2004-03-05

My apologies for the dead air. I’ve been suffering through a series of minor indignities, not least of which is the fact that I’ve been slaving like a dog here at work: all of a sudden I find myself doing things like “chairing meetings,” which is just ridiculous. I keep having to remind myself to pay attention, and when people look at me expectantly, it takes me a second to realize “Oh! They want me to talk! Fuck.”

Indignity number two: I am broke. As I’ve mentioned, someone around here fucked up my pay, so I’m currently being paid at a lower rate than I’m supposed to be getting. I was assured the situation would be rectified posthaste, but two pay periods have come and gone with noticeable chunks missing from my cheques. I failed to budget for this shortfall, since I was lulled into complacency by the chanted refrain of our pay clerk: “You should be getting a supplementary cheque any day now!” Foolishly, I didn’t immediately realize that the pay department moves about as swiftly as an unmotivated glacier. I’m clinging to a fading spar of hope that I may see the rest of my pay before my hips fracture and I can’t make it to the bank.

Which leads me to indignity number three: I decided to file my taxes early, counting on my return to supply me with some much-needed pecuniary padding. As soon as my T4s landed on my desk, I assembled all my pertinent information in a tidy pile, with paperclip just to show those fuckers I mean business, and hustled down to H&R Block: last year I got around two hundred dollars, and since my pay has remained at a (pitifully) consistent level since then – at least, until my recent lesson in random cruelty from the pay department – I anticipated something similar this time around.

Not so! Apparently the government actually deducted less tax this year – bastards! – which translates to zero return. Sorry, not quite zero: one dollar and one cent. When I receive my cheque in the mail for one dollar and one cent, I think I’ll turn it over, endorse it, write “No, fuck YOU,” and mail it right back to the CCRA.

Really adding insult to injury, I walked out of H&R Block seventy-five dollars poorer, since they had to charge me to file my taxes – something I would have done myself, except that I wanted the imagined “return” right away.

This neatly ties into indignity number four: last night I found myself standing at the checkout counter of the grocery store with seventy dollars’ worth of food, and my debit card was returned to me with an angry little “insufficient funds” printout. I made the requisite “What? That’s not possible! I’ll be speaking to my financial advisor first thing tomorrow!” face and put my groceries on my credit card; all under the observation of the pair of GangstaZ behind me in line, who were buying two cases of Vanilla Pepsi (please tell me you’re going to use that to clean your Honda Civic’s engine and not put it in your mouth) and flipping through entertainment mags, commenting derisively that “Yo, I ain’t heard of any of these peeps”; like really, you are NOTHING in show biz unless Dick Droopy Drawers from Ottawa has heard of you. Fuck! And again I say FUCK.