#hwaelweg's work life

[the-hwaelweg]

I mean I knew the Department of Education was going to be run by Trump loyalists but jesus fuck. They wasted no time. Welcome back to McCarthyism I guess. The government is now proudly and loudly in favor of book bans.

[cricketnationrise]

Congratulations on 500!!! 🎉🎉 Extremely well deserved!

How about Zahra, 9:37pm, somewhere in England (I leave where exactly entirely up you)?

I'm on ao3 as hwaelweg 💙

for you my lovely, I have a lil date night moment for Zahra and Shaan. hope you love it, and thanks for being AMAZING and screaming about books with me 💜🦗

want your own ficlet? my followers can submit prompts based on these guidelines through January 31, 2024

❤️🤍💙❤️🤍💙

9:37pm, london

Zahra looks around from her perch at the bar. The pub is all dark wood and the smell of decades of smoke sunk into the furniture. It’s the most stereotypical English pub she could ever have pictured, and she’d never admit it out loud, but she fucking loves it. There’s classic rock playing quietly over the speakers, often drowned out by the laughter of the group of students in one corner. A pair of old men, who look like they might be part of the architecture, are putting away more Guinness than she’s ever seen in one sitting. Someone’s playing darts near the back, for fuck’s sake.

She’d love the place even more if her goddamn fianceé was here with her, but she of all people understands an unconventional working schedule. Especially when the Claremont-Diaz family is even tangentially involved. If she had a nickel for everytime she dismissed that little annoying popup in Outlook that says “Send during normal working hours instead?” she’d be set for life. 

“Another round, dear?”

“I—” A buzz from her phone interrupts and she glances at it, heart giving an excited little wriggle when she sees Shaan’s name pop up. (Well actually he’s saved as “Shawn S” in her phone—a preventative measure against overly-curious June, never-me-a-boundary-he-didn’t-try-to-cross Alex, and too-smart-for-her-own-good Nora. She’ll change it once Ellen’s second term ends and she doesn’t have to interact with those assholes in person on a regular basis. (Shaan had laughed so hard he cried when he found out—Zahra had hit him with a pillow.))

5 minutes. See you soon, love.

>move that perfect ass srivastava >i miss you and stuff

“Sorry about that,” she says to the bartender, a no-nonsense older woman. She runs the pub with kindness hiding an iron fist and Zahra liked her from the moment she sat down. “I will take another round, and can I also get a whiskey ginger?”

“Jack Daniels okay?”

“Yeah, that’s perfect.”

Another burst of screaming laughter covers the tinkle of the bell above the door, but the chilly gust of air at her back makes Zahra turn around. The smile that stretches her mouth at the sight of Shann is soft, loving, and completely involuntary. Thank fucking god Alex isn’t here right now. He’d never let her hear the end of how sappy she looks right now. (Alex once tried to high-five her for locking down that suave motherfucker and Zahra had given him a look that made him hide behind Henry.)

“Everything sorted then?” she asks, tipping her face up to meet Shaan’s. He kisses her quickly and sits on the stool next to her.

“Yeah. I finally got a hold of Gavin so that Alex can “sneak out” to the V&A with Henry tonight.”

“Thank god. Now I won’t have to listen to him freak out about the logistics of proposing anymore.”

Shaan just raises an eyebrow as he sips his drink. “He’ll just bother you about wedding details instead.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

“I am sorry I kept you waiting tonight.”

Zahra tips her head onto Shaan’s shoulder. “I’ve done it to you enough times. I get it.”

Shaan slings the hand not holding his glass around her waist. Zahra can feel the warmth of him even through their layers of clothing and slumps a little further into his space, utterly trusting him to keep them both upright. They stay like that for a while, not talking, just basking in the fact that they are together and free of their charges for the night. So often they are only in the same country because of some international policy issue. Zahra lets herself sink into the moment, reveling in the rare chance to just sit quietly at a bar with the man she loves.

“This is a good spot. Cozy. Quaint,” she eventually says, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings.

“I’m glad you think so. It’s one of my favorite pubs in London.” He hesitates, eyes distant, then drops his voice and continues. “Arthur and Catherine used to sneak out and come here on dates, actually.” 

“Oh?” Zahra sits up so she can look at him properly. He doesn’t talk about the time he was Arthur’s equerry that often, and she doesn’t want to miss anything. From what he has said, she can tell it was a similar relationship to the one she has with Ellen. Close friendship, fierce protectiveness, and a hold-nothing-back, bantering sense of humor—closer to family than employee and employer.

“They’d put on casual clothes and ballcaps and make a break for it when her mother got particularly overbearing. I followed discreetly—”

“Of course.”

“To make sure they had a back up plan. And then once Catherine got pregnant, they stopped pretending they didn’t know I was there and invited me to join them. The three of us spent many a late night here, just talking.”

“Sounds great.”

“It was. I—I miss him a lot. But it’s been a pleasure to watch Henry grow into himself. He’s more like Arthur than even he knows.”

He falls silent again, and Zahra smiles at the soft look on his face. He really is disgustingly handsome, people should be absurdly jealous of her life. She kisses the side of his neck, unable—unwilling—to hold in her affection any longer.

“Take me home?” she asks. “I want to not be wearing clothes with a zipper any more.”

“I’d be delighted, Ms. Bankston.”

[the-hwaelweg]

So in today's Very Important Meeting, we unmade all the decisions we made in the last Very Important Meeting and also laboriously over very many emails, so now I can't move forward with The Very Important Project at all. Which still has a deadline of 1/31/25.

I don't think my coworkers understand how time works.

[the-hwaelweg]

Hooooo baby that is the closest I have come to quitting my job over this dumpster fire of a project. Hooo boy. Didn't do it but I'm so furious and frustrated my hands are shaking.

[the-hwaelweg]

These AI-generated books are also getting flooded with AI-generated reviews to make them look legit and harder to tell apart from real books.

However the silver lining (such as there is) is that because no one can tell them apart, they're being fed back into the language learning model, which means, much like feeding it A/B/O smut, the AI is starting to generate increasingly gibberish text, poisoning the whole well, as it were.

[the-hwaelweg]

Listen I just don't have 8 hours of thinking/problem solving/work in me. If you want me productive in the afternoon, I can't spend 5 hours in meetings starting at 8am.

[the-hwaelweg]

Honestly would like to spend the second half of my work day laying on the floor. Everyone has apparently understood "January 31 deadline" as their personal deadline instead of "day by which the whole MULTI-STEP project needs to be done."

So those of us further down the chain have minutes to hours instead of days to do our part. 🙃🙃🙃

[the-hwaelweg]

I cannot describe how much I do not have another 3-hour work meeting in me. I might just die. Of exhaustion. And frustration. And boredom.

[the-hwaelweg]

Nothing. Nothing in the entire universe. Makes me as furious as private health insurance companies. You want to know the specific joys you can look forward to under private health insurance? I worked for a year and half as an admin in pediatric oncology. That's kids with cancer.

You know how many times I forwarded on doctors' recommendations to insurance companies with a request to cover care? And I mean the whole goddamn care team came together. I was sending it from the desk of the primary oncologist, but even the kid's pediatrician two states over was on board with this. And you know how many fucking times the insurance companies said "No, we're not going to cover that"???

That's a fucking two-year-old dying from cancer! What the fuck do you mean you're not gonna "cover it"??? How fucking insanely evil do you have to be to decide you're not going to do anything in your power to help???

[the-hwaelweg]

My colleagues right now: "Hey can you stop putting out that active fire and enter this info into the database right now. Yeah I need it so I can get this contract going for a picture book that's due in 3 years that I'll inevitably ask you to delay anyway because the author had a life event crop up and somehow missing that deadline, which is a public facing one, is fine but missing this arbitrary one that no one outside of contracts and production knows about will bring about the dissolution of the company. What do you mean if you stop trying to put the fire out it'll burn the whole office down? I don't see why that matters when I'm about to miss this arbitrarily set deadline!"

[the-hwaelweg]

Someone just emailed me "now that [dumpster fire project] is winding down" and I was filled with so much visceral rage I astral projected straight to hell.

[the-hwaelweg]

I think 8am meetings should be *remembers I no longer find joking about aspects of my job being made illegal funny* overrun by Canadian geese.

[the-hwaelweg]

Another new favorite book that (a) I can't legally tell you about, (b) I can't tell you about without doxing myself, and (c) won't even exist as a thing you can purchase in the world for at least another 14 months! Publishing is great 😭

[the-hwaelweg]

OH MY GOD AMAZON IS FINALLY TAKING FIXED-FORMAT EPUBS INSTEAD OF THEIR STUPID PROPRIETARY FORMAT!!!

[the-hwaelweg]

Are you ever like "I should not be working today. I should have taken a mental heath day. I should still take a mental health day." And then you just....keep working.

[the-hwaelweg]

When you have a massive project with an insane deadline but you have to wait for someone else to do their part and give it to you before you can do anything, so you're just sitting here with nothing to do because you cleared your schedule for this, feeling this horrible looming deadline breathing wetly on your neck and there is nothing. To. Do. But wait.