telling off our clients that were bullies. That was an especially gratifying part of the job. We had some--just a few, but as soon as you'd get rid of one, it seemed like another would pop up--that I think got an answering service just to have someone to abuse the hell out of. I mean people that would literally call in multiple times a day and just yell, usually about nothing of consequence, just venting to see if they could like, make the operator cry or something, I don't know. When I saw that happening, I'd take the call over and just blast them. In the place I worked the longest, I had the most leeway with that sort of thing; piss me, our Assistant Manager, or our Manager off with that shit, and we'd close your account. We only had to go that far (for reasons of abusive behaviour) maybe three times, but it was an option. That was cool. If I ever opened an answering service (and I have seriously thought that that would be an easily-doable business that would mostly run itself as long as you had a good manager, Ass't Mgr, and staff--as the owner, you could be just peripherally there), I'd definitely run it that way.

Sigh. But then, I have utopian visions of everything--at this point, I could open up my own Eviljob and run it right (I think) too. Stupidjob also, for that matter. So what's my opinion worth? Bupkis. Plus, I know that I'm kind of under-reaching my potential in striving towards something like that. But that's a whole 'nother talk.

How in the hell do I get so far off-track? I started off at one point, and ended up all the hell the way over here. It's funny; I haven't thought about the answering service in a while. It was fun while I did it, but eh.

Back to Puff.

I'm intentionally letting her rest. I hope that's the right decision. I *think* that's the right decision. I *want* to be in there and I guess essentially bugging her, but I'm not going to; I'm going to let her rest, like the vet said to do. She should be up and perky and better and with no blood in her urine by Thursday or Friday, he says. So I'm just marking the days. She still has some--just a little--blood in her urine because of the severity of the infection, he said. But it's still scary. I hope she's not scared. I wish I could stay in there, or let her out, but I don't want her to stay awake for me (which I felt like she was trying to do), and if I let her out, she might go hide, or the other cats might pick on her because she's sick. The vet explained to me that cats sometimes do that. That's really mean. I'd like to think that my cats wouldn't do that, but they might, I guess. But thinking about that makes me feel horrible for all of the stray cats that are maybe sick and want company, and other cats pick on them. That's a very sad thought.

I know; I'm neurotic.

But I can't help thinking about things like that, and they bother me. At Eviljob, we have a few stray cats. We're in this corporate park kind of place--woods, roads, and a bunch of big buildings (and a few smaller ones, but mostly bigger ones), and I guess people have dumped their unwanted cats in the woods there, or perhaps the cats wandered off or something. But we have a few. I've named them. There's a greyish-cream coloured cat that I call Grey Cat (I didn't say they were creative names), and a black-and-white tuxedo cat that I call Mr Peabody, and an Orange cat that I call Nice Cat. I feed them. I guess there are some at Eviljob that think I'm weird for that, but I don't care. Nice Cat tries to show you what a nice cat he is by rolling around and showing you his tummy and walking close to you, though if you make a move to touch him, he darts away from you. I'm glad to see that, 'cos I'd hate to think of someone hurting him. Mr Peabody acts a lot like Nice Cat, and I think he belonged to someone, because he recognises "here, kitty, kitty, kitty". That makes me very sad. How could someone leave their baby? Grey Cat I don't see very often. I worry about Grey Cat. But I leave food out for them; I keep it in my trunk. I know (and people have told me) that I'm just postponing the inevitable, and that I should let them learn to hunt and stuff, but... I don't know. They're younger cats, maybe like two years old. They've not had a lot of nice things in those two years. I figure not having to fight for a meal a few times a week is the nicest thing they might ever have. So I leave food, and I've seen a few others do it, too. It makes me feel better, and especially since I'm not sure that I could ever catch one (or all) of them, and after I caught them, I'm not sure what I would do with them, 'cos I can barely handle the three cats I have right now. But I feel like I should do more...I just don't know what.

And there's another stray cat at the pharmacy where I pick up my prescriptions. Someone there leaves food out in back for him, I've noticed, but I feel bad for that little guy, too. I worry about them. I wish they all had homes that loved them, and would take the time to find out all about their little personalities...all of that stuff. It's like watching someone wither away, in a way. But...what can I do? Take them all home? I can't; I can barely keep up with my own, as this whole episode with Puff-Puff demonstrates. But it just *feels* like nobody cares. And I'd bet they feel like nobody cares. And I guess since I don't do anything, maybe nobody does care. Depending upon the perspective you take, the world looks like a very wonderful, or very horrible place. It's sad to think of some little life that no one cares about, like a stray cat. Why are there so many more stray cats than dogs? Or why does it *seem* like there are? But, on the other hand, we have little *human* lives that no one cares about, and adult human lives that no one cares about, so... I guess the bottom line is: Nasty, brutish, and short. And that's the way it is supposed to be, so we'd all just better acclimate, huh? Or I should, rather; just about everyone else seems to be mostly ok with it. Three thousand people at my site at Eviljob. Three thousand. Out of those, maybe five feed the cats. Five--maybe--out of three thousand. And none can, or will, take them home.

Those aren't very good odds.