DAY 4 OF 6 — AUGUST’S FINAL FUCK YOU
Monday, August 31, 2026
August had one job.
One.
It had already given me allegations, an ER visit, medication bureaucracy, a dead phone, a $1,300 wisdom tooth, and enough miscellaneous bullshit to make July look like the tutorial level.
All August had to do was quietly expire.
Instead, August looked at the calendar, saw it had approximately twenty-four hours remaining, cracked its knuckles, and said:
“I can fit one more in.”
And thus began Day 4.
SHORYU-CAN
The day actually started innocently enough.
I looked at my work uniform and performed the kind of textile inspection normally reserved for aircraft fuselages.
Three more days.
Surely this uniform could survive three more days.
Was it immaculate?
No.
Was it structurally capable of containing Mr. Germlin?
Probably.
And that's when my brain produced:
SHORYU-CAN.
👊🔥
Jerry: “No.”
Me: “SHORYU-CAN.”
Jerry: “You've been awake for fifteen minutes.”
Me: “And I'm already operating at peak performance.”
I grabbed my oatmeal.
Forgot my fucking yogurt again.
Eh.
Whatever.
Oatmeal acquired.
Uniform operational.
Yogurt abandoned behind enemy lines.
Day 4 had begun.
Then my brain decided we weren't finished abusing Capcom.
JURIsprudence.
Because Juri.
And feet.
Don't worry about it.
Then:
At least I didn't HAGGAR you into a suplex.
At this point Capcom had apparently seized operational control of Haus Morgenrot.
And because this wasn't already enough intellectual activity before 10 AM, I somehow wandered into reading about the electric chair, Texas retiring Old Sparky, and eventually made a stupid Thanos joke about cutting the population in half.
Google's AI essentially looked at me like:
“Sir, are you planning something?”
No.
No Infinity Stones.
No supervillain plot.
Just a raccoon eating oatmeal and apparently conducting a liberal-arts curriculum before work.
A FINAL TOAST TO JULY AND AUGUST
Before August died, though, I mentally raised my mug.
To July.
To August.
To all the bullshit that led us here.
First:
THE LEGENDARY A53
My SAMSUNG GALAXY A53 5G.
The magnificent bastard made it all the way to work before deciding:
Fuck this mortal coil.
And this wasn't some naked phone dying peacefully in hospice.
No.
The A53 died armored.
OtterBox.
Screen protector.
And an actual piece of duct tape on the back bearing the simple epitaph:
FU
The A53 did not die naked.
It died in uniform.
Later, Google would demand authentication from the deceased.
Apparently somewhere inside Google's security architecture:
Google: “Please verify this is you using your previous device.”
Me: “The previous device is fucking dead.”
Google: “Excellent. Ask the corpse for the code.”
To the A53.
You magnificent bastard.
Then came the $1,300 wisdom tooth.
One tooth looked at the American economy and decided:
“I am a luxury automobile component.”
Then came August 7–14.
The allegation.
The investigation.
The stretch where I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen with my job.
That one wasn't funny while I was living it.
It did, however, reinforce something I've been trying to remember ever since:
Be boring.
Know the SOP.
Follow it.
Don't freestyle.
Document what happened.
And for the love of God:
BORING TECH DOES NOT WRITE FAN FICTION.
Then came August 22–24.
Chest discomfort when I took a deep breath.
Right-hand and arm tingling.
EMS.
ER.
Hospital.
Testing.
Observation.
And the realization that sometimes powering through means perseverance—and sometimes powering through means you're too stubborn to admit the battlefield changed.
The mission changed.
I went to the hospital.
And the Monster Rotation was dishonorably discharged.
After roughly seven months of using a Monster in the morning and another around lunch to drag my carcass through twelve-hour shifts:
No more.
Goodbye, Monster.
You served dishonorably.
Then came the medication saga.
Oh.
Oh, HCA.
We will return to you shortly.
THE HALLWAY CATS BEGIN REPORTING FOR DUTY
By somewhere around 10:00–10:30, the wildlife had begun appearing.
And our first contestant was somebody I recognized.
This was the hallway cat from Sunday who'd been talking about crashing out and killing somebody.
The gentleman who inspired my groundbreaking therapeutic intervention:
“Next time you crash out, go punch a cactus.”
🌵
Well, apparently the cactus conversation wasn't finished.
He came up talking about the whole go punch a cactus thing again, and I decided to clarify something for him.
I punch cactuses daily.
Not the little decorative ones.
No.
LARGE CACTUSES.
The kind that make my hand hurt.
With pleasure.
Jerry: “You realize the original advice was for him to punch the cactus.”
Me: “Correct.”
Jerry: “And now you're telling him you do it recreationally.”
Me: “Daily.”
Jerry: “Large ones?”
Me: “Large ones.”
Jerry: “The ones that hurt?”
Me: “Especially those.”
🌵👊
Jerry: “This doctrine has gotten away from us.”
Me: “Nonsense. It's evolving.”
At least he remembered the fucking joke.
IMPORTANT PATCH NOTES FROM DAY 3
We also received clarification regarding Sunday's hallway-cat incident.
I previously described it as two cats hissing at each other.
That's excellent imagery.
But the factual terminology matters.
There was verbal aggression.
One hallway cat directed verbal aggression toward another person.
The situation was interrupted.
Then he came back and directed verbal aggression again.
No physical fight.
No clobbering.
No literal claws.
No broom-based Tom & Jerry combat sequence.
The cat imagery stays because this is my fucking blog.
But underneath the comedy:
Verbal aggression.
That's the actual event.
Again:
BORING TECH DOES NOT WRITE FAN FICTION.
Embellish the scenery.
Not the incident report.
HALLWAY CAT WITH A MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM
Another hallway cat was dealing with the aftermath of the earlier serious contraband/needle situation.
This was connected to the Day 1 incident where EMS showed up and, at the time, I knew almost nothing beyond what I personally saw.
Earlier in the day, he was still around trying to figure out what the hell was happening with him.
Where was he supposed to go?
Could he get ahold of his counselor?
What was going to happen?
He was apparently anxious about the whole situation, and I didn't have any answers for him.
And I wasn't about to manufacture any.
BORING TECH DOES NOT WRITE FAN FICTION.
Then, somewhere between that conversation and the rest of Haus Morgenrot doing Haus Morgenrot things...
the hallway cat simply ceased to be part of the scenery.
Gone.
I don't know whether the facility discharged him.
I don't know whether he was transferred somewhere.
I don't know whether somebody above my pay grade opened the Administrative Trapdoor™ and pulled the lever.
All I know is:
He was there.
Then later?
HE WASN'T.
Jerry: “So what happened?”
Me: “Don't know.”
Jerry: “They kick him out?”
Me: “Don't know.”
Jerry: “Transfer?”
Me: “Don't know.”
Jerry: “Then where'd he—”
Me: “Jerry, I am a tech, not the fucking Missing Hallway Cat Bureau.”
And that's where I'm leaving it.
Whatever decision got made was made somewhere above the raccoon's branch.
I hope the bastard figures things out.
But by the end of Day 4, one thing was certain:
Hallway Cat Whatever-His-Number-Was had left the building.
How?
Why?
Under what exact administrative mechanism?
🌵
Damn. That's crazy.
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY LUNCH?
Then another hallway cat approached the information kiosk.
🐈: “I didn't get lunch.”
Okay.
“Did you sign up for one?”
Because if you're going to be gone during lunch, you're supposed to sign up beforehand for the appropriate meal arrangement.
He hadn't.
Then came:
“So what? I'm just shit out of luck? I don't get food?”
And here's where Old Mr. Germlin might have started solving shit.
I've done that before.
Front lobby says one thing.
I understand something another way.
I tell somebody to go somewhere.
Another staff member gets involved.
Somebody else says something different.
Suddenly we've created:
STAFF SPLITTING: CIVIL WAR
I've already learned this lesson.
Not catastrophic trouble.
Just enough to teach the raccoon:
Don't freestyle the fucking lunch.
So today's answer?
Go talk to SOD.
Don't like the policy?
SOD.
Think it's stupid?
SOD.
Want an exception?
SOD.
Want to litigate the constitutional right to sack lunch?
SUPERVISOR. ON. DUTY.
Then another hallway cat wanted to know:
“What about me?”
Brother.
I have thrown you the life raft.
🛟
If I throw you the life raft and it hits you directly in the forehead—
and then you drown next to it—
there are limits to what the raccoon can accomplish.
There's the raft.
There's SOD.
Swim.
SHRIMP SALAD AND THE HCA SIDE QUEST
Lunch finally arrived.
Shrimp salad.
And I'll give credit where it's due:
Pretty damn good.
During lunch, though, I resumed the side quest that refuses to fucking die:
HCA HOUSTON HEALTHCARE NORTHWEST: PRESCRIPTION EDITION
I had been hospitalized August 22–24.
At discharge, my prescriptions were sent to Walgreens.
I had assumed:
How expensive could this shit possibly be?
Walgreens:
APPROXIMATELY $812.
Oh.
Ulric money.
The kind of money that makes me fantasize about winning enough from the lottery that bullshit like this becomes:
“Eight hundred dollars?”
shrug
“Whatever.”
That's the dream.
Not yachts.
Not Lamborghinis.
Not announcing my net worth while wearing a monocle.
I want enough money that if a job disappears, I can find another one without panicking.
Enough to build the Raccoon Den.
Replace Grandpa PC.
Eventually install four 16-terabyte hard drives.
Maybe a 70-inch television.
And, naturally, eventually acquire Mr. Catford and company.
Then continue living like a fucking hobo so nobody needs to know anything.
But I do not currently possess Ulric Money.
So $812 was a problem.
The VA and Walgreens had already sent me through enough bureaucratic circles that I could probably qualify for NASCAR.
Today, though, after explaining the situation again, I finally reached somebody at HCA who was willing to take the VA fax number and get the request in front of the doctor.
She couldn't promise the doctor would be there today.
She couldn't magically produce the medication.
But she was willing to actually move the fucking thing forward.
And I appreciated that.
I even told her I'd already filed grievances because previous attempts hadn't resolved the problem.
At one point I was so frustrated that I couldn't find the words.
Didn't cuss her out.
Didn't yell.
Just—
Fuck.
What else do you say?
But this particular person tried to help.
And that's important.
The HCA cactus wasn't extinguished.
But somebody had finally located a fucking hose.
🌵🔥🚿
Whether water comes out remains to be seen.
THE AFTERNOON WAS SUSPICIOUSLY NORMAL
Most of the afternoon?
Fine.
There was a hallway cat somewhere around the 2–3 PM group who apparently decided:
“Nah. Scheduled programming is optional today.”
All right.
I got his name.
I wrote him up for skipping group.
And that was it.
I did not go retrieve him.
I did not chase him through Haus Morgenrot.
I did not personally escort him back into group.
I didn't conduct an interrogation to determine what grand philosophical reasoning had led him to conclude that scheduled programming was optional DLC.
I had:
Name.
Skipped group.
Paperwork.
🦝✍️
Done.
That's my portion of the quest.
Then came headcount around 4:20–5:00 PM.
Also mostly fine.
Which should have frightened me.
Because August still had several hours left.
THE BAKED CHICKEN TIME DILATION EVENT
Dinner was supposed to be around 5:00–5:50ish.
Dinner was:
Baked chicken.
Somehow this became an approximately hour-and-twenty-minute fucking expedition.
I do not understand.
This was not Thanksgiving.
This was not a Michelin-star tasting menu.
Gordon Ramsay was not personally deboning a phoenix.
It was baked chicken.
Tough-ass baked chicken.
The gameplay loop seemed fairly straightforward:
Enter dining area.
Acquire chicken.
Eat chicken.
Leave.
Go outside.
Bullshit with fellow hallway cats.
Yet somehow the chicken became an epic.
People lingered.
Things dragged.
Time ceased having meaning.
And because dinner took approximately one geological era, the 6 PM group didn't properly get rolling until around 6:20.
Fantastic.
THE COO HAS TWO QUESTIONS
Somewhere around this stretch, the COO was trying to figure out a couple of things.
First:
Who skipped the 2–3 PM group?
Well.
Interesting.
Because somewhere in the Haus Morgenrot paperwork ecosystem existed a write-up from one particular raccoon containing exactly that kind of information.
I had gotten the hallway cat's name.
I had written him up.
But I did not personally go up to the COO and identify him.
I didn't wave the paperwork over my head.
I didn't burst through a door yelling:
“I HAVE SOLVED THE CASE!”
I had simply documented what I knew.
What management did with that information afterward?
Management business.
And normally that would have been enough Haus Morgenrot mystery for one afternoon.
Except there was another issue.
A much stranger issue.
Because apparently—
THE FUCKING GRIEVANCE BOX DISAPPEARED.
There are grievance sheets.
Next to those grievance sheets is—or at least was—a grievance box attached to the wall.
Simple system.
📄 Write grievance.
📦 Put grievance in box.
Somebody eventually deals with grievance.
Beautiful.
Except apparently somebody had decided to modify the architecture.
Because from what I understood, the grievance box itself had been pulled from the wall.
Not a grievance disappeared.
Not the grievance sheets.
THE BOX.
The COO wanted to know what happened there too.
And suddenly we had two things floating around the same general stretch of Haus Morgenrot:
Somebody skipped the 2–3 PM group.
And:
Somebody apparently removed the grievance box from the fucking wall.
Are those two things related?
I have absolutely no idea.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I'm certainly not drawing that conclusion myself.
Because:
BORING TECH DOES NOT WRITE FAN FICTION.
Jerry: “But you have the name of the person who skipped group.”
Me: “Correct.”
Jerry: “And somebody pulled the grievance box off the wall.”
Me: “Also correct.”
Jerry: “What if—”
Me: “No.”
Jerry: “I'm merely suggesting—”
Me: “Put the fucking red string away, detective.”
I am not building a corkboard.
I'm not connecting photographs with yarn.
I'm not sitting in a dark office at 3 AM whispering:
“The grievance box knew too much.”
I know somebody skipped group.
I documented that.
I know the grievance box apparently got pulled from the wall.
I don't know who did that.
If somebody later determines those things were connected?
Cool.
If they had absolutely nothing to do with each other?
Also cool.
Mr. Germlin's contribution to the investigation remains:
🦝📋
HERE'S WHAT I ACTUALLY KNOW.
Everything else belongs to somebody else's fucking clipboard.
6:20–7:50 — GROUP: THE EXTENDED CUT
The long group finally began.
Five or six bathroom departures happened.
Some private counselor-related movement happened.
Whatever.
I wasn't particularly bothered.
If it requires documentation:
📋
If it doesn't:
Damn. That's crazy.
Then came an argument involving an SACP client and the counselor.
The discussion touched on adulthood, supporting a family, money, being a man, race, and how people approach those responsibilities.
I'm not going to reconstruct every sentence because I don't trust myself to perfectly assign every statement to the right person after a twelve-hour shift.
The important part was that disagreement became argument.
The client was passionate about his feelings.
Fine.
People are allowed to have feelings.
I have feelings too.
I work at Haus Morgenrot.
I have approximately seventeen metric tons of feelings.
But if passion automatically authorized me to say every thought entering my skull, I'd have been launched from the property with a trebuchet sometime around March.
Sometimes you disagree.
Sometimes you think somebody's approach is completely wrong.
Sometimes you can say:
“I understand what you're saying, but I think there's another way to approach this.”
And sometimes the ancient adult martial art is:
BITE YOUR FUCKING TONGUE.
Not because the other person is automatically right.
Because every disagreement doesn't need to become the Battle of Helm's Deep.
Eventually the client was removed/left the group and continued arguing afterward.
And by this point?
Mr. Germlin's internal investment meter was beginning to rise.
“YOU LIED ON ME.”
Then came another hallway cat.
Let's call him:
HALLWAY CAT 184
That number means absolutely nothing.
I am pulling hallway-cat numbers out of the ether because this is a blog, not a fucking client database.
Hallway Cat 184 approaches.
“You lied on me.”
Apparently he disputed something I'd documented regarding group/bathroom compliance.
According to him:
I lied.
I lied.
I lied.
Brother.
I am not trying to argue with you.
If you believe the documentation is wrong, there are people you can take that to.
I do not operate:
THE MR. GERMLIN COURT OF COMPLIANCE APPEALS
Yet he continued.
Then wouldn't give me his name when I wanted to document the interaction.
Then disappeared back into group.
And I'll admit:
That started irritating me.
Because now I wanted the fucking name.
Jerry: “Didn't we establish yesterday that we don't chase Red Arremer?”
Me: “SHUT UP, JERRY.”
Jerry: “I'm merely observing—”
Me: “I WILL HAGGAR YOU INTO THE FLOOR.”
And that should have been my warning.
I was starting to invest.
THE RETURN OF YESTERDAY'S VERBALLY AGGRESSIVE CAT
Then our verbally aggressive hallway cat from Sunday decided to expand his audience.
I wasn't initially planning to write him up for being disrespectful toward me.
I went to mention the situation to the counselor.
Something along the lines of:
“So-and-so is being disrespectful and rude, but I wasn't going to—”
And suddenly:
COO HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.
Behind the counselor.
“You weren't going to write up who?”
🦝
...
Raccoon recalculating.
“I'm gonna make sure to write him up.”
She then gave me genuinely useful advice.
Next time?
Don't announce it.
Don't tell everybody you're about to write somebody up.
Just write it.
That's it.
No trailer.
No promotional campaign.
No:
COMING THIS SUMMER
HALLWAY CAT 184: THE COMPLIANCE REPORT
Just:
🦝✍️
Done.
The client had called me a racial slur and insulted me because apparently getting documented transformed me from somebody he thought was cool into Public Enemy Number One.
Apparently he'd never been written up before.
Then he gets written up and suddenly:
“You ain't cool.”
Correct.
I am not here to be cool.
I'm not your friend.
I'm not your enemy either.
I am a fucking employee.
I can joke with you.
I can treat you decently.
I can hope you succeed.
But if the price of remaining “cool” is pretending I didn't see something I'm responsible for documenting?
Congratulations.
MR. GERMLIN IS NO LONGER COOL.
The Hallway Cat Approval Poll has collapsed.
Campaign headquarters is devastated.
THE UNTUCKED SHIRT APOCALYPSE
And somewhere inside all this I found myself thinking about the endless minor shit.
Untucked shirts.
Jesus Christ.
If I wanted to become The Untucked Shirt Terminator, I could probably generate paperwork every fucking day.
Correct it.
Tuck your shirt in.
Move on.
That's what I prefer.
But repeated behavior is repeated behavior, and eventually discretion becomes me simply deciding that policy doesn't matter.
That's not my decision either.
I would like people to learn.
That's the distinction.
I don't need them to learn.
Because once I start needing them to understand why I'm right—
once I need them to appreciate that I gave them a chance—
once I need them to admit what they did—
once I need them to stop doing stupid shit because I've explained it seventeen times—
I have crossed the line.
I've gone from:
Listen with interest.
to:
LISTEN WITH INVESTMENT.
And that's where the hallway cats begin living rent-free in the Raccoon Den.
7:30 PM — FREE TIME HAS BEEN DECLARED BY THE UNITED NATIONS
Around 7:30, another group broke loose.
And naturally, movement occurred.
Which meant several hallway cats immediately concluded:
FREE TIME.
No.
It's Monday.
There's another group.
But apparently once hallway cats see sufficient movement in a hallway, the human brain automatically interprets this as:
ALL PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Then came snacks.
“Can I get a snack?”
No.
Not yet.
Somebody goes to the vending machine anyway.
Then somebody else hits the vending machine.
Fuck me.
One situation got documented.
Another person got a correction because he generally isn't much of a problem.
But the warning was simple:
Do that dumb shit again?
I'll write it.
Not because I'm angry.
Not because I want revenge.
Because I've already explained it.
CALM THE FUCK DOWN, RACCOON
And somewhere before the final 8:00–8:30 group came the reminder I probably needed most:
Calm down.
These people lie.
These people argue.
These people make bad decisions.
If I absorb every one of those decisions into my own nervous system, I'm going to turn a job I specifically want to keep boring into a personal crusade.
And fuck that.
My goal is incredibly sophisticated:
Come to work.
Do my job.
Get paid.
GO THE FUCK HOME.
That's it.
That's the Raccoon Employment Doctrine.
I don't need a hallway cat to agree with my paperwork.
I don't need him to thank me for correcting him.
I don't need him to learn a valuable lesson accompanied by swelling orchestral music.
He can learn.
Or not.
Either way:
My shift continues.
8:30 PM — ONE FUCKING LINE, PLEASE
The final group ended.
First batch comes out.
And I need them in one line.
Not two.
Not a semicircle.
Not an amoeba.
Not the Fellowship of the Wandering Hallway Cat.
ONE.
LINE.
“ONE LINE, PLEASE.”
Command voice.
And somehow—
miracle of miracles—
they did it.
🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
Look at that.
Civilization.
Then the second group emerges.
And apparently their chosen tactical doctrine was:
LEEEEEROOOOOOY JENKINS!
🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈💨💨💨
Herd formation.
Absolutely fucking not.
HALT.
Then:
“ONE LINE, PLEASE.”
And once again, against all known laws of physics:
🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈
The hallway cats discovered one-dimensional geometry.
Beautiful.
LATE TRAYS, SNACKS, AND THE FINAL STRETCH
After that came late trays.
Then the final stretch of free time.
Snacks.
Vending machines.
General end-of-night hallway-cat operations.
And now we were approaching the finish line.
Which brings us to something genuinely good.
ONE HALLWAY CAT ACTUALLY MADE IT
There was a client I'd bullshitted with for a while.
He'd been through Haus Morgenrot three times.
Third run.
We'd developed this stupid Batman/Joker routine.
He'd sneak up behind me sometimes and we'd trade ridiculous dark jokes.
And after three trips through this place—
he successfully discharged.
Around 9 PM.
Papers.
Certificate.
Receipts.
Done.
He made it.
And underneath all the profanity and hallway-cat jokes?
I'm happy for the bastard.
Seriously.
We spend so much time talking about people fucking themselves over near the finish line that it's worth acknowledging when somebody actually crosses it.
Third attempt.
FINISHED.
Good.
I hope he stays the fuck out.
In the nicest possible way.
Then SOD told me to retrieve his property.
Me: “Fuck.”
Jerry: “A final act of service.”
Me: “I WAS GOING TO LEAVE THAT SHIT IN THE FRONT.”
Jerry: “The hero requires his belongings.”
Me: “THE HERO CAN—”
Jerry: “Boring.”
Me: “...Roger.”
Fortunately, I knew exactly where his shit was.
Property room.
Approximately five minutes.
Grabbed it.
Done.
Mission accomplished.
THE FINAL BOSS WAS A MEDICATION DELIVERY
And then we got close enough to 10 PM that I could practically smell freedom.
There was a medication-related task that needed to get to the med room.
My brain had already created an efficient little route:
Grab dinner.
Handle medication.
Drop it where it needs to go.
Proceed toward extraction.
Instead, I tried getting somebody else involved.
SOD:
No. We don't do that.
Me:
Roger.
And then came the words every raccoon loves hearing when mentally halfway into his Uber:
“COME TO MY OFFICE.”
Oh.
🦝
SOD's message, as I understood it:
If I'm here until 10 PM, I'm working until 10 PM.
If I'm asked to handle something that's part of the job while I'm still on the clock, handle it.
Don't question it.
Don't try to route it somewhere else.
Do the assigned thing.
And as irritated and tired as I was?
I knew exactly what response was required.
Straightened myself up.
“Yes, ma'am.”
I'll make sure it gets done.
I won't have this problem again.
No debate.
No seventeen-page explanation.
No:
“Well technically—”
No appellate hearing.
No witnesses.
No PowerPoint.
Jerry: “Would you like to defend yourself?”
Me: “No.”
Jerry: “Explain your reasoning?”
Me: “No.”
Jerry: “Preserve your honor?”
Me: “My honor wants to clock out at ten.”
And that's another little piece of the doctrine I needed.
DON'T FREESTYLE STILL APPLIES WHEN YOU'RE FUCKING TIRED.
It's easy to be Boring Tech at 10 AM.
Try doing it at 9-something PM after:
tough chicken,
late dinner,
delayed group,
bathroom departures,
arguments,
hallway cats accusing you of lying,
racial insults,
missing grievance boxes,
snack bullshit,
vending-machine bullshit,
Leroy Jenkins hallway formations,
property retrieval,
and approximately eleven straight hours of human beings requiring something from you.
That's when the doctrine actually matters.
10:00 PM — RACCOON EXTRACTION
Everything that was mine?
Handled.
Everything assigned?
Done.
Whatever remained?
Belonged to the universe.
I grabbed my food.
Eventually ate some of that dry-ass chicken.
Finished what I needed to finish.
Called the Uber.
And when my shift ended:
THE DEUCES WERE THROWN.
🦝✌️💨
Haus Morgenrot remained standing.
The hallway cats remained hallway cats.
The grievance box remained—
Actually.
No.
We're not sure where the fucking grievance box was.
The cactus remained—
well.
Let's not inspect the cactus too closely.
HOME
Got home.
Checked on Sis.
She'd been throwing up and wasn't feeling well, so I encouraged her to drink some water and try to keep something in her system if she could.
Then came the glamorous post-Haus-Morgenrot lifestyle.
Washed dishes.
Let Bruno out.
Gave Bruno his gum medication.
His tooth will need dealing with eventually.
But tonight?
Take care of what's in front of me.
That's enough.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
At first I called Day 4:
The bullshit of bullshit days.
Then after telling the whole story, I realized something.
It wasn't.
Not really.
There was no ambulance.
No physical fight.
No hospitalization.
No single enormous catastrophe.
Day 4 was something much more ordinary:
FRICTION.
Tiny fucking pieces of friction.
One after another.
Dinner takes too long.
Schedule gets pushed.
Somebody argues.
Somebody accuses you of lying.
Somebody insults you.
Somebody skips group.
Somebody apparently removes a grievance box from a fucking wall.
Somebody hits the vending machine.
Somebody thinks movement means free time.
Somebody won't stand in line.
Somebody needs property.
Somebody needs medication handled.
Supervisor corrects you.
And every individual event is manageable.
But stack enough of them together and suddenly you're wondering why you are emotionally invested in whether a grown man understands how to tuck a fucking shirt into his pants.
That's where I caught myself.
I've been saying:
LISTEN WITH INTEREST, NOT INVESTMENT.
But somewhere today I started investing.
Not massively.
Not catastrophically.
Just enough to notice.
Enough that other people's lies irritated me more than they needed to.
Enough that I wanted people to understand why I'd documented them.
Enough that I started caring whether somebody learned the lesson.
And that's not the mission.
I can want people to succeed.
I can joke with them.
I can be decent.
I can be happy when the three-time hallway cat finally walks out with his discharge certificate.
But I cannot make grown adults care.
I cannot force somebody to learn.
I cannot make somebody agree with my documentation.
And I absolutely cannot allow every hallway cat who makes a stupid decision to rent a furnished apartment inside my skull.
So the doctrine gets another line.
Don't chase.
Don't carry.
Don't freestyle.
And now:
RETURN TO NEUTRAL.
Correct the behavior.
Document what matters.
Ask when uncertain.
Accept correction when I'm wrong.
Do the assigned job.
Then release it.
Because ultimately, the employment contract is beautifully simple:
I perform labor.
Haus Morgenrot gives me money.
At the end of the shift, the raccoon goes home.
Everything else is optional emotional DLC.
GOODBYE, AUGUST
And with that, August 2026 finally dragged its battered carcass toward midnight.
What a fucking month.
The A53 died in armor.
A wisdom tooth demanded $1,300.
An allegation put my job into uncertainty.
My chest and right arm sent me to the ER.
The Monster Rotation died.
HCA and the VA introduced me to pharmaceutical bureaucracy.
Hallway cats crashed out.
Hallway cats listened to my cactus nonsense.
Hallway cats verbally aggressed.
One hallway cat involved in the earlier serious incident simply disappeared from the Haus Morgenrot map, destination unknown.
Another hallway cat skipped the 2–3 PM group, and I got his name and generated the paperwork.
The COO later wanted to know who skipped that group.
Meanwhile, somebody apparently pulled the grievance box off the fucking wall.
Were those things connected?
No idea.
BORING TECH DOES NOT WRITE FAN FICTION.
Hallway cats argued about bathrooms.
Hallway cats argued about food.
Hallway cats argued about paperwork.
Hallway cats refused geometry.
And one hallway cat, after three tries, finally walked out successfully discharged.
Meanwhile the raccoon?
Still here.
Still employed.
Still trying to build the Raccoon Den one boring paycheck at a time.
Still learning when perseverance means keep going—
and when wisdom means:
the battlefield changed, so change the fucking mission.
Tomorrow begins September.
Tomorrow is Day 5 of 6.
So, September—
I don't ask for much.
I don't need miracles.
I don't need Ulric Money to fall out of the sky.
I don't need every hallway cat to suddenly discover good judgment.
I would simply appreciate it if you looked at July and August, considered everything they accomplished, and said:
“NAH. I'M GONNA LEAVE THAT MOTHERFUCKER ALONE.”
Jerry: “Think September will listen?”
Me: “No.”
Jerry: “What's the plan?”
Me: “Same as always.”
Jerry: “Which is?”
Me: “Be boring.”
Jerry: “And the missing grievance box?”
Me: “Don't know.”
Jerry: “And the hallway cat who skipped group?”
Me: “Documented.”
Jerry: “And the cactus?”
I looked toward Haus Morgenrot.
🌵🔥
Me: “Damn.”
Jerry: “That's crazy.”
Me: “See you tomorrow.”