Doesn't it seem that way to you? I mean, yes, we're all told that officially the winter solstice is on December 21 and that it's the tipping point--after that, the days begin to lengthen again. But it seems to me that the midpoint falls a week or so earlier in the month. It seems to me that the days are very short for a long time before the 21st--a couple of weeks, anyhow. But after the 21st, they start to get longer very quickly. Like, last night, when I realized that the days are already long enough so that it's not completely dark as I drive home from work.
Wow. That was boring.
I've decided that, from now on, I'm going to have all my clothes made for me. I was designing things in my mind and picturing them on me and I decided that what I really need is to find someone with the sewing skills to make these designs a reality.
Also, I need some red shoes, but that's a different topic.
It's a wasteland here at the office today. Earlier this morning there were a couple of other people in my half o the building but this afternoon, I'm all alone in the world. In the front half of the building, the full staff of five people are all working away, but I have 60% of the place to myself. Tomorrow I must remember to bring my walkman.
I've been just plowing through the work today, enjoying myself enormously. Sadly, I remember a minute ago that I still have 26 pages of website content to edit* today. Blech.
Also, in a conference call with the Bowery Boys yesterday, I promised to do some research and get back to them in 48 hours with some new ideas. Granted, you and I know I said that mostly to get them to shut up and hang up the phone, but they don't, so I need to go find something that looks new and wonderful for them. Double-blech.
I love my job. I wish they'd leave me alone to do it.
My own personal ChaosManager, Vela, was saying yesterday that she needs to figure out a way to "incent" me for all the work I do.
First, of course, I wince at the incenting. I do wish people wouldn't "incent" me. It makes me cringe. But I don't argue with her, because I'm too flattered.
I also don’t point out that they already "incent" me every other week. It's called a paycheck.
Next, I realize that she also said that coming to work in the morning is starting to make her sick at her stomach, so who knows if she'll be here long enough to really follow through? But it's the thought that counts (unless you want to go shopping), so I'm pleased at the compliment.
I have to work Friday. Although I feel for Vela and the now-departed Gidget, I'm not yet at the point where the aggravations of this place outweigh my interest in the work I'm doing, so I don't really mind.
I got fabulous loot at Christmas this year. Two new games (one PC, one GameBoy), DVDs, clothes (!!), edibles, smell-pretties, and I don't know what-all.
At the moment, the R.C. is having to fight me for the DS every evening so she can play her new game. I'm completely enthralled with Harvest Moon (recommended by Rapunzel) and am actually musing over breaking the budget with a $130 indulgence in a second DS, so I don't have to be generous and let the R.C. play with (her own) machine. (Not seriously. I'm mindful of the fact that I have another $2,500 worth of work that needs to be done on my car. I'm just not good at sharing.)
Which reminds me that I owe Rapunzel a letter, and I need to box up the old games I promised her (along with some books I think the L-i-K-S might like) and get them sent off as well.
Which chore leads inevitably to reminding me that I am, in fact, at work. I should be working.
But first--a trip to the kitchen. Because life is too short not to eat custard muffins when the opportunity arises.
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* I could have declined the honor, but I know that if I don't watch them, these people will load up gibberish, bad grammar, and painful punctuation. I just can't let that happen.
I can't get any work done because the Google system I use is unexpectedly "down for maintenance" right now. I hope it's not some kind of major crash. It's only been five minutes and I'm bored silly.
I have two (two!) parcels over at the apartment office to be picked up. I can't remember anything I've ordered that hasn't arrived, but they may be In-bound Presents, who knows?
I sent a snarky email to Ashlyn, who lives in Vegas. She's always so smug about how she doesn't live near the mountains where it gets cold and snows. Since it snowed in Vegas this week, I wanted to give her a little nudge. :)
Yesterday was the office's holiday party--a potluck lunch and a gift exchange. It was fun--everyone was stealing the "good gifts" from TeamChaos and the people who got unwanted gifts were trying to convince each other that cheese spreaders or old flower vases were just what they wanted. I wound up with a pack of playing cards and a Starbucks card, so I'm happy. :)
I don't know how much is on the Starbucks card, but I don't care--even if it's just $5, one latte is better than no latte! Sometimes I'm amazed (and wistful) to remember how I used to have one or two lattes every day, as a matter of course.
Today, I came in and loaded newsletter stories into the intranet, a job that reception is supposed to be doing now except that DebLor found the step-by-step directions, with pictures, I wrote for her just too confusing.
Then I did final edits on the text for six webpages we paid the Crazy George Company to write for us, wondering all the while why if we're paying "experts" they couldn't manage to get little things like grammar and punctuation right.
Then I reviewed the final text for six print flyers that my own personal ChaosManager, Vela, has been developing with an outside marketing company for the last six months and found myself curious to know how four people could have already reviewed them, multiple times, and not seen the grammar and punctuation errors.
First, as I know I've said before, anyone relying on me for the final word on correct punctuation is in real trouble.
Second, I can't do more for DebLor than I've already done. I wrote her directions on how to do it. IWhen I think that I had to teach her how to make a new folder in her "My Documents" folder on the network, I despair.
I need to be surrounded by smarter people. Stupid makes me crazy. (In this case, "stupid" is defined as, "people without the courage to just open the program and teach themselves to do what has to be done.")
Anyhow.
That all wasted two hours of my day that I'd like to have back now. If I'd known that Google was going to go down, I'd have saved those projects....
I have just a small, few more things to pick up for Christmas and then I'm done! I can't decide whether to try to get it done on my lunch break today, or hope that tomorrow's snowstorm isn't so severe that I can't sneak out then. They've lowered the forecast to a 10% chance of snow.
Blah, blah, blah. Bored and boring.
Me, for instance. I'm already starting to forget how this was the job I enjoyed, the one I actually looked forward to coming in to each day. I guess I had it better than most people. I got nine months of "hey, I'm having fun and they're paying me!"
Now I've got, "If I don't show up, they won't pay me" and I've done that before. Often.
Bleah.
Vela is still wonderful and still taking on 125% more than she can possibly accomplish, in an attempt to keep me from wigging out and to give me time to do the part of my job that actually produces results, but I know she's stressing and knowing that stresses me.
She's organizing and eliminating projects and outsourcing where she and I both agree it's a good idea* and generally doing everything humanly possible to make this a do-able thing for both of us - at least for the foreseeable future. (She may reach the end of her rope before I do. I expect her to bail out after the first of the year.)
She had a call with the Bowery Boys today and (bless her little heart) left me entirely out of it. I need to buy her a present.
Maybe, although she made it clear that she doesn't 'expect' or require me to work a lot of unpaid hours, I can see that she does have very high hopes that I'll come in to the office on Monday mornings with a nice chunk of my workload already completed over the weekend. So, I guess, starting this next weekend, I need to start giving the company a few extra hours.
After all, it is a paycheck. And health insurance.
Still.
Bleah.
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* Remember the Crazy George company - the group I mentioned a few weeks ago who were hired, as very expensive consultants (and paid up-front) to massage our s e o efforts and give us some high-level advice on how to be entirely more wonderful? (You know the ones - the ones who came in with a "plan" for how to make us wonderful that was practically a carbon-copy of Gidget's NLP from this past spring.)
Anyhow.
Remember the Argonut Afield, the Hissy 'Nut who pitched a fit because no one left at the office is willing to take his calls at 9:00 on Saturday night or whatever other weird time he decides he wants to talk about his account?
In what I instantly warned was an ill-advised moment of enthusiasm, our Crazy George Company Rep offered to take on the Hissy 'Nut -- take him off our hands and give him the 24/7 service he was demanding. I was overruled and today, the Crazy George Company Rep and the Hissy 'Nut had their first one-on-one conversation. At the end of the call, the CGCR called Vela and said he wanted nothing to do with the Hissy 'Nut. He was, in his words, "scared of the guy" after listening to how many 180 degree turns the Hissy 'Nut got through in that one phone call.
So, you know, it's not just me. These 'Nuts really are--nuts.
(You may not have doubted it, but I know I'm prone to exaggeration sometimes, and I value an objective opinion when I start thinking things are getting ridiculous. So, you know, I'm happy to have the "experts" say that the Hissy 'Nut has unrealistic expectations and they don't want to work with him.)
This week continues its trend of ickiness.
First, not to go all TMI or anything, painkillers tend to upset my stomach. Apparently the massive (for me) dosage I took on Tuesday afternoon, after throwing myself down the stairs, was--a massive mistake.
I am--okay--today. I ate nothing but a handful of soda crackers/saltines for the first 24 hours, then lashed out into a mad gorge on half a dozen triscuits yesterday afternoon. And then dinner (lightly) last night. So far, so good.
Lessons learned:
A. I am buying aspirin to use for these little (mis)adventures in the future.
B. I am never having another little misadventure
This morning was the first conference call/meeting with the Argonuts Afield Overall Internet Group since Gidget left. (There's a core group of about half a dozen Argonuts Afield who make up the committee.
In my innocence, I thought the OIG, whose mission is to evaluate proposed online changes and improvements from an "in the field" point of view, used this time to, you know, listen to us say what we're doing or thinking of doing and give us feedback on how they thought said changes might affect the locations around the country.
Not.
Apparently they think that membership in this ostensibly-for-the-good-of-everyone committee is really best-utilized for whining about their own personal business woes.
One lunatic, if you can believe it, was pissy because Gidget was the only person who would let him call her at 9:00 on Saturday night to chat about his campaign. And now she's gone.
Not, you understand, that there's anything wrong with his campaign, because there isn't and it's doing very well, but if he feel like chatting about it (or suggesting ridiculous and unlikely changes), he thinks the $95 a month fee he pays entitles him to the attention of someone from the home office 24/7.
By the end of the meeting, my own personal ChaosManager, Vela, had Had Enough. She called her boss, Jason, and is preparing to tell him that she's been doing most of Gidget's job for a week now (in addition to her, Vela's, own job and, let us not forget, the job of Penelope, who left last spring) and she's done doing it. Life is just too short to waste her energy on that group of misogynistic jerks.
On the good news side of the equation, it turns out that I didn't sprain my ankle. I did some damage, yes, but it seems to be all soft-tissue stuff. Swelling and a giant bruise. I can walk without pain and wriggle all the bits that are supposed to wriggle.
I might buy me a pair of boots and walk right out of here.
*sigh*
Gidget called this morning. She has a meeting on Tuesday with a potential free-lance client who has 300 locations. If it comes through, she wants me to leave here and come help her service that $28k/month account. So, yes, I'm considering a change, less than a year after I was grateful to get this job.
Gidget and I and Vela all know that Vela is about a sixteenth of an inch from the end of her rope and getting ready to bail on this place. And I am not going to be the last one standing, when this department goes from five people to one.
Or even when the whole company goes under--which looks more possible every day.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:41 PM | Comments (2)Even though the month started well, with an extra day off on December 1 (making a five-day Thanksgiving weekend), it's been going downhill from there.
December 3 - they announced layoffs at my company. I survived, but Gidget did not, and now I'm in the uncomfortable position of having had a friend help me to get a job, and then all-but taking away her job a few months later.
December 5 - My car's heater hasn’t seemed to be working for the last couple of weeks. I took the car to the ship. The damage? They found $3,800 worth of stuff they thought needed to be done. Only $900 was "urgent" or "safety-related," so I had that done now. The other $2,900 will have to be done no later than early March.
December 8, yesterday, I worked from home because, of course, I had no car. By the time the poor R.C. arrived home after work and was ready to take me to get my car, the snow had started.
Ugh.
Today, December 9, one of the Argonuts Afield, in direct contradiction of the rules and our constant warnings, made a mass of changes to their own campaign--changes that had the potential to damage the business of the other four locations that share that campaign. I got in a snit, deleted all their changes, emailed Vela to contact them instantly and tell them to knock it off, and took myself outside for a consoling smoke (The NSP? Not such a success so far.). On the way, distracted by my furious musings, I missed a step on the stairway and tumbled down.
Those who know me know I'm prone to doing that about once a year. Which fact does not make it any less painful when it happens. (Last time, I scraped myself all up and cracked a rib as well. Looked at form that perspective, I was lucky to just wrench an ankle this time.
Anyhow. I brought myself home while I could still drive, wrapped my ankle, and logged back in to send apologies to the management staff and try to get some actual work done.
Except that I decided that first I should give y'all an update to explain the long silence.
I'm working through pain!
How unfair is it that I don't have any potato chips?