a recurring theme of the past week

seems to be that i am the most unreliable person ever. at least the trend of late has been to tell me so. in the past month i've either missed or been late to a few staff meetings--2, if you must know--, and my boss approached me about this. i don't want to sound like i'm making excuses for myself, but to put a positive spin on the situation, i've been both on time and present to the other 25 meetings, which is a pretty good track record for the year. might i add, these meetings are fucking useless about 75% of the time (they are part of the 'meaningless organizational bullshit' i mentioned a few weeks back). i tried to explain to boss k that there's something called academics that takes up a good portion of my time, and that this being my last quarter the frequency of papers and all-nighters has increased significantly while hours of sleeping and eating have been irregular and scant, if not totally missing from the equation. we basically ended the conversation with the mutual understanding that i need to keep everything together for the next few weeks. believe me, i kept it together after that. and by 'kept it together,' i mean that i missed the end of year staff appreciation dinner on the day after our little chat. not purposely, mind you, i just totally forgot about it. on friday i get an angry email from k berating me for missing the dinner, which i found to be unnecessary and patronizing. you can't dictate when and with whom i'm gonna eat my fucking dinner. i'd understand if i weren't doing my job, but please don't micromanage and get in a hissyfit if i missed a stupid dinner.

that's over with, but here's the punchline. i discussed the whole situation with one of my best mates, to vent more than anything else. two days later, he sends me an email written in frustration, basically telling me that i am the most unreliable person ever. at first i thought it was a joke, but as a i read on i realized it wasn't. i'd be lying if i said he was completely unjustified in saying what he said. but then again, i had no idea he felt this way, and i get the feeling--no, fuck that, i absolutely know that he talked this over with a few other people. all i'm saying is that if this really bothered him, i'd rather him tell me in person rather than via email. because seriously, email was the absolute worst way to vent his frustration, seeing that i received pretty much the same email from my boss the day before. maybe they teamed up to write it together. i don't care. let's look at this again, this is just beautiful:

k makes tony feel shitty via email.
tony vents to m.
m helps tony feel better.
the next day m sends tony email ridiculously similar to k's.
tony feels shitty, yet again.

life is grand.

in regards to the whole being flakey deal, it's something i'm rarely aware of and that i'm always working on. but i'm not gonna sit here and let people take turns calling me unreliable. i've seriously used that word a hundred fucking times already. i never want to use, hear, or read it again. ever. when people are in trouble or truly need something, i will not hesitate to offer my help, bail em out of a tough situation or do whatever needs to be done, especially for the people i care about, hell even for people i'm not too particularly fond of. but goddammit, don't get mad at me for missing your fancy dinner, and if you have something to say to me, know that there are better fucking ways to do it than through stupid electronic mail. god forbid people actually converse face to face anymore.

happy monday.