Management walking around watching people all of a sudden:smack:
Maybe they found out you were posting about them on here, and on company time. Better get back to work…
Well if they plan on watching me they going to be disappointed
Because you can disappear like a ninja, or bore them like a… state worker?
Because I am the master of doing everything right when the lights are bright;)
Why am I consistently explaining to millennials how computers work? There’s the local hard drive on this computer on the desk, and there’s the server -shared drive - where you are supposed to be saving your work. That’s the one that gets backed up nightly, ya dopes.
Because they’ve grown up with autosave. To them, “CTRL+S is your friend” isn’t obsolete, it’s prehistoric.
One week of training for the new job (call center) done. I do not relish the prospect of cleaning up after some of my classmates once they’re on the phones and handling accounts.
One girl falls asleep in class EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY. How she hasn’t been fired yet is a mystery to me, but I don’t predict she’ll last long once we’re out of the training room nest. I just hope she doesn’t screw up too many accounts too badly along the way, since I really don’t think Sleeping Beauty can be learning much.
One guy has no volume control at all and a LOT to say. Not only does he frequently jump in with some question/comment (routinely drowning out everyone else, including the trainer), but it takes him about three times as many words as necessary to express the desired concept. I dread the prospect of being seated anywhere near him.
Today, some of the crew got hung up on some little detail that our trainer explicitly stated didn’t really matter for our purposes, and it took over half an hour for said trainer to regain enough control to force them to MOVE ALONG ALREADY. I’m honestly worried that we’re going to run out of class time before we run out of material we NEED to know to do the damn job, with this sort of crap, plus all the social gabfests that have to be quashed before training can continue.
Several of my classmates seem a touch shaky on literacy, and some speak “ghetto” as their primary dialect, so I’m not expecting they’ll be able to manage any degree of “professional” on the phone. My husband reminds me this is my competition for advancement, to which I remind him I’m going to be dealing with callers who’ve dealt with these bozos.
At least Sleeping Beauty managed to stay awake in class today and the no-volume-control guy wasn’t as ratchet-jawed today as he normally is.
OTOH, way bigger problem with the socializing being deemed MUCH more important than even letting those of us who give a damn about the job learn anything. I also really did not want to hear rather graphic discussions of strip club visits.
Damm air conditioner at the job was not working properly on the hottest day of the year
Was lamenting that I have taken a break from from herding college-age cats, only to be herding middle-school kittens this summer.
Thanks to your perspective, I’m now grateful for my teaching gigs.
(I mean, your life sucks, but I guess mine doesn’t!) 
I’m sure your job has its downsides.
I’m really not sure how long some of these slacker doofuses will last once we’re out of training. In an open-note quiz on material we’d covered practically ad nauseam this week, there were a lot of people who missed five or more of approximately twenty questions. OK, I did miss one myself, but most of the class did too, so I’m not beating myself up TOO hard, especially since it was about a situation I’m not likely to see often.
Considering how hard it is to get any of them to cool it with the socializing for more than a few minutes, even when the trainer is noticeably angry, I predict a lot of bounces once supervisors and managers get a really good look at the situation. I just hope they don’t do too much damage along the way.
I got sent an excel invoice form for some freelance work I have been doing.
So, I filled it out and sent it back to the email address listed on the form. That was Thursday night.
Got an email yesterday morning from the bookkeeper, who I haven’t dealt with before: “Sorry, you need to submit it as a pdf.”
Okay. That hadn’t been communicated to me and no such instruction appeared on the form, but fine. I convert the file to a pdf and it looks kind of wonky, but all the information is there–just oddly laid out. I send it back. “Will this do?” I ask.
“No,” she says in her reply; it’s now early afternoon. “You’ll have to mess around with the form. Delete unnecessary rows and adjust the size of the columns till it fits on the page. *Then *convert it.”
I’m kind of grumbly by now but I mess around with the file, delete a few rows, shrink three columns, try converting it–no, it still looks strange–shrink another column, try it now–okay, success. I save as a pdf and send it out. “Got it now,” I say. “Please confirm that you’ve received it and we’re good to go.”
Later, mid-afternoon, another email. “No. You’re missing the date and the invoice number. Try again.”
Well, i’m missing that information because there aren’t fields for them. I go back to the original excel file sent to me and there aren’t fields there either–till I realize that the sheet is missing a column entirely. When I move column dividers around the missing column appears, and it has a Date listing; when I expand it further an Invoice Number header appears as well. I also get one more place for me to list my phone number and two more spots for me to list my email. I fill them all in just to be on the safe side. Readjust column widths, make a pdf, check that it all fits on the page, and send it off, with a note suggesting oh-so-nicely that the next person to get this form would probably appreciate it if all the fields were initially visible and if it were preset to the proper size for pdf conversion.
I’m not at all sure it all worked out…if it didn’t, and something else is wrong now, I’m sure I’ll hear about it on Monday.
Question: In my field I’m usually paid by the piece, but on this project I’m being paid by the hour. Do you think I can bill for the time spent wrangling with the invoice and the bookkeeper? Would you?
air conditioner wasn’t working properly at the job:smack:
That is weird and excessive. In my experience, most companies don’t specify an invoice format, only specific items that must appear - Date, purchase order number and/or itemized charge list, pay to info, and invoice #.
If you need to submit in a specified way that wasn’t communicated properly to you in the first place, you should absolutely charge them extra for it - itemize it too - keep the original due date, they don’t get extra grace time for delaying their acceptance of your invoice. If payable immediately on original receipt - charge 'em interest. Translating multiple different payables invoice styles is the Bookkeeper’s job.
-DF
Yes, makes me wonder if this isn’t some sort of purposeful tactic to discourage you from successfully finishing the invoicing process, and to give them progressive excuses for not paying. It may not work very often, but if it only works a small percentage of the time, it could be worth their while.
By all means, bill them for every extra minute.
Thankfully, training class is over tomorrow.
OTOH, some of these people scare me (I can only hope the worst flunk the final). Today’s notions of appropriate workplace conversation included defeating drug tests and shoplifting pointers.
The air circulation was not consistent at the job
Oh man, I wonder if the climate control is working properly at a everyone’s place of employment.
I did hear back from the bookkeeper:
“Ulf, I’ll accept this invoice, but you really need to work more on getting this right next time. The pdf was seven pages long, your phone and email were in the wrong places, and [a couple more issues]. Maybe [other employee] can help if you need it.”
I’ve been freelancing for a long time and only once seen anything like this.
I am DEFINITELY billing for the time spent on invoicing.
I think my favorite is the seven page pdf. Since all I did to the excel file was remove a bunch of extraneous rows, seems likely that the issue is with the excel file to begin with…
Oh well. Thanks for the input.