To Rat or Not to Rat?

I finally decided to offer to take the phones for Twiggy for a while so she can get some things done. It is 12pm and she still has not left for lunch, although my lunch hour is scheduled to begin at 12:30. She will probably leave (yup, it's 12:18 and she just left), get something and not come back for 30 minutes or so somewhere around 12:20. She goes whenever she feels like it.

 

When I offered, she said nothing. Not yes, not no, not thank you, nothing. I can tell that she thinks it is my duty to take the phones from her when she is swamped. Problem is, when I am swamped, I have not yet had the problem of turning down offers of help from Twiggy.

 

Am debating about whether to involve Supervisor in these phone woes. I probably will not, though, as what is the point and I don't want to be petty. Let me vent here and that is enough whining.

 

I always think long and hard before I report anyone for anything, even if others would not have a second thought about ratting on me. It is not their standard of behavior that I am aspiring to, it is my own. Any sort of audience I might have on this blog is probably thinking right now: standards? What standards? Yes, I do have standards, and one of them is not to mess with someone's living unless I have no choice; unless, like Adminzilla, they are a growing cancer in the department's side and I also won't do it without outside confirmation that no, it's not just me.

 

One time, I was in pretty hot water at work because I had made a big fat mistake. I was lacadaisical about returning some calls and it could have cost the company some serious money. It didn't, but it was bad, and the manager involved, we'll call him Mr. Persnickety, rightly assumed that it was but a symptom of a larger problem with me. And that problem was that I didn't want the task on my desk. I considered it a pain and a distraction from everything else I had to do. I think I may have written about it here.

 

It involved Mr. Leads. I was to handle his job while he was gone; and what that meant was taking lead calls and distributing them to the salespeople. During this crisis, I was very angry that no one would listen, that I was given a task for which I had not been given adequate training. And I was being treated as though all my other job duties didn't matter, as though my position was simply to print and to bind. I had to sit there and argue with Mr. Persnickety that even if that's all I did (and it's not; that would be more like the tip of the proverbial iceberg), those tasks are still part of the process of generating revenue, of making a sale.

 

And I was pretty unhappy with Mr. Leads for doing something that I viewed as having gotten me into this mess. More accurately, for failing to do something he should have been doing: providing adequate training. And then blaming me for acting incorrectly in the absence of it. Because I didn't have the knowledge I needed, I didn't have the confidence to successfully carry out what I needed to do. However, not all blame can be laid at his doorstep. I did make a mistake.

 

I was on the cusp of losing my job and I knew it. And I was so angry that I had a problem keeping it to myself. I had discovered, because I covered Mr. Lead's email, that he,  a very married man, was having an affair with someone here at the company. I began to act evilly, telling people here and there that I knew were gossips about Mr. Lead's affair. I actually contemplated mailing a letter to his wife, I was so angry with him.

 

Luckily, I finally shut my dang mouth and I didn't take any actions. But I felt like a heel. And I still do, for spreading that vitriol. Mr. Leads has been nothing but nice to me and to everyone else around here. What he does in his private life is NONE of my business. And on top of that, I don't know his wife, I don't know the circumstances of his life, I know nothing, NOTHING whatsoever. One could argue that someone should be telling his wife; she could be getting exposed to all manner of things. But I am not the person to do it.

 

What is tackiest about it is that I didn't tell people about his affair because it was for someone else's good. I just wanted to get back at him; I was just being spiteful and ugly. I hate having done that. Perhaps he deserved to be found out, but I am still not happy with the way that I acted.

 

That is why you should always think long and hard before ratting anyone out about anything. You don't know what repercussions it could have, and you also have to decide if it merits ratting. You could be staking your reputation on it, both with the rest of the office and also with your own supervisor. No one likes a troublemaker employee. Offices exist not to nurture employees' emotions but to provide services, to facilitate processes and a working environment that contributes to the smooth running of the business; in the end, to making money.

When I Grow Up...

I want to be a Secretary. An Administrative Assistant.

 

Yeah right. No one says that.

 

But get this. This is a major job for people in my family. It is considered a good job. The fact that I dress up for work is enough to impress my parents. When I got my first job with my own cubicle with my name on it, my parents were impressed. I had my own extension and voice mail, the works. Woo hoo!!! I was a customer service representative for classified advertising at a local paper. All this accomplishment, all at the tender age of 19 or 20! Wow! In my family, that's a big deal. Right now, I make more than my mom does, and she has more than 10 years in at her company.

 

And I have to admit that this job doesn't entirely suck. I am paid enough and I get to work with nice people in a nice environment.  Usually, I am treated with respect.

 

But when you were growing up, did you ever hear anyone actually say, "When I grow up, I want to  be a Secretary"?

 

Has anyone actually uttered that phrase since the 1960's? Nope.

 

That's because being a secretary is not considered to be the brass ring by any means. It's not considered to be anything great. Administrative Assistants are important in an office; but they are too often undervalued. And they are not just undervalued by their officemates. They are undervalued by society as a whole. No teacher is ever going to encourage you to take a perfectly decent position as an Administrative Assistant and make a career out of it. Unless you are going to run your own business as one -- as a Virtual Assistant or freelancer.

 

Suppose you are a student in a high school, and you tell your teachers that you want to be a secretary. You are not going to see cheerleading for you or happiness for your lofty goals. No. Unless you are from a poor family and secretaryism is a significant cut above what anyone in your family has accomplished thus far, no one is going to think that this is a step up. If you are an honor student, they are going to look at you like, "Why the hell do you want to waste your brains? Do you want to encourage them to melt and run out your ears at night?"

 

I think it is actually connected to poverty. That whole thing about the next generation doing better than their parents. Ok, so I am at the ground floor of that, right? So I guess that means that my kids will be managers...providing I am able to have any? Yippy skippy.

 

Get the jist of this? Great, because I must go and prepare for lunch for my client visit happening today. And I am falling-over tired.

Limits

There are some people who out there who are absolute dynamos. They can raise a child singlehandedly while going to college part time, working full time, cleaning their house, staying in shape, all at the same time and all very successfully. They do this successfully because they are either driven, have great support systems, or are gifted with a consistent high level of energy which, without something to spend the energy on, would fry them.

 

I'm not one of those.

 

This has been a hard lesson to learn, as prior to learning it, I always pushed and pushed and pushed myself to do more and more and more, never stopping to really smell the flowers or anything similar to that. And I always wondered why I could never get anything done.

 

When I started therapy, my therapist quickly figured out that I had too much wrong with me to add more stuff to the pot. When you are spending all your energy on being depressed and angry and managing your horror of a job as well as your horror of a marriage, I guess that makes it harder to go to school at night. It makes it harder to find energy to do almost anything else at all.

 

Now I am in a position in my life where I have excellent support, a healthy relationship that adds to my life, and things are running along kind of smoothly. After a little bit more time with things running smoothly, I think I will start working on the next phase of my career: the elusive dream that is my college education.

 

I told my friends about some of my frustrations with this position. One of them, Kay (named so because she's from Kentucky), expressed urgent worry that this is no way to live! I must do something about my misery right NOW! I had to kind of assure her that something will be done when I am ready but I am not going to stress myself out by trying to stuff too much into my life and having my efforts go to waste. One thing at a time.

 

I suppose she not learned patience. Perhaps that's it. Or perhaps her overreaction speaks to how she feels about her own life. I think it says more about her than it does about me, comprende? I don't think she's happy in her position. She is constantly getting paged at all hours and is much busier than I. However, she is also paid about $3 less per hour than I. She also manages 2 other people. For what she gets paid, she should have this job and I should have hers.

 

The devil in me says that she wants me to leave this job so she can have it. She knows my salary. But I know deep down that this is not the case. I know there is probably that aspect, but it is in no way Kay's major motivation. She understands how I feel because she feels it too, but she hasn't fully examined it. It's hard for people who don't know their own limits to understand people who do.

 

If I were a dynamo, then I would sign up for college right now, I would raise Niece, and I would do it all by myself. But I'm not a dynamo. I'm just an ordinary person. And I know my limits: one major extracurricular focus at a time.

 

From Bad to Worse

Twiggy really, really wants me to answer her phone this morning.

 

I can tell because she is not just waiting for the 3rd ring this morning. She outright just ignored the phone. Just let it riiiiiiiiiiiiing until it stopped ringing.

 

She wasn't on the phone. She wasn't away from her desk. No reason not to answer. She just refused to do it.

 

I can tell she's super angry. Why do I feel like just letting her stew in it? Probably because I don't like it that she won't just ask me to take her phones so she can get her stuff done.

 

Well, I should probably do some work. Won't take long, but some things must be done and it'll make Twiggy less angry that I am unoccupied whilst she is busy freaking out about travel.

Cowtowing to the JOB

I have the worst time going to bed on time on work nights. I also refuse to get my clothes laid out for the next day or do anything akin to prep for tomorrow morning. It's a miracle that I'm not late every day and that I show up looking decent enough.

 

Now, the question is, why would someone absolutely refuse to make the most rudimentary, quick, easy preparations for her day tomorrow when she has to be at work an hour and a half early?

 

Is it because she refuses to give in to her job that she secretly and stupidly holds in contempt for no good reason?

Is it because she is a rebel in her own mind, who won't bow to conformity? Does she refuse to grow up?

Or is it because her inner child is folding her arms, stamping her feet, and poutingly yet determinedly saying, "NO! I don't wanna!" And the 29 year old woman is actually listening to the child?

 

Does it matter?

 

Not really.

 

I had to be here today at 7am. That meant that I needed to get out of the house by 6:50. That meant that I would need to be up by 6:30 at the latest.

 

I got up at 6:50. I left at 7am and got here by 7:10. I could have gone to bed by 11 last night. Could have. Should have. I was done working out, which I had promised myself I would do since I had skipped a day, by 10:30pm. Then Boyfriend was hungry and I have to admit that I was too, so we had some leftover pizza. We were done with that by 11, I think. We should have just gone to bed.

 

But what did yours truly, genius that she is, do instead? She popped in War of the Worlds and proceeded to watch it, with Boyfriend, until about 1:30am.  Oh God, the insanity! Oh God, I am so tired, and I feel so dumb!

 

I was thinking about this this morning while I was stumbling around in the dark, sniffing for decent clothing. Boyfriend popped up just long enough to whine about the lamp being on at that ungodly hour, and to hug me good bye. And I wondered, why do I refuse!!!!! to prepare for the next day on weekdays?

 

I swear, it is like part of me just says, "No. I'm not bowing to this job. You can have my daytime hours, but you're not getting anything else!" And I thought, would I think like that if I was working in a position that I liked? If I had a job that I didn't outright hold in contempt, even though it pays me well and I have nice people to work with? Probably not. For some reason, I just feel that if I take my job too seriously, if I give it more than my minimum efforts all the time (I do give it more than minimum efforts, by the way), then I will have given up something of myself.

 

Isn't that crazy? I think it means I need a different career. Entirely. A new job won't do it. I need to decide what I want (I have been thinking hard about being a teacher) and then go for it, or I will be feeling this way every day forever.

 

I could feel contentment at this job. I could. I could stay here forever if I don't screw up and care just enough to do just well enough in order to avoid problems. If I just keep showing up on time every day as scheduled, I could stay here, no sweat. But is that what I want for the next 36 years of my career?

 

Well, not really.

Dear Abby:

Check this out. lol

 

Administrative assistants get a bad rap.

 

DEAR READERS: A successful, single career woman wrote me recently wondering if she should "curtail (her) professional success, financial wherewithal and IQ" in order to land a husband. She asked, on behalf of herself and her unmarried friends, "how to find true happiness while being true to themselves." Fascinating mail from readers poured in. Read on:

 

DEAR ABBY: This is MY reaction to that woman's comment about taking a job as an "administrator" so that she won't appear to be so smart. I assume by "administrator" she means the administrative assistant positions that are vital to the smooth running of almost every business and organization.

 

Perhaps her elitist attitude is what's causing her to be single, and not her job or financial status. Please inform "Miss Thing" that not only are most successful assistants highly intelligent, but many of us know something she doesn't -- how to deal with people! Some of us went to college just like she did, but ended up in administrative positions through downsizing, necessity -- or maybe some of us really like our jobs.

 

You were right to advise her not to step down the ladder in the corporate world. With her superior attitude, she'd never make it "down here at the bottom." -- ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT WITH AN MBA

More on Adminzilla's Demise

I guess she was a little bit wilder than I thought.

 

I was online last night trying to avoid compulsively overeating when someone from my past, the Burger King guy, messaged me.

 

His Royal Highness was a Director here until he decided to quit and form his own company. Not too long ago, rumors were abounding that he wanted to come back. I have no doubt they were true, as he actually told me once that I might soon see him back here (http://asecretaryslife.blogspot.com/2005/11/guess-whos-trying-to-come-back.html#links).

 

But he apparently has given up and forged ahead with this position at the company that he owns a part of.

 

Anyway, he messaged me last night and we chit chatted. He remarked about Adminzilla's departure and how funny it was.

 

We commiserated about her and MJ; both had major personality defects. He asked if things were better since MJ's demise, I said they were and that I thought she was a bully; he agreed and added that she thought she was 'bulletproof'. Then he gave me some more dirt on Adminzilla's antics at the party.

 

Apparently, she followed a VP into the men's bathroom, got a look at his bits, then proceeded to joke to the VP's wife, in front of said VP, about how small his bits were. At that point, Napoleon told her that she'd had too much to drink and to go home. People had seen her follow that guy into the bathroom and no one really knew what had happened. He was very mum about it. Now we know why.

 

God, what an idiot. It just gets worse and worse the more you know about what actually happened.

 

The Burger King asked me to keep it quiet; basically, the usual 'you didn't hear it from me' song and dance. It will be hard to keep this juicy gossip to myself, but I must. Ah well...such is life. Twiggy would love to hear this, but I shall remain silent. The minute I told her would be the minute that the whole department found out. And his royal highness would be quite angry with me. So I shall keep this to myself. :) Indeed. :)

Peanut Butter is Driving Me Nuts

Peanut Butter (see his adventures here: http://asecretaryslife.blogspot.com/2005/11/twiggys-only-happy-when-it-rains.html#links) has me doing those ridiculous letters for him again.

 

They are all written in a very formula, very rigid way. Reading them is as painful as attempting to swallow razor blades. I know some people would say that that simile is also apt for my blog. Hey, I don't care much how I write here. But if I am writing a business letter, I am pretty careful about how I write it.

 

The way he goes about this crap is so archaic. You have to manually switch around the names in the last paragraph because he tells the recipient that he is writing in order to find the most appropriate person to meet with for a 30 minute appointment. He says to them, "I have sent this letter to you and to A,B, and C. Please let me know...." blah blah blah. It just sounds incompetent. He insists on personally inspecting and signing each and every one of these letters. I hate that. My work is very good, usually error-free on the first try.

 

He asked for my help on the letters and for the love of God, he needs it. I rewrote his letter for him so it sounded more go-getter. He rejected most of my changes and wrote me this:

 

For this letter I made one of the changes you suggested but left the opening paragraph alone. I appreciate your suggestions and feel free to give me input whenever you think it's appropriate.

 

He makes it sound as if he's going to break my heart by not utilizing my suggestions. Trust me, Peanut Butter, you're not going to break my heart, but I will hate to see your eventual humiliation when you become unemployed. I think what drives me nuts about him is that he is such a control freak and he acts like I am affronting him by offering suggestions on how to do things better or more easily. This bit above sounds quite innocuous, right? That's because you haven't seen him in the flesh and witnessed the control freakdom. I mean, this guy will blanch at the slightest suggestion that he might be able to do something a little more easily or better. He'll blanch.

 

I haven't encountered this attitude with anyone else that I work with. I know how to offer suggestions in a way that doesn't come across as intimidating. Before I offer a suggestion or idea, I roll it around in my head to determine if it's worth offering, if it's workable, and how to offer it in such a way as to ensure its warm reception by the intended recipient. I am practiced in couching suggestions and ideas in non-intimidating language.

 

I think there is something a little wrong with him. His level of computer illiteracy seems to be higher than most of the other guys, and he seems to be trying hard to hide the fact instead of trying to learn. I would be more than happy to teach him and in my interactions with helping him with stuff, I try to be nurturing and bolster his confidence. I try to assure him that there is nothing wrong with asking questions and that I am happy to help him learn; it is what I am paid to do. Alright, no it's not, but he is a human being and I hate seeing people feeling ashamed of their ignorance when it comes to computers.

 

On top of that, he seems to have some strange skin ailment and a weird hair thing going on. His skin is a little pockmarked and discolored, but just under the radar of perception unless you look closely. It is as if something happened to him and he has had some kind of surgery, as though he were in some kind of accident and escaped with his life. It's like his thrusters fire a little more slowly than most people. I have seen this before, in my ex husband, who was in a car accident that caused a coma. That happened before he met me, but you could easily see there was something different about my ex husband.

 

Writing this blog can sometimes be cathartic for me. When I first started writing this post, it was a rant about how crazy and stupid Peanut Butter is; now that stuff has boiled away and I can sort of stand him a little more easily. I have to admit that I secretly long for his professional demise, but that is like something that I can't control, a kind of visceral disgust for people of his ilk, those who are very insecure and operating out of fear.

 

One can't deny, however, that Peanut Butter has been more successful in life than I. Whether he started in a better place or just has the advantage of age or whatever, I don't know. So I may rag on him a bit, but I have to acknowledge that the man must be doing something right.

Live Spell Check

It amazes me how helpless some executives are. They don't know a thing about running their computers, they can't spell, and they can't write. But they can still get really good jobs. You need not be a good speller in order to get an awesome job. However, if you want to assist someone who has an awesome job, you do need to be a good speller in order to compensate for their lack of knowledge in the area.

 

I just had an executive who was looking for his assistant, wondering where she was, all in a lather. Know why? Because he couldn't spell cooperation. Thank God someone always answers this phone, or he'd be lost.

The Mystery of My Parents

Did I mention that I have a huge extended family?

 

Indeed I do. My mom is one of 14 kids, and my dad is one of 9. They come from disparate states. Dad is from a small town in Washington, and mom is from a large city in Ohio. They met because my dad was a truck driver.

 

Prior to meeting my dad and marrying him, and moving to Nebraska with him (pure idiocy), my mom was a vivacious thing that had a lot of girlfriends and an active social life. She abandoned all that and slowly became the embittered woman that you see today. You can still occasionally see snippets of her true self. Just writing this makes me want to go see her. Even though she once called me a whore after I called the family on the carpet for the way they were treating Niece, our family has an incredibly ability to forgive and practically forget. And so I still love my mom and she is still lots of fun to go out with once in a while. Emphasis on 'once in a while'. We have a lot in common but it just gets a little hard to listen to her complain all the time.

 

LOL the 2 people who actually read this blog probably find that ironic. Keep in mind, I complain here instead of talking to people in my actual life. It makes it easier to avoid driving everyone away by way of a nasty attitude.

 

One night, my future mom was out with her gaggle of girlfriends (Wow, I have successfully used alliteration. Thank God for spell check, or I would have negated my newfound ability by spelling its name wrong).  She was out at a bar, dancing and having fun. My dad saw her from across a crowded room and, in his drunken state, said to himself, "Secretary'sDad, if you're ever going to marry someone, that's the woman you should marry!"

 

I guess my mom was a bit foxy. She probably would have married earlier than 34 had she not been made unavailable by a married charlatan who continuously said he was going to get divorced. She still pines for that jerk. I wish I could convince her that he was a creep who wasted her prime years and prevented her from marrying someone more suitable, which then made her desperate enough to think my dad was a potential husband.

 

So, Dad walks over to Mom and proceeds to tell her that his name is Ian Murdoch, which I can tell you it most definitely is not. The only thing my Dad has in common with Ian Murdoch is that my dad was an Ian Fleming fan, and Fleming and Murdoch share a first name. Anyway, he then proceeds to sweep her off her feet in a whirlwind 3 month courtship, which culminated in a foolish move to Omaha, Nebraska, and an ill-advised marriage that produced Sister and I.

 

According to my Dad, children were the death knell to the relationship. Supposedly, they had great sex and got along famously prior to our arrival. I guess children can be a death knell to a relationship when you don't support your wife properly and then dive into whiskey bottles to escape your misery. Add to that a job that slowly destroys your family, your failure to get a different job for 30 years, and leaving your wife home alone with no friends, family, or money to handle your two growing daughters and all the issues. Two words: wrong priorities.

 

Two more words: slit wrists. My mom was tempted to kill herself many times because she didn't know how she was going to feed us. I have to remember to give her props for enduring all that. I could say she had all kinds of other choices she could have made, but did she really? It's pretty easy for me to look back and say she should have done this, should have done that. How can I say what I would have done had I been in her shoes? I can't. How well did I do myself when I was depressed and raising Niece? I don't think I did that hot.

 

What choices did my mom REALLY have? She lived in a city far from home. She couldn't go home again; my Grandma hated my father for not supporting my mother. I don't think my mom could have admitted to her mother how things were. She had no money. She had no friends. You could say that was her own fault, but was it really? If I were my mother, I don't think I'd have survived as well as she did.

 

So that's the story of my cuddly parents, mostly the story of my mom. Dad is the one who's more of a mystery.

 

Well it's 3pm and I haven't done a damn thing today aside from cleaning up the pit we call a bathroom. The mirror is now spot-free. Yippy skippy. Time to get moving. :) Au revoir!

Appraisal is done for another year...

Thank God, the annual torture session is over.

 

Supervisor told me what I already knew. She wanted to give me higher marks in the section that I got a warning for, but Napoleon 86'd that idea. Big surprise there. I don't know what she was dreading.

 

We go through the other sections of the appraisal and then she says, "Now, I know you're not going to like this, but you got a 1 [lowest rating above zero]."

 

I assured her that I expected no different. After all, I frickin' got written up. When one receives a warning, one cannot expect that fact to go unnoted on their appraisal. She acted like it was very shameful; you could tell she'd have been horrified herself to receive a 1 in any section of her appraisal. Frankly, I am not very bothered by it. After all, that was then and this is now. And despite all my ramblings about my mistakes, my doubts, my this, my that, I am a fairly good employee. I just happen to have a bunch of spare time on my hands and have to think of ways to fill it. Besides eating.

 

I'm pretty good at this job, even if it does irritate me sometimes. Anyone with a normal level of intelligence and a modicum of ambition would eventually tire of this position or any other administrative assistant position.

 

Supervisor listed all my good stuff that I'd done this year. I think she may have copied and pasted from my self-appraisal that I sent her. Then I said, "So do I have any hope of a raise this year?"

 

"Oh, nothing I say or do has any bearing on that. Napoleon gets a certain budget and doles it out to the administrative staff. It's all based on impression."

 

"Oh great," I said, knowing that this was my chance to find out what impact he'd had on my appraisal. "Did he even read this?"

 

"Oh yes, he read it. I was going to give you a 4," and I thought that obviously she was on another planet or high or something, my behaviors last year were horrid...she must have been thinking about this year, "But I didn't think he'd go with it, so I tried to give you a 2. He wouldn't even go with that, saying that I had had to warn you. So don't make me do it again!" She laughed.

 

"I understand where he's coming from. Well, this year is going to be different."

 

"I know."

 

I have seen a pattern lately of things; repeated mentionings of my need to prove that I can be here on time every day. Should be a cinch. My personal life is better now. I am disappointed in myself that I allowed my personal life to interfere so much with my work performance. But I guess when your world is crumbling around you, it's a little difficult to hold anything together at all. At the same time, everyone has their travails and they handle them much better than I did mine. Let's hope that I handle whatever the next set of travails is a lot better.

 

I mentioned that Twiggy and I are getting along better.

 

"Check it out, Supervisor, Twiggy seems to actually like me now. I guess showing up on time every day has that effect on people."

 

"I'm so glad to hear that. Maybe now she won't feel so put upon." It's apparent that Supervisor believes Twiggy whines a lot. I'm inclined to agree. I whine too, but it's on this blog, not in the office. In fact, I have found that one way to continually boost Twiggy's buddy-like qualities is to whine a little about all these damn fools that call the wrong number every day, then listen sympathetically while she goes on a tirade about it. She hates that aspect of her job and keeps passive aggressively hinting that I answer the phone for her. I can tell because she's waiting until the end of the 3rd ring to pick up a lot more than she used to.

 

I don't want her getting the wrong impression though. That's one sure way to plant ideas in her head that the phone duties ought to be more equally shared. No thanks. I will help her if I have absolutely nothing to do, but I'm not going to be doing that unless and until that happens. Furthermore, even if that did happen, I might not help her with the phones because she has begun functioning under some strange notion that I could be of more help to her than I already am. I would not want her to get any ideas about how things could be changed around here.

 

Sounds heartless doesn't it? It's just self-preservation and you must practice it in the workplace to some degree. That's especially true when you work in a job where you are not allowed to say no.  Administrative assistants in this department are not allowed to say no. One time, I told Adminzilla no about her stupid shredding. What happened? I soon received an email from Supervisor directing me to shred her stuff. I told some jerk admin from Client Services no about her presentations one time. I soon had an electronic missive from Supervisor asking me about it.

 

An Administrative Assistant, an Executive Assistant, a Secretary, whatever, cannot ever appear to be unhelpful to those whom he/she supports, no matter how much work he/she has already, or he/she will soon find themselves unnecessary. Her 'people' will find others to do their tasks. Soon the company will realize that either A) you're a twit or B) they have an extra administrative staff member and they will take appropriate action. Trust me. I've been there. :) This is a post unto itself, really.

 

But now it's time for me to depart the office for the weekend. Sweet.

Brangelina: Due Date & Divorce Date

US Weekly is reporting that Brad and Angie's baby is due May 2.

 

Pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, right? 40 weeks equals 280 days. If you look back, that would make the conception date exactly a week prior to finalization of Pitt's divorce: 7/26/2005.

 

Interesting stuff, huh?

 

No, not really. :) Maybe. Sort of. Especially now that Brad is looking more like a human being.

Cleaning Philosophies

My mom cleaned houses for 10 years when I was kid. She 'owned' her own 'company'. What that means is that she put an ad in the paper and cleaned 2 houses per day. You shoulda seen the weight that she lost. If I ever get fired, I think I should start doing that. : ) My mom can give me pointers.

 

She lost weight, but she was also dead tired when she got home from work...tired with a capital T. One night, she fell asleep in her car upon arriving home. She stayed there until Sister and I found her around 8pm. Her normal arrival time at home was 5:30.

 

Just as nurses and doctors neglect their own health, so this particular housekeeper neglected her own house. I was about 10 and full of energy even though I was fat. Being the good little daughter that I was, who yearned for normalcy, I started cleaning the house. And mailing the Christmas cards. And decorating the house for Christmas. And pushing my parents to buy Christmas presents. And take us to school. You get the idea. I wanted that nice sitcom life and Mom and Dad weren't going to provide it, so I started looking for ways to do it myself.

 

You would think then that my apartment would be immaculate and I would be acutely aware of germs and their brethren. Alas, my apartment's a mess and I'm not very picky. However, some people are. So you can imagine MJ's horror, prior to her professional demise in this office, when she saw me one day with my bagel directly on the breakroom countertop while I applied liberal cream cheese.

 

She goes, "S, you are grossing me out!"

 

"Exsqueeze me?"

 

"Ewww, you're doing that right on the counter? Do you know how dirty that is?"

 

"No...don't they clean this place every night?"

 

"Yeah, but that stuff just gets to me. For God's sake, use a napkin!"

 

Incredibly embarrassed (yeah I'm sensitive about having grown up with little to no instruction from my parents in this particular department). So I snagged a napkin and continued to apply cream cheese. This idiot was always indirectly insulting me. Like, "Most people learn that growing up..." and I found myself saying quite often, "Well, I didn't. Terribly sorry."

 

Thus far, we've established that MJ was a neat freak, right?

 

After she bit the dust (her demise is listed in my blog somewhere), I inherited her computer, including her keyboard and mouse.

 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the neat freak's keyboard and mouse were covered in grime which I had to spend half an hour scrubbing off with a damp cloth.

 

Oh the irony.

 

I hear she's a telemarketer for a local company now. I pray that if I am let go, that doesn't become my fate. Although I wouldn't mind working for the company she's at.

Appraisal Time

Well, I just passed my 3rd anniversary with the company. It's a miracle that I've made it this far. I should have been fired many times over, and if it weren't for my gracious and kind-hearted Supervisor, I would have been.

 

So I am going to get my appraisal tomorrow morning. Supervisor wants to go over it with me. I told her she should just give it to me and I will read it. She wants to 'talk' about it. Ugh. I hate this. Now, usually, the appraisal is 95% good with 5% bad. You know how it goes: they go over alllllll your strengths and the good stuff you've done this past year.

 

Then it's time for the shiznit.

 

You've been late and absent more times than they can count. You've screwed up several times. You've done this, you've done that. You've written to your blog from work and said non-complimentary things about several parties whose identities we can only guess at. And Napoleon wants to give you another warning because you were supposed to have zero tardies but you had 3 or 4, maybe 5. Or because your clothes don't fit perfectly and you haven't worn a blazer in eons (cause you're too lazy to take it to the dry cleaners). In your downtime, instead of thinking of new and innovative things to do for your job and executing them, you read celebrity gossip blogs. You dropped an F bomb or two here and there during stressful moments. Never mind that a Director dropped the P word (the one that ends in Y) right in the middle of a staff meeting.

 

Supervisor writes the appraisal and then she must submit it to Napoleon for review. Then he has to sign off on it. She writes everything in glowing terms first. Then he edits it, I think. I'm sure he probably skewered me.

 

I'm sooooooo not looking forward to this.

How to Get Your Man to Go Shopping with You

via text messages

 

Secretary: Wanna go sheet shopping with me tonight?

 

(5 minutes later)

 

Secretary: Never mind, I wanna get flowery sheets.

 

(5 minutes later)

 

Phone rings. I answer.

 

"ABC Nuts and Bolts Company, Secretary speaking."

 

Boyfriend says, "I wanna go shopping with you."

 

"No, that's ok, I'm good. I can go alone."

 

"No, no. I really wanna go shopping with you."

 

I guess he didn't like the idea of rose-covered sheets. Ah, such is life.

Is it Wrong...

...to delight in the discomfort of someone who's repeatedly delighted in yours?

 

Well, I didn't think I was going to tell Twiggy about the bill collector coming out of her voicemail and asking for HR, but I did. She looked mui uncomfortable LOL.

 

I know it's sort of wrong to be happy about that, but this woman's gossipped about me, tried to get me fired, all kinds of stuff more times than I can count. So I don't really care much about it today lol.

 

I'll leave the guilt for later. I'm sure it'll come. I am a Catholic, after all.

Twiggy's Being Stalked by Bill Collectors

Ooooo the bill collectors are calling...I wonder what they want?

 

Twiggy gets a ton of calls from either telemarketers or bill collectors, or a combination of the two. You can tell which ones are the bill collectors; they will leave voicemail messages OR they will leave messages with me. "It's VERY IMPORTANT that she call Mrs. _________ at _______."  I just checked her voicemail and sure enough, "[Twiggy], call [Bill Collector's Name] immediately at _________." Don't forget the phone room noises in the background.

 

LOL this is the same bill collector (we'll just call them Bill) that zero'd out of Twiggy's voicemail and asked to speak to HR. Apparently, Twiggy transferred the bill collector to her own voicemail and the bill collector picked up on the fact that the voice on the greeting was the same as Twiggy's voice. LOL. Man, she was pissed with a capital P. She asked to speak to Human Resources! I knew she was a bill collector, so I was reluctant to give her the number. She asked for MY name! What the heck? I said, "What are you trying to accomplish? I'm not being snarky or anything, I just want to make sure you get to the right person." And she said, "Well, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but can I have the number to HR so I can get this figured out?" I gave her the number...no other choice, really.

 

But I honestly don't know what a bill collector thinks they're going to accomplish by talking to HR. Really. HR is not going to do anything except to verify employment; and I'm not sure they'll even do that. This bill collector will probably have to be transferred again.

 

I guess that explains why Twiggy isn't applying for other positions. I know why, because I am in the same position: bad credit. She doesn't want to rock the boat, I would guess.

 

I know the MO of bill collectors; that's why it's so easy for me to identify that that is exactly who's calling Twiggy. God knows, they have stalked me in the past. I feel sorry for her. Mostly because of the shame she must feel about it; I have been there.

 

It is nice to know I'm not the only person around here who screws up. :o)

Two EA Candidates Came By Today...

One was in a brown suit.

 

The other was in a black suit.

 

I liked Black Suit better. She smiled.

 

Brown suit looked like she had a stick up her ass. I hope they don't hire her.

 

I suppose that's unfair. She could be really nice but really nervous. Who knows. But she does look awfully high maintenance.

Napoleon

Not that my take on Napoleon matters one whit anywhere in the world, but I may as well get it off my chest. It's been percolating for a while. 

 

He kinda drives me nuts, actually. Sometimes he's moody and all pissed off, striding around the office like if anyone gets in his way, he's going to mow them right down.

 

Then sometimes, like today, he's all chatty. I was passing out paychecks and he's all, "Thanks, I appreciate it," with a smile no less. Why is it that I always crave the approval of those whose approval is close to unattainable?

 

Supervisor manages people the exact opposite way of Napoleon. She treats people like they are people, not just resources to be managed, although there is that side to her management style, of course. There has to be that side.

 

Napoleon doesn't really approve of anyone. He sort of does; ie he won't fire you if you're always there as scheduled, 10 minutes early, work through lunches but don't charge the company, manage your position as cheaply as possible, dress professionally, stuff like that...ie, if you're the perfect employee...ie if you're Twiggy.

 

In a way, that's fair. That's judging people on their merits alone, not on how much sucking up they do. He has little or no true loyalty to anyone in the office; he's the ultimate manager, viewing people solely as resources and connecting everyone's position to their contribution to the bottom line, to the results they provide. And everyone knows the score; I don't think there are any pretenses about it, if you're a good observer of human behavior. Otherwise, you may find yourself imagining that he's actually your friend if he's nice to you.

 

Now it's true that he might be chummy with some people. But if those people don't prove their worth with results, the chumminess will stop. It's not personal; it's business. Results = Napoleon's approval; lack of results = lack of approval. I would not be surprised if he became CEO of this company someday.

 

I guess I kinda like Napoleon, actually, although I have spewed much venom about him in this blog that I use for venting. I kinda like people who let you know what the score is, who are unambiguous about what they want from you. I suppose it might be better if Napoleon had some people skills, but at least you know what to expect from him...that way you don't get your hopes up.

Monitoring and Corporate Maturity

I heard that my employer recently started monitoring IMs. I'm sure that blogs aren't far behind, if they haven't started already.

 

The company is really maturing into a less casually-run type of place. The operations division was never run casually. But the staff part was...the back office. I wouldn't say it was fast and loose or anything, but I would say that the company probably wasn't as militant about managing staff as they were about managing operations personnel.

 

I have a feeling that that is changing now.

 

Now I'm pretty sure that they don't have a technician who stares at a computer screen all day and reads IMs. I'm sure they use keywords or perhaps monitor usage randomly or something. It would be impossible to monitor 27,000 employees alllllll the time. Same goes with email.

 

Either way, the company is tightening up usage of their computer system, as is their right. And it's their duty, honestly. They have to protect client confidentiality and they have a right to make sure that their employees aren't misusing the company's resources for frivolity when they should be working, contributing to the bottom line.

 

I'm not sure what I should be working on when I don't have anything to work on, but never mind that! Bandwidth still costs money, and perception, as one past manager told me, is everything.

 

I have heard that they want to get rid of Firefox. Sometimes I wonder if this is because I downloaded Blockfall, a version of Tetris. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have downloaded such an extension. I have heard that the reason is security; I'm sure that's not it. If it were, IE would be the first to go. As one tech put it, "IE has security problems you could drive a truck through." I'm sure it's because you could add all kinds of extensions to Firefox; extensions and themes.

 

I think I'll research the topic today during any available downtime. :)

Napoleon Freaks Me Out

Knowing that the head of the department you work in is not happy with you tends to make you very paranoid.

 

Although, keep in mind that some people who are paranoid have a reason to be. I think that the above-mentioned circumstance is one valid reason.

 

I usually leave work around 5:30. That's my official end time. Sometimes I leave maybe 2 minutes early, but no earlier than 5 minutes, because, well, to me, that seems way too early to leave without permission. I'm supposed to be answering phones until 5:30 and that's what I usually do.

 

Anyhoo, tonight, Boyfriend and I were supposed to babysit Niece. She has to be picked up from daycare by 6pm. 5:40 came and went and I was still working on something, so I told Boyfriend to go ahead and pick her up and then just swing back and snag me.

 

I finished what I was working on and then called Boyfriend. While we were on the phone for 2 minutes discussing something, I brought up a website relevant to the conversation. It just happened to be that moment that Napoleon walked by, and as is his usual MO, he stared at what I was doing while he walked until my computer screen was no longer visible to him.

 

I hung up with Boyfriend and completed a couple more work tasks that needed doing. One of those included using the copier to scan something for distribution to others. While I was at the copier, Twiggy's phone rang 3 times. I had forgotten to forward it. Napoleon is death on that phone not being answered, which makes sense, as that could be a prospective customer calling. So then I had that error hanging over me. I quickly got my fanny over there and forwarded her phone so it wouldn't happen again Also while I was scanning, immediately after the phone stopped ringing, Napoleon walked by and wouldn't even look at me. Par for the course.

 

Filled with doubt and paranoia, I finished up, got myself together, and was clocked out by 6pm.  I should have headed downstairs immediately after finishing that lingering task so I wouldn't have had anything untoward happen.

 

I hate knowing that Napoleon dislikes me so much. I know that it's pretty much just business. He thinks I'm a bad employee. To some degree, he's right. Look at what I do with my spare time, right? Plus I named him Napoleon. That's a little disrespectful, right? More than anything, it's just being playful though. But up until recently, I was late all the time and absent a lot too. I had a lot of strikes against me. I've improved a lot, now that I am not in the middle of my family's personal business anymore.

 

Yet the taint of my past continues to stick to whatever I do, at least for him. It's rubbing off a little every day with the people that I work for and others too. But only consistently phenomenal performance that goes above and beyond will wash it away when it comes to Napoleon.

 

And weight loss. Napoleon does strike me as the kind of person to hold someone's weight problems against them. His demonstrated personality as observed by me and others leans toward it. But, like I said, consistently good performance can help alleviate those problems. Being fat just makes it stick out more and look worse.

 

Just thinking about digging myself out of this hole makes me feel tired. I guess I'll have to take it one day at a time and see what tomorrow brings.

 

Hopefully, it won't bring a pink slip.  

 

 

Surprise

"Hi baby. How was your day?" Boyfriend looks cute in that hoodie he got for Christmas.

 

"Long and boring. I'm exhausted and starving." My gut is rumbling.

 

"I have another surprise for you."

 

"Oh wow. Do I get to drive my own car tomorrow morning to work?" Already thinking of making him drive me to work again.

 

"Well...yes...but that's not it." We both laugh.

 

"Oh ok...you've put on your chef's hat and made macaroni and cheese with hot dogs for dinner tonight?" I am a woman who appreciates not having to make dinner, no matter how unhealthy the presented meal may be.

 

"Nope."

 

"Well, what IS it??? You know I hate waiting."

 

"You're going to have to wait."

 

"I knew you were going to say that. You know I hate that!" I may heard cackling from the driver's seat.

 

We get home. In the entryway before our apartment door, I am told to shut my eyes and am led into the apartment by the hand. Boyfriend flicks the lights on.

 

I open my eyes and am greeted by a neat and tidy living room. Then I am greeted by a neat and tidy kitchen. Next up, the neat and tidy bathroom, and finally, the neat and tidy bedroom with bed made, neatly and tidily.

 

I was too exhausted to properly appreciate this gift last night. But today I feel like I have caught the most desirable fish on the planet and everyone else is missing out. It's a great feeling. :o) A feeling of, wow, I have stumbled into a healthy relationship. Whoa. How did that happen to ME?

Loss of Confidence

A former boss of mine explained to me once, after he threatened to fire me and I asked him, "Well, let me ask you a question. If you fire me and hire someone else, isn't it true that they could even more easily make the same mistake that I just did?"

 

He said yes, "But when someone screws up too much, you have a loss of confidence in them. You can't depend that they won't screw up again."

 

I witnessed this phenomenon this morning.

 

The Back Story

We are fortunate in my building to have an in-house cafe. They serve lunch and breakfast and the line cook is always a riot. Although everyone on the staff up here calls it the "Loser Cafe", they still go there at lunch. Everyone knows and loves the staff, including me.

 

The Cafe Manager is always looking for more catering business. But lately, we have been ordering breakfast from outside vendors, such as my favorite bakery. The major reason we have done this is because of Cafe's lack of good presentation. Their breakfast food often looks very slapped together and very cheap.

 

The Cafe's serving pieces look like they are left over from something else but have been deemed passable for the occasion. I've seen the bottoms of dispoable trays reused ad nauseam, scratched up, clear plastic serving trays, chipped ceramics. And when I say chipped ceramics, I'm not referring to some dressy serving piece whose chips just add to the charm. I'm referring to some plain Jane, white, no-frills heavy ceramicware whose chips just make them look dumpy.

 

We've asked and asked for better serving pieces so that we can order from the cafe more often. But it is the company's facilities department who must pay for those items, not the Cafe themselves. So far, Facilities has been unwilling. I'm not surprised; I worked in a Facilities department once and they truly don't grasp that, outside of building things and maintaining things, you also have to spend some money occasionally to impress people so they'll do business with you. Yes, you do have to give them perks; you do need to feed them gourmet food, and you do need the overall presentation, not just the room, to look nice and pulled-together.You get what you pay for...

 

...Which is why the admins in the Sales department have urged Cafe Manager to charge a little bit more so he can offer a higher end product in an effort to get our people to be more willing to order food from the Cafe. We'd much rather use the Cafe. Cafe Manager takes care of setup, he knows where the glasses are, where the plates are, etc. I can't count how many times Cafe Manager has saved my ass because I either forgot to order the food or didn't get here early enough to get glasses and plates out and whatnot.

 

However, since the Cafe Manager started here about a year and a half ago or so, his performance has steadily declined. In the beginning, he'd come and arrange everything just so. He'd bring flowers, use crates covered in linens to provide different heights for the different items; a nice landscape on which to present his food, which he took great pride in. Upon taking over the kitchen, he immediately upgraded the available catering options for hot meals. His hot meals with chafing dishes and the whole nine yards are less expensive than ordered-out cold lunches.

 

Buuuuut then he started messing up orders; missing some and screwing up others. We forgave him though; it was a busy time.

 

As time wore on though, the cheap presentation continued. Nothing changed, even though we gave the Cafe input that it didn't look good enough to present to prospects. We ordered from the Cafe less and less often.

 

And then there was this morning.

 

Supervisor is the most gracious person I know. She has great perspective. She won't eviscerate someone by going to their boss unless she really thinks it's necessary. Right now, since Adminzilla drank herself into unemployment, Supervisor is supporting Napoleon as well as her usual people. So that's why Supervisor was organizing Napoleon's meeting this morning...his breakfast meeting...in order to introduce a new SVP to the staff.

 

She ordered breakfast from the Cafe downstairs. A week ago. Cafe Manager confirmed via email. Then she revised the order last night to include some additional items. Cafe Manager confirmed via email. The food should have arrived this morning at 8am.

 

8am came.     8am went.      No food.

 

I got here at 8:25 and saw Supervisor sort of pacing and looking worried, not her usual MO. Come to find out, she was livid because Cafe Manager had completely forgotten about her order.

 

And now Napoleon was bound to be pissed.

 

I asked her if she was going to file a complaint; of course, she was. I like Cafe Manager and all, and it's not personal, but ummm this is a serious problem. That could've been me waiting anxiously for food that wasn't going to show up. Supervisor won't order from him again; and neither will I.

 

For one, we don't want to order from him, because we have lost confidence.

 

For two, he just might not be there any longer.

 

 

A Surprise for Me

Boyfriend called me yesterday at work.

He said he had a surprise for me.

He came home, I provided dinner (lunches left over from the GCV [Ginormous Client Visit]).

Hours later, I finally nagged it out of him. He knows I hate waiting.

Surprise! I was gonna get to drive my car to work today!

Wow.

Mighty generous of him.

In return, I allowed him, after he stayed up until 2am, to get out of bed at 8am in order to drive me to work. After all, he did have to drive downtown to go to the gym today...remember what I said about applying the right resources to the right situation when in a relationship with pooled resources?

Ah, amor...

Twiggy is on the War Path

Maybe I shouldn't have told Twiggy that I was accidentally nasty to a someone who called us for Geico the other day. She's on the war path, I think.

 

Twiggy just answered the phone so sharply that I thought her head was going to start spinning and fly right off.

 

The other day someone called and asked for Geico, just like a hundred other callers each day. I was polite and informed him that he had reached the wrong number, just as I am with allll the other callers. However, this one had the audacity to ask me if I could transfer him to Geico. Why would you ask someone who is at the WRONG NUMBER to transfer you to the right one? I emphatically said NO! My tone was a little bit on the snarky side...it was something like, "No! Of course not, you moron! Are you nuts?!!!" I really, really did not mean to sound that way. It just kinda tumbled out.

 

Well, I sort of told Twiggy about that and she seems to have sort of gotten the idea that if I did it, it must be ok. Which is strange, because I am plainly not a leader in this area.

 

Shortly thereafter, she got up and walked away. I think she knew she was about to have a meltdown or something. I feel bad for her, but she's been offered many different positions in the past and always turns it down. She's been offered the executive assistant to Napoleon position, she's been offered my job, just all sorts of things. She always turns all offers down. I don't know why; she's plenty capable, and she's a much better worker than I am, frankly. I am only just now figuring out that yes, you really do have to show up to work every day, on time or early. She's had that figured out from the beginning.

Makeup

I looked like death warmed over this morning. My acne looked terrible. This acne is really odd...I mean, I have 2 owies on my neck, and I never get anything there. Weird.

 

But the acne looked so terrible to me this morning that I decided I'd have to break down and put makeup on. I love Mary Kay's foundation. It covers so nicely and stays put. There's no sliding, no rubbing off, and it feels light and touchable. And when I went in the bathroom for the first time today, my skin looked beautiful. I also opted for mascara. And some blush. And I left it at that.

 

I just spoke with Boyfriend. He sounded sleepy. I told him I felt like I had to put makeup on this morning and he emphatically says, "GOOD!"

 

What the heck? I think that's probably just his way of saying, "I'm glad you felt like taking care of yourself this morning."

 

Thanks Boyfriend. :)

Abundance & the Taint of Error

Well I have learned a lesson today. And that is, when ordering food for a meeting, think 'abundant' not 'enough'.

 

There was an Executive Assistant here who thought 'enough' when ordering for a very high-level meeting. It turned out there wasn't enough food...and she got summarily canned. When you work for the COO or the CEO or both, you do not screw up like that...not without consequences that, shall we say, have a large impact on your immediate financial future.

 

As I have mentioned, I have that meeting today for about 25 people for a high, high profile prospect. They had breakfast in...I ordered it from my favorite continental breakfast vendor, because they do a really nice presentation and their pastry is top-notch. And they are uber-reliable. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone partook of breakfast...pity for them, because their stuff is awesome. I even had the ginormous pastries cut in half so no one need fear looking gluttonous or silly while trying to manage cutting a pastry in half with a butter knife and screwing up their manicure. Still, virtually no takers. It's that carb thing.

 

That's alright, the abundance of leftovers allowed me to earn some brownie points by informing the executive assistants that there was a bunch of leftover stuff in the breakroom. Plus I just like being nice to people. :) Sometimes. Well...alright...I'm a pushover...after all, I was even nice to Adminzilla.

 

Back to the topic.

 

Neither I nor the organizer of the meeting expected there to actually be 25 people for lunch. He had pointed out to me when we were trying to figure the headcount that people would be coming and going. But, lo and behold, when I brought lunch in, there were 25 peeps in the room. It looked like the prospect had just started grilling our people. Anyway, my VP came over and counted the lunches, then counted heads, then mentioned to me there are exactly 25 lunches and exactly 25 people. I knew we'd need to order more when he said that. So I happily complied and got more lunches from the vendor. Supervisor drove, praise the Lord, because I am driving the Ugly Duckling today. :o( After all, the Cherub is in residence today and we can't have the Cherub riding in a work truck, perish the thought.

 

When my VP was discussing the lunch provisions with me, I felt the Taint of Error starting to cling to me. If I didn't hurry up and fix that problem, the Taint of Error was going to stick, so I put on my happy face and dealt with it. No admonitions from Supervisor this time, thank God.

 

Lesson learned: order more, not less, no matter what. Better to have leftovers than not enough, even if you theorize that there will likely be less people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overqualified

I got here at 7am today. I am coordinating a ginormous meeting complete with breakfast and lunch and 25 people. That may not seem so large, but for us, that's a lot of mouths to feed and butts to seat. I was here until 7pm last night doing part of the prep-work.



Supervisor and I were working together on it because it was so much work. As there usually does with these things, there came a point where there was a lull in the activity and Supervisor and I had time to chit chat.



I was checking the forks for food-specks since our top-of-the-line dishwasher sometimes leaves leftovers on the utensils. Supervisor asked me what Mr. Leads and I were working on, since I've been meeting with him lately. And each meeting usually takes half an hour to an hour. I'm sure Twiggy may have complained that her backup was missing, and so she couldn't run off without her ball and chain whenever she felt like it. Mr. Leads and I are going over the annual reports that justify Marketing's existence. Each meeting reveals a new error in the reports.



The errors are mainly due to the poor reporting capabilities of the database. It was the marketing manager that built it, and she was just learning Access when she did so. It does the job, but it wasn't very well thought out, probably because it was one of those things that's been added to and subtracted from as needed over the years, but not by someone who has had any formal Access or database training.



I was talking with Supervisor about the database, stating that the thing needs an overhaul because the tables aren't done right and so on. And then I just blurted, "Why am I working here?"

And Supervisor goes, "I have no idea. I wonder that myself."



"Well, it's hard to market higher skills without a degree in hand. I don't have one."



"But if you already work at a company that needs those skills..."



"I suppose that might work if I didn't have 4 warnings in my employee file."



"Yes, that is a problem..."



"This year will be better."



"I know."



This might explain the frequent boredom that I experience at work. It might also explain the boredom that I've experienced at every job except for one. That was the most stressful job I've ever had. Maybe it has scared me and that fear has prevented me from aspiring to more responsible positions.



I felt like saying to her, "I know you think this job is something that anyone could do with half their brain tied behind their back. But have you noticed how much you pay me for it? I'd be hard put to find another position that I'm considered qualified for in that pay range." But the thought came after the moment and so it was not expressed.



Supervisor is the kind of manager that you can actually have such frank discussions with. It's really nice to work for someone like that.



Frankly, it's been my experience that most admins are people who are overqualified for that position, whether in terms of experience or intellectual capacity, and they get bored with it. Most of the time, though, they don't leave the position because they don't have higher aspirations of managing great numbers of people or working 60 hours a week and making over $100K. I'm one of those people. My job is just a job...it's just what I do during the day to pay for what I like to do at night. Some of the things that I enjoy doing are: driving home, having a roof over my head, eating, having clothes on my back...frivolous stuff like that.



Well, maybe after a year of good performance, I will feel confident enough to apply for other positions. But right now, I don't have any such confidence. I'd like to know, before I apply for something more responsible, that I can show up, as scheduled and on time, for work 99% of the time and keep that up for at least a year straight. That is something I have never attained. It's quite ridiculous for a 29 year old woman to have to confess that, I know.



Work beckons, I guess.



Should be done with it in half an hour.