Yeah, my mood's busted, for sure. This latest assault from the Happiness Police has me spitting useless invective and grinding my teeth. I hope they're happy.

Here's the announcement.

The “Mood Busters Committee” is organizing a Cinco de Mayo potluck for May 5th from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., which will play out in a similar way as the potluck held for Halloween: each department signs up for a food group, and employees go from area to area to fill their plates.  We also intend to hold a piñata (mood) busting with some music and dancing in the Training Center from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m.

Yeah, the bosstards are desperate. It's been the year from hell around our place, just like everyplace. Not a spare dime, nobody who leaves gets replaced, and nobody knows when it'll get better. Add to that the retirement of the beloved (mostly) former executive director and his replacement by Mister Private Sector. We were bound & determined to work more like a business, complete with statistics at all the meetings and condescending strategy stories. Too bad for him, he honked off the member leadership, and he was on his way a bit over a year in.

And then there was the new software. IT got a whole new leadership too, and they inherited a replacement of the basic member/transaction database, the information backbone that affects everything that happens. They inherited a project which had (a) a firm go-live date already set about 6 months in the future and (b) almost nothing else accomplished. They actually figured out what would be needed and managed to get the date reset based on some version of reality, but that meant no more adjustments, period. So it went live on that date, despite us being maybe the second customer to launch this new turkey and the vendor's deliveries happening anywhere from days to months late, and mostly not working without 2 more weeks' debugging. Results have been predictable for a bloody-edge release launched essentially without testing. No data reports are available a month later, performance sucked initially, and there's still more bug than code.

Yeah, the general mood's completely shot. No question. So why, then, oh why would the remaining management geniuses feel the need to pile the weight of some forced recreation on top of all that. But no, it'll make everyone happy happy happy to have to bring bags of chips or bust out grandma's onion dip recipe and fucking dance the merengue in the training center over lunch.

I won't be there. I can't stop people from asking "Only OK??" with a concerned look on their face when that's how I tell them I am in honor to that most vacuous of questions. But I do have my 'peachy' defense, so that's survivable. I'm at much greater risk in this latest assault of the mood engineers. What can I do when it's the middle of the workday, I have to be present, and they're the ones in nominal control? It seems pretty crappy-headed to stay aloof, when they really do just want to help. But their help is just impossibly, terribly lame. It's just one more thing to feel the weight of.

So I'm bailing, at least on that, and also on the cheerleaderism of the monthly all-staff meeting. That'll be my way of keeping my mood elevated, as best it can be. Maybe I'll even feel all empowered & whatnot by resisting the groupfeel and deciding for myself how to respond. Surely that'll make me all full of resolve and ready to take on this challenge, rising triumph upon triumph, driven by my person vision of a shining world where at least you get to feel the way you fucking well fee! Now who wants to go to lunch?!