Note: My first attempt at using pseudonyms has resulted in a rather strange story. Think _Lord of the Flies_ meets "The Carebears." Or.. "The Evil Carebears." Anyway, I realize this analogy gets old faster than wet bread on a hot day, but just go with it, okay? Okay.

…..

Yesterday was six months to the day I started working at the Isle of Immaturity and during the course of my shift, for the second time since I started working there, I whole heartedly wanted to quit. I can’t take this nonsense and drama. It’s like... well, it’s like an endless season of "Survivor," is what it’s like! In six months, there have been no less than three change-overs of management. Currently, there are secretive and suspicious alliances, as well as people throwing hissy fits swearing never to speak to one another again. Team WantsToBeFair includes GentleHeart - a co-worker knowledgeable in dog communication skills, LovingLeader - a level headed supervisor, willing to be The Bad Guy, whenever necessary, always striving to make our little island a place of peace and commonality, and me. Team NotThinking includes DoubleHeadedCoin - a supervisor whose trustworthiness is questionable at best, and Naivete and Prideful - two wide-eyed employees who know very little about dog communication skills, and insist that no animal should be euthanized, ever. Granted, none of us like euthanasia, but even in a no-kill shelter such as ours, there will always be cases in which it’s called for. And then there are other stragglers, who don’t really know where they stand on any of it, trying to appease everyone, and more or less lying low. Yesterday, I passed one of the Team NotThinking employees, Naivete, having lunch in the office with DoubleHeadedCoin. Looking through that door, I suddenly and eerily felt as though we were re-enacting the final scene from "The Godfather." It’s odd and disturbing that the two of them are *this close* (this is where I’d cross my fingers, if I made those kind of gestures), because Naivete does not know that DoubleHeadedCoin has said and done certain things which would cause her to want to switch from being DHC’s Best Friend to Murderer in 3.5 seconds.

Shit hit the fan a few weeks ago, in a badly mishandled situation. Naivete and I had formerly been heading down the Budding Friendship path, but because we had a difference of opinion in the way it was handled, she has since stopped talking to me.

Prideful decided today that she will never speak to GentleHeart ever again, because GentleHeart has been appointed into a position that Prideful was not, and boy, is she pissed. This came about because of some guidelines I wrote up. So GentleHeart wrote even more guidelines to further explain things and forwarded it to LovingLeader and me. It is good, and I’m glad she wrote it, but let me just say here that typos and grammatical/punctuation errors in professional documents make my blood curdle. I can’t think of anything that looks more unprofessional!

But I digress…

What it comes down to is this… Maybe I’m feeling so disheartened because I’ve felt sick with some unknown malady the past two days, or maybe it’s because I’m getting burned out working in the animal shelter field. All I know is that nothing feels more nauseating than realizing the job you thought was a foot in the door on the path to the ever-coveted Dream Job may be nothing more than a petty gameshow wherein people will stab you in the back the first chance they get. And there’s not even a cool million to be vying for. Bastards.