Labor Day

So things are about the same. Work is stressful, and everyone is tired. At work we use Skype for business, which is like instant messenger. It's convenient since you don't have to walk to someone's desk every time you have a question. Recently, we discovered the variety of emojis you can send.. and there's a time of night when we cease to communicate with words. We communicate in emoji. This has on a couple of occasions resulted in me having to walk around the building because I was laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes. We're weird when we are tired and the supervisor is gone.

We also have inside jokes now, which are mostly quoting the supervisor when he's not there. My favorite is "they can't fire all of us" which was not funny when he started saying it, but somehow it is now. There was a time the chief toxicologist (boss) came to talk to us and say that none of us were getting fired (this was a while ago) because someone mentioned that he had been saying that. He didn't say it as jokingly as I do. We have a new trainee, and I worry he thinks we're all crazy. People have been discussing the dreams they have had about work because we all think about work even when we're not there.

I talked to a coworker, and she agreed with the plan to talk to the manager about needing help. I explained that I can't go to HR without them possibly realizing that I know more than I am supposed to. She also agrees that the supervisor is not likely to advocate for me. He is too passive and I am not sure he really wants me taking time off since we are short staffed. Don't get me wrong. I do think he cares about me, but I don't think he understands the severity of the situation. I am about ready to just show him the stitches in my leg. I am thinking that I will talk to him first. I will explain my plan to talk to the manager and that it is not going to involve revealing that he told me things. I don't want him getting paranoid, and if he wants to talk to her instead or handle it differently.. fine. I don't care. I just can't keep dealing with the stress. I am not going to be able to keep functioning forever. There's this curve in the road leaving work with barely any guardrail, and I have on multiple occasions considered just driving off the edge. I probably shouldn't say that to them, but I know it is bad.

Yesterday we had to finish all the work because today is a holiday, and nobody is working. It went pretty smoothly until we discovered a case from the first that was waiting on a reconfirmation and had been missed by the lab. We discussed who would be blamed. I admittedly missed it but so did everyone else. It was missed by multiple lab techs doing reruns. It was missed by multiple analysts and the supervisors. However, it definitely worried everyone. Thankfully, they didn't make anyone go in today to deal with it, or at least the supervisor texted me that nobody was working today. Once I saw the text, I made my plans for the day. I slept until 2pm then went to the liquor store and Target. I was half afraid that I would get a call at 3:30 asking me why I wasn't at work. I didn't, so I went home, painted my nails (mainly because I accidentally got hair dye on one so it's brown) and am watching TV. Trying not to think about tomorrow.