Yesterday, as the train was carrying me back home from work, I reflected on the unique strain that my job provides, one that I didn’t experience as a programmer. I work as a computer technician for a big hospital complex, big enough that the tasks sometimes pass through a few departments before they get solved. However, our office receives most of those tickets first, and deals directly with the users. Once we determine that we can’t solve the problem because we aren’t supposed to (hardware issue, some printer needs ink, it’s related to a malfunctioning machine that belongs to the electromedical department, etc.), we push the tickets away and hope that they don’t come back. However, whenever I do that, it injects a growing anxiety in me; those other groups may take days, a week, or even more to solve them, but I’m the one that will receive angry emails and/or calls from the users, who seem to believe that our office solves every little issue that involves machines in this hospital complex. As a consequence, I dread every email I receive, and particularly the phone calls. In fact, virtually every interaction with human beings in the context of my job is bad news.

I’m dealing with two such cases this week. In one ticket, the supervisor of a neighboring department, who is on medical leave, couldn’t access her workstation remotely. This usually means that the computer is switched off, but in this case, as I found out in person, it was stuck in a repair cycle, and wouldn’t reach Windows. We aren’t supposed to fix such issues, so I pushed the ticket to the department that does, and notified the annoyed supervisor.

In another ticket, a doctor couldn’t open the analyses of test results in the corporative app. That’s a big deal, because they need to do so for almost every patient. I hadn’t come across the specific issue, that seemed to be a bug in the app. I contacted their developers. They told me to reinstall the program and ensure that the PC ended up with the correct version. However, the app still refused to open the analyses. The developers told me that in previous cases, the corporative Windows image needed to be applied again (an annoying, time-consuming process that involves basically redoing the software of that PC, including Windows, so that we end up with a fresh installation). Our office doesn’t do that, so I pushed the ticket to the corresponding department through the usual channel (an intermediary department that’s supposed to validate these movements).

Yesterday I got angry calls from the users of both tickets. Why isn’t the matter solved? I was tempted, as always, to tell them that I’m no longer responsible for those tickets, but because they may end up stirring up trouble for me, I looked up the state of both tickets. Regarding the supervisor’s computer, the corresponding group had assigned the ticket to one of their technicians, but he hadn’t written any update. I walk to the supervisor’s office. I realize that the other department hasn’t touched the PC in the two days they’ve had the ticket.

I write an update in the ticket to emphasize that the user is bothering us about it. Nothing. I write the technician an email. No response. As I’m doing this, the supervisor writes me an email to indicate that she’s losing her patience. I talk to my boss. He understands the situation and writes an email to the computer technician from the other department to prioritize the task. The technician does respond in this case, and assures him that he will try to fix it during the morning. It’s now the following day, and they haven’t written an update. I’ll have to pursue them, likely through our boss, to figure out if they’re in the process of solving the issue. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to deal with the supervisor again.

Regarding the second ticket, related to the fact that a doctor couldn’t visualize the analyses of test results, I found out that the ticket was stuck in the intermediary department that’s supposed to approve the move. No idea why. I wrote them to unblock it. No reaction. When the doctor bothered me again, I told her that it was out of my department’s hands, and that she should call HQ and complain so that it reaches the proper department. They reacted a few minutes later, and finally pushed the ticket through.

Obviously I can’t stand this job. I was trained as a programmer, and I’m quite good at it, but I couldn’t get reliable employment; I was either let go or not hired after an internship because I’m weird and “wouldn’t work well in a team.” Now I’m too old and outdated to return to that field. Still, it’s a testament to my luck in life that now I’m stuck in a job that I can hardly tolerate due to my neurological issues (autism mainly). Interacting with humans in person makes my skin crawl, as I can’t predict what they’re thinking nor how they’re going to react, and I have to force myself to speak, stringing words together into coherent sentences, because my instinctive reaction is to keep quiet. Most interactions make me feel as if I’m betraying myself.

Unsurprisingly, turnover rate is somewhat high for this job. Some of my coworkers have moved out to greener pastures, preferring even relatively mind-numbing administrative positions instead of this shit.

On top of that, I’m quite sure that the main boss of my department wants me out. Seven months ago, before my last contract ended, he offered me a finagled contract through a company that received a grant for some biomedical research. I would be on that company’s books, but working normally at my regular office. However, that would not only mean that I wouldn’t receive “experience points,” that contribute to my ranking (which determines how often they call me back to work), but I would also get paid 30% less. I only work to earn money (writing doesn’t pay, folks). If I’m not working, I could get on unemployment benefits for about a year, so doing the same work, which erodes my mental and physical health, for 30% less money is an automatic no. I’m quite sure this annoyed my boss.

Now, not only he hasn’t looked me in the eye in the whole month I have been working here, but he goes to the extent of calling the other guy who shares my name, and who sits on the other side of the long desk I sit at, while I’m seated in the middle of their line of sight (meaning that the boss is calling my name even though he’s referring to the guy who’s seated on the other end of the line that intersects me). I’d love to be invisible, and I’d prefer if human beings didn’t interact with me in person, but this situation suggests that one of these days the boss will snap at me or give me worse shit, so my anxiety is forced to anticipate that situation.

However, this whole business with my boss could be in my head. I never know if the impressions I get of people are correct, as I don’t understand their motivations nor can predict their reactions. When I approach someone at work, I can’t tell if they’re going to listen to me or angrily tell me to fuck off. I’ve had cases of people sharing with me that someone clearly hated me (in the sense of, “can’t you tell?”), even though from my side I was approaching them cordially. Once, during my short stint in college, I found myself seated alone in one side of the classroom while the rest, shortly before the professor arrived, moved deliberately to the other side leaving me alone there, and I never found out why. I have no choice but to stay in a defensive stance and be generally paranoid. I have also been taken advantage of by human predators, particularly when I was much younger.

This morning I woke up with a worse discomfort than usual in the left side of my chest. It’s not muscular, because I don’t feel anything when I massage that area. The soreness in my heart in the early hours of the morning has been worse these past six months or so than it was in the first year after I got the so-called booster jab, Moderna’s, that gave me atrial fibrillation (arrhythmia), a permanent heart injury for which I’m taking medication in perpetuity. I can’t be arsed to look it up, but a few days ago I got ahold of a peer-reviewed paper (not that peer-reviewed seems to mean much these days) that stated that 1 in 35 people received heart injuries due to the Moderna booster. Most days I suspect that a significant percentage of people who got the jabs will drop dead in a few years, including myself. One of my coworker’s brother, a semi-professional football player, dropped dead in the shower from a sudden heart issue, even though he got tested regularly through his team. Another coworker’s friend, a healthy man in his forties, had a heart attack and died. Many studies out there have proven objectively that excess deaths have been overwhelming these past couple of years. Was this gross incompetence, or is everything working as intended?

I considered writing at length about the recent elections in Spain. Before the previous ones, the socialists hired the same companies that provided the machines that regularly malfunction in favor of a certain political party during the US elections. The socialists claimed that the goal was to (unilaterally) fortify our elections and provide anti-hacking measures. What confidence can we have that our elections, and I mean every Western country’s elections, are legitimate? How many cabinets are infiltrated with WEF goons who openly work towards a global unelected governance in which the citizens will receive expiring money as long as they don’t annoy their masters (if they do, they won’t even be able to pay for food)? I have little doubt that they’ll end up pushing CBDC in every country.

Other than exciting news such as the UFO stuff (most of my family, including myself, saw one in the early 2000s) and the possibility of a room-temperature superconductor (I want a quantum computer on my desk), everything seems to be getting worse and worse and worse and worse. Our countries are already unrecognizable from how they were twenty years ago. What is there to hope for? Do you want children to suffer through this nightmare?

Despair aside, I’m eagerly waiting for Baldur’s Gate 3 to come out, which will potentially be the best RPG ever made. A cinematic experience with off-the-charts reactivity and a tremendous amount of options to solve (not always murder-related) problems. You can also sort of have sex with a bear. Once BG3 comes out on the 3rd, I expect to do little else in the afternoons than lose myself in that fantasy. Then, a month later, Starfield.

Bye bye!