Yeah, I am now at home, trying to figure out remote login; call me crazy, but I’m fond of working and breathing at the same time. Lord help the office manager if he gives me crap about it.
Newsflash: my (now-already-ex-)boss has told me what the heck was the actual issue and the complicated WAG I came up with was actually pretty close to the mark; it’s a matter of budgets and personnel reorganization, not any problem with my performance. Phew!
Then shame on them for the “her performance has not been what we expected” crap! Some people.
I wholeheartedly agree with your shaming, and add mine to it. Shame! SHAME!!
More common in smaller companies, but not unheard-of in larger ones. This is one reason that businesses buy “key man” insurance - to help them survive a loss of productivity due to the untimely departure (usually death or retirement) of that one person who made everything work, while they figure out how to recover.
Thanks for the good wishes, Kolga and kaylasdad99 and everyone else who thought but didn’t post. This is a pretty routine procedure for a very common sports injury.
Its not life threatening and its been planned for almost 6 months. That’s why their freaking out now is ticking me off so much. I’ve planned for this, I’ve discussed my plans with my boss, I’ve kept her up to date on everything. I’ll be available by phone or email. Nobody is going to die if their boxes don’t get picked up. The County won’t be sued into bankruptcy if a couple of boxes don’t get shredded on time.
STOP FREAKING OUT ON ME, GOSH DARN IT!!!
I think that if I had to share a hospital room with SG for longer than half an hour, I’d learn if its possible to strangle someone with an IV line. So, instead, I’ll leave SG’ legs unbroken and enjoy and share my boss’s problems with SG.
I’m also going to enjoy the pissing match between my boss and IT. Boss doesn’t think I should have to pay for the DYMO printer because it was IT’s fault that it just sat around until past time when it could be returned. IT is saying that its my fault because the IT guy is claiming that he suggested new drivers a year ago.
Too bad for IT guy, I kept all of our emails about this problem and gave them to my boss yesterday and pointed out the year old emails saying that there were no drivers available, as well as the one where I told her that IT guy had verbally told me to download the driver on my own. There will be months of drama over a hundred dollar printer.
Too bad you can’t leave a camera behind to watch all this. You know your boss is just not going to give you all the details [del]we demand[/del]. She probably won’t tell you what’s going on with the Lair of the Rat King, either.
Meantime, good luck with the surgery and recovery. Who’s caring for the minions while you’re in hospital?
My company is a world wide huge corporation within a corporation and there is no one else at my company who can step in and replace me without notice. No in irreplacable but my company would be seriously hurting for awhile if I walked out.My exboss can handle most of it but she doesn’t remember the details that will net us huge fines and back charges* if not done exactlyt right. It wouldn’t being down the company but there would be no joy in mudville for quit awhile.
- who requires a pacling list and what kind attached to the bill of ladings, who requres a special number on the paperwork and where that special number is found, checking the routing guides because they change them with no notice and each incidence is thousands of dollars in fines not to mention refusal to pay the invoices because it states in the contracts that these are requirements. These requirements are a line or paragraph in dozens of pages of requirements x about 15 companies we deal with.
The warehouse would be hurting for a while, but I’m just a cog in the wheels. It would be hard to replace me because there aren’t a lot of people who have the quailfications that I do and are still willing to spend their days tossing dusty boxes around.
Excuse me, but I can see how “having to deal with SG directly, without flatlined’s buffer” would constitute an emergency on your boss’s part…
NOBODY IS GOING TO DIE!!!
I spent the last 2 hours of my day going over everything with my boss. Here are the pull lists, here are the pickups, everything is on the shared outlook calendar, etc. We’ve done this all last week, nothing has changed since Friday, they are just boxes of paper, calm down and give it a rest!!! NOBODY IS GOING TO FLIPPING DIE!!!
pant, pant, pant
The IT head says that no drivers available means they only go through the manufacturer of record, installing drivers from other sites is risky and not allowed. My boss was standing right there when the IT guy said to do it, and I emailed her right away just so we would have the paper trail.
This pissing match is going to be epic. They are going to spend months doing the “he said/she said” thing over a hundred dollar label printer that I can trade to a different department. My tax dollars at work, oh hurray.
Good luck flatlined, hope the procedure goes well. :raids candy stash and hands over chocolate:
The audit is done… yippee! But now I have to do another audit of the automatic payments and withdrawals. I have to make sure all the procedures are followed for each type of payment. Guess who posts the payments… That’s right, I do. So I’m auditing myself. Every year I tell the boss that we really should have someone else do it. Every year she says “Oh, it’s OK, you do it and I’ll sign off on it.”
It’s her butt on the line here, not mine. Don’t know what else to say.
Thank you. Smooshes next to you on your desk chair and offers to share. Bill sent me some chocolate covered strawberries today.
You work in a bank, right? If I was dealing with money, I’d be so uncomfortable with that. The audit trails last forever.
Let me tell you about The Machine.
I’ve been working at the same small company of 30 people for 9 years. I may not be on the top rung of the totem pole, but I’m fairly important. From 8 until 5 I am working nonstop and much of what I do can only be done by me. No one else even knows how to do it and nearly every day I look at what I have to do and think there is no way I can possibly handle it all, but somehow I do.
One day a couple of months ago, the owner came to me and and said “When you get a minute, come see me. I have a special job I want you to be responsible for.”
Hmmm, with my knowledge and experience, I can do anything and this sounds like an interesting assignment, nay, opportunity that requires my unique skill set to accomplish. I was full of thinking outside the box sticktoitiveness and synergy as I walked into his office, ready for my new responsibility.
He walked me to a section of the building on the other side from where I work. This area houses about 10 technicians which I really have nothing to do with. Hmmm, he must want me to take over this department and whip 'em into shape. I can do that. Or maybe he just wants me to oversee operations and be a “foreman.” They’ll probably have me hire someone and train them to do my job so I can concentrate on whatever this new and exciting responsibility is.
He walks me over to a machine I never knew existed and still don’t know the name of. This machine is used to clean the technicians’ tools. It is essentially a sink. Underneath is a 5 gallon bucket of water with a tube stuck in it. Above the sink is a needle shaped piece of metal which the technicians stick in their equipment. When they step on a foot pedal, water is pumped up the tube and sprayed through the needle to clean their tools from the inside. The water then collects in the sink. Every 2-3 days, this sink has to be drained.
To drain it, you simply reach under the sink and flip a valve, let the water flow from the sink to the bucket, then close the valve. It takes approximately 30 seconds.
10 technicians work in this department and use this machine. I have no idea how old the machine is, but it’s really dirty and has obviously been used for a couple of years at least, and cleaned by the technicians all that time. Until now.
Draining this machine is my new responsibility.
Now, for the technically minded, no you can’t really leave the drain open and just let the water flow into the bucket freely. It has to collect because there is something in the water that attaches to dirt and debris and turns it into sludge and it takes some amount of time for this to happen. When it drains, it passes through a filter, and the sludge is trapped so only water passes. The filter has to be changed once a month and it takes about 15 seconds, so I’m leaving it out.
I did this for a week or so, about 2-3 drainings, until I concluded it was the most asinine thing I’ve ever had to do at a job. It’s not hard and I wouldn’t mind doing it, but I work on the other side of the building and have no time to check this machine, and it takes several trips of checking for it to be ready to be drained. Plus, it takes 30 seconds and the ten guys standing there talking on their cell phones have been doing it forever, why is it now my job? It’s like having someone from the other side of the building come sharpen your pencil for you.
Within a couple of days, a technician appointed himself liaison and came to tell me it needed drained. I didn’t want to take the “No, do it yourself approach” so I thought I’d show him how pointless this whole thing was.
“I’m real busy right now, can you just flip the drain and I’ll come check it in a minute to make sure it’s done?”
Surely he will understand and be kind enough to spend 1.5 seconds flipping the drain open, then 30 seconds after it drains flip the drain closed and be done with the whole affair, realizing how foolish it is to have someone on the other side of the building do it for him.
“Not my fucking job” was his reply as he turned and walked off. I should mention that I’m 34 and this guy is a good 10-15 years older. I could understand this whole scenario if we were both 16 and working at a grocery store or something, but I would shoot myself if I was pushing 50 with that attitude.
Ok, I had a meeting with the boss in a few days I’ll just bring up how silly this is then. Until then, they can just tell me when it needs draining and I’ll do it. When I meet with the boss, I’ll explain that they spend more time walking over to get me than it takes to drain the stupid thing and I know he will see things my way.
A few days later, I sat down to meet with the boss. I knew the meeting would go well so, once he was pleased with my work, I planned to bring up the machine. The instant our normal business was over and about 2 seconds before I was going to mention the machine, he said “Oh, one other thing. That machine… These guys are coming to me and telling me that you’re not doing your job. They have to come tell you to do it. I know you’re trying, but I don’t want them coming to me and complaining, so try to stay on top of it a little better.”
They preemptively bitched to the boss? Fuck me.
I took a 3 day vacation last week, Monday through Wednesday. I drained the machine the Wednesday before so it would be full by the end of the day Friday. I wanted it to have a full tank when they came in on Monday and have to drain it themselves on Monday and probably on Wednesday when it filled up again.
I came back on Thursday, half expecting the boss to apologize since he surely had to deal with the techs and that stupid machine all week. I finally had time to go check it about 10am and found that the sink had filled up to the rim and they had just let it spill onto the floor for three days.
I’m looking for a new job.
Kinda sounds like they want you to quit.
HOLY COW!!!
I’m sorry, I was laughing through the entire post, wiping tears from my eyes. You work for the government, don’t you?
I have to go to the microfilm department and clean the machines once a month. I don’t work with the machines, I don’t know what is going on with them and when I get there to clean them, the people who use the machines just expect that I know what is wrong.
I think that sometimes but they genuinely love me and would be lost without me. I think the owner is going crazy. If it wouldn’t make me identifiable, I’d tell more.
Ooh! Chocolate covered strawberries? Thanks! :scootches over in chair to make room:
I work for a credit union, but yeah, same idea. Some things I have to keep an audit record for 15 years! :eek:
Fubaya, I’m very sorry but I had to laugh too. Good luck in the job search!
Somebody being crazy would go a long way to explaining what’s going on with that. 10 technicians in a building far away from you, and they can’t be arsed to drain their own friggin’ sink? WTF, man?
I’ve just scheduled the rest of my week. I have 4 hour meetings every day (2 on Thursday) to create budgets for new projects. Basically this consists of holding my finger up in the air to see how I feel about each number. I may just need to kill myself before this week ends.