I went to bed earlier, slept longer, ran into less traffic on the commute, and--she's still driving me bonkers today.
We have a survey job She needs to code into two different software programs today and tomorrow. She was looking through the manual and practicing on old surveys and I told Her that was, yes, the best way to figure it all out. And Bernie told Her that he'd have the "live" survey to Her in 30 minutes.
What did She do? Stopped and spent 20 minutes wiping down tables, stacking things on the floor, and generally moving stuff around because She has an idea that She'd like the server machines in a different location next week.
Sigh. She interrupts when we're talking to Her, so determined to contribute to the conversation that you can tell She's been scouring Her brain for something to say instead of listening.
Whatever.
I talked to Bernie about Her. I warned him that I think She'll be able to learn the work (but not to expect too much too fast--remember, it took me three months to get comfortable in the job) but that he was going to have to watch for Her living Her personal life on company time.
The person who works my job is on their own a lot of the time. Even now that we're in Boulder, Bernie doesn't seem to feel obligated to be in the office five days a week or eight hours a day. He really needs someone who can be trusted to keep getting the work done when he's not watching them.
He's gonna miss me when I'm gone.
So tired....
Okay, if She works out around Here, I'll be a bit surprised.
Not that She'd agree. No, after a whopping 7 hours of training, spread over two days, She feels She's got a good handle on everything.
She must feel that way, otherwise why would She have made or taken five personal calls today, most of them while I was in the middle of a sentence trying to teach her about something?
Otherwise, why, when I was trying to tell Her something that I assured Her was going to be personally important to Her, did She decide that making a call to a friend to see if She'd accepted a new position, was more important? If you don't send Bernie your timesheet every other Wednesday, you will not get paid every other Friday. She felt that not only Her phone call, but a discussion about how small the calendar was displaying on the monitor were more important than understanding how the payroll & timesheet process work. Her (paycheck) loss.
Maybe it's just me? I know my work style doesn't match everyone's. Many people enjoy spending a significant percentage of their work days exchanging personal anecdotes and family stories. I've never been one of those people.
Also, I was assuming that with a maximum of 20 hours for training ahead of us, we'd both prefer to focus on the training and not bother to play Getting To Know You since we won't be meeting again after this week, but She shows a marked tendency to drift toward personal chit-chat in preference to doing actual work. At the drop of a hint, She's wandering off into stories about Her spouse's shoulder surgery or Her horses or Her part-time job or anything but what She's ostensibly being paid to think about, which is learning this job.
Without in any way meaning to disparage the pets/children/spouses of those of you who possess those accoutrements, I must say that my interest in the p/c/s of near-strangers is non-existent. I am not making this 80-mile round-trip journey every day to listen to Her chat about Her hobbies or hubby.
Today did contain one little giggle, though.
When Bernie called to discuss a couple of database issues, She took Her lunch and went to the other room. Later She explained that She didn't need to be in on those discussions. Bernie has assured Her that She doesn't need to worry about the databases since they won't be an issue after this week. I disabused Her of that notion promptly.
She--did not look pleased.
I--do not care. You can't just take the parts of a job you think will be easy or uncomplicated. Also, what kind of fool thinks they don't have to be involved in something important enough to have been allocated three training sessions in three days?
At that point, I made a point of mentioning to her that Bernie had complained about a bad phone connection and that he was going to call me back. It's anybody's guess as to why she felt that was the appropriate moment for her to tie up the phone setting up an address book, choosing a new ring, and exploring the other features. If he did try to call me back, I probably won't know about it until tomorrow.
Sigh. After I arrived this morning, it took me forever to stop Her chatting with Bernie and filling out insurance paperwork and fussing over how the fax was set and wondering why the printer made so much noise when printing and a dozen other minor nothings she kept bringing up.
I know She has to be tired of "being trained." She's not half as tired of it as I am of listening to myself repeat all of this stuff to Her, but I'd hoped She was smart enough to stay with it, understanding that no employer pays someone to spend a week training you if they don't think you're going to need trained.
In the end (thanks in no small part to Bernie feeling needy today) I'd be surprised to learn that we spent as much as an hour training.
The one thing I most wanted to do, an introduction call with Her to our largest client, got lost in the shuffle, which is going to offend the client who was waiting for our call and cause Her problems when she starts working with them later.
Okay, honestly, I think it got lost in the rising tide of my indignation. About the third time I was in the middle of explaining something and I looked up to see her dialing a call or walking out of the room with her phone pressed to her ear.... Well, I'll admit, I spent a fair amount of the day wondering whyinthehell I had bothered to show up today.
Two more days.... Two more days....
Whoosh. Training someone for hours a day takes it out of you.
I thought I had a plan and I was organized and ready for this but the reality is never as clean as you hoped it would be. (Also, a training plan has to change depending upon the skills and abilities of the person you hire....)
She's doing reasonably well so far. I've thrown a lot of information at Her in the last couple of days and She's struggling, but so far, so good.
She's got a sort of ADD thing going. In the middle of a sentence, She'll interrupt me to ask what some half-erased word on the white board is. I assume these are the moments when Her brain starts to overload. I'm sorry, but I can't really schedule long or frequent breaks for someone training only 3 or 4 hours a day. We're already breaking for 30 minutes for lunch (promptly at 12:00) every day.
She's borderline hypoglycemic so She can't have lunch late. Which is fine, we all have issues. And She needs a snack, mid-morning, which is also cool except for the weirdness of looking over at someone and seeing them going down on a large-salted pretzel stick. (But I tell myself I have a perverse imagination and from Her perspective, She's just snacking.) And, as She mentioned today, She has some kind of foot or bone or something ailment (I wasn't really listening) that's going to make it very difficult for Her to work the Conferences, which require being able and willing to haul ass around a huge conference hall, almost nonstop for ten or twelve hours.
In short, when She said She was physically able to do this job, I'm not sure She understood what the job was, but four (3-1/2!) more days and it's not my problem. She was the only one willing to take the job.
It's 1:30 now. I'm assuming She will need to be leaving in the next half-hour since She's working out her notice at Her part-time job.
I'm determined to have a better 'tude this week. Today, I managed pretty well.
My back is tired again. My own fault. Bernie warned me that that white board was too heavy for me to lift and hold while he drilled it to the wall, but from my perspective, it wasn't that much heavier than the network back-up batter thingy he wanted to prop under it. Sigh. He was right and I was wrong.
Anyhow. 3-1/2 hours today training Her, the shortest day we have scheduled for this week. She seems to be picking things up well, which is good. We did software today--all of those proprietary software programs the company uses, the online UPS account, the bookkeeping software (which She already knows, thank goodness), the mapping software, etc.
Tomorrow, clients. At 9:30 again, but it was my idea. It wasn't that hard to get there by 9:30 today (for some weird reason traffic was abnormally light) and it occurred to me that the more hours I actually put in this week, the fewer I'll "owe" Bernie after my last day.
Also I have a sekrit fantasy that I get Her up to speed by Friday and I don't have to go in. At this point, I'd trade that last day's pay for an early parole.
In addition, today's joys included office tidying (the aforementioned whiteboard installation, re-storing the things Bernie tidied away and moved on Saturday since he put things where he found a space to hold them and not in any rational order) and sneaking around trying to get in touch with the clients who owe us checks. Bernie doesn't want Her to know anything about the problem we've been having. (Because, you know, late payments will never happen again, so She doesn't need to know what our policy is or who to contact. Sheesh.)
He has a belief that it's necessary to hide from Her that our main client is behind on payments. Since the clients sent the checks but the stupid post office isn't forwarding our mail, I don't see why this has to be a Dark Secret, but whatever.
He asked me twice today what my training schedule was going to be. I consider it a triumph that I didn't answer, not once, "Precisely what I said it was going to be in the detailed email I sent you on Friday."
He's also trying to get me to do a lot of other tasks this week, when She isn't around. Call me crazy, but I think it's the person who's going to be there next week who needs to know who the phone service is through, what the property manager's address is, how the phone/fax combination is supposed to be set up, etc. Part of what she is going to have to do is nursemaid Bernie* so the sooner she gets used to it the better. I'm working with her when she's in the office to get these things done. Bernie's twitchy about it but I don't really care. He'll be grateful in a month when he's not faced with her saying, "I don't know. Anne did that before I worked here." (Also? She's new and all gung-ho. Let her deal with the petty aggravations. I've done my time.)
I consider that 90% of my job this week is training Her. Aside from that, I have no objection to spending an hour doing other things if I determine they're not necessary for her to be involved in, but I keep firmly in mind that what's he's mostly doing is trying to "get his money's worth" out of me this week, and that's really not something I'm particularly interested in being involved in.
It's a mistake to blog at 10:30 at night. I'm too tired to be cheerful.... And our internet access is being weird. This worries me. We've had a cable modem for years and never had any problems before.
_____________________
* Seriously. Nursemaiding. Today I had to refuse several times to place a call to the payroll company to make a change in our account for him. They don't talk to me. I am not on the list of "approved" people on the account. Only Bernie is on the account. I cannot make any changes. Only Bernie can make changes. He spent four times as long and four times as much energy coming out and trying to 'delegate' the call to me as it would have taken to just pick up the phone and call them. I had to tell him that three times before it sunk in.
Today's daily update contains...nothing of importance. I was working from home, so Bernie had few opportunities to annoy me.
He did take advantage of two such opportunities, though.
(1) He called and demanded three or four things he knew I couldn't do unless I was at the office, and then got pissy when I pointed that fact out to him. Although he was in the office and none of these things were beyond his abilities, he chose to do none of them himself.
(2) And then we had a conference call with his new-hire (he had to hire the only woman who would take the job, although he didn't really think she was suitable. I told you this, right? That none of the well-qualified candidates he liked would take the job for the money he was offering.) In it, he announced that her time isn't really her own next week since she's doing part-time work, and he offered to her that I'd come in at 9:00 every day next week to train her.
10:00 to 4:00, you jackass. That's what you offered. That's what we agreed.
Five more work days. I wonder if I can make it?
Posted by AnneZook at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)Well, drat.
I was supposed to meet a friend after work last night, but I completely forgot. I was so exhausted from fighting with the chaosmonster that I went home and just collapsed. Luckily for me, this morning said friend admitted that she'd blown me off as well. She sent me an IM yesterday, saying she wouldn't be there, but I didn't get it.
So, I'm back in Boulder today. Today was my first day of enjoying a Bad Weather Commute. What was a misty rain in Denver turned into rain, mixed with snow, in Boulder. Not much snow, fortunately.
The office looks marginally more like an office. At least half the network is up and running. I've sent Bernie emails about the things he still needs to do (without volunteering to do any of them myself) like upgrade our email account to allow for adding more names and notify all of the clients about our new phone number (we had to change it again yesterday) and fax number, hire a new database guy to replace Scooby, etc., etc., etc.
Sigh. I'm tired, I have a raging headache, and I didn't sleep well last night. I don't want to be here.
The R.C. said last night that when actually going to the office every day took an act of will, you've stayed too long. I've been at this point with jobs and bosses before, but never after just a year. I can't decide if my tolerance has just dropped dramatically in recent years (quite possible) or if Bernie really is that much more of a lunatic than previous employers? (Or maybe it's because it's just the two of us...so it's lunacy undiluted.)
He's already called me twice today. He was headed for a meeting in Denver and called to see if I'd come into the office at 9:30, the way he told the network guy I would yesterday (in clear defiance of our 10-4 agreement) and once after to talk about our abortive attempt to get our mail forwarded (long story, but the tagline is, "not gonna happen") and how we're going to have to call everyone we actually want mail from and make sure they have our new mailing address.
#1 - I didn't arrive until 9:50. As I tried to explain to Bernie, leaving my own home at any time before 9:00 is just a waste because I lose so much time to traffic trying to get through downtown Denver. I can leave home at 9:15 and arrive at the office by 10:00. Today I left home at 8:30 and arrived at the office at 9:50. A complete waste of time and gas.
#2 - Tom Thumb, the network guy did not come scampering down here when I arrived and called him. As he suggested previously, he has a full-time job and can only do stuff for Bernie when he has a few minutes free. There is no point in Bernie being determined to make "appointments" for the guy to come and do Bernie's stuff. Tom Thumb isn't able to do that and he's not going to risk his full-time employment for the joys of doing an hour's worth of work a week for Bernie.
I'm doing bookkeeping at the moment. Reconciling payments received, generating invoices, sending emails to clients whose checks got lost in the Great Mail NonForwarding Debacle Of '07, trying to figure out who we should have received bills from and didn't, etc.
Since Bernie's in Denver this morning, there's been no drama yet.
11:52 a.m. Well, yet another commute to Boulder safely under my belt. One of those inexplicable highway slowdowns delayed me for 15 minutes this morning. You know the kind I mean--traffic slows and then stops and inches forward at a crawl and then starts moving freely again and no one can figure out what the cause was.
Arriving this morning I discovered two things:
(1) The last shelving unit that Bernie was supposed to bring in last Thursday so that we could finish unpacking boxes is not here. He's bitching about the boxes still sitting around but I don't know what he expects me to do about it.
(2) The network is not set up and the T1 is not hooked up. In spite of me telling him when we spoke at 11:20 yesterday to call the man and confirm he would be here at 1:00 yesterday, Bernie did not call him.
He was in a snit because he wanted me to call. I pointed out that he was the one in the office. I didn't have the number, which was written down on the pad next to my computer, and it was up to him to schedule when he wanted someone to come in. All of that just made him more irritated. I? Am not a secretary.
The idea of me calling Boulder to ask some guy when he was available and then hanging up to call Bernie and give him the time just so he could tell me that wasn't convenient and to make it 30 minutes later and then hanging up and calling the guy back and making it 30 minutes later only to have Bernie call me again five minutes after that and tell me to call the guy again and ask him to call Bernie and confirm when he was headed over? Does not amuse me.
Bernie eventually called the dispatcher at 1:00 and by the time she tracked the man down, he didn't show up until 4:30. Bernie seemed to want points because he was here until 7:30 last night but from where I sit, it's his company. If anyone should be here until 7:30, it's the guy who owns the place, makes the most money, and brags that it's fifteen minutes from where he lives.
I suspect he did what he always does--called five companies and then signed with the cheapest one. You get what you pay for.
(1:17 p.m. - Just overheard Bernie talking to the new network free-lancer. Bernie was actually here until 6:45 last night. Why does he lie about stupid things?)
Later....
So, we had another little trauma about paying me. He's still determined that he's not going to pay me full-time between now and the time I leave because from his perspective, I'm not working full-time and if I am working full-time, I'm not doing things he wants to pay me to do, so why should he pay me?
So he wants to not pay me for this Friday because he doesn't see I have work I can do from home and he wants to pay me hourly for the hours I'm actually in the office next week unless I agree to be here for five days from 8:30 - 5:00 each day, in which case he'll pay me full-time, and no more working from home because while he had to concede that the work I was doing needed to be done, it's not work he wanted to pay anyone to do.
And, oh, by the way, how about I schedule to come in for a full day on Saturday, two weeks after my last day, and do a follow-up training (because he's just sure that I care as much as he does about the future of this company?) and while we're discussing training why doesn't he hire two people and I can train them both next week and he'll just keep the one that works out best at the end of the week.
An hour later I put the finishing touches to an email that essentially said that since he felt it was unfair to have to keep paying someone who wasn't going to be working for him any more in the future, I was happy to help him take care of the problem by leaving. Today.
Then I hit send and went about my work, which included interviewing a potential replacement while Bernie ran some errands.
Sigh. The thing about being passive-aggressive is that it's difficult (at least for me) to stay aggressive, or mad. I'm really more passive-snippy-passive. By the time he got back to the office, I'd calmed down (having vented all of my anger into the email) and before he could read it, I told him I'd sent it.
Then we had a nice little conversation. Much was discussed, but the bottom line is that I will fulfill my commitment to work until 3/23 and he will pass no remarks about how sad it is that he has to actually pay me.
Also he apologized and admitted that his wife has been ragging on him for two months about what a jackass he's being at home and he knows he's been wrong. He also admitted that he's been taking all of his frustrations out on me because I'm the only person around. And he's sorry.
So. Nine days left (okay, 8-1/2)
Before I leave the computer to work with pen and paper here in a few minutes, an update!
Bernie's only wigged out a couple of times today.
First, at the news (which I swear I told him before, but maybe not) that our bulk email provider is worthless and that if he's signing up new clients with thousands of names on their newsletter lists and complicated needs in terms of feedback and forms, he needs to drop this "cheapest-thing-he-could-find" service and get a real, full-featured provider.
The other time was, as near as I could tell, just on general principles.
He called and asked me if Buehler was out of the country or something. Since I haven't worked for Buehler since 11/05, even though he still shared an office with us, I'm not privy to his schedule. This news did not make Bernie happy (although naturally I didn't say it that rudely) but he was made marginally less tense by the revelation that Buehler called me a couple of hours ago to get a password for a computer. It appears that Buehler isn't returning Bernie's calls any more.
Then Bernie wanted Sassy's personal contact information. I don't know how to contact Sassy, she who was once Buehler's assistant but who moved on to a new job last fall. Bernie was actually pretty rude about that and I'm all, what?
She lives in New York, okay? She worked remotely from New York after she left Denver a month after I signed on to this circle of insanity (with Alvin and the Chipmunk, remember?) four years ago. We weren't close personal friends or anything. Since he's in the office, with access to his saved personal email and all of the contact files, I don't understand why he doesn't just look for that information in the files.
I keep having fantasy mental arguments with him, ones where he crosses the line just enough to justify me walking about today and leaving him with this mess. It's a bit distracting.
I'm also having imaginary conversations with him where I tell him, item by item, why I'm really leaving. That it's not the commute to Boulder, it's him.
I won't really say any of these mean things to him because, (a) I never burn bridges that way, and, (b) my disagreement is with who he seems to be, based on how he acts towards me and how I perceive his actions towards the clients and it's purely my perception. The fact that I agree 90% with what his last two employees (Tweenybopper and DiamondGirl) complained about in him doesn't make me right. It's not really who he is. 80% of the time he has no idea of how his words and his behavior sound to other people and it's not my place, flawed as I am, to be handing out rules and regulations for other people's behavior.
I'm going to hang onto that knowledge for the next eight days. :)
Bernie called. Not only does he want me to come up three days again this week, but he's afraid he's paying me to do "busywork" on those days I'm working from home.
He thinks that he might need me later, so he'd rather not pay me to do busywork now.
His idea? He should not have to pay me for the days I don't drive to Boulder this week but I should hold myself in readiness to work a couple of days after my last day and if I do, he will pay me then.
Isn't that nice? He's telling me he needs me too desperately to let me go, but that he doesn't feel I'm valuable enough that he should actually employ me.
"Busywork," for those of you wondering, is the stuff I do cleaning out the spam filter, rebooting the network servers in St. Louis, filing, trying to start and stop providers of various services as they go in and out of favor with him, getting the mail, answering the phones, cleaning the databases, answering questions from suppliers, etc. In other words, the stuff that has to be done to keep the place going but that he doesn't care about because he can't bill anyone for it.
So I told him no, I do not have flexibility on my end date and that no, I have decided that I am not available to do contract work for him after I leave.
You know what? There is no graceful way to say, "No, I will not keep working for you because I do not like you and I don't like you trying to get out of paying me today while you're telling me you want me to be available to you later when you feel you need me and you feel like paying me.
Also, he's in the middle of fighting with Scooby, the Database Boy about the hours Scooby is billing us for (far fewer than Scooby's spent on these projects, I'm sure) and I'm reminded of how last fall whenever DiamondGirl would submit a bill for the free-lance work she was doing for him, he'd call her and make her take hours off.
The R.C. was right. Two weeks was too much notice to give this guy, for my personal sanity. He needed two weeks because this month's invoicing hasn't been done and the new person will need trained on everything, but it was too much. I should never have agreed to stay on after the first of March.
I have not damaged my back but I certainly think I've worn it out in the last couple of weeks and yes, maybe I should have eased off of hauling things around but if I didn't set up the copier/fax machine and then fish out the printer and put it on the table where the network is supposedly going to be installed, then no one else would have done it and we'd never be able to print.
Hello. Boulder again.
Today, in theory, the internet and fax connections will be set up. I'm taking it on faith (a dangerous precedent) that the company Bernie arranged with to come and do whatever magic needed to be done to the phone lines in the building actually showed up and did it this morning. They assured me they didn't need access to the suite until 1:00, so I didn't try to get here at 7 a.m. for the set-up portion of the process.
Brooding.
Scooby the Database Boy is mad at me because of the huffy email I sent him on Friday. And also, one assumes, because of the huffy email Bernie sent him on Saturday. I wish, I honestly do wish I could figure out which one of them is crazier in this set-up, but I can't. I believe that Bernie believes in the numbers he has in his head and that he believes he's laid out his requirements clearly, in spite of the fact that I know that sometimes he believes imaginary things and only thinks he's saying what he means to say. I believe that Scooby believes he's worked hard, done a good job, and provided what we asked for, in spite of the fact that I've been told, more than once, that he was previously let go for incompetence.
The only thing I know is that what we need and what we got ain't the same thing.
No, I know one more thing. For some reason Scooby spent the weekend sending back to us the files we sent to him to create the Cago database. One presumes that Bernie told him to and I have a ghastly feeling that Bernie is going to want me to fill this week's slack time by going back and retracing our steps for the last four months to figure out whether or not the database we have is the database we should have. And I know that if he asks me to do that, I'll tell him that's my last day of employment.
When someone is paying you, they have a right to decide how you spend your time. However, when they want you to spend your time in ways you find ridiculous and/or menial, or cleaning up yet another of their messes, or doing things you're entirely unqualified to do, or some combination of those, you always have the option to pick up your hat and leave. The stuff I spend 70% of my time doing around matches neither my original job description nor my skill set.
Also, I realized on the drive up here today that having to drive to Boulder for a day of work is only 10% as stressful when I know that Bernie won't be in the office at this end. So, you know, it wasn't the commute that did me in. It was the crazy-factor.
Also, I had to top up my gas tank this morning. Hmph.
Sometimes I find myself wondering. Will you be glad when I'm working for a sane person, or will you find the blog boring?
Well, I gave notice, anyhow.
Although I hate to do that to someone while they're traveling, I sent Bernie an email telling him this arrangement isn't working out, isn't leaving me any time or energy to search for a new job, and that he has my official two-weeks notice. My last day will be 3/23.
Am I crazy? Should I have tried harder to gather the energy to job-hunt in the evenings?
Should I have the conversation I so badly want to have with him about how a major factor in my decision to just leave is my frustration with his policy of ignoring the actual work that needs to be done around there, of bidding jobs based on how much he thinks clients will pay and not how long it will take us to do them, and of pililng more and more stuff on his one employee under the theory that anyone he's giving a paycheck to regularly should just shut up and be grateful?
Or should I take the High Road and assume that the company's eventual failure (guaranteed unless he changes how he does things) is not my problem?
Hmmm?
Posted by AnneZook at 04:00 PM | Comments (3)I think this is one of those seminal moments when you really understand that you're not a kid any more. This 80-mile round-trip commute to Boulder, even just three days a week, is wearing me out.
I'm working from home today but I was so exhausted that I actually rolled out of bed only five minutes before I was scheduled to start work. (Fortunately, "working from home" means getting the computers(s) and phone turned on by 8:30, so it's not a major issue.)
Yesterday's 9-hour day didn't amuse me, either. Bernie and I had a deal that he'd only expect six hours work on the days I drive to Boulder. It was purely my own generosity (and my disinclination to listen to him bitch about it all) that made me volunteer to work from home for two hours every morning, for a total of seven on commute days. But, having done that, I don't expect to be kept in the Boulder office for seven hours after I arrive.
Nor do I expect to be expected to spend three hours in hard, manual labor every day I'm in Boulder, but I knew that was part of moving, so I'm not really bitching about having had to do it. I'm just bitching about not being young enough to do hard, manual labor without consequences any more.
There are other drawbacks. I had to gas up my car Wednesday! I just gassed it up last week. I'm accustomed to gassing up my car every 16 days or so, not every week. On the news last night, they said the price of gas is going back up. It's already back over $3 in places.
And highway driving, especially coming back to Denver, driving westerly into the setting sun, is making replacing my windshield (especially after this week's drive, when two more rocks added their share of damage to the glass) an ever-more urgent matter, which is going to cost money. (I carry a $500 deductible, so these smaller repairs are my problem.)
Not to mention the fact that if I'm going to keep making this commute, I need to put the car into the shop and get a tune-up and have it checked over really thoroughly. I suspect that I need shocks, among other things. I don't know what those cost, but they sound expensive, you know?
I'm dancing on the edge of dishonesty since I haven't yet notified my insurance agent that the discount I get for driving less than 10 miles each way to work every day no longer applies. I think I'm going to have to tell him next week. I wonder how much my premium will increase?
To be honest, I'm not sure I can afford to let Bernie keep paying me until the end of the month.
Still. Be strong, Anne! So what if you only make enough to cover rent/bills and fix the car up? The car needs fixed up anyhow and at least you'll get the bills paid. You can go 30 days without any extra money. You'll have rent money, food money, utility/credit card money, and car insurance (one hopes--how much will it increase?) money. Many people would consider themselves wealthy with all of that. As long as the car doesn't cost more than $700 or so to fix up, you'll survive.
Quite easily, in fact, so stop whining.
Okay, so Bernie wanted to plug the breaking-things peripheral into my computer and I objected but then I let him but then it didn't work and then he said, "maybe you have to install the software to make it work" and I said, "did it come with software" and he said "yes" so I said "yes you have to install the software."
And I thought, "just how stupid is it possible to be, anyhow? But I didn't say it out loud.
Also he is mad because the computer diagnostic program doesn't seem to have worked any magic on his laptop and because I didn't see any error/diagnostic messages related to his problem.
Even though he gave me a pile of things to do today in his absence (in addition to actually creating an office out of this mess) calling me four times on his drive home to give me new things he'd thought of and didn't want to do himself, he seems annoyed that I didn't sit there and watch his computer for an hour to make sure--well, there's no telling what he thought I'd be able to do as I sat there watching a diagnostic I didn't understand try to make sense of a problem I wasn't clear about, but he clearly feels that had someone been sitting there watching the diagnostic program end and shut itself off, the results would have been different.
I'm here. Bernie's here.
Bernie's leaving.
He seems to have shorted out the USB ports on his laptop. Also the cable he uses to connect to the internet. So he's going to go work from home. I can't believe I made an 80-mile round-trip drive to work with him today because he desperately needed us both to be in the office but now he's not going to be here.
All of which is fine because I have a lot to do and I could use the time, but he also just called the computer warranty support line again about his laptop and he's telling them he just got back to town this morning and that the laptop that I got repaired for him on Friday was not repaired properly.
In other words, he broke it yesterday and he's lying to get tech support because the thing he broke it with was a third-party peripheral.
Every time I start to weaken, to think maybe I could do this drive two or three times a week if necessary, he does something insane or immoral that reminds me of why I really, really, really don't want to.
Money and madness, that's what I need to remember. He won't pay the money the job is worth and he's a lunatic.
No, wait....
He's going to go get a different laptop and come back to work. But the internet cable is out, so what good with that do? No idea. But his idea is that he can use my desk and internet connection to work. When I pointed out that I need the internet to check my mail, he said, "what do you need mail for?"
I can't just stand up and leave now because he's crazy. Tomorrow is payday. I need to hold onto that thought.
He's been a lot crazier than this. Frequently. Why, today, is the sound of him sitting in there cursing the telephone help line and the computer and the carpet and everything else getting to me so badly? (Also, why is the sound of him lying to warranty support about his "secretary" handling the repair issue wrong pissing me off so badly? Is it being referred to as his "secretary" or the statement that I messed it up?)
I know he's sick. Being sick makes me cranky, too.
He says the reason he's sick is because of the stress around the move. I said, "we really haven't had it that bad" and he said, "I did. It's been a nightmare."
And I'm thinking--for you had it bad?
You looked at three places and signed a lease for the cheapest one. You made a trip to Verizon (two weeks after you told me it was "done" and we're still waiting on phone service today). You called an internet connection company four days after we'd already moved, and then wasted a lot of energy complaining because they couldn't hook everything up that day.
Yes, you also placed a Craigslist ad to hire some freelancers to come and do the actual moving, but let's both remember, you tried very hard to get me to let you pass all of the responses to me so that I'd have to actually call everyone and do the screening and hiring.
And, yes, let's be completely fair, you hauled ten carloads of stuff to your own house to store temporarily, but that was your decision and for another $100 you could have had the mover guys do all of that the day of the move.
I spent six weeks sorting, packing, throwing out (10 times I filled that dumpster), getting services stopped, getting phone numbers released for transfer, sending move notices to clients, notifying the post office of our change of address, and organizing and labeling about 20 boxes so that we'd be able to find things before the move was complete.
Once we got in to the new office, I helped move desks and filing cabinets, hauled boxes from one place to another, and rearranged everything three times while you measured what would fit where.
Now, while you've gone to "work from home" today, it's my responsibility to check your laptop every two minutes to make sure the diagnostic it's running keeps running, to get everything back into the filing cabinets, arrange the computers for the network guy (you rescheduled him for next week and I have not yet been able to get you to understand that yes, you need a network connection to print on network printers), call the internet/fax provider to actually get us service, and figure out what to do with the five boxes full of absolute trash you packratted into the moving truck while I wasn't looking.
(Four portable printers so old you can't buy printer cartridges for them any more, even if they worked, which they don't. Fifty hanging folders full of stuff from clients the parent company worked with in the mid-90s. A heavy-duty comb-binder and approximately 500 combs of assorted sizes for the four, twenty-page reports we comb-bind in a year. Two of those blasted rack servers that he swore he'd store at his own house until his good friend and ebay expert buddy got them sold. And entire box full of flyers for a product even the parent company gave up on trying to sell ten years ago.)
I'm at a loss about precisely how this was such a "nightmare" for you. I can only assume that it's because I spoke to you rudely a couple of times. Sorry about that.
On the plus side. Power tools! Bernie has a heavy-duty battery-operated screwdriver that I got to play with yesterday. :D I love power tools.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:27 PM | Comments (1)Here I am. In Boulder. Where's Bernie?
We were both supposed to be in this office today but I'm here and he isn't. And he hasn't sent an email or left me a voicemail or any of those things either, so I have no idea where he is.
We're supposed to move out of the temporary space and into our "real" office today. I can see he started moving stuff yesterday, but he didn't leave me a key to the new space, so I can't finish that up.
He wanted to have a big meeting about talking me into committing to stay until the end of the month, but I can't do that alone. Even if I were inclined to do it, a thing I'm of two minds about. A couple more paychecks would come in very handy. But working for him is going to get expensive. Two rocks smacked my windshield during today's commute. Now I need a new windshield. Fortunately, that ominous squeaking noise from underneath the car turned out to be the wheeled luggage carrier I'd forgotten that I left in the back seat, but I'm paranoid about every sound the car makes.
Sigh. Until we get the network connected, I can't do the bookkeeping or clean out my old email files or any of the other routine tasks that I normally use to fill slack time.
I got up early again today, worked from home for an hour (not much to do, I admit) and then drove in. Now it's 10:40. The whole point of moving the office to Boulder was so that he wouldn't have to commute and so he could work out of his office instead of his home. So why isn't he here?
I gave up and put an hour down on my timecard for waiting for him to show up.
Now, I'm just sitting here. Waiting. (And eating Thin Mints, actually. Mmmm, Girl Scout Cookie Time!)
I guess I could call him and ask whereintheheck he is.
Okay, he just called. He thought I was going to call him and tell him when I started driving up to Boulder. Where he got that idea is anyone's guess. He and I certainly never discussed any such thing. He didn't mention anything about why he didn't come to work this morning regardless of whether or not he thought I was here, but that doesn't surprise me. He used to make a point of not being in the office if I wasn't there. I'd like to pretend it's because he didn't think "work" happened without me but the truth is I think he was afraid something would happen and he wouldn't be able to deal with it.
The new office is a cute, little place, I have to admit. It's a step up from the ratty building we were in before and I'm a little sorry I won't get to stay and play.
I like broccoli. Quite a bit, actually. However, since I'm working from home today, I'm shoveling down lunch in a most unhealthy and unladylike fashion while I work and I very nearly did myself in with a lump of broccoli a minute ago.
After yesterday's commute to Boulder (not such a nightmare, as long as you keep firmly in mind that you won't be doing it often), I'm more than ever convinced that I have got to get serious about job-hunting.
Bernie did ask me if, now that I'd done the commute once (although not in rush hour traffic), I didn't feel I'd be willing to do it regularly. The question really took me by surprise since I was sure my refusal to stay was well-established by now.
And then, after blithely announcing that he wasn't going to get tense about whether or not I worked a full 8-hour day on the days I had to commute to Boulder, Bernie got all pissy with me yesterday when, with no network and no internet access at the new office, I decided to leave at 3:00, as he went into his 1-hour conference call, to come home and check my (work) email.
Was it my fault he was 30 minutes late in coming to meet me and he thus lost time he felt he was entitled to from me? Was it my fault he'd spent an hour on the phone with Dell tech support while I stared at the walls? Was it my fault he scheduled an hour-long conference call on the only day he and I would both be in the Denver office?
Was it my fault that he ran around making a lot of noise about how he was getting the new office set up and then showed up yesterday with brand-new, not-yet-activated phones (neither of which will have the number we gave out to the clients as our new phone number, BTW), to show me the temporary space we'd have to cram into for at least six days until the actual new office was available, and that the temporary space had no phones, no network, and no internet access?
He seemed to think so.
He also seemed to feel that as long as I was sitting there, he was getting his money's worth of my time, but my tolerance for doing absolutely nothing is pretty limited. Especially when being forced to share a very small office space with a grasshopper-brained employer dividing his time between cursing his laptop (dead motherboard) and bitching about a nonexistent network.
(I am still unable to convince him that a network is a thing and that nothing outside of creating some kind of actual connection between machines will enable them to converse with one another. I sweartogod I had trouble making him understand why, just because both machines were in the same room, they couldn't talk to each other without a connection and that, NO, a network was not something I could cobble together from the myriad parts and pieces and miscellaneous cables laying around.)
(Also? Our "network files" were split between two servers in the old office (don't ask) and since TechBoy took one of those home with him on Tuesday when he accidentally took the network down, I wouldn't have been able to recreate the network even if I'd known how.)
On the way home last night I heard from TechBoy and made a detour to pick up the AWOL network server, so when I go to the office again on Monday, I can take it with me. And no, I will not be making any attempt, no matter how feeble, to network the machines.
Bernie actually had the nerve to call me when I was driving home last night to say that we needed to find me some work to do from home since "you're still on company time, you know."
As I paid for a new tank of gas to replace what I'd burned driving to his new office (and hauling 300 lbs of office "stuff" that I had to unload when I got there) and sat in a Best Buy parking lot for 40 minutes, waiting for TechBoy to show up and pass the server box back to me, then got up this morning and fired up both of my personal computers and then called the most important clients on my personal cell phone to give them my personal phone number in case they need to contact us before he gets the phone situation straightened out, I stewed about that crack.
Aside from his use and abuse of my personal resources, as usual I already had a full day of work that needed to be done today and, as usually happens, he was completely oblivious to the fact. I tried to explain that to him when he called me at 6:00 last night (my personal time), but he was too full of a project he'd created for me to work on so that I wouldn't be getting away with getting paid for doing nothing to listen to me.
I'm preparing an email for him to explain that setting up shared public files, recreating contact lists, and notifying clients that I lied to them about what our phone number will all take time. Also to remind him that I had 6 hours worth of database review scheduled for today and that I have decided just not to do it since he clearly no longer feels the databases are of any importance or he'd remember them.
I can't believe it's 1:00 already. I haven't gotten through a fraction of my work yet. I've been working and working all morning but everything takes longer when you don't have everything at your desk and your fingertips. I have to use both home computers because one has internet access which I need and the other has Excel which I need and then I needed a table for the papers I'm working on the for the Dell man to work on (Bernie scheduled for him to come to my apartment today to replace the motherboard on the laptop, which I had to bring home with me) so I have the computer desk with the PC and a little table with the laptop and a folding table with all the papers on it and I'm dashing back and forth between the three of them.
Working from home shouldn't be this stressful. Okay, partly it's my own fault for not getting my (personal) wireless network back up and running so that I could more conveniently use my (personal) laptop to work on company business. And partly it's residual stress from the move, I'm sure.
And partly it's because The Time Has Come when I can no longer ignore the necessity of hitting the job sites five or six times a week.
Is it really petty of me to be smirking because everyone Bernie interviews and wants to hire is telling him they want more money for the job than he's offering?
Is it mean of me to laugh every time he tells me, very indignantly, that one of them wants the same amount I told him he'd have to give me to make me even consider staying?
Job applicants for this position are now being interviewed. I was a tad underwhelmed by today's applicant. She wasn't pro-active enough, didn't ask enough questions, and her resume was strong in working with a team. (When you are the entire team, being at your best when working in a group isn't really a big asset.)
Anne's resume recreation process is nearly complete. The R.C. took my lameoid draft and bled red ink all over it last night. I did those rewrites and others today and while I'd like for her to take another pass at it, I think I'll go ahead and apply today for the job DiamondGirl is nudging me towards. She's been waiting almost two weeks for me to send in a resume. They're hiring for two positions but I'd hate to lose my window of opportunity.
Deep breath....
Resume sent! I hope to heck I didn't make any typos in my email. I checked it over but you never know....
Sixty, I sweartogod, sixty seconds later--
Bernie just came dancing in. A giant new project, with a big new client, just said "yes!" I mean, a big project, too. A medium-sized contract came through late last week and a big summer job is about to make a commitment. Looks like things are finally breaking for the company.
He wants me to reconsider leaving. :) There's going to be work for a while to come. (I might even be able to get the $10k I told him I'd have to have in order to consider commuting to Boulder.)
Sigh.
Gonna be a golden day, what with the snow, the sleet, the ice, and the idiots.
I arrive at the office at 8:31. The phone is already ringing. It's Bernie. He's checking in. Do we have internet access at the office?
No.
I checked my email at home before I came in, so I tell him to go check his web-mail. A client needs a change in a .pdf file Bernie sent them. He needs to do that while he still has internet access at home.
It's a typo, okay? He spelled a word wrong. It's a two-second fix. But, no. He objects to making this change. He wants me to do it and then email him the new Word document to convert into a pdf.
I remind him that I have no internet access. He says he'll "try" to make the correction but it might have to wait.
I am completely at a loss as to why he would not be able to fix a typo in a Word document and then select the menu option that converts the file to a .pdf (he's done it a hundred times before) but I can clearly see that whenever the time comes when we have internet access again, the first thing I'm going to wind up doing is fixing this typo and then emailing the document to him.
As clearly as if he'd said it, I can tell that he has decided is hard and complicated and he doesn't want to be involved. He also as much as said that since the client's original email came to me and he wasn't copied, it wasn't his job to fix the mistake.
He has the necessary Word document since he's the one who emailed it to me originally. He has the only computer that will do the conversion. He has experience doing it. Why, suddenly, is this all just too traumatic for him to deal with?
Apparently his internet access at home is slow. I refrain from mentioning that it's not as slow as at the office where it's stopped.
Next up:
Considering that I had a 15-minute conversation about his responsibilities with Buehler yesterday, before he left the office at noon, I guess I should be impressed that it took him clear up until 3:30 yesterday afternoon to start calling Bernie and asking if "we" have fixed the internet access yet.
I talked with Bernie about this yesterday afternoon, when he called to ask why I had not gotten the internet access fixed. At that time I explained to him how no one but Buehler can provide the information required.
This morning, Bernie called to say that Buehler was inquiring about the access. Is it fixed? When I said, "no," he asked me to "call her" about it.
Her? Who her? The Access Goddess?
I explain, again, very slowly, that I need an account number or the primary phone number the account was set up under in order to call Qwest and get any assistance. This information has to come from Buehler and/or Moe.
I explain that it's completely ridiculous for Buehler to say that he has never gotten a bill from Qwest and that I told him, Buehler, quite plainly, what I needed yesterday, so it's no good him calling us today and wondering why I haven't done anything about it.
Bernie hangs up, calls Buehler and then calls me back. Buehler did talk to Moe, but he did not understand that he needed to get information from him so he didn't ask him the questions. I guess he just made a general inquiry after his health or something.
Now Bernie demands to know why Qwest cannot help us by tracking down our account by our address. I have no answer for this, not being in charge of how Qwest or any other company stores their own data. I assume, as I told him yesterday, that Qwest, being primarily a phone company, tends to use phone numbers to track accounts.
Bernie objects that we have lots of phones and surely one of those numbers will work. I point out that it's hardly reasonable to expect Her to sit on the phone with me for an hour while I rattle off the 20 "active" phone numbers into this office and have Her try them in combination with three different company names in an attempt to find our account.
Bernie decides to call Qwest himself. I wish him luck, decline to provide the phone number (he can do the same thing I did, look it up in the phone book) and actually do hope he can get this fixed. I miss my internet access.
Before he hangs up, Bernie asks if I've asked DiamondGirl about this.
No, I have not. She doesn't work here any more.
She hasn't worked here for over six months, and when she was doing contract work for us, you bitched her out for the number of hours she was charging, so she doesn't love you any more and is highly unlikely to offer you any free tech support on a system that someone else contracted to have installed in the office. (What I actually say is, "I don't have internet access." He says since I can't email her, can I send her an IM. I say, "no, I do not have internet access.")
In the end, he decides to work from home today (thank goodness) and instructs me to finish packing up the office.
Being, as I am, and as I told him on Friday, at the point where I can't really pack anything else (And since when did moving the office become solely my problem? Bernie acts like he's doing the world a favor by announcing that he'll pack his own office--a fact that's even less-impressive when you hear that three months ago, he "cleaned" it by dumping all the stuff he didn't want in the main area.) until Buehler and Bernie decide who owns what of the piles of stuff that's left, I object to this plan. He gets pissy. I say, "fine" and wait for him to hang up. (Actually, having anticipated this, I wore jeans into the office today.)
I left my desk to go to the little girl's room. I was gone for just over two minutes. He called five times in that interval. Now I'm trying to decide whether or not to call him back now or wait a few minutes.
He's been pretty annoying already this morning, you know?
Also, I've spoken to him in the past about sitting there dialing my number over and over and over when I don't answer. I'm either on the phone or away from my desk and it does no good to sit there and work himself into a frenzy over my failure to instantly pick up the phone when he calls. I am the only person in the office most of the time. A certain percentage of my job cannot be done from my desk.
Today, if he wants me to be working in the other half of the office, packing stuff up, then I'm not going to be at my desk to pick up the phone instantly when he calls. He needs to realize this.
Also? He needs to stop calling my cell phone. My personal cell phone is not available for him to call and abuse me on. He can use the telephone he pays for, for the purpose.
(Note: For those wondering, I actually did call him back as soon as I got to my desk. His line was busy.)
Twenty minutes later, we're talking again. He has been on the phone with Qwest and has a question. What do the lights on the modem look like?
Just like yesterday, I tell him. All "green for go" and solid, except the "internet" light which is not on at all.
A minute later, he calls back. All of the phone lines are tied together where they come into the building Qwest shares with our VOIP phone provider! It's probably the VOIP system!
I remind him that we have phones. It's not the VOIP. It's the internet access.
He garbles out something about the fax machine "proving" that he's right and it's all--I don't know. Tied together or something. I have no idea how the fax machine suddenly came into it except that he believes that since we get the fax through Qwest and the phones through VOIP, it proves they're all connected.
The situation teeters on the brink of disaster as I fight back the urge to scream at him.
The memory of my near-daily complaints about my battle with the VOIP company as I tried to get them to send us a converter so our analog fax machine would work with their digital system, a six-month war, flickers through my mind. Clearly it's entirely escaped his, as has the day two months ago when I triumphed and wrested the necessary converter from their grubby little mitts, giving us the ability to send and receive faxes for the first time in months.
Forget it, I tell him. The fax, like all of our phone lines is VOIP. The internet is Qwest. They are separate. Any line-sharing arrangement that the two companies have come to is not our problem.
Call them anyhow, he says. Just ask them if they're having a problem.
I take a deep breath. I can call them, I agree. But they'll just think I'm insane. They do not provide our internet access and the services they do provide are working flawlessly.
He calls back two minutes later with a brilliant new suggestion.
Reboot!
All of the energy drains from my body, leaving me exhausted, discouraged, and disinclined to giveashit.
I've been here for two hours. So far, we've established that we have no internet access, we have phone access, and that rebooting doesn't fix the problem.
This is exactly what we knew 24 hours ago and, had either Buehler or Bernie actually listened to my answer when they asked me yesterday why we had no internet access, that's two hours of frustration I could have avoided. (Not to mention that we'd be 24 hours closer to a solution, instead of stuck re-running yesterday.)
Sigh. Going off to pack the office up now.
45 minutes later.... I came back to my desk for a drink of water and find that Bernie has called me five times. He desperately, urgently needs the answer to a question from the property managers here. Clearly he has no memory of telling me to spend the rest of the day away from my desk. Just as clearly, the idea of dialing them up himself never occurred to him.
Let us pause for a moment while I try to figure out how, "I'm not going to be a secretary or your personal assistant" turned into, "You'll never have do to a thing or think for yourself because I'm here to hold your hand and do everything that needs to be done every second of every work day."
"I know you're not my secretary," he says, "but put a stamp on this envelope for me." "I know you're not my personal assistant," he says, "but call these people and schedule a conference call and I'm available from 1-2 on Tuesday unless they're not available until 1:30 in which case we have to do it on Wednesday but if they want to do it on Thursday, tell them you'll have to call them back and then call me and check with my schedule first."
I should point out, in Bernie's favor, that he did actually get two contracts signed in the last 30 days.
In the year I've been here, these are the only bits of new business he's brought in, so this is the only time in the last year he's even remotely resembled a "salesman." Our two current largest clients have not officially renewed for 2007, and these two new contracts will replace their revenue for about two months, but whatever. (Oh. No, I tell a lie. He also got a contract signed this fall for project we delivered free "for the advertising" and a $1k contract signed last summer.
Later that same day
These entries get long when I work on them off and on for hours on end. Sorry. (Okay, no, not really. No one's making you read it.)
Bernie called back to ask what the checking account number is and to say Buehler's on the way over and he and I and Moe will be "solving" the internet access problem.
Moe, who was supposedly out of touch all day today until 4:00. Buehler, who is pretty much as clueless about technology as Bernie, although not as annoying with it. And me, the person whose every idea has already been tried without success.
I'm pretty excited about the potential there.
Later
Buehler wandered in and brought lunch. I bit into my half of the sandwich quite happily the instant before I noticed that rather than the standard "turkey lite" (acceptable on my diet) it was some new thing called a "chicken cabo" full of a mayonnaise-based sauce and bits of bacon. I ate it (very tasty), but I'm going to be on starvation rations for dinner tonight.
Buehler, contrary to Bernie's information, did not come in armed and ready to work on the internet access problem.
He asked me vaguely what we should do.
I said, "I don't know."
He looked for a Qwest bill for about 15 seconds and that was the end of it. After that, we ate lunch and now he's reading magazines.
Later
In the course of yet another phone call, Bernie casually mentioned that "if you have time, I left some boxes in my office and you can pack up that bookcase there."
I said, "Yeah. If I have time." When youknowhere freezes over was clearly implied and he clearly got it.
Anyhow. I'm home now. Five seconds after I logged on to my email here at home, I got an IM from Buehler saying the office access is fixed.
There are days, when I just can't deal with it.
Saturday, as I was tooling back from Boulder with a couple of friends, Buehler called complaining because the VPN was out. He'd gone to the office and wanted me to walk him through fixing it.
I know, in a vague sort of way, that we have a VPN. I even know what a VPN is (a Virtual Private Network) and what it does (it lets people access the hardware here in the office, even when they're somewhere else) but those basic concepts are pretty much where my knowledge about, and interest in, our VPN stops.
If there's some physical thing in the server closet, amid that wilderness of tangled wires and stacked boxes, that is an actual VPN Controller, it's a surprise to me. If there's a button you can push or a thingy you can reboot to make it work when it gets stubborn, the location of said magic gizmos is a mystery to me.
Anyhow. I like Buehler, so I walked him through rebooting the Exchange server (the only thing I know how to explain over the phone and "a case of the blind leading the blind" doesn't even begin to explain how scary that idea is), including managing to explain to him how to change the "channel" on the weird black box that controls whether you're looking at the Exchange server or one of three other computers there in the closet. I waited for and took the inevitable second phone call because he'd forgotten to ask for the password, and then I forgot about the whole mess.
I mean, when he didn't call back I assumed all was well, but I come in today to find out that he was calling and IMing Bernie all weekend about the problem. (If calling me for network tech support constitutes "desperate" then calling Bernie has to qualify as " apocalypse imminent." The man can't even change the "view" on his documents in Word.)
And, yes, today, the entire office's internet access is out. It wasn't the VPN at all.
Ninety minutes later, I've rebooted everything in sight (including the box labeled "do not turn off"), most things three times, with no success.
When the Magic Of Reboot fails me, I'm pretty much stuck.
I have a vague idea that we have our internet access through Qwest. A close examination of the little modem box reveals that it does, in fact, have a Qwest label. Aha!
(At this point, Buehler asks if Bernie's "tech guy" isn't coming in this morning. I have no idea. If the two of them arranged for this over the weekend, that information wasn't passed to me. Besides, while I have much faith in TechBoy's abilities, I doubt that he's going to be able to fix a Qwest outage, you know? It has to be a Qwest outage. All of the little boxes are hooked up and all of the little lights are a happy green.)
(I should mention that Bernie called and said that their dog died last night so he's taking a sick day.)
After explaining all of this to Buehler, I am reduced to the primitive expedient of paging through a hard-copy phone book. I find a number. I call Qwest, fight my way through the debris of voicemail options to get to a Real Person and--get stuck.
I don't have our account number. I don't know which of the three companies sharing this suite the account was set up under. I don't even know the "main" phone number the account would have been set up under.
Moe, the guy who used to do freelance and contract software coding work for us, set the whole Qwest thing up two or three years ago and of course he's long gone. Also, while Moe's a great guy, documentation and information-sharing weren't really his strong points.
Eventually I bully the truly kind and helpful woman on the phone into admitting they're having an outage. I cannot force her to tell me if it includes this building or not though. Also, we're not the only Qwest customers in the building, but apparently it's possible that some of us are having an outage and some of us are not.
(During the time I'm trying to talk on the phone to Qwest, Buehler is interrupting me with questions of such earth-shattering importance as, "what is today's date," and "did you get the weekend mail yet.")
In the end, Qwest-Lady says the outage, if that's our problem, could last for up to 24 hours and if we still don’t have internet access tomorrow, the problem could be with our modem, so find our account number or something that she can track in her system and they'll help us trouble-shoot it.
I hang up and search the office. There are no bills from Qwest. It seems that in some peculiar fashion, we've managed to have Qwest DSL service for the last two years without ever receiving a bill. I can understand that it might have been set up for auto-pay to a credit card or something, but I cannot understand how a mailing-happy, paper-obsessed company like Qwest failed to send us any kind of paper bill/reminder/notification in all of that time.
I've been in the office for 2-1/2 hours by this point, and the only work-related (as in "actually my job") thing I've done all day was the two-second interval when I completely failed to send an email to a client because the internet access was out.
Also, I'm facing the knowledge that if it's the modem, it's just going to be out until Bernie moves the office, because I have no information and no documentation that will get us any kind of technical support to fix it.
In the meantime, I'm still wearing an antique contact lens in my left eye, so the world is half-hazy and entirely off-balance, making me just slightly queasy if I try to focus on anything smaller than a school bus. The pharmacy is calling to complain because I ordered prescription refills and never picked them up. The bookkeeper is calling to complain because I haven't deposited the expense reimbursement check that was written to me two weeks ago.
If I were a drinker, this is the moment I'd be reaching for the nearest bottle. But I'm not, so I'm munching morosely on today's "approved" diet snack (soy nuts), doing the bookkeeping, and looking forward to the moment half an hour from now when I need to get up, go home, and check my email.
(Posted from home, later that same day.)
I don't want to go into boring details, but yesterday evening was just icky. I didn't get to bed until 11:30 again, but this time it was because I was upset and having to calm down.
How did it begin? Well, typically, Bernie promised a client something last week and then never thought about it again. At least, not until 4:55 yesterday evening, when he got an email saying they needed it today.
Skipping the ranty bits, let's just say it involved pulling me out of my meeting with TechBoy and wasting my one chance to get the tech part of the office move set up to run smoothly, keeping me in the office until I was late for my 6:00 get-together with a friend (and for which I realized I didn't have directions anyhow), discovering that Bernie saying he was "working with Scooby on the database" over the last couple of months meant nothing of the kind, the discovery that Scooby himself has actually been doing nothing with the information I've been sending him for the last two months, and all climaxed with Bernie calling me at 10:06 last night to yell at me for sending the client too much information when I got home, got online, and tried to finish up the project at 8:00 last night.
Today Bernie's inventing new complications and telling unnecessary lies that are going to bite him in the butt in a few days, all so he doesn't have to say, "your name was not on the mailing list" to the new head of the Board of Directors.
I'm not good at lies, okay? They make me tense. You have to be smarter than me or something to keep track of what lies you've told what people. I don't want to live that kind of a complicated life.
For those of you who might be newish to this neighborhood, DDIAMFTTS means, "Downtown Denver Is A Lot More Fun Than The Suburbs." It's an acronym I created when I started in this office, four or however many years ago. I'd worked in the suburbs since I moved to Denver and I had no idea how much more entertaining it would be to be downtown.
Karpenters in Kilts! Weird bus advertisements! The Powerball billboard, rising and falling each week, making people who are not me rich! Eight or ten restaurants within walking distance, if I want to have lunch out! Drunks, druggies, and homeless waifs on every street corner! Yes, that's the flavor of Downtown In the Big City.
But. Bernie's made his decision and he's going to move the office to Boulder. It's just not gonna happen for me, okay?
I'm okay with him assuring me earnestly that his public transit commute "to Market Street" is just under an hour every day, but that's from the time he hits the bus stop in Boulder to a place three miles from this office. He's never said how long his whole commute is, so mine would be that, plus the hour or so it would take me to ride MOPT to Market Street, so we're talking two hours minimum, plus however much time I'm going to need to find and ride a bus between the drop-off point and the actual office in Boulder.
I'm not spending four+ hours a day commuting, not even if I'm working from home a couple of days a week. I mean, it's okay for him - he can show up here at 9:30 and leave for home at 4:00. He expects me to be in the office for a minimum of 8 hours a day.
I haven't told him definitely that I'm not planning to follow him on this expedition but I'm going to need to do so on Monday. Which means that a chunk o'time this weekend will have to be devoted to reading the Help Wanted ads. Shudder.
Except that Buehler swears he has "something cooking" and he's threatening to hire me himself again some day soon.
These people love me ever so much more than I love them. (Well, Bernie doesn't love me. I think it's been bothering him recently--he keeps coming into my office and telling me in tones of wonder that this or that client has been saying glowing things about me. He doesn't get it.) It's very flattering, but Buehler's wife Has Money and he can afford to dink around casually and almost part-time at running a business. I do not Have Money and I need a real job that's going to last more than 10 or 11 months.
Had the stock market not tanked.... Were I only dishonest enough to have invested in defense stocks when I knew we were going to invade Iraq....
Your 50s are supposed to be your "peak" earning years. If I could only convince someone to "peak" my salary back to what it was a year ago, I promise I'd save and save and save.
Sigh. Like many of us, I had a dollar figure in mind for my total retirement savings. Before the Big Crash, I was well on my way to making it. Now I'm thinking I might have to take half that and like it. (As long as Bush doesn't actually manage to bankrupt Social Security, I won't be living under a bridge, but that's not saying much.)
I laugh when I remember that I used to plan on retiring at 59 or 60.
Life is hard.
What do you do when asked to read a "draft" of new website copy written by your boss/company marketing person and it's just not good?
The first draft I read, I gritted my teeth, corrected some punctuation errors, asked for clarification in two places, and moved on with my life.
Now I have a new draft, this one approved by Bernie's boss (Buehler is Bernie's boss), the version they worked on together and it's--worse. Not only does Bernie strive, for reasons I've never understood, to avoid clear language, dressing phrases up in frequently made-up "jargonese" but he just writes badly. (Okay, yes, my syntax is sometimes torturous--but I do that on purpose. I'm not here to communicate, I'm here to amuse myself.)
He capitalizes words Quite randomly, fails to find and follow a single narrative path (yes, that matters on websites), and has about 25% of the "design" talent he thinks he has. (There are eight font colors, at least two typefaces, and five different font sizes in the draft website he sent me.)
My knowledge of punctuation is rudimentary, but his is positively primitive.
He prefers vague but grandiose-sounding promises to a clear description of what we actually do. He didn't bother to make the corrections I sent him in the first draft, so he's still promising, for instance, that we'll show up on-site and do 100% of the day-to-day running of one system--and we don't do that.
As a different but still worrying problem, he promises things we can't begin to deliver. He shows a "branded" version of a machine we own one of, offering vague promises of all it can do, when he's never actually seen it in action. (He "branded" it himself, running a label through the printer so he could put our logo over that of the company that makes the equipment. This is not illegal. Just--a touch misleading. Borderline dishonest.)
He promises another delivery mechanism that, to the best of my knowledge, neither he nor Buehler actually knows how to use or where to get.
The mind. Boggles.
Okay, so we have five "rack" servers, four of which we want to sell off. These were all bought 4 or 4-1/2 years ago.
I've complained about these before, they're the machines that Bernie is convinced he can sell for 60%-70% of the purchase price, in spite of their age (and let me point out that they're all at least a year older than he was remembering). The ones he thinks are still almost new because the components have been sitting largely idle for four years.
Today I finally find a live human being at MegaCorporation where we purchased them, and she's in the Small Business department, so she can find and send me electronic copies of the invoices showing the prices we paid and the exact configurations for each machine.
I spend 1-1/2 hour putting these into a spreadsheet so we can see how much the machines differ from each other.
As it turns out, at least one of them differs significantly, having dual processors and a lot more line items with mysterious numbers attached to them on the invoice than the other machines. All (and this is important) are clearly labeled, "No OS, No Windows 2000," though.
Bernie is annoyed that there are no serial #'s on the invoices, to help us out. I nobly refrain from pointing out that at the time they purchased the machines (when the invoices were generated), it was just an order. No specific machine was as of yet associated with the purchase and thus no serial number would have been available.
Instead, I tell him that all of that would have been on the paperwork shipped with the machines and that paperwork is mysteriously missing.
I explain to Bernie that I have looked for this paperwork many times and not found it. He goes to look himself and triumphantly brings me a folder full of payment information for six other machines in a different year. I reject it, explaining that I've seen those papers and they have nothing to do with the case at hand. He insists on standing there and reading me bits off the papers until he's forced to concede that a $600 payment-in-full receipt is unlikely to be associated with the purchase of a $4,000 server.
Then he decides we need a different approach. We cannot, of course, tell from looking at the cardboard boxes these servers are stored in, tell which specifications go with which server. Bernie suggests we open a cardboard box and look at the actual physical hardware.
I mention that I've tried that, pointing out the box that's been open for the last month, and found nothing helpful tattooed on the outside of the metal frame of the server but tell him he's free to look for himself. He does so (leaving the box open in the middle of the main pathway in and out of the office) and finds nothing, of course.
After that, it takes me over 15 minutes to try and convince him that we cannot just plug one of these servers in, hook a monitor to it, and find out which machine is which.
I am entirely unable to get him to comprehend that the little pictures on the monitor are provided by a Windows OS and that, without installing Windows, no little pictures will appear. In the end, he just gets mad (I can see him mentally writing me off as "uncooperative" again) and walks off.
Before he walks off, though, he announces that they had installed copies (now four years old, of course) of some software (I'm not really listening by now) on each machine and that he wants $500 added to the price of each server on the resell to cover that expense.
Then my head explodes.
The end.
Bernie's at home having a little wig-out because the report he needed today won't be here today.
And I'm thinking...if you wanted PoodleBoy working on Client P's report this week, why have you been emailing him all week about Client I's data? But when I suggested the same in an email, he went ballistic and said he hadn't been communicating deadlines, or at all, with PoodleBoy (he tends to tell transparent and ridiculous lies).
Then he as much as said that a job I've never worked on (and that he's been responsible for, for eight years) and for which no written specifications exist was my responsibility to psychically divine and manage.
Boggles the mind sometimes.
I've lost an hour composing mental hate notes to him today, pointing out that as I'm already doing the work of at least two full-time employees plus bits of work previously done by free-lancers and "managing" two new free-lancers, it's a bit much for him to unilaterally decide that he no longer needs to be involved in fulfilling our responsibilities to the clients who are paying both our salaries and that he can just turn his back and walk off.
Especially since he didn't see fit to inform me of this decision, but just let it sort of dawn on me as he failed, time and again, to step up to the plate on deadlines and project specifications over the last three months.
I just have to feel that as long as he's paying himself $90k a year from the money these clients pay us? He's in no position to just abdicate all interest in and responsibility for the work.
Also? Tech problems again today. The whateveritwas in the server closet has quit beeping (thank goodness), but now the machine we use as a spam filter and to catch messages sent to invalid email addresses is giving me fits. I've been swapping out peripherals (Bad mouse! No cheese!) this morning, trying to find a combination that works.
The server with the expensive, proprietary software on it that Bernie wants us use for "occasional" client mailings still considers keyboards the devil's playthings and refuses to acknowledge their existence. It's a little hard to code newsletters and mailings without access to a keyboard, so right now it's just a useless lump of plastic and metal.
The free-lance network tech guy has not proven able to solve all of our network and email issues in the 1-1/2 hour a week he has to spare for us right now (color me so surprised), although one assumes that after he graduates on Saturday, he'll have more time (until he finds a full-time job, anyhow).
You know, I come into the office every day cheerful and willing to do whatever comes up. (I know, it doesn't sound that way, but I really do.) And mostly (especially this week, as things have slowed down considerably), I get it done. Parts of the job are even sort of interesting.
Sigh.
Still. I was repaid for my restraint in not sending a hate note to Bernie. He called and we talked and it's all better now. (Okay, it's largely all better because I did not address with him my frustration that he feels he needs to do nothing but sit and wait for client checks to be handed to him, but I decided that isn't really the kind of conversation that should be had on the phone.)
Another reward for my restraint is that today's morning cheer, is back with me again. My head is all full of P. G. Wodehouse because I've been re-watching the Jeeves & Wooster DVDs for the last two weeks and that's not a world that can survive the bruising of the 21st century work-day. I'm willing to pay the price for being allowed to live there mentally.
Next Tuesday's Chocolate Surprise was delivered to the R.C.'s office today, but that's okay. She seems delighted. (Sort of cake-truffle things. I discovered the company when I was in California last month.)
Buehler took off for a lunch meeting. That will make it easier for me to slide out to the post office and send the parcel to the L-i-K-S and Rapunzel and Pippi. I'm late with packages this year, but at least I'm getting them sent, right? This is the last one that has to go.
You see? I little self-restraint, a little effort, and it's turning out to be a good day!
You should let me double-check things before you send them out. You really should.
When I started working here, you were charging Client P $1650/month as a retainer for the stuff we did all year-round, plus $10k and $4k respectively for extra work we did at their large annual and small annual conferences.
I badgered you because we were doing twice as much work as we were being reimbursed for and you bitched about it constantly. You were afraid to ask for more money from the client, but you weren't afraid to make my life and DiamondGirl's a living hell with your constant complaints because we couldn’t do 10/hours worth of work in a week in 2 hours.
I badgered you until you changed the monthly retainer to $3300 and bumped the upcoming small annual conference to $5k.
When I had my back turned, the client decided to cut out of the monthly jobs we did for them, about 50% of the monthly work, and you changed the agreement to...wait for it people...a $1575/month retainer that quotes such an absurdly large ceiling for monthly work volume that they can run us ragged without touching it.
You cut your monthly fees by 53%, regardless of the fact that the client has made up for the work they cut by doubling the amount of work on the projects remaining.
You didn't cover everything that will need to cost extra, and you made no mention of the things you have verbally agreed that we will not do any longer - and you know you need to formalize things with this client.
And you did all of this without telling me until two months later--when you bitched me out because the invoices I've sent out for the last two months are at the "old" price.
And that was right after you said it was working out really well for you to have me doing the reporting on Client W and Client S (and client Sc, if they return to us), because you didn't have to pay PoodleBoy, the expert, to do what he does and so I should plan to spend four more hours for each job for each of those clients to do my own reporting.
Which was right after you said that you didn't want to pay PoodleBoy for the actual hours it takes him to do the reporting for the larger clients, P, C, and I, and that I need to mentally "book" about ten extra hours in each job we do for each of them in the future so I can clean up the data so that PoodleBoy, the supposed "statistician," doesn't have to actually think about the data.
And then you said yesterday that in your ideal world, I would do all of the work for Client P, Client C, Client I, Client W, and Client S, along with whatever else comes up in the same line, and that you'd never see or hear of any of it.
So, you know. Less money, more work, and just me doing on it all where there used to be 3-1/2 people sharing the load, proof-reading each other's stuff, and pitching in to help when deadlines got tight.
Thank you. So very much.
All of which was shortly before you said that we were going to move the office in February (was there a point when I agreed to stay after 12/31? Because I don't remember it, if there was.) and that I should plan to spend my spare time cleaning out files, throwing things away, and figuring out how to get rid of the excess office equipment, furniture, and unidentifiable electronics bits and pieces over the next two weeks.
For the detritus of 10 departed employees, I also thank you.
I do not love you, Bernie.
I cannot tell why, but the spirit of the season ebbs from my heart when I see your little face.
Me
P.S. I got a call from Sassy today. She's found a new job and she's leaving. Even though we didn't get to talk often, I'm going to miss her.
P.P.S. I am planning to start job-hunting after Jan 1. If Bernie feels free to extend my commitment to suit himself, then he's entitled to his reality. I'm going to take advantage of the situation just enough to stay employed while I start the job search. (This decision came about partly because something Sassy said made me think she has info I don't have about actual definite plans to close the place March 1.)
Someone explain to me how to explain to Bernie that just because he paid $3500 for a rack server three years ago, does not mean it's still worth at least $1500 today. Three years is a long time in computer technology.
Nor is there any point in yanking out the extra memory we put in if he can't get that much. (It's not like we have rack servers here onsite that we can put that memory into.) Being spiteful at the buyer isn't going to make the market for used three year-0ld servers any stronger.
Also, ask him to stop being schizophrenic. Last night, as he was leaving, he said he'd be happy to sell them for enough to cover the shipping we had to pay to get them back from the hosting company. Today he wants $1500 for each of them.
I can't keep up.
He said, "we need to sell them." I found someone here in the building interested in buying them.
He said, "we just need to get them off our hands." I told this someone we probably weren't going to ask that much for them.
Now he wants me to ask them to buy all four for a total of $6k? You can buy a brand-new rack server for a small business for $800. Or even $1700, if you want a huge amount of computing power.
So, this morning PoodleBoy went on strike. He wants 40% more for the jobs he does for us, and he wants to do 60% less of the work on those jobs.
I ask you. Is it my fault he's been undercharging Bernie for the number of hours these things take for the last five years? It is not. But, as so often happens, I was here at the time, so I get to pay the price.
Today I had to spend 5-1/2 hours of time I'd really intended to spend on other projects cleaning up data.
Also I found out that our two biggest clients are having their annual meetings within two weeks of each other next fall. Which should make next fall a nice little slice of heck for me or whomever is here at the time. (Whomever? Whoever? I never know about those two. I think it has something to do with being the object of a preposition? Whatever.)
The thing is, I don't mind doing the work associated with this job. I can even live with having to do some of DiamondGirl's and some of PoodleBoy's jobs. It's not easy, but I can fit it all in most of the time.
Where I really find myself getting annoyed is with the secretarial stuff. Bernie and I have talked about this and he knows how I feel about being treated as a secretary. And yet, that doesn't stop him from asking me to email people documents instead of emailing them himself, or from making phone calls that would be better coming from him (like to the bank about the company's account) , or from sending me explicit instructions on conversations he feels need to be had with clients but that he won't pick up the phone and just have.
There are valid times when you ask someone else have a conversation with someone. I accept that. I'm a big believer in that. But emailing me to ask me to email Scooby and ask him if he's done a certain report, then having to Scooby's answer back to Bernie? Would it not be a lot less schizophrenic if Bernie just emailed Scooby and asked him the question?
Bernie sending me three emails telling me to email a document from last year to PoodleBoy? Bernie worked here last year. I did not. Bernie has the document on his computer. I'm going to have to spend 20 minutes searching the Tweenybopper's files to find it. What is his issue with just emailing the stupid document himself?
I talked with the R.C. about this and she says if I don't know what Bernie is doing all day every day, I should just ask him. Of course, I should put it diplomatically, not just blurt out, "it feels to me like I'm doing 90% of everything that needs to be done to keep your stupid company going and just what are you bringing to the table, anyhow?" at him. I should say something about scheduling tasks or making sure we have everything covered and say that I want to make sure I'm supporting him how he needs (hah) and then ask him what projects he's working on and where his time is going.
It's a good plan. I know that, Bernie being Bernie, he's going to take that as an invitation to try and offload yet more of the tedium of running a business off on me, but I have no doubts about my ability to push back on any such suggestions.
Also? The raise Bernie and I were supposed to discuss at the end of July that I let slide until we talked in Septemberand then told him two weeks ago I'd want at the end of December if he wanted me to stay?
Now he's trying to slide it past me that all of the big client decisions should be "in place" by the first of March. I suspect that in his fevered imagination, I won't have any problem waiting for another two months for a raise that was supposed to be forthcoming four months ago.
But you shouldn't bluff these things. If I tell him I need the money January 1 or I'm going to walk? I need to be prepared to walk.
I'm not really sure why I'm so cranky all of a sudden. I got the insurance thing straightened out and I'm all legal again. I had a nice lunch and a cookie. I have chocolates I can eat in case of emergency hunger or just boredom. Only 45 minutes until I get to go home.
I'm just...well, I'm having a little Cranky Interlude.
Not that I haven't had my own moments of stupid this week. I fought one of our proprietary software programs to the wall because the program I coded wasn't working. Turns out I mislaid a comma in a logic statement. Color me embarrassed.
Still.
Buehler, who doesn't normally annoy me at all, wanted me to print stuff for him today because he doesn't have access to the color printer and I'm all, "okay, no problem" until he gives me the URL, at which time I informed him that it is no part of my job to print out his porn, even if it does look better in color. (Who knew that http://www.supermodelinc.net/ was a site to buy doggie beds?)
Later he required more assistance because the pages did not come out of the printer. I investigated and explained to him that, while it would be a cool feature, printers do not yet make their own paper as they go and it is necessary to load blank paper into the little bin in order to get the machine to produce copies.
I spent 45 minutes writing up instructions so that the genius program developer would know how to get into the server to look for my missing data. If he can't get into the server without my assistance, I have little faith he'll be able to work technology magic and retrieve my files.
Our e-mail continues to come and go, choke and relax, at irregular intervals throughout the day, just as both it and our internet access have been doing for the last ten days. I'm pretending not to notice.
I've spent 12-3/4 hours on "tech" stuff this week, not including little interludes like the one mentioned above - significantly more than I've spent doing anything for any client.
Should I manage to free myself from the coils of technological malfunctions, I can always put on my Human Resources hat and go out and find myself a new insurance provider. Bernie's wanting to switch to his wife's policy on the first but he's not sure if our current carrier will let him have a small business policy with just me on it. If they won't, he says it's up to me to find my own insurance carrier and he'll pay up to the dollar amount he's paying now.
Failing that, I can put on my Office Manager hat and go find heavier boxes for shipping our products since those last two shipments came back crushed. Or find stickers we can run through a color printer that are permanent when applied to cheap plastic and have transparent backgrounds. Or return product components we bought that didn't work. Or hassle the building management because our suite isn't getting vacuumed and we pay for cleaning.
The one thing I can be fairly certain of about today is that I will have no time to work with any of our actual clients. My actual title, if anyone was wondering, is "Account Executive." I was hired, if anyone cares, because I have ten years of account management experience. Because working with clients is what I'm good at.
Naturally I'm thrilled to spend my time on hardware repair, software troubleshooting, and office supply ordering.
In fact, I'm just thrilled.
It's naughty to be late. They've trained us to that from kindergarten, on.
At least, they tried. With some of us, it didn't quite 'take'.
Me, I'm casual about times when it comes to work. I make a reasonable effort to show up on time but I don’t always succeed.
(It's always been my opinion that an employee whose main claim to fame is that they're "never late" isn't worth an employee who strolls in a bit late from time to time but is also available to work through lunch or on weekends or in the evenings when necessary. Those who punch the time-clock in in the morning are likely to be the same ones who insist upon punching it out promptly in the evening.)
This morning was not a success.
That was a long, boring, and unnecessary way of saying I was late to work this morning, wasn't it? (I'm not even sure why I felt the need to tell you.)
This week has been Technology Hellweek.
A software program we use (proprietary, need I add?) that lets a DOS-based program on a portable box interface with an internet-based .asp reporting program ate about 35% of a client's data this week.
Bernie assures me this has happened before (I remember hearing about it in my training) and that DiamondGirl can wrest the data from the server, but....
DiamondGirl doesn't work here any more and while she said she would have done it for us, free-lance, she's going to be out of town for the next four days for her actual job. The client not surprisingly wants their data now, so I turned to Moe and send a half-begging e-mail. He would know how to do it.
In the meantime, the "just in time" data that the clients are supposed to be able to see within 24 hours of doing their jobs has now been AWOL for five days.
The servers have been acting up, one of them won't let us in at all, the machine we use for the really, mind-numbingly boring process of scanning business cards has the sulks, our internet access is like molasses, our e-mail has been and continues to be giving us fits, and something in the server closet beeeeps in an alarming way at least once a day.
The last two jobs we did for one client spawned a flurry of e-mails and phone calls as they tried to decide if it was our tech or Human Error that caused some odd problems (it was tech, but their tech, not ours), and the oh-so-eager-to-help "help desk" at the new email provider's office disappeared abruptly as soon as they got our check.
I dunno. I'm thinking there might be some kind of connection between these events and my unwillingness to roll out of bed this morning. What do you think?
Yesterday was the capper, though. Bernie was in here discussing the Mysteriously Eaten Data with me and looking at the boxes (under the assumption, one presumes, that I was too stupid to read the screen and recognize that it actually said, "Responses: 37" instead of, "Responses 00").
He asked if I'd tried a different button in the reporting program (yeah, because that's going to magically fix it) and if I'd tried a different software program entirely (what part of, "Responses: 00" sounds like the box is just kidding?) and various other well-intended but idiotic things.
Eventually he picked up the box, looked at it, and asked me, quite seriously, "Have you tried looking at the chip?"
It's not an engraving, okay? I can't get out my magnifier or my little chip-reading glasses and see the data on the chip.
Eventually I figured out that Alvin, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, a Masters in statistics, and an I.Q. of something like 175, was able to access the data on a chip through other means occasionally, back when the program was all DOS-based. (Alvin invented the boxes. There is little or no magic he cannot work.)
I, with my degree in English Lit, find myself unwilling to attempt to duplicate this feat. Even if my own I.Q. does go into triple digits.
Bernie's next suggestion was that I ask Poodle Boy, who has a degree in Marketing, if he could look at the chip and do whatever it was that Alvin used to do. (Bernie and Alvin don't speak any more.)
To be entirely honest, I find myself unwilling to call Poodle Boy and ask him to do "whatever it was Alvin did eight years ago to magically retrieve data when we used a different software program and using a full set of electronics gadgets and with physical access to the box, none of which I can offer you."
Moe's little company helped design the on-line part of this software, which is the part that's giving us trouble. He says he might be able to help me tomorrow.
In the meantime, the server that isn't responding to our attempts to communicate with it? Bernie finally decided the problem is there's no picture. He decided to hook a monitor and a keyboard up to it so he can look at it. He was, yesterday, entirely convinced that all the problems would magically disappear if he could just see a picture.
I solved that one by asking him to "wait a second." Then I walked out of the room.
Eventually he called after me to ask what I was doing and I said, "I don't want to be involved. If you're pushing any buttons on that machine, I don't want to be in the room at the time."
Since I had previously forced him to view the e-mail trail from last fall of what we not laughingly call "tsunami day" when a server error causes us to spam a client's list with millions of duplicate e-mails, he took me seriously. He grumbled, but in the end he didn't push any buttons.
It's hard to be sure if it's the tech or the attitude of the other people in this office toward the tech that makes my head spin the fastest.
Update:
DiamondGirl took pity on me and walked me through the hour-long process of getting the non-responsive server to respond.
We did, at least, get it to boot up and now we can access it from the 'net. I can't actually get into it (Bernie's all-important "picture") from the server closet, but that's because the box has decided that keyboards are the devil's playthings.
I just don't care any more.
Okay, I've rebooted the server four times, cleaned out about 50 MG worth of message attachments from my account, and now I'm trying to clean out the spam catch-all account, but I can't keep the server running for long enough. I'm also running disk clean-up on the server to see if we can compress it any further and free up any space.
This is not my fault. I cannot fix this and the next person who asks me, "what should we do" is getting trouble.
I told 'em and I told 'em and I told 'em this was gonna happen.
Exchange is down today - which means no e-mail.
Bernie and Buehler keep asking me what to do and I keep repeating, "I don't know." I tried to explain to them, back when they did it, that getting rid of all the tech people would not magically turn me into a network administrator, but they insisted everything would be peachy-keen and it wouldn't be a problem. They could hire someone, they said, if necessary. A company that could come by and help us if we had problems. But of course they never quite got around to it. And now there are problems.
I can, of course, reboot the server. And I'm doing it. But so could they and what I can't understand is why they felt I was the only one who could push the button? All I can do is push the button and I'm fairly certain their fingers all work just as well as mine.
They're afraid, that's what it is. They want the button pushed, but they're afraid to push it themselves.
Dorks.
P.S. Okay, later Buehler said I was being "p