I really, really didn't want to do this but I had to rat Twiggy out.
She's now blatantly ignoring the phone while she's right there sitting at her desk. She's done it at least twice today. It is becoming more frequent. I clocked out for lunch, then came back to my desk and told Twiggy, "I'm at lunch" and she ignored the phone while she was on the other line several times. She is not supposed to do that.
The primary reason that the phones must be answered is this: if Napoleon calls that phone number and no one answers, he will freak out. No, it's not because we want to provide good customer service. It's because we want to avoid a tantrum by Napoleon.
Now, who does Napoleon think is the weakest link among the admins? Is it Twiggy? Heck no, he'd love to have her as his EA if she would only apply for the position. Yet she won't. When a problem occurs and it involves several people, do you tend to blame the people you like or do you tend to pick on someone whom you perceive to be the weakest link?
If you answered, "Why, the Weakest Link of course!" then you're right. If you answered otherwise, then you are living in a fantasy world where the word 'fair' actually means something. In the real world, the word 'fair' means nothing.
In his mind, no matter how unreasonable it is, Napoleon would naturally think of me as the root of the problem although the phones are not my responsibility; they are Twiggy's primary responsibility. So, it's better to proactively place blame on the appropriate party than it is to receive half of the blame because you left something alone that you shouldn't have. Know what I mean? Basically, if Napoleon had a freak fit, Twiggy wouldn't get all the blame, though she richly deserves it. Supervisor would be talking to BOTH of us, not just Twiggy, even though it's squarely Twiggy's fault. So that's why I felt that I had to tell Supervisor, and she said that Twiggy has an attitude problem.
This situation plays nicely into my thoughts about the 'Taint of Error' in office environments; that Errors are like dirty bombs going off, and if you are near one when it happens, you could be contaminated. Only in this bomb, instead of nuclear material and radiation, it's full of blame and when the bomb goes off, the blame splatters everywhere like sticky radioactive peanut butter.
Twiggy's attitude problem must be pretty darned glaring if it's so bad that Supervisor has come up against it. I say that because Supervisor doesn't have occasion to deal with Twiggy that much. She must have received complaints.
That wouldn't surprise me. Yesterday, we got a call from the CEO and COO's Executive Assistant, and she wanted to let us know that the caller she had just spoken to said that whomever transferred him was rude to him. Twiggy had transferred him. And the EA wanted to make a complaint about it, because that caller was either a member of the media responding to a press release or someone who wants to invest in our company. Very. Bad. The EA thought that a main switchboard receptionist had done it and I told her, no, they didn't, it was definitely Twiggy. Those poor people get blamed for everything else under the sun, why should they have to deal with Twiggy's sins?
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