This is exactly my case. I am the only QA rep in a 55 seat call center. Basically, there are three people in my department: our training person, our manager, and me. And I don’t even get invited to the parties for the trainees. I’m the Maytag repairman of the call center.
Thank you for remembering your QA people. This makes me feel better about the holidays.
Well then your manager just sucks, Ann, for not ensuring that you get included. Sorry. 
You are…to use a slang phrase…getting burned out. I’ve been there.
This is not something to take lightly. It will keep getting worse and worse until you either break or you quit. You are most likely a strong person and so that time is probably a ways away yet…but it will happen. It could happen in such a way that damages your reputation and all the years you put in at your place of employment.
Even if you don’t break…and you don’t quit…then you run the risk of becoming the ‘supercompetent martyr’. You know the type…the relatively low level employee in the company that knows many things…been doing the same thing for centuries and because of her innate intelligence and the large amount of experience does it extremely well and much better than anyone else could. Because of this, she becomes extremely bitter and cynical but people put up with it because she is so damned good and is payed shit.
I have met many of the last paragraph above of my life. It is always sad because those people should have been promoted and be doing something much more challenging.
Oy. These workplace Christmas festivities. Today grandboss threw a holiday lunch for our team: two hours of watching a movie on a fuzzy projection screen while eating takeout. After it was done and I’d milled around politely for a bit, she tried to get a round of cards going. No, thank you, y’all go ahead without me. Naw, thanks though! No, I need to finish this little thing I’m working on, but you have fun! No, it’s okay! No, thank you!(OKAYSERIOUSLYNOMEANSNO.)
Look, I spend all damn day with you people. I don’t appreciate my lunchbreak being taken away so I can spend more time with you but I played along and made nice. Enough. Stop wheedling me to play cards! You’re my boss! Don’t you understand that I’m, um, working?
Now I have a headache from the movie. And I don’t get a lunch break, since I apparently took mine already.
Thank you for the mug, though. I, uh, have one on my desk, but a superfluous mug should come in handy.
A shot of Jack in a superfluous mug can be very discreet…
What was the movie?
“Elf.” Fun movie - hadn’t seen it before. It was going to be either that or something syrupy like “It’s a Wonderful Life” so I guess it coulda been worse.
She yelled at a co-worker who hadn’t done anything wrong and made her cry as her last act of the day before leaving the office. I see the Christmas spirit has warmed all our hearts.
Well, isn’t that festive?
The Festivista in my office has been attempting to drum up the Christmas spirit. She approached me from behind earlier to place a set of reindeer horns on my head.
No thank you, they get in the way of my phone headset. Also, don’t touch me.
Seriously. I barely know you people, do not touch. Gah!
“Sorry about the punch to the throat - I don’t do well with people sneaking up and touching me.”
I don’t have PTSD and have all the sympathy in the world for people who do … but … I startle like someone who’s been through a war zone. I’ve jumped through my skin because of people I knew were in the room with me* so I can’t image what I’d do if someone did that to me. Probably just scream like the little girl I am. Throat-punch is certainly an option, though.
When I asked you to set up the tracking ID for this sale so that we can get it properly credited, I specifically said that you should tell me what details you need to set it up, besides the evidence I already forwarded you. So why are you replying (a) almost a week later to (b) tell me that there’s not enough information for you to set up the ID and asking if I want a list of what you need. YOU FUCKING RETARD, THAT’S WHAT “If there are any details that you need, please let me know and I will obtain them” MEANS. FUCKING FUCKING ASS FUCK RETARD.
Thank you SOOOO much oh vendor of mine for logging into our QA environments and making unauthorized and unannounced changes to every single database 3 days before Christmas. The shit storm of errors that I’m dealing with this morning is wonderfully entertaining.
Please enjoy the present I’ve sent you - executive escalation for your repeated refusal to follow fucking change control processes.
Happy Holidays
“Executive escalation” has a lovely ring to it. 
Dear Scary Government Agency Purchasing Department,
You bought a bunch of licenses of our product from some third-party source. You then tried to upgrade them using just one of the serial numbers. Sending us extra money was nice but doesn’t really fix the problem, which is that we need all of your serial numbers. This is why there were big scary errors on your f’ed up order with “Please contact support!” appended to each one. Did you contact support? No, you did not. You emailed one serial number to everyone, who then all tried it at once, and it didn’t work. Surprise!
Apparently nobody over there has a list of all the serial numbers you bought or who is using them, and apparently when nobody responded to a request to send you the serial numbers, you mass emailed everyone who uses our software (and probably other people) and told them to call us so we can “sort it out” for you. You have created a giant mess that we will have to sort out manually and have someone (a lead developer) manually fix our serial number database; we can’t process these individually on the phone on demand, which is why this was in no way implied as a solution when one of your employees contacted us. Further, since you have been this messed up so far, I’m not taking the chance that we upgrade the wrong one or that you have bought enough. SEND US A LIST. It really should not be this hard.
We do not offer software inventory services. We are not tracking who in your company is using which license of software at any given time and we’re not here to coordinate due to your office’s communication problems. If you want a site license, get one - don’t order a shit ton of individual retail boxes from a reseller and then expect us to clear up the mess for you when you hand them out willy-nilly and don’t track them whatsoever. This was not only stupid, but substantially more expensive both when you bought it and to upgrade them.
Also, special thanks to your employee who tried to freak out that she didn’t get a response to an email about this issue from September and file a complaint against our support (yesterday). In fact, we did respond, and she admitted she got the response, but forwarded it to you and didn’t get a response from you. How this is something we can control I don’t know, but what the hell?
Look, I deal with academics and government agencies all damn day. I know it’s hard to deal with purchasing issues; that’s why I didn’t just refund you and tell you to order it properly. But throw me a bone here and take some responsibility for the monster you have created.
Take responsibility? Hah! Good fucking luck.
I’m missing the end-of-year update from the CEO; have had an appointment scheduled for two months that I can’t re-schedule. I’m sort of sorry; I’d really like to hear how he’s going to spin the fact that the company is more than halfway through its probationary period (after nearly going broke earlier this year, and getting bailed out by investors) and still doesn’t have enough business to keep the lights on, much less pay its employees.
Listen: any startup that wants investors is a scam, scam, scam, scam, scam. All they want is for someone to hand them money for a few years while they pretend to run a company. They don’t intend to make anything useful and they’re pretty well aware that because of that, the company isn’t going to be bought.
Except for every company that actually ended up getting off the ground? :dubious:
You know, the ones you hear about in documentaries always start with two guys in their garage who already have a product. NOT with smarmy guys in suits scrabbling to find something to do while their previous company crashes and burns.
I guess my confusion is that there is going to be *no *company, or almost no company, that *doesn’t *need investors. So to say that any company looking for investors is a scam is, well, only accurate for those that are scams.