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I’m not a difficult person to get along with. Yes, I am rather quiet and I understand that people find me aloof sometimes (not true, btw, I am just quiet because I don’t know you and am unsure of myself). I’ve tried very hard to have a good attitude about the place I am working now, in spite of having been called on the carpet about my “rudeness“, I’ve really endeavored to be positive in the workplace.

But today… Today my co-workers ONCE AGAIN all went off to lunch together. Without a word to me. One gal stayed behind but it was her CHOICE and she had been cajoled and almost BEGGED to join them. Not ONE WORD was said to me. Not “we’re going to lunch and we need you to stay and answer the phone”, not “we’re going to lunch”, NOTHING. And, yes, I HEARD them all planning to go to lunch but it bothers me that I don’t even matter enough to be given the COURTESY of being asked if maybe *I* had lunch plans.

And then the icing on the cake. The gal who is my supervisor called for the gal who had stayed behind. At that point there were TWO people at her desk talking to her, which I relayed. “Well, tell her it’s an EMERGENCY” and I did and she said to tell SupervisorLady that she was BUSY and would have to call her back. SupervisorLady then called the direct line and cell phone of the gal that had stayed behind REPEATEDLY. As if she didn’t believe that I had relayed the message. (I know who was incessantly calling because the gal that stayed behind bitched about it). She finally called SupervisorLady back and all SupervisorLady wanted was to know if she could bring something back for the gal that stayed behind.

HOW FUCKING UNBELIEVEABLY RUDE!! To speak to me and not even ASK if you could bring ME something but to call and call and call someone who didn’t even want to go in the first place and who didn’t want anything (not that I did, but that isn’t the POINT) and not even have the COMMON COURTESY to extend an offer to me. Wow. And it’s not even that I wanted or expected someone to buy me lunch, it’s that it wasn’t even offered to me and was strenuously offered to someone who sits FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ME.

The group at work go out to lunch together ALL THE TIME. They are all “Facebook Friends”. And I understand that you “bond” when you’ve worked together for years and years, but… to blatantly exclude someone, as they have done with me… how is that excusable? (And then to threaten my job because I am not “a team player”).

And yes, when I go out to lunch (ALONE), I offer to pick things up to bring back for people. Every time I’ve invited someone to lunch, I’ve been turned down.

I’ve bent over backwards to fit in. I’ve done favors. I’ve gone in early and stayed late and done all of the shit work that no one else wants to do without a single complaint. And it doesn’t matter.

And so, I have to say to yet another supervisor (at least here on my blog), “I am SO glad I don’t have to get up in the morning and be you.” Because I can’t treat someone like something nasty I stepped in even if they have given me a REASON to be less than nice to them (and I have HONESTLY done NOTHING wrong to any of the people I work with… nor am I rude, inappropriate or someone who has poor hygiene). In fact, they all went out today with the salesguy who has had HR in an uproar for his completely inappropriate behavior in the workplace (a rather “rough/crude” sense of humor). So, I really, REALLY don’t understand what I’ve done that is so wrong that I don’t rate even the barest of common courtesy.

I know I am a grown-up and I shouldn’t let things like things like this bother me and maybe it’s the fact that my co-workers (with the exception of the gal that stayed behind today and Mr. Inappropriate, the salesguy) are 5-18 years younger than I am and maybe there’s some weird age-related “thing” going on (in addition to the fact that I’m “not from around here”).

And so… the fact that I applied for a new job today (an agency called me) doesn’t bother my conscience at all. The sooner I can let all of this be a bitter memory, the better.

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY!!

So, check out the new button in my sidebar for the kick butt “Over 40 Bloggers” group (meaning that their chronological age is over 40, not just that there are over 40 bloggers involved in the group….)

I’ve got to get to bed before I end up face-down in the keyboard. Again.

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!