Happiness in slavery

Well, today has been a day of ups and downs. The ups come in somewhat decadent purchases, and the downs come from the job which funds these enjoyable, if not a little silly and wasteful purchases. I'm not too bothered though, I'm only really spending betting winnings and bonus money. My normal paycheque will go on drugs, alcohol and savings, as it does every time.

I'll start on a more positive note with the ups, seeing as I'm using it in all its glory to type this. I bought a mechanical keyboard, it was £120, a Majestouch-2, and I've just bought a coloured set of custom keycaps for around £38. Slightly stupid and unneeded purchases, especially the coloured keycaps. But oh well, whatever brings you joy, eh? The keyboard is an absolute delight to type on, and I take comfort in somewhat nerdy, extravagant purchases. It's not wrong to spend money on something you want, even if it'd seem like an extreme purchase to somebody else. After all, what's the point of working for money if you're not going to enjoy spending it?

Anyway, the bread and butter of what makes me tick, the downs. Today I was meant to do a 12 hour shift, though luckily I was doing it as a sort of 'surplus' worker in another role, not my own. Because of this fact, only my manager who wasn't in on the day knew I was going to be coming in early for some overtime. That worked to my advantage. I woke up at 3am last night, and even if I hadn't I'd only have had an opportunity to get around 5 hours sleep, as I didn't get to sleep while about 12. Waking up at 5am is never pleasant, especially if it's overtime. So I decided to put my phone on silent (though nobody ever rang, as the deputy manager didn't know I was in), and go back to sleep.

I felt slightly bad about lying to my dad about it, as I was too cowardly to tell the truth. I said something about they'd rather have me in on Friday doing overtime, which was slightly true when I told him this evening, but not at the time. My dad is very protective, maybe not the right word, over my work, he thinks that if I didn't go in today I'd lose my job or something, he thinks he knows the workings of my job and how to work with the system better than I do. It's tedious to try and convince him otherwise, so I don't bother.

So I get into work, all is fine. Nobody is any the wiser, and as I'm 15 minutes early I have a nice cuppa with a workmate before going down to my department. After about 10 minutes work the deputy manager who was on this morning tells me he's leaving, and asks me if I'll work tomorrow before he goes. Now I don't want to work tomorrow, it'd mean working 6 days in a row, and before last week I'd only done two days max in about 3 months. However, whether it's being too nice, being too cowardly or whatever, I find myself unable to say no to him. So I said I'd work it. It's almost as if I feel guilty if I say no, if I don't have a genuine excuse (why should I need one, it's not a contracted shift?) I find myself unable to say no, for guilt and lack of will power.

So he leaves and I mention it to my manager. She understands that I don't want to be working 6 days and got somebody else to do it for me so I can work 12 hours Friday morning instead as there's a guy off with illness that needs covering, and quite honestly I'm the best at my role. That's a little better because I have Saturday off. I'll have to go in though because I'm covering someone else on that day in an actual role, rather than as a 'surplus' thing.

Sunday was shit for lots of other reasons but I'm too tired to write about it. I'm glad I have tomorrow off and I'm just really annoyed that
a) I feel too bad to say no to a shift, I feel like I am letting people down if they ask me and I say no
b) They sort of know this and would ask me before they ask other people.

Random thoughts; I've wrote some more on my book, though I'm unsure where to go with it now. I seem to be listening to the same 3 songs over and over. Russia can fuck off, I'm not quite ready for world war 3 yet.