More Covid

[jkatkina]

The "this feels like a holiday" portion of the ride seems to be over. I'm so tense I'm making myself a bit dizzy.

Let me present to you the scroll-list of Things Currently Going Wrong:

• My contract comes up in about two weeks. No sign of it getting extended. I've asked twice and the best I've gotten is "I want to but we don't know!", which, in corporate-speak, means "get your EI ready, barring a miracle". I've never been on EI. The notion stresses me out. The lack of communication stresses me out. The fact that no one's going to be hiring in an epidemic STRESSES ME TF OUT


• A coworker of mine has been panicking nonstop about this stuff and I appear to be the one she messages about her panic. I do my best, but she is so afraid and pessimistic that it wears me down.


• Another coworker has been steadily trying to get answers from our manager and our VP about if there's work coming up. She finally, finally, right before the pandemic really took off, got a five-minute meeting with the VP where she basically said "there's no work coming up. When your contract is over, it's over." Well, fuck.


• I trust my supervisor -- who already sets off alarm bells with me -- way less over digital mediums than I do in person. She and I communicate in very different ways, which are magnified over text. Every time I talk with her I have to grit my teeth against the suspicious, angry cat-grandma in the back of my brain screeching SHE'S GOING TO FIRE YOU DON'T TRUST HER. Limited success, as even my better nature thinks cat-grandma might be half-right: I do not think my supervisor has much use for me generally.


• this is especially galling because I do good work


• I've done a ton of keys for this season already ffs, I'm good at my fucking job


• and there's always the chance I'm just badly misreading her, but I think she thinks I'm lazy, or uppity, or something? and I wish I knew, but that's not just something you can ask, except I think I should have earned at least a little bit of respect by now


• My wife's employer is pulling Some Shit right now. They "temporarily laid off" all of their floor staff and a lot of people at head office, today. She barely missed the chopping block, and has been shuffled to a new team where the manager absolutely wants nothing to do with her.


• She has been asking for an assistant for MONTHS, and now that the heavy season is happening, she needs help pretty fucking badly. She is not getting it. She is being told it's impossible, by this new manager, when previous ones have been receptive to the idea. And then this new manager went and used the fact that my wife puts on a twice-a-week fifteen-minute lunchtime meditation for the office as a REASON WHY SHE DOESN'T DESERVE EXTRA HELP because yes, that extra half an hour a week would do the job of a whole nother employee.


• To note, this is for an aspect of the business that is going to be absolutely VITAL to keeping them afloat through the pandemic: digital media asset management. Pictures for their fucking online retail website. And they won't get her, the literal only person managing all the product pictures for their very big website, an assistant.


• My wife and I are both working at home, in the same room, and oh man. She is so stressed out and I can do nothing about it. I am not good at letting other peoples' stress pass over me; it gets all gunked up in my chest, especially when it's someone I love, and today the office is a thick mire of stress.


• On that note, I've no notion of how I'm going to get any alone time during this pandemic. I wasn't getting much already, but having absolutely none is....... a bit rough. Sometimes you just need quiet.

In summation, economic insecurity is a fucking bitch and now is a very bad time to have a contract coming to the end.

We as a society are seeing now just how shitty our social safety nets are.

Comments

[corvi]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh, that is so stressful. What awful timing. I hope you are renewed quickly.

[jkatkina]

It is a lot! I think more likely I'm going to have to learn to use EI quickly, and then just start the long slog of seeing if any other studios in the city are hiring. Animation is a weird sector; people churn between studios regularly, but everything's up in the air right now with the virus and all.