Shi(f)twork!

Remember me saying that I was returning to the salt mines on Thursday? Well . . . this project is turning out to be a real booger in the garden of life. (Make that a cat turd in the sandbox!) We're already down two people because they figured out very quickly we were being stiffed on pay. Our hourly pay during the morning training/qualifying session unbelievably enough worked out to be less than $7.00 an hour. I could have made more money wiping syrup off the morning breakfast tables at McDonald's. (And this place requires at least a bachelor's degree.) And the disorganized P.M.S.-ing project leader is one of those people who wants to make sure that she takes all of her many frustrations out on any underlings within her reach -- because she evidently CAN! She runs into the room hourly with her whip and spreads her negativity. Speed up. Slow down. Stop asking stupid questions. Most of the people are working online from home, so she can't scream at them. We're the lucky people sitting in the room down the hall from her office.

So brainstorm with me for a few minutes. Can you help me come up with some good excuses I could use on Monday morning to just call in and resign?

My grandmother died (once again 30 years later) in Kansas.
I've been quarantined with the swine flu.
My car won't start and I can't afford to fix it. And the bus doesn't run through our neighborhood.
I contracted flesh-eating bacteria from my pedicure last week.
I took a stick to both eyes out hiking, tore both corneas, and both eyes are temporarily covered with pirate patches.
I fell and broke a finger in my mouse hand and they've put me in a full arm cast. (Make that a full body cast.)

Seriously, I probably have no choice but to return on Monday if I want the option of doing seasonal projects next year, but this is the pits. My last project wasn't easy, but all the supervisors and project heads were wonderful supportive professional people. It's one thing to take a big pay cut on a project and work for pennies (and I think they're doing this because they know they can get away with it in a time with record high unemployment) -- it's a whole 'nother thing to put up with verbal abuse and insanity for three weeks. Fortunately, I'm sitting next to a comedian and we can lighten the blows by laughing about it. What else can you do? (And don't suggest going to H.R. That's the ultimate joke.)

She comes in hourly with her whip and threatens that we could be locked out of our computers at any moment if our performance slips. Maybe I'll get lucky on Monday!