Stupid Shit We Fight About

Stephen and I just had a fight. Then, because it was over stupid shit, we resolved it. Yay, team!

As you may know, if you've been reading here for any time, Stephen works for a local pet-supply retail chain. He was first employed as a part-time retail dude, working in the Burbank branch, because that was the job opening, and it was convenient for him to get to work.

He then earned a "promotion" to full-time hours, at the same Burbank branch. Kewl.

His next promotion to Floor Supervisor also included a transfer. The new branch is in Encino. Not quite as convenient a commute, and definitely a different "vibe" from Burbank, but still the same company. We moved from Burbank to North Hollywood around the same time he got transferred, so while the commute wasn't as convenient, it still wasn't horrible.

He gets paid every two weeks, with Direct Deposit. This is very convenient. His pay stubs get delivered to the store, so in most circumstances, I have it in my hands so I can enter the details into Quicken within a day or so of the money being in the bank.

Two weeks ago, Stephen was transferred back to Burbank. Kewl! Better commute again! Buy another bike to replace the one that had been stolen! Get some exercise and sunshine! Don't spend more than an hour waiting for buses in either direction! Kewl!

... except ... the pay stub from two weeks ago was delivered to Encino, instead of Burbank. We'd immediately brainstormed ways to get it into our hands, but none of the ideas we had had been followed up on.

Flash forward to today: I had paychecks for myself in today's mail, and I was trying to tidy up my filing by doing the Quicken data entry, etc. I had Stephen's most recent pay stub to work with, but I still don't know the details from two weeks ago.

So I suggested that someone in Encino throw a stamp on it, and have it delivered to our mailbox. <^<^THIS is the stupid shit we fought about today. My POV was, surely someone in the office at Encino has seen this envelope addressed to Stephen and would like to not see it anymore? Why has no one else thought to either inter-office or mail or fax or something to get it out of their office? What I said was, they can just mail that paystub to you here. Stephen's response was, "I'll take care of it", and then we were suddenly both repeating ourselves until it got out of hand.

What Stephen heard was, emelle has to be in charge and this needs to be done her way. When I stopped contributing to the argument and he calmed down enough to ask if I didn't understand his POV, the fight moved off the high heat flame and went to a back burner to simmer. I wasn't able to answer that question, because if I said that I did understand his POV, then clearly, I did want this thing done my way. That wasn't true. But also, to say I did not understand his POV would mean he would attempt to rephrase whatever I wasn't getting, and frankly, I just needed to process what I thought I understood.

It was an apples vs. oranges argument. My frustration was that no one other than me seemed to care enough to do anything about this stupid-but-important document. He'd said he'd take care of it (two weeks ago), but he hadn't. It had fallen through the cracks, and now his frustration was with me, because it was obviously more vital than he'd first known it to be. No.

Grr. Argh.

Once I'd figured out exactly what my frustration was, I tried to calmly explain it. Then I explained what I thought his frustration was, got corrected, re-explained it, and we both Got It.

Then Stephen got on the phone, spoke to the Assistant Manager, and requested that a coworker pick it up when he was in that store for training, so he could bring it over to Burbank. Yay! Taken care of!

... unless the action falls through the cracks. That'll be a fight for another day, I guess. ;)

What Stupid Shit Do YOU fight about?