Lazy today. Stopped by the Canadian High Commission to register to vote this morning. I have the sneaking suspicion that Election's Canada will take issue with one of my answers as I was uncertain as to how to fill it out and my friend couldn't figure it out either. Got the office at around 10am and had to scramble to finish a report that I was assigned yesterday. Unfortunately, all hell broke loose yesterday and I wasn't able to complete it until around noon today. So it goes. Was a challenging assignment, but I welcomed the opportunity to finally put my skills to some creative use. My boss had asked me to dxraft a letter to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) that we would use to request funding for our projects. In order to do so, I had to demonstrate that we promote democracy, in one way or another, through our work. Having finished that, I'm procrastinating on getting back to the nightmarish editting assignments I was assigned during the holidays. I realize that the documents had to be written quickly, but the grammar and sentence structure in some places is positively horrendous! I swear a lot in French whilst making my corrections as no one else here, aside from yours truly, understands French. So that, in a nutshell, is the work situation.
In other news, life here over the past couple of days has been ... hm, how do I put this ... a bit fucked up. The other night I was sitting outside talking to P and, the next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose. One of the female members of the staff got into a HUGE fight with the manager, in which she was apparently saying some pretty nasty things and challenging him to a fight (or so P tells me, as I never actually went inside), which escalated to the point of P restraining the manager. According to what I was eventually able to find out from P and another staff member, the woman in question had been sitting in the (empty) restaurant watching thereby violating the rules which state that staff are not allowed to watch TV at work. The manager caught her watching TV and told her to "go back inside" (she was on kitchen duty). She refused. He told her again. She refused. He came and got P who pleaded with her to go back inside. She refused. According to what I was told, she was being quite verbally abusive. I've since gathered that the manager can be quite authoritarian and that this has lead to the formation of resentment among some members of the staff. Honestly, they earn a pittance.
Anyhow, despite the fact that she was breaking the rules and being verbally abusive, the manager's response was completely out of line. He had come out of the restaurant and went back into his living quarters. I thought it was 'over'. Turns out I was wrong. The manager returned a belt in his hand!!! My memory's grown a bit fuzzy, but I vaguely recall saying something like "why has he got a belt? what does he think he's doing?" P jumped up and caught up with the manager as he was entering the restaurant, restrained him and begged him not to stop/calm down. Fortunately, P was able to get the manager to back off. I was in a complete state of shock. When I finally regained my ability to speak I said to P "now do you see what I was saying about violence against women!" or something along those lines. That very day I'd printed out a couple of articles for him to read. I've been trying to demonstrate that the attitudes that people hold about relationships between men and women (like marriage) and about women in general in male-dominated societies facilitate violations against women's human rights. Not an easy task. As much as I respect P and consider him to be a close friend, he's been socialized to believe in stereotypical gender roles and sexist notions about women and their duties toward their male partners. It makes for some pretty heated debates. We ended up getting into a discussion that almost ended in me telling him that I didn't want to speak to him anymore. Eventually I calmed down and realized how upset he was by everything that had happened. In fact, he had more cause to be upset than I did as he's been working there for some time now.
All in all, everyone was upset by what happened. I don't know how I'm ever going to speak to the manager again. Whereas I can understand him getting upset by being verbally abused by a member of his staff, that gives him absolutely no cause to become violent. P didn't approve of his behaviour either, but seemed a bit more willing to excuse his reaction. That is, P kept telling me that the woman refused each time to move and then he asked me what the manager was supposed to do. I said "well, if she was breaking the rules, then he should suspend her from work or fire her, not go grab his belt!" P kept asking me "what if she still wouldn't leave?" I got rather annoyed and said "I don't know, call the police and have her removed?" It was rather aggravating.
Anyhow, that was the other night. Yesterday more madness followed, with my boss's wife freaking out on him, breaking their car window, and yelling at my co-worker. I was oblivious to what was going on (outside) until my co-worker came into the office, called her husband, and started crying on the phone. It took me forever to find out what was going on. For a while I was convinced someone had died. My co-worker isn't the type of person to break down easily, so I was quite worried. To make a long story short, no one died but my boss's wife may have some anger management issues to cope with. Maybe she had good reasons for being mad at my boss, I don't know, but there was absolutely no reason for her to take it out on my co-worker. It made for a pretty crazy end to a crappy, sleep deprived day at work. Fortunately, things have improved since and I finished off the day at a friend's place sipping liqueurs and eating chocolates. Would that every day would end in this manner ...
All righty, I ought to actually do some work before I take off. Until next time, my pretties!
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