Work, Urk

Some days at work go downhill, if not precipitously, then in regular steps of "oh yes, this day can be worse, and worse, and worse"; yesterday was like that and so was today.

Today was being okay, not great, and then my boss mentioned that for a meeting today (which, BTW, I had declined because it said I was an optional attendee but apparently they didn't mean that), we were all supposed to have our video on.

Now, I normally only have to do one meeting a month, the division sales update, which is mostly pointless for the editors to attend, but okay, an hour a month, whatever. We don't have to have video on (it only switched to Zoom recently anyway; before that, it was call in only) and you can keep working, or roll your eyes, or whatever.

Then we were invited to this high-level "info session" meeting two weeks ago, which was run by the bigwigs and they talking about the state of the business as a whole, and while I'm glad we seem to be doing well enough to survive, I can't fathom why I would be on that meeting even once, let along every two weeks are you kidding me?

And now they want us all to be on video, for all meetings, because they want us to be "engaged" (whatever that means), "and video helps with that."

I could not disagree more strongly.

But he gets to decide what he wants us to do, so I'll just have to sit there for an hour, looking serious and attentive and grown-up*, while wanting to scream.
*And I have never been good at faking that sort of thing.

I thought I was going to get off the hook for today at least, since I tested my video and the camera wouldn't work, but I put in a ticket to the help desk, the IT person remoted in, and don't you know that he got it fixed by 5 minutes before the meeting? Gosh, thanks...

Also, the meeting is at lunchtime. At least, here it is; to them in the UK, it isn't, of course. And since I had thought I wouldn't be able to go today, I didn't eat lunch beforehand, or take Excedrin for the mild roofing*-related headache I already had, and by the end of the meeting, whuff, bad mood all around. A pill and food made things somewhat better, but every two weeks with this? Really?
*Nope, still not done!