This morning started out rather uncomfortable. My ex-minion was waiting in the parking lot for us. He started apologizing as soon as he got close, he was sorry, he was drunk, he was an idiot, he’s sorry…
Bill cut him off with a terse “Pack your shit, you are going to Oklahoma.” and we walked past him. Not before I saw the look of surprised happiness on his face. Then he followed us in thanking us for not firing him.
When we got the the elevator, Bill looked at GG again and told him that I was going to be in Bill’s office while GG packed his shit. GG had already done that and it was in his car because and he had already written his letter of resignation in the hopes of being allowed to quit rather than being fired.
Email. Flipping email. To my company address. What the heck are they teaching kids these days?
Celebrity Culture. Everything is done publicly. Nothing is private.
Cities 97 (Twin Cities radio station) had this band whose name I can’t remember in their Studio C today. They have a hit on the radio and I’m kicking myself that I can’t remember their right now. Anyway, they were asked about Twitter and they said they avoid it because people post to these places like they think they’re posting to their private diary, but a million people see it.
And that’s kind of it. Facebook, Twitter, boards like this. People say really private things in public spaces and don’t think anything of it. Email is thought of as private, since it is only between the two of you. No thought at all that “oh shit, I just put that in writing”.
I think you are right, Chimera. GG is 23. He probably grew up sharing everything online, but how could he not know that it never goes away?
Waves hand, the problem is over. I’ll probably never see GG again. I gave HR a list of things I want in a new minion and sat in on an interview.
Nava, Bill wants to go all traditional on my butt as well. Its NOT our money yet. Bill wants me to feel that way, but I don’t. I will think of it that way on July 4th. So maybe I’m traditonal as well, in different ways.
Anyways, during lunch, Bill asked me if I had scrolled past the pics to the prices. Of course I hadn’t, so cell phone ensued and they aren’t diamonds, they are carbon zerconia (or how ever those fake diamonds are spelled). He wants me to sparkle and he knows that I’ll probably never wear them again (except for my wedding ring, which we picked out together.)
In fairness to your ex-minion, he at least did realize that this was stupid when he sobered up. I’m glad he didn’t try to minimize it, and he realized just how serious a transgression it was.
I know this because I once embarrased myself at work, replying to an e-mail about alternate engine oil additives that could be based on other metals. Turns out, zirconium is an element on the periodic table. You’d think Chem Engineer (me) would’ve known that…
I still maintain that it would’ve been a marketing disaster, telling people you were putting zirconium into their engine crank case (“What, like the fake diamonds? In my engine??”). Instead, they went with molybdenium. Which is at least amusing, since no one can pronounce that.
“Did you see that email? rant rant rant”
What email are you talking about
“The one in the mailbox”
Yeah, there’s 40 emails there. Narrow it down.
“Oh, I guess it’s in my personal mailbox”
:rolleyes:
Seriously. Stop fucking assuming that I know exactly what you are talking about at all times and to what you are referring. I’m doing my own fucking work over here. It is considered polite to, when initiating conversation, give the other party some details as to what the holy blue fuck you’re on about. I’m getting seriously fucking tired of trying to guess.
Me: Do you have a request for Jane Smith?
CG: <5 minutes of looking> No, nothing for John Smith.
Me: I said Jane Smith.
CG: Where’s the email?
Me: Since I’m asking you if you have one, what other possible email are you talking about?
CG: Where is she asking if we have a request?
Me: The email at the top of the group box, from her, if you really need to see it.
CG: Who is the request for?
Me: For her, like I keep telling you. Like she asks in the one sentence in that email. Like is given in the form lower down in that email. **Now are you working on one for her or not? **
CG: No, I don’t have a request for John Smith.
Me: :smack:
Have I mentioned lately how much I dislike the head salesweasel for the company lately? No? I very much dislike that guy.
He tried to throw me under the bus today for something that happened two weeks ago that he called me about and we discussed and solved on the phone together. At least I THOUGHT it was solved. All it took was for him to put in a group block that wasn’t showing up on my system. Somehow today this morphed into me not knowing how to make reservations under the group block and not forcing in reservations under the shoulder dates (which, to be honest, I didn’t know I could force in under those circumstances, so that was me not having that information in the first place). HOWEVER. The block was not showing up at all under any of the dates when we had this conversation two weeks ago.
Fortunately for me, the bus zoomed past me. Both managers know the head salesweasel likes to blame underlings for his incompetence and oversights so I wasn’t in any trouble at all. I’d also like to point out that the conversation I had with the head salesweasel is recorded on the surveillance camera, as are all the conversations I have on the phone. The lobby camera is located right over the phone! :rolleyes:
And today we hit yet another usual marker of a crappy company to temp for - reception cover! I. Don’t. Do. Reception. Work. But I work in an office, and I’m a woman, so I must love to do reception work, right? :rolleyes:
This reminds me of the time that our receptionist quit and they powers-that-be suggested that us support folk answer the phones since we already had coverage set up. Ummmm…no.
While my lack of desire for doing such a thing did not dissuade them, the realization that we are paid about 5 times what the receptionist is, on average, sunk it home (since they would have had to hire another techie to make up for the time spent on the phone).
Vaguely work-related mini-bitch the first:
Our office’s building features an employee cafeteria. This is not the problem - it’s nice to not have to leave the building to get a hot meal in cases of inclement weather and/or laziness. The problem is that the hallway leading up to the cafeteria always smells like one of my favorite indulgences in life: hole-in-the-wall Americanized Chinese food.
However, the cafeteria does not serve hole-in-the-wall Americanized Chinese food. It serves things like baked chicken breasts, sandwiches, and has an “I’m being totally virtuous except for all this Thousand Island glopped all over everything” salad bar. None of which is remotely like crappy Chinese food. So as I’m heading to the salad bar in a rosy glow of virtuous good intentions, I’m overwhelmed with the desire for crispy orange beef, a craving which is decidedly not satisfied by raw spinach and croutons. Vaguely work-related mini-bitch the second:
I haven’t worn heels in a while. Now that I’m back from leave, I’ve work heels two days in a row, and mah dawgs are barkin.’
This “paperless office” crap sucks. I work in a conservative law firm, and a lot of the attorneys have been working with the same clients and paper files for twenty or thirty years. The head bean-counter is breathless over the idea of getting rid of all paper and saving money on file storage.
Now I have to categorize, describe, page-count and bar-code every bit of filing to prepare it for scanning. Preparing my filing took ten or twenty minutes a day before and now takes three to four hours a day. To top it off, the system is not really equipped to deal with how my attorneys do their work: they exchange emails which attach drafts and underscores of documents, over and over again, all day. Every e-mail is printed out for filing. Other law departments here do not deal with the voluminous exchange of multiple drafts. But I’ve got to label every last stinking bit so it can go through a scanner.
My job has become a mind-numbing labor-intensive data entry position.
And of course, printing a physical copy for filing and one directly to PDF wouldn’t make sense. Well, it would, but since TPTB haven’t considered the option it’s now unacceptable - it’s not in the procedure!
(Having flashbacks to The Client From Hell)
teela brown, please tell me that I’m reading your post wrong and that you really aren’t scanning paper print-outs of electronic documents to put back into electronic form. I’ve read it 3 times and I’m so afraid that I’m right. That sort of stupidity makes my brain hurt.
purplehorseshoe, I totally hear you. I’ve spent the last 7 years wearing comfy work boots, jeans and button down cotton shirts. I clean up pretty well, but the shoe thing is just kicking my butt.
You read it right. Sometimes the e-mailed documents are in Adobe .pdf form, sometimes in Word form, somtimes in Excel, but they all must be printed out, pages counted, bar-code-tagged, and scanned in using our special “searchable text” scanners.
We have the option of keeping the paper versions, as well, for those attorneys who don’t want to deal with online documents.
All five of my attorneys are opting to keep the paper versions. So I’m doing all this work for exactly nothing.
