I've decided that's what I have, because I'm getting my longed for wish and I can't seem to feel one way or the other about it.

Ya'll know my boss is a complete and utter whack-job, right? I mean, for a while there she was all I blogged about, so great was my amazement that someone could be so brick-dumb and still manage to walk upright. (An opinion not altered by her voluntary admission the other day that she doesn't know what "Harry Potter" is.)

Last year during a mass exodus where some folks wrangled transfers and a bunch more with seniority up and retired suddenly due to her extreme asshattery (would that I had that luxury), a couple of folks I call friends went over to the next town down, which the Stupid Cow isn't in charge of. They then proceeded to chase the resident whack-job that worked in that office away - you go, boys! - and so now there's an opening there. They've spent the last few months ragging their boss to get me down there, and I've spent the last few months making it worth my boss's while to get rid of me by making her life a living hell. Their boss is a guy who knows me, who managed the place I used to work for a few months before they closed us down and I ended up working for the Cow.

I've been talking to him on the down-low, and talking only to my union president (because my chief steward has a yapper like a wide-mouth bass and who spends her days spreading rumors hither and yon) and between the three of us we figured out a way to get me down there without breaking any rules or pissing anyone off. I could have taken the easy route, something I like to call Joe's Cheat Train To Transferville, where our second level manager tries to make side deals to put people wherever he wants without consulting the union or respecting seniority. But I don't want to do that because I'm a damn union steward and that's no way for a union official to act. So I've been working this out within the rules for a few months and we finally got it going, so the cat came out of the bag a couple weeks ago.

Or, I should say, it exploded out of the bag. Pandemonium ensues. Never let it be said I can't keep a fucking secret.

But before said cat made its escape, the only people who knew were me, my would-be boss, and the union president. One day my would-be boss goes into his morning meeting and there's the Cow, screaming about how awful I am and how she'd pay someone to take me off her hands. (I was having some serious fun with her via email. Shooting fish in a barrel, my friends.) Would-be says, "I'd take her in a minute, and she wants to come down here anyway" and my boss is all, "Please! Please!"

This conversation was relayed to me by Would-be, and we laughed and I assured him of two things: 1) I was doing my part to make her pray she never lays eyes on me again, and 2) I'll never do the same thing to him.

The next day, I get a reply from the Cow about the issue we're arguing over, and she slides this in at the end: "Do you want to go to the next town down? I've been hearing a rumor." Which cracks me up because I already know where she heard it, and it wasn't from some phantom "rumor". So I write her back and say, "Yes, I would like to go to the next town down. Is it true you'd pay me a months salary to go? That's the rumor I heard." Her reply to that was a lot of huffing and righteous indignation, which was pretty amusing all on its own.

Cat's out of the bag now because the Cow can't keep her mouth shut either which is why she wasn't consulted until we had it worked out. And here comes the pandemonium. Wide-Mouth Bass is in an uproar, flinging emails left and right and gabbing to everyone she could reach. Within 48 hours 6 different people call me to ask about it. Now I can say something because they're going to send an email out asking if anyone wants to go - a crap-shoot because if someone with more seniority than me wants it, I lose. But I was pretty confident because I'd already asked everyone above me. Heh.

Long story short, we went through the steps and I got my wish - my last day working for the Cow is May 3rd. After that "Would-be" becomes "Is" and I get to wash my hands of her. I get to go to the next town down - which is just 3 miles further than I already drive, and 10 minutes shorter according to MapQuest (because it's interstate instead of state roads going through downtown during rush hour). I'll be working in a office with 2 people I like and whose work I respect. The most senior of us has only 14 years, so theorhetically the three of us will be working in that office for a long time - and we can run it any damn way we please. Property down there is way cheaper than here, and I can get twice the house on 3 times the land for less than I paid for this house when I get ready to move.

No more crazed pages from the Cow about goofy shit. No more 8-10 emails a day boldly illustrating her incompetence in 22pt blue font. No more coming to work and seeing she's "helped" by loading me work other people were planning on doing, so the first hour of every day won't be taken up redistributing the work to the right people. No more worrying she's going to creep in unannounced at 2pm and try to get all managerial when she finds we're all in the break room. No more Outlook email "recalls" of a message 2 or 3 times because she's to stupid to send it right the first time. No more explaining to her over and over that the reason that 8 minute old trouble isn't fixed yet is that we don't have transporter technology, so I actually have to drive from office to office.

And the only price for this impending peace is I have to say nothing as she runs around telling people about the huge favor she did for me, and how she always works to help people get what they want, and how hard she worked to make this happen. A small price, really. Ludicrous, yet small.

What I should be feeling now is elation. I should be over the moon. I should be dancing in the streets! But what I feel is... nothing. I can't seem to feel any way about it at all, one way or the other. I've been thinking about that, and I've decided it's shell-shock. I can't remember what it's like to want to go to work. I can't remember a time when my pager going off didn't fill me with dread. I had to set up an Outlook rule 2 years ago that automatically sends email from the Cow into the Deleted Items so I wouldn't feel compelled to open them and be faced with her idiocy. I'm so accustomed to being beat down at work that I can't imagine what it will be like not to feel that way.

That's just sad, people.