mscleanslate

So, on January 22nd of 2010, I applied for a job with JumboCo. Today, I received the following email:

Dear Ms Cleanslate,

Thank you for your interest in JumboCo! We appreciate the time you took to complete our online application process for the following position:

Requisition Job Title
00-1000666 Administrative Assistant Badass – Special Projects South of Nowhere

We appreciate you sharing your education and employment information with us, but we also must inform you that this opening has been filled. We wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you may consider other employment opportunities. (emphasis mine)

Thank you again for your interest in this position and JumboCo. New jobs post daily. We encourage you to continue to visit http://www.JumboCo.com and look for job opportunities that match your skills and qualifications. If you haven’t already, we recommend that you take advantage of our automated notification system so that we can email you when new positions become available in your area of interest.

If you have any questions, please contact NeverAgainDarkenOurDoorstep at 866-555-2666.

Sincerely,
JumboCo

JumboCo is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Wow… did they really think I sat around for the past 126 days (from the start date to the end date, end date included) because it’s been 4 months, 6 days ( including the end date) since I sent them my resume. Which is….10,886,400 seconds or 181,440 minutes or 3024 hours or 18 weeks and I’ve been hovering by my phone, obsessively checking my email and losing sleep over the fact that JumboCo had not yet contacted me?

I’m SO HAPPY that they have so quickly released me from the torment of pining away, waiting to hear from them so that I may pursue other opportunities.

Honestly, I don’t think I want to work somewhere that it takes 18 weeks to make a simple hiring decision.

If anyone wants to know why people are unemployed for so long, it’s because companies don’t think twice about taking FOUR MONTHS to make hiring decisions. If I apply today, it means I need a job TODAY. MAYBE I need a job in 2 weeks… but I hope that every single person who applied for that job has another job now. Because I’m spiteful like that. And 4 months and 6 days is not acceptable in my book.

There isn’t a “standard” in the world of temps/contract workers as far as getting paid for time off. In some cases, I have had the “major” holidays as paid holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (and sometimes the day after), Christmas Day (sometimes Christmas Eve) and New Year’s Day as paid holidays.

The company I work for now doesn’t do ANY paid holidays. Which means that next Monday (Memorial Day) I will have the day off (company I work at is closed) and I will not get paid for that day. It is, therefore, my intent to just enjoy the extended weekend and not worry that I’m not getting paid for it and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. My co-workers? Yeah, they all get paid. Whatever.

And, Bossman can be an asshat all he likes about my collecting. But the truth of the matter is that I’ve resolved about 2 dozen very past due accounts. Without a single phone call. Because I am not going to call people that someone else just called 2 days ago. I’ll EMAIL them. I’ll FAX them, but I will NOT call them. And I’m getting results. HA!

Still have heard nothing about the opportunity that came up early last week. Since they kept asking over and over if I was available immediately, I’m figuring that I was not a candidate who was chosen to move forward. It happens. You can spend time feeling bad about it or you can move on.

This is me moving on…

It was a weird week… full of whispered conversations and just general weirdness. I think that they don’t believe I am doing any work. I say this partly because bossman has now decided that he needs me to pull a rabbit out of my ass and be able to collect many thousands of dollars owed by month end, I am to report to him about 40 accounts on Monday afternoon.

Interestingly, I am fairly unconcerned about this. If I pass the “test”, I pass. Yay. If I don’t… then they let me go? I’ve been waiting for that to happen since my first week on the job so every time one of the bosses wants to talk to me, I am prepared for them to be telling me it’s my last day, clean out your desk, etc. When that isn’t what they say, I am a little amazed and end up pretty nonplussed by whatever it was that they wanted to talk to me about.

The thing is, if I don’t collect the money, it’s not a failing on my part. Many of the accounts are 200-300+ days past due. There are issues well beyond the scope of what it is possible for me to fix. I haven’t the authority to address 97% of the issues at hand. (Customer unsatisfied with work done, customer doesn’t have purchase order, customer believes the service was a warranty covered item…) There have been some accounts where the person I get in touch with has simply never seen a copy of an invoice (whether this is true, I have no idea… the fact that when I send them invoices, they pay them is a pretty good indication to me that they really hadn’t ever received it) or maybe there is a new person in the position. I send what they request, they cut a check. But… when you need to collect a quarter million dollars and all I am able to collect is $500-2000 because the really big outstanding amounts belong to another department and I have been told in no uncertain terms that I am NOT to call those customers, what I do tends to look a little inadequate.

I’ve heard no more about the opportunity that was on the table earlier in the week so I will assume that they have decided to go another direction with it.

But I should probably be proactive and start looking again. Just in case I fail the ‘test’.

Maybe I am wrong, but last I checked, Tudie was not my boss. Yet, ever since Bosslady left for vacation, guess who has been micromanaging me?

At least a half million times a day (or maybe it just feels like that) she’s asking me what I’m working on, how many collections calls I’ve made, how many promised payments I’ve gotten… Ummm, well, because of her stellar training (“You’re so smart, you figure it out… class dismissed”) I have had to figure out 2 new-to-me software packages completely on my own. I will NOT be in the position of sounding like an idiot when I contact a customer. I don’t care how much Tudie micromanages me, I am NOT going to be fumbling through things when I am speaking to customers. Because a bill collector who can’t answer simple questions? Is never, ever (did I mention EVER?) getting paid.

The other thing I’ve been trying to wrap my head around and can’t is this. When a customer purchases something, they generate a purchase order. (I know this because when one of the techs wants to buy something, they call me and I have to generate a purchase order, therefore it follows that if someone is buying something from us, THEY would generate a purchase order). Yet, a great many customers who are disputing their bills are disputing them because WE can’t give THEM a purchase order number. Wait, what? You folks created a purchase order and… lost it? The person who GENERATED the Purchase Order should be able to conjure that purchase order up again so the invoice can be paid. But yet, they are telling us “Sorry, we can’t pay until you give us a Purchase Order number…” I think I am going to use that one next time I have a past due bill and see how it works. Maybe the collector’s confusion will buy me a couple of days to pay the bill.

And big hearts to the tech who needed a PO today and just wrote the info on a sticky note and then LEFT ME ALONE. Thank you, Tech Dude, for not hovering and making me feel like I am screwing things up. Can you teach Tudie to LEAVE ME ALONE?

So, that’s the latest from my own personal hell…

Oh yeah… and I got a rejection today… for a job I applied for IN NOVEMBER of 2009!! I think I figured out about 5 months and 2 weeks ago that I wasn’t getting the job. But hey, thanks for contacting me, folks.

So, today was the day I got my “training” to do the job I was hired to do. Do you want to know what that training consisted of?

Tudie: “I wasn’t trained on any of this. They just gave me this PowerPoint thingy and told me to have fun… and ummm, I don’t really know how to train anybody so here’s the link to the PowerPoint thingy. Bossman says you’re bright so I’m sure you won’t have any trouble figuring it out….”

Ok. Yeah. That was ever so helpful. And TOTALLY worth waiting 5 and a half weeks for. And then she was all indignant that I wasn’t ready to hop on the phones, at 3PM and start making collections calls. I’ve got 2 new software systems that I’m going to have to figure out myself and I’m just supposed to jump into calls with NO research? No idea how to pull up information in these systems (because I hadn’t perused the “PowerPoint thingy” yet)? No… that wasn’t going to happen. Because if I am going to be talking on the phone with people, I want to be able to sound like I know what the beejeezus I’m doing.

Oh and… bosslady is on vacation until next Wednesday. Who do they have filling in for her? Yep, it’s Tudie. I give it until noon tomorrow before I get called into Bossman’s office. I’ll be surprised if I still have a job come week’s end.

It’s been a little more than a week since I got the call about the other opportunity. I’ve heard nothing new. I got a call from the same agency, different recruiter about another position today. Again, I expressed interest. We shall see if anything will come of it. If not, I’ll just stay open to possibilities. I am still not feeling welcomed or comfortable where I am, although there seems to be an effort now to get me trained to do what they hired me to do.

The thing is, though, that if I do a good job doing what they’ve decided that they want me to do then I will work myself out of a job. Which may be why this is a contract position. Because if I do a craptastic job then… Oh yeah, they have someone like that already… Tudie.

I’m not someone who is “motivated by money”… that being said, the other jobs that I am being offered pay more than what I am making right now which doesn’t hurt nor does it make them less attractive. It’s true that another job could end up being even worse than where I am now. However, I don’t think that “Optimizing my personal space utilization” (aka sitting at a desk bored to death because you don’t have the tools to do any actual work) is the picnic that you think it would be. Because Big Brother watches the internetz and I think they’d notice if I spent hours in the bathroom with my Battery Operated Boyfriend (tempted to test that theory… but somehow think that being fired for being a perv would probably not be a good thing to add to my resume at this time, plus, lube is not always easy to get out of one’s work clothes).

I do have a project for tomorrow and allegedly will get some training on Wednesday. Would be weird if they finally got me trained and then I took another job. I have to keep telling myself that they have no loyalty to me, so why should I have any loyalty to them?

Speaking of loyalty… I have things to wrap up for LegalBeagle. More later!

Tomorrow, Automatrons R Us (where I am “just a temp”) has it’s annual “Our Future’s So Bright We Can Hardly Stand It” celebration. In the past when I’ve been a contractor, these soirees were “for employees only” and “justatemps” were not ALLOWED to attend. So imagine my surprise when I was informed about a week ago that my attendance at this function is MANDATORY. And I have to be there an hour before my normal start time. And it’s farther from home than my normal workplace. Yeah, I’m thrilled.

Now, I suppose there are some people who would see this as a glimmer of hope that maybe they were going to be brought onboard full time. To this I say “nay nay” gentle reader. And here’s why I say “nay nay”…

When I was first hired, there was talk of my getting a company cell phone. I hadn’t heard anything more about it so I decided to probe a little today and was told that “Bossman doesn’t think it’s a good investment for Just A Temp”. Allrighty then… this says to me that my “Just A Temp” status is not likely to change.

I hadn’t been told by the agency pre-interview why the position was open but it slipped in the postmortem that I was covering for someone on maternity leave. The person on maternity leave is due to come back mid-June and they hired someone internally to cover for her absence and will be (allegedly) keeping him on after she returns. What I don’t understand is why would they tell the agency something that isn’t true? Why say I am covering for a maternity leave when I’m not? And most maternity leaves aren’t six months. So… maybe they didn’t want to admit it was a couple of month position and not a 6 month position? I know that there are people out there who would jump at an 8-12 week gig where they weren’t going to be brought on full time. I was told by the company in the interview that this could become a permanent position. Was that a ruse as well? Were they afraid that if they were honest I wouldn’t take the job?

I finally have access to the programs I need to do the job I was hired to do. However, I need some training to be able to use them. No one seems interested in giving me any training. They all seem as apathetic about that as they did about getting me access to the programs in the first place. (I find it very difficult to believe, especially since I know how to read their IT tickets, which are being emailed to me, that they escalated the situation at all. Everything I’ve seen so far was done 2 weeks after I was TOLD it was done/requested and everything is marked “low priority” or “not critical”).

Meanwhile… another company I haven’t heard from in well over a month let me know that a position they had allegedly submitted me for almost 2 months ago has been filled. (insert eyeroll here). But I am “on the top of their list” for the next opening at The Evil Empire. (See this? This is me not holding my breath…)

::SIGH:: I’d better get to bed. I need to be up early to be all “Rah Rah for the company that will never hire me…!”

So, I’m almost through week 3 of the job and I get called into the bosses office today. Apparently, Tudie has reported that I am “rude” to her all the time.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I was informed that I could lose my job if I don’t change my attitude. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor again.

Now, my friends, I have been called MANY things in my time, but RUDE has never been among them, especially not in the workplace.

So, WOW… just Wow.. I was just stunned by that. I’ve bent over backwards to help out every person I work with. I’ve done everything from filing to making copies to making coffee (none of which is “my job”). I brought donuts the first Friday I was there.

Now I have to decide whether to try to stick it out for the length of the contract or whether I should start actively pursuing other employment. My gut says it’s time to hit the bricks again because when you’re dealing with someone like this, who has been with the company for a while, there’s no way to win.

I’m too old for this “she hurt my feelings” bullshit, especially from someone who has been as rude as she can possibly be from day one. Plus, honestly, this is a really toxic, negative group of people. I’m not quite sure how to work this, the whole interview thing and all when I’m working and can’t take time off, but I don’t think I really have a choice.

And hey, the touch of trying to make me feel guilty for “all of the time and money you’ve invested in me….” did you REALLY go there? What about the time I’ve invested? What about the fact that you knew I was coming a week before I got there and did nothing to prepare?

Ugh. That’s really about all I have to say is UGH! So frustrating and it doesn’t HAVE to be that way.

Well, I’ve made it through two weeks at the new job. The most significant thing to happen this week is that I did actually get a computer. It doesn’t have access to the program that I need to do my job, but I did get a computer. So, now people can email me and I still can’t do a damn thing to help them.

So, hopefully soon I will have a computer and access to what I need to actually do some work.

You know, if you hire someone because people are drowning in work and then don’t give them the tools to do the job you hired them for, it’s like sending someone to sit in a rowboat right out of the reach of a drowning person… “Hey look, help is here…. but NOT!” (I think my analogies could probably use some work but the cubicle fumes have gotten to me the last couple of weeks).

My desk is clean. I have office supplies (I went out and bought some of my own because Tudie is in charge of office supplies and people are ALWAYS complaining that we don’t have something and I figured it would just be easier to get my own than try to argue her into ordering what I want.

This weekend will be spent catching up on all of the things that I haven’t had time (or motivation) to do this week.

Then Monday… back to the grind. But at least there is a grind to go back to, right?