February 21, 2011
My Second Full Week of Work: Part I
Monday
Did you know that the words to "My Wild, Irish Rose" are kinda racey? Especially for the time it was written! Like everyone else in the world under the age of 70, I only knew the first four bars, usually heard in movies and t.v. shows in exaggerated, drunkenly singing. But here's the last quarter of the first verse:
And someday, for my sake,
She may let me take
The bloom from my wild, Irish rose!
He's totally hoping to deflower her, right? I like how he says, "For my sake." Good to let her know that she shouldn't expect much from the experience. Thanks for the warning, selfish lover!
Know how I know all this? Because last Monday was Valentine's Day, and in an effort to distract everyone at work from the fact that things have gotten even worse, HR Troll #1 came up with Love Songs in the Lobby. And guess who was singing them?
Yeah. Me. And another lady and two guys. A quartet of people singing in the lobby of an office building at eight in the morning. A capella. The things I do for that place! Hey, beats sitting in a cubicle, I guess. Especially when the cubicle I was sitting in was STILL a temporary cubicle.
At some point during our singing, my new boss, Vy, walked in. She didn't pause to listen or grab a piece of Valentine chocolate. Nor did she compliment me later on what was probably crappy singing anyway, so it's nice to see that she's not insincere, right? But she did give me permission to do it, so I guess that's something.
Tuesday
On the 15th, halfway into the first month of my new job, I was still not occupying the cubicle that went with the position. And despite it being the biggest cube I've ever had -- with it's own private printer -- my impatience wasn't just about the prestige. See, it's harder to do one's job when
a.) someone else is sitting conveniently right outside one's boss' office so that it doesn't occur to one's boss that one is the person one's boss should be asking to do things, and
b.) one isn't anywhere near the files and records and materials that one needs in order to do one's job.
Very annoying, indeed.
But Tuesday was the day that we were told we would be moved, and I was VERY excited. I think my predecessor was even looking forward to it,... UNTIL. She remembered that Vy had a WebEx meeting set for 2:00, and it just WOULDN'T BE HUMANLY POSSIBLE to switch our cubes AND host a WebEx meeting in the same eight-hour period.
Can I just say? My predecessor is a lovely human being. But she moves at the speed of tectonic plates and spends much of her day completely baffled and overwhelmed by her situation. It's no wonder she had a heart attack last year.
Immediately, she wanted to tell I.T. that we couldn't POSSIBLY move our computers and phones that day, but I was determined to talk her down off the ledge. It took thirty minutes of negotiations. I had to come up with THREE -- not one, not two, but THREE -- alternate plans, in case our computers weren't working at 2:00.
Plan D was to literally go to my house and use my home computer. That's how certain this woman was that everything was going to go horribly awry, and on no one day in the history of the world have two events ever happened that didn't result in utter catastrophe and the destruction of life as we know it.
Know how long it took for them to switch our cubes? Including her boxes and boxes of personal crap (and files from her old boss five years ago because she never throws anything out)? Go on, guess.
Three minutes. Including the time it took for us to make sure our computers and phones were working properly in their new homes.
Wednesday
Was awesome. Aware of my deep, pathological need to PURGE my new cubicle, Vy was out of the office for the day and encouraged me to use the day to do just that. Let's be honest -- she was probably tired of looking at the mess.
In cleaning out a small cabinet, two small drawers, and one big file drawer of surplus office supplies, I found:
* Return address labels bearing the name of a guy who retired five years ago.
* Rubber gloves.
* A non-working solar calculator.
* Herbal tea with a 2008 expiration date.
* Enough paperclips to circle the earth three times.
Plus, binders and files going back to 1987, the year I graduated high school. Video tapes. Not DVD's -- video tapes. Along with cassette tapes and floppy disks. My desk is a time capsule!
From my actual desk surface, I moved many binders to the bookcase, and many stacked files to the file drawer. Ya know, where they belong. I'm not done purging the files, but at least I have a clear workspace. Which is what a desk surface is for.
Oh, wait, I forgot about the most convenient of all storage places: the floor. There are 27 binders stacked on my floor, dated 2007 through 2009, which is apparently MY job to figure out what to do with them because my predecessor apparently didn't have any time. Frankly, that's like if I sold my house without cleaning out my basement or garage. Your shit is not MY responsiblity, lady!
Except that, yeah, it is. Because if I wait for HER to do it, it will still be here when I retire... or fly a plane into the building.
Comments
I had to do the same thing with my last job. The woman before me had been there for 30 years. I got rid of more typewriter ribbon than ANYONE ever needs.
What made it worse was that a woman I SUPERVISED didn't want me to toss anything out. So I'd stay late and have maitenance bring me bins and I'd purge the heck out of office every night for a few hours.
Then I up and quit and left all my crap there for them to deal with, figure fair is fair :)
Anything exciting in the binders?
Posted by: Hope at February 21, 2011 01:29 PM
OMG, typewriter ribbon. Did you donate it to the Smithsonian?
Nothing exciting in the binders AT ALL. Just lots of printed out emails. This woman printed out every email she ever received and filed it in some binder.
Oh, she also printed off the entire online manual for WebEx, even though she never uses any but two of the features. Good-bye, trees!
Posted by: Wenchie at February 22, 2011 09:21 AM
I HATE people who print out emails. I had one of those in my office too. She then would go in and DELETE the emails because back in the day, the server would get full so you had to. Well, times have changed sweetie and you don't have to do that anymore but she couldn't get that through her head.
There was a typewriter in the office and two people actually used it because they didn't know how to use Word. I threw the typewriter out one night :)
Posted by: Hope at February 22, 2011 10:52 AM