Category: Work

Drama, Humor, Life, Work August 20, 2009August 20, 2009

Office Worker: n. resident of Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell

“Is it just me, or is this whole thing going to Hell in a hand basket?”
“Just wave your magic wand and make it all better.”
“How about a stapler? I have one of those and I think it packs more of a punch when it hits.”
-C. and Officer Lampost

One upon a time, the parking office, which is not controlled by the police department, had a novel idea. “Why don’t we,” they said to one another, “do away with this medieval notion of parking permits that you stick on your window or hang from your mirror and instead invest millions of dollars in a new digital license plate reader system that will simply take a picture of the plate, compare the info to a database, and automatically write tickets!”
“Brilliant!” said University Administration. “But hey, folks, we are in the middle of a recession. Is this a good idea?”
“Sure,” said the Parking Powers, “it will only cost XXX amount of money, require fewer man hours to run, and reduce costs all around.”
“How economical!” exclaimed the University, “Go for it!”

futility Six months later…the Office of IT had not even started writing the program, the bare bones equipment was costing three times more than projected, we had to hire even more people to keep the office running, supervisors were not listening to the traffic and parking clerks when they explained what they needed in the new system, no one had thought that perhaps students/faculty coming to this university might be coming from out of state/country and so the program would need a way to account for that, and days away from the new system going live, the office hadn’t even received a prototype of the program to run.

Ergo, this whole week the entire office has been overrun with techie-types (and everyone of them with the stereotypical thick glasses, receding hairlines, and nasally voices…it’s been weird) scampering about frantically trying to patch a program they didn’t know they had to write, written in a matter of a couple of weeks, and left with enough holes in it that it might legally qualify as a sieve.

Sorry, IT guys, e-card just aren't going to cut it...

The funny bit in this mess is how the IT guys seem to be trying to apologize for their blunders. The office has spent the week overrun with flowers, balloons, sugary treats, and take out meals. I would just like to have been a fly on the wall while they were working this out…
“Crap, guys, we’ve screwed it up royally and now we have an office full of women all barking mad to get this thing online and absolutely furious with us. Brainstorm, quick! Best way to make it up?”
“They’re women! Flowers and chocolate all the way, dude!”

I don’t even work for the parking division, but I would hazard a guess that as much as the girls are enjoying the perks of having a dozen erring husbands groveling for forgiveness…they might prefer the new system working instead.

stupidity_1170973245 — Can you exorcise this stuff? Fingers crossed!

And in continuing office news, after the Rising of the Secretaries (spearheaded by yours truly) and ample warning, I am wheeling out the guillotine! Today all unclaimed lockers and uniforms will be confiscated, gear will be redistributed to kids who are actually working, all paperwork will be filed and discrepancies will be punished. At noon we attack!

Humor, Work August 11, 2009

Hostile Takeover

“I feel sure that coups d’etat would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what is happening and not miss anything.”
-Edmond and Jules to Goncourt

The title is misleading. If anything I’m staging a “Mildly Irritated Reworking of Procedure” in the office, with Hennessy, Wise, and Susie. With the upcoming school year we have dozens of students to be hired, fired, given raises, etc., but the problem is that the supervisors in our department are notorious for not telling me when students quit or are fired. Then end result is that I think that lockers assigned to students are still in use, gear is still checked out, the kids aren’t hired properly (the procedures of which are federally regulated, meaning that mistakes equal risking one mother of an audit bill), wages get screwed up, and all the secretaries go home with migraines.

But no more! We have rounded up the ringleaders (mandatory meeting), studied the mistakes of the past (reviewed suggestions from a similar meeting that took place last year, all of which have been subsequently ignored by the powers that be), barricaded off the exits (cancelled all other events) and put our fates in the hands of a higher power (got Chief on our side). Liberté, Égalité…er…Sororité?

Humor, Work July 31, 2009

Challenged

“A problem of type 2094 has occurred…what the [ahem] is that?! What are the two thousand ninety three other problems I skipped to get to that one?!”
-Eddie Izzard

A spectacularly dull day at the office, livened only by the laundry run. At which time a bundle of clothing was handed over to us all clean and neatly pressed, but without a name attached because it’s owner had forgotten to put the order sheet with his instructions in the bag with his clothes. Fear not, citizens, Lt. South’s name was discovered on the tag, much to my unholy glee.

Small Dog finds a tiny degree of joy in her technological impaired-ness — Small Dog finds a tiny degree of joy in being technologically impaired

Other than that, my Outlook account for work decided to blip out of existence yesterday. Thinking it was something to do with the new software our department is bringing online, I let it go, but today it was still out. I put in a request with IT, but when the techies did whatever it is they do and Outlook reappeared…it was without my emails, projects, calendars, contacts, or distribution lists. The only thing that makes me blissfully undisturbed by this is the fact that it’s twenty minutes to five and I don’t have to deal with it until monday.

Family, Home, Humor, Life, Travel, Work July 8, 2009

Married With Presents

“How’s married life?”
“How should I know? I’ve only been married a week and four of those days were vacation!”
-Lt. Citrus and C.

Usually when reality hits me it does so with enough force to break teeth. So here I am, a week into marriage, flinching and waiting for some kind of blow to fall…but it hasn’t landed yet!

Daae says her favorite part of being married is waking up and seeing her husband next to her every morning. J. and I, neither of us being morning people, tend to ignore the alarm and fasten our eyes firmly shut against the light for at least a half hour after we had nobly intended to get up, and then try and urge the other person to take their shower first so that one of us can sleep even longer.

After we’ve both managed to get presentable in spite of ourselves, I’m off to work on campus and he’s off to the city for 4-8 hours a day where his summer job is helping a firm write an article for publication (meanwhile C., being the resident aspiring writer in our newly hatched family, is stuck back as a secretary for a bunch of people who managed to overlook her several emails warning them of her week-long leave and created all sorts of muddles for her to sort out when she returned to their grateful, frantic arms. There’s no justice in the world!). After work I’m back at the gym, which after a two week absence has been hellish, for an hour before heading home. Where, depending on work, chores, and moving in necessities, J. may or may not be.

We opted to open prezzies away from the prying eyes of friends and family.

And as for setting up house! We opened our hoard of wedding presents monday evening, feeling rather smug about how orderly we were being about writing down who sent what, disposing of boxes, and carefully sorting…until we stepped back and surveyed the carnage from outside our little cardboard cocoon. We looked at the two rooms filled with receipts, wrapping paper, and presents, looked at the clock (midnight), looked at each other, and went to bed. And did pretty much the same thing last night when confronted with the wreckage again.

So far I think we’re a pretty boring couple.

But there is this. When unwrapping presents and pulling out the one from Dr. Don, he listened intently when I went off in raptures about how Don had sent me plates! The story of which is that last summer I was in Oxford with him and some other students and we’d gone with him to the Oxford English Dictionary projectwhere we had a presenter, who was also a researcher on the team, who shared his favorite word with us: twiffler. Which literally means it’s a plate that can’t make up it’s mind what size it is! Don had given us twifflers and I was ridiculously excited about it! J., who did not tease me as he usually does for being a hopeless nerd, got this big smile on his face. And when I rather mulishly demanded, “Why are you grinning?” he just kissed me and said, “You’re my wife.”

Which, I’m not going to lie, makes me pretty giddy to hear.

Drama, Humor, Work June 11, 2009

Pantsgate 2009

“Mws. Venice, I can’t find my pants anywah!”
-one of her students who can’t pronounce his R’s

Having finally let go of (most of) my rage about the incident I am about to relate, let me share the tale of The Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.

No couture involved! The Devil wears police uniforms!

One of my less enviable jobs is doing the laundry for the department. When I first started we were with a company that picked up and delivered our stuff as part of their service, which we loved. However over time we found their service also included the smashing of zippers, losing of uniforms, discoloration of the same (most memorably turning some silver patches a most ungentlemanly shade of pink), and dishonesty about accounts…all of which served to outweigh the convenience of delivery. After various warnings, cajoling, and threats, we switched to a new dry cleaner.

With tolerance for laundry mistakes at an all time low, I honestly expected some officers to be annoyed with longer-than-usual turnarounds, etc., during the switch. I did not expect that Lt. South would come to me about clothing that was missing almost immediately. This happened three weeks ago…and instantly the scandal took over my work life!

Without fail, three times a week South lectured me about locating their clothes before we staggered out the door burdened with laundry baskets. Then off to the cleaners with Hennessy where we were lectured on how they are a model of integrity, business acumen, whatever…but still unable to find the missing items. Back to the office to be subjected to scorn for failing to find four shirts and three pants (because the loss of those items by the individuals or the cleaners is clearly my fault). Cue the Chief and Lt. Figaro both taking me diplomatically aside to urge me towards “better efforts” in finding the articles. Week 2 rolled around and we escalated to South going down to the cleaners, to bully them into finding his pants I suppose, and the cleaners immediately seeing this as antagonistic (no idea why) chose to punish me and Hennessy with ever louder defenses. We were ordered to carry increasingly vicious responses back and forth and adequately punished by both sides for thm…a double case of Shoot the Messenger. According to their records, South’s pants had been signed, sealed, and delivered.

Honestly, I believed the cleaners. I’m convinced that half of the lost/misplaced problems we had with our last cleaners were purely officer operator error. The guys wouldn’t label their things, or just do it improperly, find items that didn’t belong to them but neglect to turn them in, and never failed to whine to their lowly secretaries when a problem arose that us girls literally had no control over.

By week three I was so sick of the heckling, whining, and lecturing that I yanked Lt. Colossus head out from where it was buried in the sand and flat out ordered him to get us a master key to go through all the lockers in case any of the missing clothes had managed to find their way into them. Sure enough, one pair of pants had meandered into Lt. Citrus’ shirts…the which he entirely neglected to mention even though Wise sent out two emails asking any unclaimed or unknown stuff to be turned into us.

That left two. I spent nearly twenty minutes talking the cleaners off their Righteous Anger ledge with Hennessy before we trudged back to the office emptyhanded again yesterday.
“Well?” demanded South as we stumbled into the office laden with laundry not belonging to him.
“No luck,” I said, “They’ve asked you to call them so they can work out restitution–”
“They can call one of you, that’s what you girls are for,” he rolled his eyes.
I could have gleefully disemboweled him with a hanger!

AND THEN! This morning, Susie came up to me as I was giving a pants update to Aims and Sport.
“You’ll never guess,” she breathed almost maliciously.
“You’ve found them!” I gasped.
“South did…in his home closet.”

Small Dog wants to lay some HURT on!!!!!!

I felt my face drain in anger. I’d spent three weeks getting abused by my supervisor, lectured by my boss, barked at by our dry cleaner, dragging my friends an co-workers into it, being slapped in the face with my own lowly station as a secretary maliciously and repeatedly, and forced into the roll of Resident Wench On Behalf of the Entire Department. I’d spent several hours delivering laundry, trying to ameliorate irrationally angry people, and leading a witch hunt for pants thieves…only to find that the man who had started it had FAILED TO LOOK IN HIS OWN CLOSET? Moreover had failed at any point in the last month to check and see if he already had the items, convienently marked “Delivered?”

Apparently my wrath has an effect. After trying to joke once about how the last three weeks “gave me something to do” and being met with my evilest of vicious stares, he hasn’t been seen in the front office all day. In fact he’s been using the back hall to get around instead. Good.

Humor, Life, School, Work June 10, 2009November 29, 2011

Pondering

“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
-Mark Twain

Realizing that I’m about to brand myself a hopeless nerd, I have to admit I am horribly jealous that J. gets to go back to school this fall. This is really the first autumn in nearly twenty years that I’m not going to be in school (I don’t count last year’s because I was still whirling from the dizzying feeling of freedom) and it’s a little odd to realize how sad I am over the thought.

I really loved school, especially university where I got to immerse myself in a topic for months at the time and come out feeling like I really did know something about the subject. I got to study things I genuinely loved and had an interest in, so major projects and papers were seldom a chore (unless I procrastinated horribly).

And believe it or not, I’m wretched over the idea of not buying armloads of books this fall! Maybe those of you who currently attend my Alma Mater are stretching your eyes incredulously over such a lapse in financial judgement, but unlike lots of my friends I seldom had to eat Ramen for a month in order to pay for my books. The majority of my classes relied on novels, primary sources, history books, anthologies of writings from every conceivable century, essays, etc. and I absolutely refused to sell most of them back to the campus bookstore (except for one semester when I was well and truly starving and had to sell back a book on classical Greek civilization from the earliest city-states through the Persian Wars. I nearly cried, and when I saw how little I was going to get back for it – compared to what I’d originally paid – I nearly abandoned the plan…but I needed food).

I was talking to MyFavorite a while back and when he asked me what it’s like working full time instead of being in school, I told him all of the above. We also discussed the oddness of being in charge of one’s own continuing education. Lots of people seem to finish school and never tax their brain again, I live in fear of mine starting to atrophy! I swear the process has already started! It takes effort to get home from work, cook, clean, manage bills, make future plans, and still pull out a book instead of turn on the TV. Instead of someone else teaching me, I’m entirely responsible for what goes into my head from here on out.

Frost wasn't entirely correct, it's more like "Two million roads diverging-" at times.

In that same vein, it’s not just the stimulation I miss about school, it’s also the framework university sort of set up for life. Each semester had a distinct beginning, middle, and end so you always felt as if you were actively moving through life instead of just being pushed along by the current. Now, instead of this handy, cyclical way to make a year pass, post-graduate life by comparison seems like one long line stretching off into the distance.

That seems depressing…I don’t mean it to be, but it’s the best metaphor I can find. What I mean to say is that instead of having an Outside Force set up my life’s structure and passage of time, I’m now the only person who can do that. If there are to be any interesting breaks, sideshows, or detours in that long line, I’m the person who must take the prerogative of creating/finding/following them. And while the adventure of doing so is almost always fantastic, sometimes I do miss having that Outside Force doing it for me because I feel (looking back) that being ignorant of that Force meant I could simply live life and enjoy the ride. It’s no simple thing to be almost entirely in charge of your own destiny!

*Image (C) by Martin Liebermann, http://www.martin-liebermann.de, original found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/liebermann/580181284/

Humor, Work May 14, 2009May 14, 2009

Come With Me If You Want To Live

“I’d be very well advised to have you revoked.”
“Revoked?”
“Yeah. K-I-L-L-E-D. Revoked.”
-Douglas Adams

I wish I could be this terrifying. I suspect I would find it useful.

One of my office duties is the hiring and firing of all our students employees (of which there are legion) and all the requisite paperwork that goes along with it, a process that is casually referred to as “termination.” I hate the word “termination,” it makes me feel as though, rather than firing these kids, I’ve quietly disposed of them for having outlived their usefulness to the department (side note, my official title is Criminal Secretary, which I always thought made me sound like Don Corleone’s personal assistant so maybe terminating people is fitting, but I digress). No matter how you slice it, whenever I’m given a packet and told to terminate someone I feel like a bad person.

Another problem I have with “terminating” people are the supervisors who tell me whom to terminate in the first place. Probably my biggest beefs with the sergeants over campus, library, and museum security is the fact that none of them are able to get that paperwork to me on time. We’re not talking a day or two late, here, I’m talking months and/or years! In the last two days I’ve processed the paperwork for about a dozen individuals who’ve graduated, transferred, moved, flunked out, or whatever in 2007 and no one informed our department! My inbox couldn’t even support the total paper weight! I don’t suppose I can quietly dispose of my superiors, now can I? “Hasta la vista, baby!”

Humor, Snark, Work May 13, 2009

Stupid People In Large Groups

“To summarize the summary of the summary, people are a problem.”
-Douglas Adams

Kiri used to have this up as her desktop background. I used to think it was funny. I now consider it a sad truth.

I have again been smacked in the head with the realization that while in terms of skill and efficiency I am constantly getting better at my job, I may not be mentally cut out for it for one very important reason: I dislike silly, annoying, bad-decision-making people. But what sort of people do you think we deal with at a police station, especially one on a university campus?! Pranksters anxious to go down in campus legend, freshman drunk on the feeling of being away from home for the first time, crazy drivers, anxious students, stalkers, druggies, thieves, and occasionally the seriously out of touch. And I mean seriously dangerously out of touch. Basically, the sort of people that make me go quietly mad and bang my head the wall of futility that encompasses the entire human race (especially on a friday afternoon). Dealing with these characters day in and day out is exhausting, even my hyperactive personality can’t sustain the level of intense vexation these individuals deserve!

Occasionally, though, when I’ve had a very trying day and that French Bakery is looking even more tempting than usual, there are moments of delight. I got home from the gym the other night, absolutely dreading some of the stuff I had to do that evening, only to find J. doing the dishes and wiping down the kitchen. He then helped me put together invitations for almost all of his friends before sending me to bed early. Pure Bliss.

Humor, Shameful, Work May 5, 2009May 5, 2009

Get A Grip…

“‘You could always try relaxing.’
Relaxing! She was way too hyper!”
-Marian Keyes

Long ago I discovered that I work best when I frame my life projects and goals as battles to be won (yes, I am Napolean reincarnated). Thus my life is tiny parade of tiny crusades that I participate in valiantly and no one really cares about but me. Case in point: blackheads. Hate ’em! Loathe em! I have a mission, nay, a calling to eradicate those nasty little buggers and a whole arsenal at my disposal including cleansers, extractors, a new toy – Clean ‘n Clear Blackhead Eraser – recommended by Venice and seconded by me, and Biore Pore Strips, aka God’s Gift to Noses. Want to seriously gross yourself out? Slap one of those babies on and see how much gunk it pulls out of your face!

Of course, this mentality has side effects. Since I’m in a state of perpetual warfare with blackheads I often make the mistake of thinking other people are too. So when I see people merrily prancing through their lives, seemingly indifferent to the noxious body waste pooling in their pores, I just want to attack them with salic acid. The crusader aiming a sword stroke at the Turk and demanding, “Convert, heathen!” while they stare back in confused disdain, “What exactly is your problem?”

Occasionally my battles are of a more productive variety. I’ve written several times of my Battle of the Bulge, even though I’ll be the first to admit that since buying a dress the ferocity of my attacks have put a serious dent in enemy flanks (plus my own flanks, I might add smugly). I’ve also campaigned against landlords, laundry piles of epic proportions, work projects, more recently wedding planning, mountains during hiking trips, treadmills, and shoes that think I won’t be able to break them in (HA!).

I am aware that this is a rather exhausting way to live life. For example, the university does this health reward program which gives participants $25 per lifestyle even they chose to participate in. This month it’s a goal to walk a certain amount every day. Not a problem, I though originally, I can easily meet that quota during my gym time. But then I looked online today…and some guy (with an unfortunately chosen Lord of the Rings nickname, I think he’s trying to be one of the characters) had already logged ten times what I had. Just counting at the gym, was I?! I THINK NOT! I dashed over to the university health center and got myself one of their sad, cheap little pedometers and have been annoying people with it’s rattling sound ever since! Competitive? Me?

Drama, Humor, Snark, Work April 3, 2009

Battle of the Sexes, Part II

“What is going on with the XY’s today?!”
-C.

Our adventures in male/female interactions continued yesterday when I had to attend a workshop in Preventing Sexual Harassment that the university insists its new hires take (note: I’ve been working here for 8 months, first I ever heard of it). I didn’t mind, it was a paid hour out of the office I thought…unfortunately by the end of it I was irritated enough to breathe fire. The problem wasn’t the topic, the problem was This Guy.

Picture if you will a short, rotund man with heavy jowls, greasy hair (where he had any left), small eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and huge pores gaping in his cheeks. Got that? Now add on the annoying personality of that kid you once had in some class or another who had to comment on anything the teacher says, and when he isn’t called on offers up a muttered running commentary anyway under his breath. And finally, top it all off with a nasally voice that was used mostly to talk about himself a lot. Charming, eh?

Not five minutes into her powerpoint presentation the teacher started a new slide with a cheery, “Now, there are several categories of personal aspects that are protected under the law–”
Up shot this guy’s hand. “Why aren’t men protected? When I was the vice president of XYZ Corporation, we had a situation–”
“Actually,” the teacher said quickly, “men are protected. Sexual harassment can pass between genders in any number of ways.”
“But say I was being hit on by a homosexual,” he demanded (the word homosexual was whispered darkly).
I personally couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind, regardless of sexual orientation, hitting on this guy, but I digress. It took a while but the teacher managed to get us back on topic, but then when she brought up the protected categories again: gender, religion, disability, race–
Up shot the hand again! “Well, in my last area of work at Such-And-Such University, I had nothing against the negroes, but…”

My jaw dropped, I couldn’t help it. Out of date, grossly derogatory racial epithet in the middle of an anti-harassment seminar? Seriously?

It sort of went downhill from there, culminating in an argument between this man and a female biochemistry teacher who talked (at length) about her personal dating history and how she’s been subjected to prejudice because of her unmarried status, but how could she marry when all the men she meets are intimidated by her intelligence, has anyone else had this problem, isn’t is unbearable, what is wrong with the men…
But, injects our enlightened friend the greaseball, you made the decision when you decided to pick school over dating, this is your fault, women can’t have it all and it’s ridiculous to try…
“Um, can we please try and stay focused?” asks the teacher in a small voice which no one hears because they’re too busy watching the train wreck.

In the end, the lecturer had to cut out the last third of her presentation and lamely hand us pamphlets saying, “Most of the material we didn’t get to is in here, and feel free to give me a call.”
“I have another question,” our hero demanded, but I didn’t wait to hear it. I bounded up, snatched the pamphlets with a breathless thank you and scampered back to the relative safety of my officer where stupid people, when we deal with them, are usually undergoing some kind of legal recourse.

Small Dog Syndrome