I've been trying very hard not to do this. The lockdown, spending hours per day on Microsoft Teams (corporate Zoom), the stress of logistics in this environment, all has made me uncommonly patient with my fellow humankind. For me.

But everything has its limits.

So due to COVID, my company has imposed a hiring freeze. We can replace those who leave the company but no additional hires (notice I refuse to say headcount). What edicts like this mean in a real world sense is that the company can hire whomever it damned well pleases whenever it wants and claim exception for business necessity, but when an overwhelmed department begs for help, they are told "we wish we could do something but there's a freeze."

Hence we are all doing more than one job. For example, I am covering for the person who took over for me as North America Transportation System admin and super user when I moved to Global. She's off this week.

While my current job with the global supply services team is mostly what is irritatingly referred to as "white space," my previous job was extremely "hands on" as far as having to resolve multiple daily issues. In jargon, this is called, "the day to day" or BAU - business as usual. I normally get at least a hundred emails a day. This week that's doubled. At least.

One such email was received today from an outside vendor who's product APIs into our transportation system and updates each new shipment we create with the estimated diesel fuel cost for the shipping date. He requested that I re-send the outbound transmission from our system for 12 shipments they hadn't received.

I looked at all 12 shipments and none had fuel output. Our system's transmission manager identifies the transmission recipient to make it easy if you need to recreate it.

So I replied that I can't re-send. There was no original transmission on these shipments so nothing to retransmit.

He replied, "Carol always simply states, I have resent the transmission."

Small thing, right? Not today. This is a difficult short week and I will likely be working until 7 or later tonight. It pissed me off.

So I replied, "How can one resend what was never sent before? By definition, “resent” implies doing it again, correct?"

Multiple people were on CC. I do not care. Fuck him for breaking my balls.