Tag: Work

Friends, Humor, Work

Cheese With That Whine?

“Do you just hate happy people today or something?”
“Yes.”
“Well, knock it off.”
“This?  Coming from you?”
“Exactly.  Consider the source.  If I’m saying it, you may have crossed a threshold.”
-C. and Marie

A few lessons gleaned from this week, a few frustrations, and a few observations:

Where is this job?!
Where is this job?!

For all you would-be moguls out there, may I offer a humble tip towards being a good boss: Listen to your secretaries.  They are the people who are responsible for keeping your megalomaniac ambitions logged, organized, and proceeding according to schedule.  Lt. Citrus and Lt. Figaro both laid a project each on me this week without warning, which while it more than quadrupled my workload wasn’t too bad.  The instructions, on the other hand, were maddening.

Quoth Lt. Figaro, “So, I’d like you to update this directory of every employee in the department.  We haven’t done it in three years or so and it’s entirely obsolete.  Theeson was the last person to update it” [Theeson was replaced by Tink who was replaced by Wise who was replaced by me, just for a time frame reference] ” but no one else ever really used it except me, and since she quit I’ve done without it, but I’ve decided I’d like a new copy.”

My thoughts exactly...
My thoughts exactly...

I tried to tell him that 1) we were hiring and firing half a dozen people within the week so the list would be obsolete by Friday anyway and 2) that I kept an up-to-date roster on the department server already complete with names, call numbers, and personal and professional contact information.  “Well, just make it for me then if no one else will use it,” he smiled and went back to his office.  I tried not to cry and mentally cut back my lunch hour.

Lt. Citrus’ project was validly important to the university, but the instructions he gave me to do it all came in the wrong order, with outdated software, and logically confusing interjections of last minute ideas, corrections, or modifications.  And since it involved the creating, labeling, stuffing, packaging and mailing of literally 100 packets, by the end of the second day I had papercut my fingertips to shreds. 

It’s been a long, hard week and I’m intensely glad it’s Friday.  And I want Tink back desperately, work without a good friend to grumble about assignments to is drudgery.

Weird, Work

Lockdowns, Employment and Otherwise

“This having a baby and going right back to work has got to stop.  They may do it in Africa and Asia but here it makes the rest of us look bad!”  
-C. to Tink 

I’m about to have a managerial divorce from my work wife Tink.  She’s going on maternity leave but due to family concerns, a recession-induced hiring freeze on the department, and our need for another dispatcher, she won’t be coming back.  Hennessy is moving over from our Appeals department and she’s going to be lots of fun to work with, but I will miss my work wife!

The majority of my nightmares now include some variation on this theme
The majority of my nightmares now include some variation on this theme

On an unrelated note, I am learning lots about driving in icy weather.  I got my original driver license on Guam where the temperature never dipped below 75 F on a cold day.  I never knew I’d have the experience to physically dig my car out of ice in a parking lot, nearly swerve off a road due to no fault of my own, or live in constant fear of killing a small child inadvertently.  However this morning I discovered a new perplexity: my locks froze!  I eventually got in the passenger’s side door and scooted over to drive to work, by which time that door was functional again, but honestly!

Work

To Catch a Thief

“They said they were just doing it for fun.”
“To the tune of Grand Theft Auto?  What is this, a video game?!”
-Detective South and C.

Law enforcement, even from a secretarial standpoint, is pretty interesting.  I’d never make a career out of it, but I’m getting a lot of fun info on people that I’ll hopefully be able to turn into good writing one day.  But some of the stuff we deal with is stranger than fiction, no one could make this stuff up!

Oops.
Oops.

That big case that the detectives cracked?  Turns out a bunch of college freshman went on a burglary spree that eventually culminated in finding dropped keys taking the car, and using it for a week before dumping.  It only took one tip and somehow the detectives managed to unravel it all, high five, guys.  But, heck, these kids weren’t even born in the same decade as me! 

Another robbery occurred yesterday in the campus library.  Thanks to a description by the victim, we found the stolen item listed for sale on Craigslist, matched the seller info to Facebook  (of all things!) where he was handily wearing the exact same clothes in half of his online photos as in the security footage, and voila! 

Oh, and who gets to do all the paperwork for these sorts of things (all criminal counts for our friends the car thieves that all have to be recorded, filed, copied, put into correct format, and hand delivered to the county attorneys)?  Your friendly neighborhood secretary, C.!

Hopefully since they managed to solve almost every theft case from the end of last year in one feel swoop, I’ll be able to get some of the more mundane work done that I haven’t for a couple weeks.  Office supplies must be ordered, stats must be entered, letters must be written.  Obviously I get to do all the fun stuff around here…