Gah...

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Blood tests came back normal save for one that was high. Orders? Exercise more, watch what you eat. Well, duh.

Then the dermatologist appointment. Went better than I hoped. But I'm on a spray treatment that is so 'aggressive' that I can only use it for four weeks. Really it's for two weeks and your doctor can opt to throw you back on it for two more... he just threw me on it now. It's tiny small bottle of spray. It's one spray per 5" area, rub in. When I'm done, I have to wash it off my hands. Umm... and I'm putting this on my skin? It makes me really sensitive to touch for about an hour or two...

I kept meeping everytime someone touched me yesterday at my friend's house. Eight people around a table... I got bumped a lot. ::whimpers::

But the spray seems to be working. It's only been 6 doses so far and I'm seeing hints of my freckles through the psoriasis. Neat.

Bad news on the work front... I lost an ally. The great "B"mer (sounds like Beamer) took a Friday & Monday off to do this wonderful community service/big brother sort of thing and when he came back they told him he could leave. I mean "WTF?" No warning just 'here's the door'. I didn't even know what happened until later. I was waiting for him to get done with whatever he was doing so he could help me with a project and his former-co-worker (hippie-witch) happily told me he'd been let go. Then dumped more work on me and lectured me and walked off.

I'm totally swamped, she has unreasonable demands, and she's a bitch. Yes, she is. Funny how a girlfriend of hers from a previous job comes to visit earlier in the week. "B"mer goes on his two day thing. "B"mer is let go. Her girlfriend comes in the VERY NEXT DAY to start her NEW JOB. I'm seriously pulling a WTF here! I smell set-up.

Since "B"mer has left, I've had three run-ins with the hippie-witch. She's seriously out to get me fired too I think. Trying hard NOT to think negative thoughts about her... but she just doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but herself. ::sigh::

Wah! I want "B"mer back!

Another Update

I was taking hand-written notes the other day (Tuesday) during a "bad day"...

7-22:

Two birthdays today. Huge storm rolling through. It's as black as night outside. Rain & thunder, it fits my mood. I'm still on my probation time. I have two senior women jerking my leash in different dimensions. One is even jerking it in multiple directions all by herself. The big boss is "retiring" at the end of the year. The aforementioned woman jerking my leash is one of his personal assistant. She's using me to update his MAMMOTH contacts & now his "clip book" of his best articles. Joy.

Even if I bust my a$$, I'm not getting the pat on the head... she will. I will do my best. I can't in good conscious do less, but she's given me two full-time tasks. I have other tasks that are full-time or nearly that. Plus I am the receptionist, Officer serving girl, gopher and chief whipping girl.

At the moment I'm waiting for my laptop to finish loading a few new programs. It froze yesterday @ 81% after tying up my laptop for three (3) hours. Now I've just lost about an hour so far and it's 56.87% done. ::sigh::

Had interesting dreams last night. Only remember little bits of it. It was Anita Blake-verse. I was a "were-kitty" and I was given to a new vamp in Jean-Claude's brood. The new vamp was sent in to spy on St. Louis but instead defected and joined up. New vamp was being 'played' by David Tennant. MEOW! 64.1% done.



Took calls. 66.66%

It's going a little faster now. Yes! Hope it finishes before we get any power flickers because of the storm. The occasional flash of lightning is NOT improving my mood. I need to go out in this and fetch the two birthday cakes for my birthday boys. 81.51%

82.94% Slowed down again...

I'm hoping the big order of paper I placed arrives today. But it probably won't get here until tomorrow. That means raiding the emergency stash for a day and a half.

My bonsai is dying. None of the other plants I take care of are dying, just my bonsai. Joy.

83.48%

Went light on breakfast this morning, am feeling it now. Nibbling on pistachios while I wait.

85.12%

My group of friend that I hang with on Sundays is thinking about changing games soon to a less 'moody/dark/thought provoking/mystery solving' type to a more traditional hack and slash sort of game. I'm am SO ALL FOR IT! I'm kinda tired of what we have been playing as it's very dark, very stacked against us, and is a no-win situation as best I see it. Something lighter would be good.

Still 85.12%

Crapped out and froze at 85.12% ::sigh:: I didn't want to install one of the programs in the suite (an option supposedly available to me) and when it should have skipped installing that program, it hung and froze. Joy. Two more hours lost!

Noon - Restarting...

Served the birthday cakes! Quattro Leches Cake & Tri-Color Beauty Cake. Tri-Color Beauty Cake was a dark chocolate cake with mocha icing around the side and pastel puffs of icing covering the top in not three but four colors: white, yellow, blue and pink. I guess they didn't count the white as a color. ::blinks in confusion:: The Quattro Leches Cake was a caramelly delicious cake. Yum.

12:36 pm - 37.67%

12:43 pm - 60.64%

1:21 pm - 89.72% Crashed? When?

That's it. No more. I need to try and do some work today. The IT guy will have to try and fix this when he's in on Thursday. Crap!

Nearly a month has passed...

Nearly a month has passed since my last blog update. I could go into a huge list of reasons why but basically it all boils down to life biting my ass... as usual.

The new thing was 'the talk' at my office. Yes, I was given a 'improve in 30 days' talk. I'd like to say that I think that it was not totally uncalled for. But I do think they were excessive on some points. Never the matter, I have done several things in the last few weeks since the meeting to 'improve' my performance.

• My desk was moved away from the young, college-age, impressionable interns, who it seems I have been chatting with too much and interfering with their training.
  I call bullshit on this one. They don't talk to me that much. They chat and gossip and goof off all around me without including me. Including massive conversations on IMs. If anyone is distracted, it's me.


• My desk is now up at the front desk. Joy, joy. I am the first person you see when you enter my office. I get to greet guys, redirect the lost persons who stumble into our office, sign for every package that comes in, sort the mail, deliver the mail, keep my desk spotless (while working) and make sure the lobby is tidy... Shoot me.
  It's my fault. It's the only free seat that isn't in a private office and I don't get one of those... don't ask... don't think about it.


• I have to get back to cleaning the kitchen, breakroom, supply room, printer stations, etc.


• I have to better track supplies and the purchases of them.


• I have to monitor other departments and offices to make sure they stay in budget.


• I need to learn not to 'share' in conversations happening around me. I'm not college educated so no one expects me to know everything... so say nothing. Bad information/input is worse than no input.


• I have to answer the phones the 'company' way. "Good morning/afternoon/evening. <>. This is Kiri. How can I help you?" Every time, all the time. Which is fine here at the front desk where I can hear myself think. I screwed it up all the time in intern alley from the raw noise. Typically, I'd forget to say my name. ::sigh::

Basically, shut up and be the slave we hired. Nice, eh?

The Friday Briefing

Well, with Witchy laid up with a nasty.. er... flu(?) I've had huge amounts of time to work. And I did. A lot. Oye!

I was juggling three VPs' expense reports. One is leaving the company so he's SO not interested in the dotting of "i's" and the crossing of "t's". So that's fun. Another is my 'big baby' who I have to beat up to get the receipts because he was never properly trained and as his 'work' is different from the other VPs, his handling of the expense reports is different. (I'm staring at a folder stuffed to exploding point full of stuff for him... Joy.) The last VP is the one that I first inherited this duty for and then he stopped having me do it. Joy. Well, he's back. LOL First thing he did was drop four weeks of receipts on my desk and say "sort and report". Joy. Then a week later, he grabs me and drags me to the conference room with even more receipts and says I messed up and here's how to fix it. Er... you TOLD me what to charge to each client, so... I messed up? ::sighs::

I've been fighting to get new cards and stationary ready for our NY office, which is moving to a new location. They took forever to get things approved and then I needed to talk to them about quantity. When I got a hold of my equivalent in the NY office (except with more authority as she is EA to the other owner, the nice one), she acted like I was crazy not to have just randomly ordered. Er... How do I know the quantities they'll need? ::sigh::

The big color printer had issues. I had to call for a repair tech to fix it. Stupid people keep slamming the paper drawers. ::snarl:: Then they grouch at me when it doesn't work. Er... HELLO?

So anyway, Witchy's back, sort of. I've posted. All's reasonably well.

Oh, and did I mention that I had a little Spring cold too? No? Silly me. ACHoo!

Small Victories

Well, yesterday a friendly conversation with one of our nicer VPs was overheard by the Office Manger/VP of New Sales (read: my real direct supervisor). We were chatting about the office coffee, which I have noticed has been declining in popularity. I haven't changed brands since I got here except for the occasional flavored coffee day when I was feeling 'crazy'. Well, the nice VP was saying she had shifted to decaf since she's expecting. (YEAH!!!) So I was chatting her up about her preferred coffees so I could get some in the office for her in decaf. Well, Mr. Boss heard and approved my 'upgrading' the coffee and... (drum roll please)... our Monday company lunches.

I nearly fainted. I've been twisting the arm of the CFO to try and improve the quality of our Monday company-bought lunch without success. Mr. Boss has enough authority to 'bully' the CFO to opening the purse-strings. Woo-hoo!

Small victories. Now I just have to FIND something better without being insane.

April Fools Day led to Hump Day

Well, last night ended very quietly at the office. It was slow enough that most of the staff felt safe leaving at a human hour rather than staying well past "closing" time. Officially, we open at 9 am and am open until 6 pm. That means someone's here at 8:30 and someone's here until 6:30 pm. I'm the 9:30 to 6:30 group. Mind you, not many people watch the clock that strictly. We're salary, not hourly and that leads to fluctuating hours on a daily basis. I've seen people here before dawn and staying until very late at night. (Have heard of employees having stayed overnight once or twice. Gotta love the few offices with nice couches (2 offices/2 couches). I live close enough that should hopefully never be a problem.

Anyway, at 6:35 pm I rang my Mother wondering where she was as I was ready to go and she was usually early. Traffic and a late start had slowed her down. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't complaining. I was going to offer to go a block over and wait there because the traffic pattern is less hectic, thus less stressful for her. 'No, no problem. Wait in your office for me.'

So I powder my nose and glance out the front window as I'm walking back up front... MOMMIE!!!

So we're heading home and I'm talking about my day (she slept all day - Night worker, remember?) and she goes 'so... what's for dinner?' I'm tired so I'm like... 'er... pasta is easy.' She didn't wash dishes. Ok. I'm not going to wash dishes then cook so... EAT OUT! Yeah! Where? Er... um... er...

We debate, we compromise, we blacklist, and we finally agree on Chili's. They only opened it a few months ago and we hadn't been yet. Nice friendly attentive waiter, Corey. Reasonable, if boring appetizer, my fault... I ordered it without checking into the details of it. :-( Great meal. We both ordered a steak, each a little different.

The food arrives and I fish the roasted peppers OUT of my veggies and fling them onto Mom's plate (she likes them). I nibble at the veggies... poof... gone. I nibble at the mashed potatoes... poof... mostly gone. Er... should try the steak... I ordered rare and got medium. :-P Oh, well. At least, it wasn't dry or show-leather. Four bites and I had to ask for a to-go box. LOL I guess I wasn't in a meat mood.

Wish I could have slept last night. I was awake more than I was asleep. Plus I had this funky re-occurring dream about trying to make drinks in one of those mini Starbuck's that they tuck into stores. I ground some chocolate chip cookies in the coffee bean grinder by mistake. I was having no luck finding anything and kept wondering why no one had showed me how to do this. LOL So annoying.

Anyway... I'm here at work. Got my massive supply order in. Got it all tucked away now. All my morning stuff is done. I'm waiting on three separate tasks to be approved. I have two projects to work on... All in all, a good day. Now, if I can only stay awake. ^.^'

Tuesday - April Fool's Day

Well, thankfully no one has made a fool out of me today... not I anyone else.

Today has been running smoothly. Except for my efforts to fall asleep at my desk this morning. ::blushes:: I can't help it, I hit a monotonous streak of activities and I start nodding off despite my best efforts. I stood up, walked around, took a few of the incoming calls... Snac- huh? ::blinks in confusion:: 'Was I just snoring?'

Anyway... still have an expense report to do because he gave me nothing to work with for information. I sent a pdf of his receipts... each receipt numbered... asking which of these was billable to a client... his reply... he thinks that the $29.00 MAY BE billable to X Client Corp. Joy. Lovely. Why'd I bother asking?

Anyway, now I'm ordering food for two different groups of people from two different delivery places and they are both making me be the money holder, which means the waitress when the food gets here. Joy. Where's my f*cking uniform and you'd best not be a cheap tipper!

The Four Day Wrap-Up

Hiya!

Well, as you noticed, I didn't post Friday. Too busy. Can't recall all of it but there was much 'workage' happening. Friday I finally finished entering the receipts for the VP, it came to just under a grand in cash back to him.... No wonder he was after me about this. Got another tiny batch to do that he gave me after the monster batch so I'll be doing that today (hopefully). Heard back from the girls in Accounting today, I entered his stuff right... the first time! Go me!

My Saturday was mostly internal battery charging. I slept late. I played a little online, Puzzle Pirates. Then checked on the Mother-figure... still sleeping. Hey, she works nights. Then I went back to my computer and played Sid Meyer's Pirates... Fun but a bit monotonous after a while. Batteries weren't totally charged so I catnapped with my cat eagerly hopping up to join me. I could almost hear the "yes, that's good. Nap time. See? It's only taken me forever to teach you this trick."

After a bit, the Mom-person awakes and demands food. FOOD. So I stall her a bit. And take her out for an early dinner, rather than a late lunch. What's the difference? About $12 bucks and better main course and appetizers. I was being a 'good' daughter and surprised her with a plate of raw oysters on the half shell that I picked out myself from the hill of them. That's about 7 raw oysters and 3 or 4 lemon wedges. Don't 'ew' me. I don't eat them. She does, I just like hunting for the best ones for her. :-D We get home after a small shopping trip for the necessities and she goes back to bed. Me? I get to put stuff away and entertain myself. Oh, no! Whatever will I do? Er... read a book, watch a series of the boob-tube, watch a movie, play a game... pet the cat... feed the cat... throw cat-treats for the cat... try to trim her claws... find and use the bandages. See Mom off to work. Stay up late watching... er... Animal Rescue Heroes. I think... I was sleepy, I might have been watching my eyelids more.

Sunday rolls around, I sleep in late. (See a pattern here?) Shower, dress and race out the door to pick up junk for the gaming table (veggie tray, chips, chocolate, etc.) I see that the doughnuts are on sale. So I add a dozen doughnuts to the order. Expensive trip. Fruit for Mom's snacking at the office, all the gaming junk, my treat (olives off the olive bar & a marinaded artichoke), and few drinks for the home and the office totaled around $46 and change. I give $5 to whichever charity the store is sponsoring. I give another $5 to a woman begging as I'm loading the car. Felt like a total bitch, here I am cramming crap in the car and she's literally a walking post. I'm seen her around, there's a homeless shelter a few miles down the road and she stays there sometimes. So I gave her $5. I mean, it's not like I do that frequently.

Got to gaming before anyone else. Killed a little time trying to play Oblivion again. Woohoo. I remembered how to slash. Oblivion ended quickly when the others showed up. Gaming is a bit boring at times. Then another player & I had words. Ended with me taking my freezing self upstairs and curling up on the sofa under a blanket for a half an hour. I got summoned back down to gaming after everyone was done screaming. I wasn't going to have any of that. Gaming ended fine. No one's feelings apparently hurt. Yeah! Then I stayed up too late playing on the computer.

Work has been fun, lots to do and no energy to do it. But that'll teach me. (No, it won't but I figured that I should say it before someone else did.)

Got lunch ordered. Last minute again. These people don't understand how hard it is to feed a group this size on short notice. ::sigh:: Anyway, one meal got forgotten but three people weren't here who I had orders from so the 'owner' of the lost meal got to pick from the three options. He seemed happy enough with his choices.

Just finished cleaning up after the animals and sorted the mail... now to scan it some receipts and do the next batch of the VP's expense reports. Joy. ::stifles yawn as she shambles off to the scanning room::

Tuesday PM/Wednesday

Yes, I know. A brillant and titillatingly title for a post... Come on, what do you expect? Creativity? Hah!

To set the stage for last night, I was working (shockers) when the CFO of the company (one of my superiors, but not a direct boss) came back from a trip to the bank to get money out. She was trying to close on a home to retire too in a few years. The bank was having problems so she had a lot of trouble getting the cashier's check she needed. She came back in a fowl mood after fighting with them for over an hour.

A little later she was mucking about in the storage room that also houses our color workhorse of a printing station. I hear this yell of anger about how she told me to unpack these four boxes of paper (40 reams) the other day and it's still not unpacked and how I need to do what she says faster. The she starts on about how the printing stations were out of paper and 'blah, blah, blah'. I protested that the printing stations were not out of paper, they were at least half full and the storage areas beneath them were at least half full as well. She stalks out and slams open the closest print station... looks at me and snarls that she said 'full' not half full. Then storms off back to her meeting.

She rounds the corner and is out of sight, every eye in the place is on me, and I literally pantomime blowing her head off. Snickers follow. Feeling stupid and embarrassed for being dressed down in front of the whole office just because she's having a bad day, I limp into the storage room to do as the mistress commands. I'm bent in half over the boxes, cutting the plastic thingies, slapping the reams from two of the boxes into the storage room's paper supply area. Only two fit and barely considering that I pride myself on it being well stocked. I have to shuffle a ream into the various print drawers of the workhorse printer to not have a single spare lying around. Then I start loading the two remaining boxes onto a spare rolling chair to move about the office and re-fill the print stations.

Queue CFO screaming my name again demanding to know if I pulled her office door closed. Ticked to high heaven by this point, I snap that I was just leaving the storage room and was stocking the print stations like she asked and hadn't been near her office. Silence as she snarls about her door being locked and having to go fetch the spare keys. Another co-worker, one of the President of the company's personal assistant duo, comes out and corners me going 'why is she yelling at you now?' I explain what's going on and she gets angry red talking loudly about how if I won't complain, she will. "She can't treat you like that. If I feel that you are being harassed, even if you don't, then it IS harassment" and she was complaining to the Office Manager. Joy. This'll brand me a bigger trouble maker than I already am. Nice.

I fill the two other print stations, barely took one box. So I push the last box around giving everyone with a private printer a ream... Accounting gets four and so does the CFO. (Who's office is open again.) I carefully place the four reams on the closest surface in her office, test the lock, close the door, test open the door, close the door and go to the conference room where she, her husband and the agent are talking over forms and paperwork.

She's ignoring me, but her husband smiles at me. I tell him to please tell her that there are four reams of paper waiting for her and that I didn't lock her out of her office. That said I leave and get back to work.

Meeting over. She's fuming. She didn't close one the house because she couldn't get to the money in time. Now I'm just stewing in anger and she wisely walks off bitching to herself.

It's 20 minutes to closing. I hear her giving BAD directions on what to do with the items in the spare office to her son (who's interning for us). I shrug and say NOTHING. Let her screw it up. Her son, however, is smarter than that and came over to ASK politely for my help. I walk in, sort stuff into "storage", "trash", "media property", & "uncertain - requires senior staff decision". He thanks me, I grab a few of the little things and go stow them away in the proper places. I don't do a single other thing to help with the office move. She didn't tell me too. ::raspberries:: I leave only a few minutes late... like 20 minutes late.

Now I have to wait for her to finalize who is moving into the other empty office now. I have my suspicions about who is going to get the office, we'll see. We've lost two people this month and gained two. But we have one or two too many interns and not enough seats, thus the rush to get senior staff into offices and the interns into their old desks. Me? Oh, in all likelihood I'll be moved to the front desk. ::groans:: That sucks... it really sucks... You have to deal with the morons who wander in asking for directions. (Does my desk have a 'please ask me shit' sign on it?) People asking for charity. I'm a poor working girl, I live paycheck to paycheck and slide deeper into debt every day, f*ck off. People handing out fliers, cards and trying to bully their way into the office to talk to 'someone in charge'. In charge? I'm in charge of keeping people liek you from wasting the time of the senior staff, there's the door. Use it. Once. Don't come back unless we invite you.

Gah! Plus, everyone hangs out at the front desk talking. The closest office has a tiny little angry Bronx boy in it and his taste in music is questionable at best. I had to sit at the front desk for a week right before Easter. I kept having to get up and close his office door. Think he took the hint? No. Not once. Now I know why "Pepper" wears headphones a lot.

Aye!

This morning, I'm juggling an iced coffee, an orange juice, the paper (from the front door), my purse, and my lunch as I manage to finger open the door, hold it with my foot and elbow it open and get in. This done, I'm half way to my desk when an intern accosts me telling me that I'd 'better take a call from D in the NY office'. I look at the intern with death in my eyes and say "I just got in the front door. I need to put all this crap down and away. I need to see what is happening in the office today BEFORE I can handle the NY office's issues. Tell D that I will call her back."

The intern hovers, 'you sure?' I sigh, "yes, I'm sure." She wonders off shaking her head like I am making a huge mistake. I get everything taken care off, plus I spitefully do my morning routine before I bother to talk to D in the NY office. So I empty the dishwasher, start the iced tea, load the printers with paper, and make sure of who's in the office today and who's not and why they aren't.

D in NY? She wanted to know if I could let her hear the voicemail message people hear when they call in after hours. This is the urgent business that I was supposed to drop everything for? I handle it. Find the intern and tell her in no certain terms that I am NOT so low on the company's totem pole that I HAVE to take a call from anyone short of the Presidents. Honestly, I could beg off talking to them too if I was HONESTLY elbow-deep in something unless it was life-threatening. She paled, apologized and scampered back to her desk. I felt bad so I apologized later. We're good now.

She realized why I got so mad when I mentioned the load I was carrying and the nature of "D in NY's" emergency. D does that... every time she calls it's an emergency.

So... after a crappy morning... it's become a fairly nice one. Ordered good and cheap chinese for lunch, had my cooking complimented by two employees (I let them sample my cheesy-herb whipped redskin potatoes), had the Office Manage need my help on something trivially easy that he couldn't figure out, then he needed my help with some help wanted ads, etc. All in all... a good afternoon.

::knocks on her wooden desk:: Here's hoping my luck holds.