Work place Grumblings

Twelve in12

Reading
Queen’s Play ~ Dorothy Dunnett
The Other Boleyn Girl ~ Philippa Gregory
Myst: The Book of Ti’ana ~ Rand Miller

Finished
Mirror, Mirror ~ Gregory Macguire
Witchling ~ Yasmine Galenorn
Changeling ~ Yasmine Galenorn
Something Wicked ~ Catherine Mulvany
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ~ J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ~ J.K. Rowling
Myst: Book of Atrus ~ Rand Miller, Robyn Miller and David Wingrove
The Game of Kings ~ Dorothy Dunnett

I am struck, over and over again at the incompetence I discover in the world.  I am struck by the selfishness and blind stupidity of those beside me.  How did they live so long?  There are things at work I have definitly missed and look forward to each summer.  But there are also things I can easily do without.  Every time I return to work, there is an apprehension.  There is a lot to remember, procedures and rules and regulations.   Its sometimes hard to keep everything straight and organized, especially after nearly 10 months away from this place.  But I should not have been afraid, cause instantly I fell back into the swing of things.  It wasn’t even 10am and I felt like I’d been here for weeks.  There are some changes, but nothing to drastic.  I remember all of this and in the end, my training from the law firm kicks in.  I can juggle phones and people and directors and anything Ro can throw my direction.

What frustrates and really pisses me off more than anything is being treated like an idiot.  There are too many people here who have that attitude, like we are all their underlings.  John is the boss.  But not once has he spoken or treated any of us as less than a human, less than someone worthy of his time, someone beneath him.  Yes, he’s the boss.  And yes, he’ll get pissed at us sometimes.  Yes, he tells us what to do and sometimes overrules our plans.  But not once does he look at us or treat us like babies.  There are others here who think everyone else is beneath them; we are here to serve their every need.  That attitude pisses me off.

Today was much more relaxed and easier to deal with, even though there were major problems this morning.  I really believe its because Ro wasn’t here.  She has to know every single phone call I take, constantly checking up on me, wanting to know who I’m talking to.  When she’s here, I don’t feel like we work together, I feel like I work for her.  I’m her underling, her support staff.  She gives me copy jobs, which I’m more than happy to do.  I really don’t mind copying.  I’ve done it since I was old enough to lift the top of the copier.  But she never explains to me why I’m copying things or how to organize them.  She vaguely explains that she needs three copies of this, but stapled one way and another done another way.  So when I bring her the copies, she says thats not what she needed – she needed two copies and one original, but clipped this way.  Not until I’ve gone through it a third time does she really explain what she needs the different piles for.  If she had done that in the beginning, I could have done it right the first time and even quicker than her micro-managing me.  I wanted to scream yesterday.  I had an original and a copy in my hands.  I asked her if either of these needed to go to the city office, or could I throw the copy out.  She tells me to throw them both out, but she needs a copy of the original for the city.  All in the same breath.  She doesn’t listen and she doesn’t look.  She’ll warn me against repeating anything I hear about counselors or campers in the office, but she’s the biggest gossip on camp!  She has to know every phone call and everyone’s business.  Which takes up half of her day, chasing everyone else around.  I don’t bother anyone.  I’ll say hello, how are you – but if they need me to do something or ask a question, they need to speak up.  I refuse to chase everyone down.  I really almost lost it yesterday. Ro had been complaining all day long that she didn’t have time to finish the bills.  She half taught me how to do it last year, but not until the very end of the year.  She also wouldn’t let me tweak the order in which things were done.  Again, micro-managing.  So she’s back to doing them all herself.  All day, she complained about not having time to get to them and having too many interruptions.  One of my jobs is to answer the phones.  Usually, people ask for her, knowing she’s the secretary and will have the answer.  But 9 times out of 10, I actually know the answer too.  A lot of it is knuckle-headed kind of stuff, like what’s the warehouse extension or what time do we go home.  So when they ask for her, I make some kind of answer that implies she’s unavailable or ask the reason for their call.  If I don’t know the answer, I’ll put them on hold to get it or let Ro just pick it up.  And there are some people who just need Ro, and I know this.  The exec. director from NYC gets put right through.  If he thought I could help, he wouldn’t ask for her.  He’d try me first.  But Ro got all upset and told me that if she wasn’t on the phone, she can always take the call.  My answer was that I was trying to keep knuckle-headed stuff off her radar as I know she has bills to complete.  She kinda huffed and said she can still answer the phone.  My back was to her so I just rolled my eyes, but I was sooo annoyed!  I told John about the next day and he said she’s being stupid.  She thinks she’s going to lose her job or something.  She doesn’t want anyone else to come in and take over.  But the flip side of that is she has mentioned her desire to retire.  She just believes that this place will just collapse without her.

The last person I worked with like this was Gloria at the law firm.  Gloria’s head got too big and she was fired.  I took over her job, created a manual for it and trained her replacements.  Now I don’t think Ro is going to get fired, but when she retires, I know John wants me to take over and rework this office to make it run smoother.  There’s really no reason why there needs to be two people sitting in this office.  Maybe two days a week in the summer, but not year round.  Today without her has been wonderful, except for all the problems.  We had two missing counselors  At first it was just on

e girl from Brazil who never showed up when she was due back from her day off, then we found out another Brazilian (male) from a different camp was also missing.  We eventually found them but there was some concern with them being foreign counselors.  One of the camp directors needed to leave because her mother had taken extremely ill.  The exec. director had decided to come up and there were a few other little problems that popped up during the day.  Somehow I managed to get 90% of my work done.  (I’m being lazy now and not working while the office is empty!)  Now granted this is a holiday and I don’t know how to do the bills, but still.  I’ve been pretty lazy most of the day to be honest.  So what excatly is her problem?  She gossips and chats a lot.  I’m all for talking and being polite, but oh my goodness!

Alright, enough for now.  I really should get back to work and be productive….