girlofprey

Well, it turns out my drawers - that I bought more than a month ago - are more DIY than I imagined. Given that I really thought they'd be delivered assembled, I'm really quite pissed off. I got a range of advice on the subject - I figured 'oh, well if it's do-it-yourself and they don't even tell you, it can't be that difficult, just needs assembling'. Another guy told me, "oh, that'll take a whole day" when I told him. My dad, the other day, said I could probably put it all together with an alan key. So I confidently started tonight, thinking I'd just go til midnight and get it all put together. I was going to do it earlier today, but our sink clogged/burst, and I decided to put off dragging things out of the garage until people were done in the kitchen. Still I thought I might get somewhere. But no. It turns out the drawer parts do not just slide together, as I was hoping, and they don't have any guideholes for the screws, which I was genuinely expecting. They're the kind of 'assembly required' where you put a screw into a single hole in one piece, hold it against a different piece, and then just screw straight into the wood. And just hope it doesn't go in wonky, and you're doing it in the right place. While also trying to hold all the pieces together, at right angles to each other. No wonder you need two people for it. I put together one single drawer, while the drawer itself seems pretty square, whether it'll squarely go into it's drawer-hole (assuming I put the body of the drawers together correctly), I don't know. And won't know until considerably more building has been done.

And I don't super have faith in the build or instructions now, the instructions told me I'd need a Phillips head screwdriver and a hammer, and when I got the screws out I could see a bunch of them were just one line straight across the head, which a Phillips-head won't help you with. I went down to get a second screwdriver when I needed one, complained to my parents for a while about the build, and then my dad came upstairs and looked at it, and agreed with me it was bullshit. And that my one drawer might well be a bit wonky.

And I'm just really annoyed I guess, because I genuinely just thought I was buying some drawers, that they would be delivered built and I'd just have to put them in a good place. I guess I didn't read the manufacturer's website thoroughly enough - I try not to, given the OCD, frankly - but I read everything I thought looked important, and I really felt like they would make a big deal of it, in GIANT NOTICEABLE LETTERS, if every piece of furniture was do-it-yourself and needed masses of assembly. There wasn't even an offer for someone from the company to assemble it for you, for an extra fee, as far as I recall. What if I lived alone? Or they had a disabled customer who couldn't really handle unexpected DIY projects. I feel really let down. Maybe I'm just being demanding, because I'm annoyed, but I really feel like that was pertinent information, and they should have made it very clear. I wasn't buying from Ikea. Is everywhere just flatpack nowadays? Just annoyingly complicated flatpack?

So I'm disappointed. I was really hoping the drawers - which, again, I wasn't expecting to be a job at all - would be a quick job and I could get them done before the chair comes (finally) next Saturday. Instead I'm going to have to arrange with dad for when he has time to do it with me, and I didn't want to give him extra work anyway, and also we might argue while doing it because we do, and sdjaslkjlk. What a let down. A very disappointing night. And now my back hurts anyway. And I can't just go get a glass of water even when I'm thirsty, because the tap's still broken and we have to fiddle about with the bathroom tap to drink. Who knows when that'll be fixed, either some payment from or more work for dad I guess. And storm Ciara came through and flooded a local town, and my work train goes through that town, and I don't know if it's going to affect my commute tomorrow.

>:(

My Day:

• I woke up late, and realised I had to go to work again.



• I got up late, and after having a shower, I didn't have enough time to play anything before I went to work, as I often like to do.



• When it was time to start getting ready for work, I went to the bathroom first, and after a morning of feeling fine, the instant I sat on the toilet I felt like one huge cramp, and just awful. I started feeling really hot, and like I was going to pass out. I really thought I was going to have to call in sick to work, and I can't call in sick every time I have a weekend off, they won't allow it. At the very least I thought I was going to have to miss my train while I recovered, and go in late.



• I started feeling better and managed to get ready in time to go for my train, but I didn't have time to make a sandwich, so I knew I'd have to buy one.



• I got to the station, and my train came, and it pulled in way too far along the platform, and then the conductor got off and said the train wouldn't be going to the first two stations it's supposed to go to, because of a line failure or something. It still went to Leeds, so I was fine, but it did occur to me that if it wasn't going to Leeds I wouldn't have known until the time I was supposed to get on it. This is after my train was late on Friday, and they didn't tell us about it, the display just started showing the details for the next train to somewhere completely different, and didn't say our train was still coming but late until about a minute before it pulled in. I very nearly got a bus, but didn't. Renationalise the railways, that's what I say.



• I don't know if my train was late getting to Leeds because of that, but after buying and eating a sandwich, I ended up being late getting to work. The person covering the lunch hour was kind enough to let me use the bathroom and get some water before I started anyway.



• Still felt sick all day, after the toilet incident.



• When I switched on my computer, it said it was 'configuring Windows'. Then when I opened Outlook, I had to set up my email account again, and then I could only see my own email and not the car park emails. While I was waiting to ask my boss if he knew how to set it up again, I went to fill a spreadsheet I've been keeping of temporary passes we sign out, at my boss's request. That was also gone. It turns out, because of malware or some sort of security scan, they found that our desk computer was vulnerable, and had literally gotten rid of it and replaced it with an entirely new PC. So everything really did need to be set up again. I had indeed lost the document I'd been keeping, which included all the incidents of people going through the barriers when they shouldn't.



• I had to get IT involved to set up my car park emails again. While they had control of my computer, they switched to the ugliest font imaginable, and now I have to live with that.



• My boss emailed me some of my old spreadsheets I'd sent to him (I send one every month), so I got the formatting and some of the older incidents back. I still had to go through our file for the whole of May so far, counting up how many temporary security passes we'd given out each day, and filling it out again.



• The woman who properly runs the car park in HR said I didn't have a signature on my email anymore, even though I don't remember having one ever, and I had to set that up again, and it was annoying.



• Every Tuesday, we do a fire alarm test. This basically means one of my co-workers comes out, I give him the keys and my phone, and he calls up and puts our alarm on test (so no fire engines come), then he goes upstairs, and I have to wait by the panel for him to set off the alarm somewhere upstairs, count to ten, then push a button to silence it. He told me today we'd be doing a 'full test', which basically means it'd do all the things it's supposed to do in a real fire, like open all the security barriers and call all the lifts down so no-one could use them. He did the thing, I waited by the panel as usual, the fire alarm went off. I briefly noticed that all the barriers hadn't opened and at least one lift hadn't come down before I had to press the button to silence the alarm. It wouldn't silence. I pressed it again. It wouldn't silence. I pressed a different button that said silence, but no joy. Everyone who'd been stood there when it started going off was looking at me, but it wouldn't silence. I told them that, that it was just a test but the button wasn't working. People started coming down the stairs, because they thought it was a drill or fire, but the barriers hadn't opened so they couldn't just walk out anyway, so they just hovered around the room behind them uncertainly. Then the fire marshalls started coming down, in their yellow jackets. While I tried to explain it was just a test, it just wasn't working properly. And the alarm was going off very loudly and piercingly. My co-worker finally came and shouted down 'is it not silencing?', and I said no. I turns out you need a code to silence it during a full test, and it had been so long since he'd done one he'd forgotten. In the meantime, because people are absolutely, 100% supposed to leave the building if the fire alarm goes off and keeps going off, the building had evacuated. And then I had to sit with my hand on our contractor gate button to keep it open while everyone marched back in, while the fire marshalls looked on disapprovingly. And tried to ask me exactly what had happened. It was not a great time. But at least I didn't have to fill out reports afterwards, which my co-worker did for some time. Also, it turns out our fire alarm doesn't work like it should on full test. Which is a shame.



• Still felt sick all day. But then I had some chocolate and felt like I was giving myself life force, so idk.



• I got home and found they'd finally sent me the form for a re-assessment for tax credits.

What a day

The more I hear about Bernie Sanders, the more I think he's just a cunt.

And Jeremy Corbyn seems to be taking after him, and that's a shame.

Tonight my train home was delayed due to flooding, and then my train home broke down a few stops from my stop. They got it going again. But still. It was not my favourite train ride home ever.

My Playstation Vita made it bearable though. The littlest Playstation.

Also, when I got home, I had a letter from the HMRC about my Working Tax Credits. They have given me them, which I sort of suspected when I looked at my bank balance the other day and had more than I thought I did. They are going to give me £400 a month. Which seems like a lot. It seems sort of ungrateful to even be shocked by it, and I'm not unhappy about it, I just...was not expecting that. They're going to give it to me until next April, the beginning of the next tax year, so I don't know if it'll continue after that, but. Wow.

I would feel a lot better about it, but ever since I sent off the form I have been worried that I accidentally confused Contribution-based and Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance. I know that they probably actually looked into my circumstances and tax records/national insurance information, and maybe that part didn't even make that much difference, but I'm still super-paranoid that I'm going to be accused of fraud somewhere down the line. I'm going to call the helpline tomorrow and just double-check. But if all goes well that's...very comforting. A lot more than I was expecting.