...and yet always imagined that the prospect lurked just over the horizon.

They're going to turn me into a fucking clerk. I've just been handed an administrative burden that has nothing to do with anything I've done for the past twenty-seven years I've had my present assignment or, for that matter, for the previous ten years I spent in the International Division. Hell and damn!!

in high dudgeon (I'm going out to buy a fucking lottery ticket right now),

institutional absentminded brutality. I hate it, but I think I'm rather by way of "collateral damage."

cordially,

I arrived this morning, fired up Outlook (prepared to draft a passive-aggressive response to the new assignment: "My attorney has asked for a detailed account of these duties and their applicability to my current position description") and found a message from the middle manager to whom I now report informing me that his masters had changed their minds, such as these are, and that the burden will be assigned to a separate division entirely. Woo and yay, say I. Woo. Yay. Vast relief, although I remain troubled that I even flicker on management radar in connection with this kind of bullshit. I'm starting to feel like King Lear, dissed in my decrepitude. The middle manager is out for the rest of the week, so I don't know what was behind this, although the phrasing of his email suggests that I did not entirely conceal my dismay at yesterday's meeting, notwithstanding my attempt to maintain an impassive demeanor.

senescently,