Bullies and cats

Boy, oh boy did I just get my fortune told! When I politely asked one of the above to please stop bullying me, he went off at me like a rocket! I received a loud, angry dressing-down about my attitude, my rude behaviour, how I’ve been intolerable right from the start – with a couple of threats to complain to the project manager, etc, thrown in! I stayed calm, quiet and polite while this angry bull rants and raves at me. A colleague who came in while this was going on, afterwards asked “WTF? What’s wrong with him?” He actually did go to the Site Manager and complained about my rude behaviour! Seriously? You scream and shout at me, yet I’m the one who’s rude? And furthermore: Hello? I am your customer! WTF? Well, we (the Site Manager, my colleagues & I) had a good laugh about it.

Another supplier sent a mail to our Project Manager whining that their invoice hasn’t been paid yet; he forwarded it to me to verify – and it’s a complete mess! How any accountant or bookkeeper is expected to make sense out of the documentation they send, is a mystery to me! I mean, how hard can it be? You make out an invoice, attach a signed delivery note (signed by us!), make sure you reference the correct order number – and you’ll get paid! Yet they are asking for payment for items which have not yet been delivered! It took me hours to verify the document they sent against my records! I had a good laugh at their claim that they deliver all parts as requested – on average, their deliveries are a week late!

Then, I’m trying to find my feet in this new task – which has a deadline. My ‘sponsor’, i.e. the student who started this task, has now left and I’m sort of on my own. There’s still someone here to help me, but he’s extremely busy, so I try to avoid asking his help. But so far today it’s just been one urgent demand after another – I’m not getting to it!

Last night it was the strays who fed on the cat food I put out – I looked! Silver and even Ginger came all the way up and wolfed down the Whiskas!

The weather forecast says it will rain tomorrow, and only partly sunny on Sunday. So no gardening on the plan for this weekend – though I do have a drum to fill! Our gardener will visit my neighbour on Monday (though it looks like rain, in which case he won’t come) and me again the Monday after that.

But first I’ll have to do the dreaded grocery shopping tomorrow morning.

On my way home I decided to take care of some of the shopping today already and stopped at the local Spar. They had a sign up saying “Voted the best Spar in Eastern Cape” which nearly had me laughing out loud! This is the Spar where I stood all alone on the customer side for a whole minute while a gaggle of staff were chit-chatting. The same Spar where the milk in the shelf was one week past its sell-by date! I don’t know who does the voting, but I can’t imagine customers are involved!

Back home, I was barely through the door when my Poinsettia committed suicide by jumping out the window!

I dashed to the window and was barely able to save my Fuchsia from following suit! Blerry PE Wind! As I opened the door, the wind blew the curtains outward, pushing my pot plants over the edge! I thought the Poinsettia was too heavy – sadly, I was very, very wrong. And now I’m very, very sad. That plant has moved with me from Pretoria, and I’ve been treating it daily by picking newly formed parasites off it – and it just looked like it was finally beating the infection! Gosh, I think maybe I need a pet!

A dog would be a better option – since most cat-owners refuse to take any responsibility for their cats, most Body Corporates no longer allow cats as pets. With Mynx I really had a hard time trying to find a place where he’d be allowed! But I like cats! So, I have quite a dilemma, don’t I?