mscleanslate

Weekly meeting with boss started with the phrase “So… how do you like working here…?” (which, believe me, is never a good sign.. in fact, it usually is a phrase you hear just before you AREN’T working “here” anymore.)

I was correct in my assumption that my boss was not “disappointed” at how the company picnic went… he was PISSED RIGHT THE FUCK OFF!

Now… the morning of the company picnic, I’d woken up @ 4am with a migraine. I was not well. I went out shopping in the crowded, whiny-child-infested hell of a BallzMart, then to the picnic site. The ONE picnic shelter was occupied. Great. I had something like 20 plastic bags full of food, table cloths, etc. plus jumbo paks of plates, cutlery, etc. plus 60 fricken pounds of ice, a cooler and two huge bags of charcoal.

The people using the shelter left….right about the time that people started showing up. One of the Perfect Wives started harping on me right away about why wasn’t everything already set up and how it was so tacky that it was a potluck and blahblahblahblahBLAH.

I was trying to get all the stuff from my truck to the shelter (could anyone be bothered to help?? Nooooooo….) I started setting things up and got an earful about how I hadn’t gotten enough food or enough ice or enough table cloths… blahblahblahblahBLAH.

I’d wanted to be HOME by 3:30, but people didn’t even get to the picnic site til 3:15ish… I left about 4:15.

Wellllll… today I got told that “EVERYONE” had gone out of their way to tell my boss I was nonstop complaining and bitching from the moment that they arrived(untrue) and unorganized (didn’t have everything all set up when people got there) and how AWFUL and UNFORGIVABLE it was that I LEFT (and they had to Cllllleeeeaaaannn uppppp…..). Add to that the complaint that there were no decorations, that things didn’t look nice, couldn’t I have gotten balloons or some small bouquets or something? Oh, and that I share a vehicle with another person and had to go was “not his problem” and I SHOULD HAVE freed up my day “for the team”.

Then he launched into how I had ruined the whole experience for everyone (keep in mind that I was gone pretty early on… so if they didn’t manage to have a good time, that’s my fault HOW?), that his whole “team building” effort that he’d worked a year on and this was supposed to be the crowning glory of was all “at least seriously set back and possibly at a point where we are back at square one” and that the whole team felt extremely negative toward me (really? gee… guess what? I don’t think the negativity towards me came from the friggin’ picnic)

Boss then starts in on how the breakroom isn’t being kept pristine and that the floors should be vacummed every couple days and the conference room isn’t pristine and that I obviously am not “focused on the TEAM” and how my life needs to stop during working hours so I can be “focused on the team” and checking in with them to see what they need and what they want and I need to be totally disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the espresso machine AT LEAST once a week. And that I need to “LISTEN” to what that team wants. That I need to spend time chatting with them. Well, ya wanna know what they all bitched about regarding the FORMER person in my position? “All she did was stand around chatting or go out shopping…”

Now…. this is the “team” that regularly goes to lunch without a word to me. Yet, *I* am the one who “isn’t focused on the team”

I worked for an extra 1.5 hours on a Friday and 4.5 hours on a Saturday for which I will NEVER get paid for this disaster. Not to mention all the time and planning that went into it and I did it all MY FUCKING SELF. Not to mention that the Other Half was pissed that I didn’t just blow it off altogether AND I heard nothing but negativity about it from “the team” before it ever happened and got not even one THANK YOU. No, I just got to hear about how my “constant complaining” ruined it for everyone who attended. (For the record… I said NOT ONE WORD OF THE VERY BITTER COMPLAINTS THAT WERE IN MY HEAD!)

So… basically, they want to pay someone $pittance an hour (NO OVERTIME) to do everything from washing coffeecups and vacuuming to doing Project Management to, apparently, being Dr. Friggin Phil and making sure everyone is happy all the time, to doing all of the supply purchasing and maintain the wiki AND you need to be an event planner (and be able to plan and execute everything ALL BY YOURSELF) and to do this you need to work 50 hours a week but you’re only going to get paid for 40 no matter what… and you have no vacation, sick time, or benefits of any kind. Your co-workers all make in excess of $100K a year and most treat you like something nasty they found on the bottom of their shoe.

Now… out of all of this, you know what stings? That part about not “being focused on the team”… Let’s see… if you recall, I bought both real mayo and miracle whip for the picnic, because I know some people ONLY like REAL mayo and some ONLY like Miracle Whip… I made sure to include hotsauce because I know that some team members like really spicy food/hot sauce… I got not only the hamburgers and hotdogs I was told to get, but I got brats, too and had even thought to ask if anyone needed a veggie option (the closest anyone came was that chicken would be their request, which I accommodated). I’ve done shopping on weekends and do shipping after work because I want to be available during the day in case someone needs something (big complaint about previous person was that she was never in the office). I’ve bought donuts with my own money. When we have visitors and I am sent to fetch lunch, I NEVER put MY lunch on the company card. I bought both regular and baked varieties of chips in case there were calorie counters in the group or those concerned about their fat intake. I buy Truvia for our “lo cal” sweetener because it’s a stevia based sweetener and is better for you than Aspartame. I buy three different types of coffee beans for the espresso maker and blend them so “the team” can have the best espresso experience possible (while keeping an eye on the budget).

And, ya know what? I was, until today, a little sad I’d be leaving this job. Not anymore… I’m countin’ down the days.

Currently, I work in a small office–14 people plus 1 “Skullery Wench”. There is one other female and she’s the lab team leader.

My duties are to make the coffee, clean the coffeepot and espresso maker and wash all the coffeecups. Seriously, it was a HUGE HAIRY DEAL in the interview that I knew how to make coffee and understood it was going to be my job and also that I knew that all cleanup was my job. But they also want me doing Project Management. So, basically, they pay me $pittance an hour to be everything from Project Manager to Skullery Wench. My contract had been scheduled to end July 31st and it was this big ordeal to get Corporate to approve an extension. Nevermind that they pay me only half of what they’re paying the agency for me (I know this because I had to write up the Purchase Order for my own contract). And I work assloads of OT and cannot submit for any overtime (on the plus side, when the company closed for a long weekend (3 work days plus weekend) and I didn’t work, they let me submit 40 hours, otherwise I would have had 3 unpaid days). I keep the breakroom stocked, order all supplies and equipment for our location, am the local person who handles all of the HR paperwork (Corporate is in Non-US), do all of the shipping (which we have to take to the FEDEX location since our company rents space in another company’s building), am in charge of getting badges for all staff and visitors, making sure the heating and cooling is ok, making sure that the people who gather the trash are doing their job, vacuum the office when there is a mess made, take and distribute minutes for the weekly meeting and am sent to fetch lunch and dinner for the “regular” staff from time to time as well as coordinate breakfast and lunches when we have visitors. I have to give my boss a report every week of what I did the previous week. (Basically, I have to justify my existence on a weekly basis).

They give me a company cell phone (which I seldom use. Previous person in my position gave out the number as her personal phone number and ran up $700+ a month in calls for her last 2 months). And I have a purchasing card so I can get all the supplies and stuff.

I get no vacation time, no sick time, no benefits. And it took me 6 months to find this job. For a pretty small town, there is a HUGE hangup on only employing people who have college degrees, which I do not. I am not willing to go into further debt for a degree… I already have more debt than I can pay off in my lifetime.

One of my recent assignments was to plan and execute “The Company Picnic”. On the day of the picnic, I got a later start than I should have. EvilMart was packed with preggos and hellspawn (and maintained their corporate mandated quota of rednecks and women in tubetops who have no business going braless). I think I got way too little food.

The picnic was populated by The Perfect Wives (seriously, it was like they were all just slightly different versions of the same woman…. same basic body, hair, voice… I honestly think that they all just bought a kit and did minor customizations) and me being a) a divorcee (gasp!) and b) having no babiez I was a big neon FREAK FLAG in Perfect Wife Land.

I woke up the morning of the picnic with a migraine… shopped at friggin’ Evilmart… had to get sixty fucking pounds of ice by myself and then had to schlep all the crap to the picnic site. And first whiff I got of the charcoal file wracked me with waves of nausea, so I cut out… but I am sure they think I am a huge failure as a party planner but, ya know, here’s the deal. I don’t DO “outdoors”. I am allergic to sunlight, charcoal grilling makes me ill. There were allegedly going to be 24 people there (mix of kids/adults). I got :

24 hamburgers (the Perfect Wives frowned at Frozen Patties… oh the horror)
16 Beef Bun Length Hot Dogs
24 Bratwust (Beer Brats, Stadium Brats and Cheddarwurst)
3lbs chicken breasts (mainly because our employee from India doesn’t eat other meat)
Buns for the above that require buns
2 fifty-packs of assorted bagged chips
Assorted “tubez o’ nuts”
Assorted paks of cookies and crackers with cheese and crackers w/peanut butter
Real Mayo
Miracle Whip
2 kinds of BBQ Sauce
Yellow Mustard
Spicy Brown Mustard
Louisiana Hot Sauce
Sweet Pickles
Dill Pickles
Pickle Relish
8 Two Litres of Soda
1 Six pack o’ Kool Aid Bursts (blue)
1 Pkg. Capri Sun “Mountain Cooler”
2 gallons Spring Water
Aluminum Foil
2 table cloths
2 pkgs table cloth clips
Cups
Plates
Forks, knives, Spoons (plastic)
Paper Towels
Wet Wipes
Bug Spray
Hand Sanitizer
Sunscreen
Bag of chocolate “fun size” candy packs
Trash Bags
Cooler + 60 fucking pounds of ice
2 Sets of BBQ tools
2 bags charcoal
1 large thing o’ lighter fluid
2 long “fire lighter thingies”

Plus people were supposed to bring something to share. The pre-picnic signup indicated there would be about 16 lbs. of Potato Salad.

In reality:

Perfect Wife with 4 freakin’ kids under age 6 brought… 1 one pound bag of baby carrots

There was a small bowl of pasta salad (brought by the guy whose wife probably said there was no friggin’ way she wanted to hang out with The Perfect Wives because she “had to work”.)

There was a small bowl of bing cherries.

There was a container of 24 mini chocolate chip cookies

And there was a cupcake cake. (It was a ladybug! Oooh!)

I am sure I won’t get so much as a “thank you” because I wasn’t there 2 hours early and didn’t have a gourmet meal all prepared and waiting. And because I didn’t stay and clean up afterwards. And cuz I wasn’t a skinny, model-beautiful Perfect Wife with an Geek Husband (and, for the record, there isn’t a damn thing wrong with Geek guys… I’m all for ’em) and teh babiez.

But now it’s OVER. And my happy ass won’t be here for the “holiday party”.

Dear Deluded Co-Worker,

It has come to my attention recently that you do not understand some very basic principles. First and foremost, let me make it crystal clear that YOU are not my boss. You may think it’s macho to try to bark orders at me. I will even admit that, in the culture of your homeland, it may be expected that you bark orders at a “lowly” female. However, doing so only makes me resent you and will not make your requests get fulfilled any faster.

Secondly, a lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency for me. There are things that take time and you hounding me does not speed things up. In fact, being interrupted to answer your inane questions actually slows things down.

Lastly, on a day I am busy, I may or may not get to your request the same day. Asking me if I have completed your request 10 minutes after you made it when it’s an hour long task and you’ve asked at 4:40 in the afternoon when I am scheduled to leave at 5:00 and have several very high priority lengthy tasks from my actual boss in queue ahead of your requests means you will only be disappointed. I’m doing the best I can, I have a task given to me by my boss on Monday that I haven’t even started yet. Frown at me all you want, it isn’t going to change my priorities.

Not your slave, so dream on,
MsCleanslate

Greetings Clueless Employer,

As you may recall, my friend is attending a family function connected with the death of a family member. My friend is not on “vacation”. As such, it would be proper and respectful for you to NOT CALL and ask, again, when my friend will be back to work when my friend CLEARLY stated in the last phone conversation that you had that s/he’d return on Monday. (I am being inclusive here).

Seriously, what sort of person calls someone attending a FUNERAL to whine about how hard they are working whilst you are away having a gay ol’ time burying your deceased family member? I knew before this that you were a self-centered asshat but, honestly, this really takes the cake.

My friend told you they’d be back at work on Monday. No, they will not take “on call” the second they touch down at the airport. Let’s recall, shall we, how my friend stepped in and took YOUR on-call weekend when you had a family emergency. How soon we forget.

Before you write your next review dinging someone for not being a “team player” and not “realizing we’re all in the same boat”, I would like to bring to your attention that sitting on your ass, at a desk, barking orders and issuing missives is not “working hard” and you are fooling no one. Or at least no one at the local office. I will not go into how your superior “oral skills” may be benefitting you at the corporate level.

You didn’t call in anyone to help when my friend’s co-worker went on vacation, you didn’t call in anyone to help during your little family emergency (when my friend’s co-worker called at 7:30 in the morning in hysterics and needed to be “talked down” from quitting right then and there), so just because you have to, perhaps pitch in and work for a change doesn’t make this a crisis worthy of you calling my friend during their time of bereavement.

Hate & Pinches,
Ms. Cleanslate

Dear CodeMonkeys,

Hi… It’s your Scullery Maid. The one who washes your coffee cups because even though you are all allegedly grown people who allegedly don’t live in your mother’s basements, you cannot seem to wash a coffee cup before there is some sort of science experiment growing in it.

Did you all know I have, in my contract, a restriction on lifting? It’s not because I’m disabled, it’s because the company I work for doesn’t want me getting a friggin’ hernia or throwing out my back. That’s why I usually let you young, strong, male people put the new water bottle on the water cooler. I was hoping one of you would see how EMPTY it was and, ya know, put the new bottle on the cooler. Alas, you seem to be, I don’t know, “punishing” me for something, I guess, because it was bone dry this morning. I broke the rules of my contract and put the new bottle on the cooler because I know I am nothing more than a Scullery Maid and you are all so goddamned important and college-educated that you can’t do one little thing that isn’t in your job description.

Also, I need to talk to you about the mini-fridge in the breakroom. I buy the soda that goes in it. I have a “setup” for how many of which kind of soda gets put in the fridge and make sure that there are always cold sodas available. It is not helpful, then, when one of you yahoos comes along and stuffs all of YOUR favored flavour into the fridge leaving no room for the other flavours. I KNOW you like your Pepsi Max. But, guess what? Only 2 of you drink it. I KNOW you like your Dew but you don’t need to fill the whole fridge with Dew you selfish bastards! And don’t look at me like I just shit on your desk when I actually walk back to my desk with one of your Beloved Mt. Dew’s. I work here, too, ya know! We have two 24 packs of Dew, my having ONE isn’t going to mean you are going to go without! So, don’t act like I’m some sort of marauder pillaging your village!

Finally, don’t think it escapes me that you often all go out to lunch together and don’t invite me. To this I say “GROW THE FUCK UP!” This isn’t High School, ok? Don’t all be coming down the hallway, gabbing away and then get quiet when you pass my office cuz you don’t want me to know you’re going. Have some balls and tell me to my face. I know I am not a high and mighty CodeMonkey like you are. I know I am but a lowly coffeepot scrubbing, waterbottle hefting scullery maid. I’m not asking to be treated as an EQUAL… I AM asking to be treated like a real person with real feelings, though. Or does that not compute?

No Love,
The Scullery Maid

I do some freelance work. I have one pretty long-term client who is generally pretty easy to work with but who occasionally asks for some really last minute stuff and pretty much expects me to drop everything I’m doing and take care of his stuff. And most of the time, that’s ok. He’d been saying for several weeks now that he had some money for me and so I wasn’t really sweating some of the stuff that’s looming for me. But when I talked to him today to try and arrange a time to finally get to meet he tells me that since I haven’t done the billing in a while, there’s really no money for him to give me and implies that it’s my fault.

Now, here’s the problem I have with that….

a) One client, whose stuff I spent HOURS on and who I just spent nearly $10 mailing something to via certified mail because she’s been bitching she didn’t get the previous mailings, just dropped a big check about 3 weeks ago.

b) All of the billing there is to do is for clients who have outstanding amounts dating back to 2007 or earlier and who have gotten multiple bills, collection letters, etc. and haven’t responded.

c) The couple of newer clients that haven’t been billed? It’s because I have no record of time spent on their files and therefore have no idea what to bill them for.

This is someone whose whole office we moved on the spur of the moment, without his help, a couple Sundays ago. So, like 4 hours of packing, moving, cleaning, taking shit out to his house after getting a call early on a Sunday morning and there was the expectation that we’d just drop everything and take care of it…

I dunno, I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to be a tad miffed that 2 weeks ago I was told that there was money for me and now I get asked “Why aren’t you able to pay your bills? You have a job…” Yes, I have a job. And I had 6 months of no work and scraping by on almost nothing that I was getting for unemployment. The tiny bit of savings I had was gone and I was stupidly counting on getting paid for the work I’ve done. Silly me.

So, I’ll be looking for either another freelance gig or a second “real” job here shortly. Sigh. And then deal with the fallout when I am not available to drop everything for this long-term client at the drop of a hat. And probably lose the one really good, shiny, stellar reference that’s even somewhat recent that I’ve got.

Ahhh, freelancing… the best gig in the world. Except when it’s not.

Most people in the workforce who work in an office have colleagues with vaguely similar titles who work in the office, as well. However, most of the time, in a smaller business or in a business where different divisions of the business sit in a specific area (like accounting or HR, for instance) there is but one Administrative Assistant or Office Manager. Therefore, that person has no real “peers” in the office setting. In most cases, pretty much every position is seen as being superior to an Administrative Assistant. As such, there can be a real feeling of isolation for the Admin. My current job function is Administrative Assistant, even if that is not my title. While I have the skills and abilities to be able to do more than I currently do and while the primary manager would like to see me utilizing more of my skills, for some reason the person who would assign those tasks to me will not speak to me (Euroboss) and I happen to know this has created some issues. I am not sure exactly what his issue with me is. I’ve never not accomplished something that this person has managed to bring himself to ask me to do. I do not kiss his ass or fall at his feet in worship, which MAY be the issue. Or perhaps (because he is not American), he looks upon me as a stupid American. It could also be that to him I am “just a secretary” and thus should not be given more complex tasks. It could have something to do with the fact that the person in this position before I got here was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. (I am basing this on things I’ve seen and comments I’ve heard). Because this opportunity had been presented before and I had been initially rejected for it (they said they needed a different skillset) and because Euroboss was the original hiring manager I tend to think that I would not have been his choice when they filled the position for a second time and that’s why I am being snubbed.

But I suspect that his unspoken (at least to my face) rejection of me has given the “green light” for the rest of the team to snub me, as well. I base this on the fact that although there is a weekly team lunch that I am supposed to be invited to, they often leave for this lunch without a word to me (and it isn’t at a set time or place every week so it isn’t as if I am not in the assigned meeting spot at the assigned time).

Over the years, I’ve grown used to the isolation that being an Admin. brings. You have to be careful to not be too chummy with the manager level people because then the rest of the office eyes you with suspicion thinking that you are the “spy” for the managers. Since you may not have the tech skills of the “regular workers” (as is the case in my current position… I work with a bunch of engineers) you have nothing particularly insightful to add when they are discussing work stuff over lunch. And you also have to be aware when management level people have seen you rubbing elbows with the “regular workers” and start asking pointed and probing questions of you in order to get information about certain employees. I’ve been in the position of being asked to basically “rat out” people and that isn’t a position you want to be in (if you do, then the “regular workers” will, of course, not want anything to do with you and if you don’t, then management dubs you “not a team player” and if you aren’t fired outright, you will be denied raises/promotions/etc.)

I’m not saying I want to be best buddies with my co-workers, but I would at least like the courtesy of being invited to lunch. I know that the fact that I usually need a ride works against me. But I think that there is some deeper flaw (or flaws) that work to set me apart. I’ve been told that were I somewhere other than The Frozen Tundra that my work life would be different. I am not altogether sure if I believe that. But maybe it’s because I’ve been the “different” person for so much of my life that I just don’t know anything else. I really wish I could just not let it get to me, but it does. On the up side, I figure it can only get better, right?

It wasn’t a bad day at work but I will be honest and say it wasn’t as productive as it might have been.

The day started well enough. I ran some errands before work and then went into the office. Then I opened my email. Yeahhhh.. that was a bit of a nasty surprise. A flurry of emails about things that needed to be ordered! Right now! Today! Pronto! But, you see, there were a couple of problems with these missives.

First off, none of them were issued by my boss. Who is, by the way, traveling and so even if we did manage to research the best possible price, put together the purchase order and send it to be approved, there’s not a good chance that Mr. Bossman is going to see it and approve it today.

Secondly… are you kidding me? Do you REALLY believe he’s going to just say “okie dokie” to an item that costs almost $15,000.00?

Lastly, I have questions about some of these items and am not in the mood for people to be sighing and rolling their eyes at me because I cannot intuit what KIND of KVM switch they need. And did anyone bother to check if these things you are giving me links to can be shipped to places outside of the US to our affiliates? Did you stop to consider that or check? I’m guessing NO because none of the places you cited ship outside of the US which isn’t going to do our non-US affiliates, for whom we are ordering some of these products in the first place, any good! *facepalm*

I pinged the boss and the person who had issued the “we need this stuff ordered TODAY” missives. The bottom line came down to this… it didn’t all get ordered today because there were too many factors that were not in our control and no one but me bothered to even scout contingency plans.

Tomorrow promises to be another bonanza of clusterfuckery. The boss is returning to the office, I don’t have many of my “loops” closed because I’ve been dealing with clever little games like “what is that noise, where is it coming from and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY MAKE IT STOP!!” And other things like needing a note pinned to my shirt to remember to bring the goddamn digital camera back to the office!

In spite of the fact that there was a little grumbling about it, I bought Truvia for the breakroom again because I am thinking it’s better for those who use artificial sweeteners than the alternatives (plus, I want to support the use of stevia where I can).

Also, before today I had no idea it was even possible to eat just ONE of a two pack of Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups. There is hope for me to live a life of moderation yet!