I overheard my boss say my name in the bathroom today. I was in the stall and she didn’t know I was there. She and another manager – one who had seen me enter the bathroom and go into a stall – were talking about meetings they had to attend, and I heard my boss say “I’ll be finished with Erin in an hour.”

Um, we didn’t have a meeting scheduled. We haven’t been fighting one another and I don’t think I’ve done anything to piss her off, but at my office it’s really a crapshoot. Typically, the only time they tell you what you’ve done wrong is 2-3 months after the fact, which means you’ve had time to forget all about it and not suspect a thing until they pull you into a conference room for Another Talk. This is performance appraisal time and I’d like to think she just had to finish writing mine, but it wasn’t very heartening to hear that other manager shush my boss, and then to hear my boss say “Oh.” And then they left the bathroom, where they never should have had that kind of conversation to fucking begin with.

You know how you always think people are talking about you, but then you remind yourself that you’re not that popular to begin with so you’re probably just being delusional? I tried that. It didn’t work. And then later, when I saw that other manager talking to the director, who said “Are you joking? Did she really?” and then the other manager made an “I’m afraid she did” face, I tried it again. Still didn’t work.

My job isn’t really into giving people presents for no reason, and my appalling lack of ass-kissing skills guarantee that I’ll remain un-promoted. So maybe I’m getting fired soon? Unemployment wasn’t all that bad when I wasn’t pulling my hair out over being poor. Of course, I was also bartending on top of collecting unemployment (shut the fuck up, I’ve been working full time since I was 16) so I never had to dig into my savings, so I wasn’t that poor. I am, however, a worrier by nature and have been completely broke before, so I’ll always have the ability to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and convinced that I’m about to lose everything. Aside from that, though, unemployment was awesome. I slept late(ish), hung out with my friends, kept my house clean, and served drinks three nights a week. It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been. I miss it sometimes almost all of the time.

That said, I don’t really want to be unemployed right now. I have a car payment for the first time in 5 years. I want to move in October. I need money like it’s my job, people, my job that I can’t afford to lose.