i t z i e . d i a r y l a n d . c o m

Miami Vice // 2003-05-15


Today was the worst day at work EVER. The Chinese government has put a bunch of "guidelines" out and a "point system" by which all adoption agencies are going to be "graded." Do this wrong, 50 points off, do that wrong, 100 points off, make a mistake on a dossier, 500 points off. There are a total of 1000 points that each agency starts with. If you drop below 500 points, China will no longer work with your agency. Well, guess what my job is? I've been the one in charge of putting together dossiers since I started. I do all of the other stuff too, but it's the one thing that only I own. Additionally, the Chinese goverment only put out the rules to the point system this week. And they're grading starting February 1, 2003. That's right. Retroactively grading. It also happens that all of the dossiers done after Feb 1 were ones that I did and all of the dossiers done before that, were done by my predecessor. So today, we pulled out every dossier I've ever done and went through them page by page - 50 some dossiers - and looked for any tiny little nitpicky mistake. Any item uncircled, any tonsillectomy unadressed by a doctor's note. So all day long, I was under a microscope with my co-workers as they assesed every god damned fucking thing I'd done since I started working there. When I left this afternoon, we had 9 more dossiers to sift through, 30 had gone back in the file cabinet, and 11 sat with sticky notes detailing everything I'd done wrong. It was SO awful. I just wanted to puke and cry and scream all day long. I know I shouldn't take it personally, but they were analyzing EVERYTHING I'd ever done at work. It was like each tiny mistake was screaming "look at how careless I am!!!" And yes, it's incredibly important because NO ONE can afford to be docked 500 points. And it's such a fucking ruse. China doesn't really care about all of this shit. What they're doing is setting up a grading system so that they can kick out agencies that they don't like or who don't bribe them or whatever. They can certainly find SOMETHING wrong with a dossier from any agency. Fucking bastards.

Sorry for the bitchfest. God damn it, I need a vice. I wish I smoked or drank or did lines or something. I think I do have some alcohol somewhere around here... I wonder if it's still good. If only I enjoyed vices. I mean, what's the point of a vice if you don't like it? Do you think that mangos would count as a vice? I could eat those until my skin turned orangey-yellow. Any good vice suggestions are welcome. Please see my guestbook.

(Also, the bumbershoot line-up looks good this year. Too bad I'm going to be in Columbus, OH for a wedding for most of that weekend. I'd love to see the Shins in concert ... and as geeky and wrong as it is to spend the last days of summer inside in the dark, the one reel film festival is one of my favorite things in the world.)

prev & next