Andare, Partire, Tornare ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthrax at the doorstep The wacky, weird, wild world today. The anthrax scare hadn't hit close to home, despite all the Capital Hill furr-forr, but it sure as hell struck T at work today. A co-worker opened up an envelope that was full of nothing but a white powder. One of the managers, who spent time in the Army, "evaluated" the situation and decided that A) it wasn't anthrax, and B) nobody in the office really needed to know about it. Rumors started to fly, people got really scared, and T ended up calling the HazMat team, because nobody else was taking any sort of action at all. Said manager sent him home, saying he was 'unprofessional." So, for a good portion of this evening, we figured T was out of a job, which sucks way, way hard because god knows, we're not making enough when BOTH of us are actually employed. But. Tonight, T's temp rep, through which he has the job, phoned up. They're backing him totally, and he still has his job. They'll meet tomorrow with the dickhead manager and negotiate the whole situation. We're planning on sending her flowers, bless her little rep heart. So life may be better than we suspected. I can't say that I'd really do anything different, although I guess I would have yelled at the manger more before I actually called the hazmat people. But my god, what's the freaking headline on today's Washington Post? Two postal workers die of anthrax, and they didn't even open the envelope with the anthrax in it, just handled it. So of course, everybody is scared and trying not to panic and trying not to phone the police over trifling little things, but it's hard to know when it's overreacting and when its being prudent. No, people aren't likely to anthrax-attack the office where T works - it had to do with electronic deduction of tolls, not anything in the government. But you don't know. And the way that the management let the rumors build and build and feed off of each other was really poor. So. In other news, I leave for Delaware on Thursday. I get to see my friend E at the conference, which will be awesome, and Amtrack finally sent me my freaking ticket, so that's all good. I'm looking forward to seeing the Hagley and Wintertur museums. Hopefully the leaves will still be beautiful there. I'm a sucker for gardens, formal and informal, and these two museums have good ones. Gotta scoot...looking forward to a long soak in the tub with a trashy novel. 9:11 p.m. - 2001-10-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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