2 weeks ago, right after tax season ended and after our tax party where I had a great time with my co-workers, I was reading my posts from a year ago at this time and 2 years ago at this time and I just couldn't believe how I made it through that miserable time in my life. I felt so lucky that I finally have things together in my life... I love my job, my friends, my relationship with my family, my apartment and my relationship with my roommates and I love where I was in my life. I was so happy to have Don in my life and most importantly, Dante OUT of my life. I finally got off my ass and I'm on my way to getting my CPA.

Fast forward a couple days later, when I found out that the people in charge of the company now are promoting a girl who started 6 months after I did, a girl with the worst personality ever - know-it-all (even though she DOESN'T!!), talks about herself ALL the time, brags about her connections (who fucking cares, they're nobodies just like you), asks us if we know Quickbooks and brags about how much better that program is than the program we use at this company (yes I know Quickbooks because Stan used it and no it's NOT better because the program has no internal controls and you can change entries sooooo easily which just invites fraud)... AAHHHH!! I'm gonna stop now because I can go on forever about how much I can't stand her big fat kiss-ass and I want to finish this post sometime soon so I can catch up on 24 and Amazing Race. Anyways, they were promoting her 'not-yet-graduated from SANTA MONICA COLLEGE even though she's 30 something' ass over 2 UCLA degrees (me and Tony) because she overheard someone tell someone else that they were leaving and she went into the bosses' office to ask for the job. If it weren't for office gossip, I wouldn't know anything going on at the office because everything is so secretive now... but technically, Tony and I 'didn't know' that the girl was leaving so how could we have gone in to ask for the job?

I wasn't as pissed as I should be because I felt like we all knew Tony would be the next to be promoted and I was after him. He was at the job 2 years longer than I was. Tony pissed me off because he didn't want to go into talk to any of the partners or the consultant. Speak up for yourself dammit!! I told him if he didn't speak up, then I would and I was going to give him a day to do so. I thought I finally convinced him to do it after talking to him for what seemed like hours but then at lunchtime, he says, "I think I'm just going to mention it at the review in July." WTF! BE A MANNNNNNN!!! His office-mate has the heater on constantly in their office and it feels like its 100 degrees in there all day and I KNOW it bothers him but he won't say anything! I get pissed at my niece for not speaking up for herself but she's a 13 year old GIRL and he's a 29 year old MAN.

Enough bitching and moaning though - I've already done it for almost a week straight. I'm over it - I had my talk with the consultant and if things work out, then great, if not, there are a million other jobs out there. I still love the job but this just put some bitterness into it. The consultant doesn't know me at all and at least this gave him a chance to know me and my qualifications. He interviewed Ms. Kiss-Ass so I'm sure she felt comfortable asking him for the job and he felt comfortable giving it to her because if you don't know someone, who cares about them? He started in August I think, 2 months after I did and he was supposed to take time to get to know everyone at the company, but that didn't happen. He was surprised I wanted to be promoted and I just asked him, "Isn't it OBVIOUS??" Apparently not. Forget my UCLA degree, my previous business manager experience and the fact that I'm sitting for the CPA exam (all of which he didn't know about), I want to be an assistant bookkeeper forever.

When I interviewed at the company, Liz told me that they do promote from within but there are a lot of people in line in front of me and I told her I was fine with that. I didn't expect some wonderkid (who proved today in my office she doesn't know how to use a freakin typewriter!) who came in 6 months after me to move ahead of me 'in line'. Typewriter story - she comes into my office to use the typewriter next to Susan's desk and Susan mentions something to her about the margins being screwed up so wonderkid says, "Oh, I know how to fix that." She presses a couple keys and puts her paper in, presses a key and it won't stop typing!! What's the next step?? Say it with me - turn the typewriter off so it'll STOP! But no, wonderkid couldn't figure that out so Susan had to tell her to turn it off so it'll stop typing and Susan is pretty clueless about stuff herself but it's ok for Susan because she's old (I had to go through how to write a letter on Word for her because she's never used it). I was just sitting there doing my work - why should I help her out if she's acts so much better than I am? She gave up after she couldn't figure it out and just left.

This was the toughest week I've gone through since I started this job but its good because it helped me realize that no matter how great you think a company is, in the end, its just a company, just like many others out there. Things have changed a lot since I started at the company and the "family" feeling isn't there anymore. We still have fun sometimes but so many people have left or are leaving that it's just not the same anymore.

Gosh, I'm depressed now... my dream of the perfect company is just shattered. With my luck right now, a press release will come out tomorrow that Justin proposed to Cameron...