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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!

For many reasons, I am needing to “repackage” myself for my next career move. I am assuming that the next job I look for will be in the state I plan to move to…where no one knows me and so I have somewhat a new start. I am not sure what the job market there is like so I am thinking that I need to start repackaging now.

The big job is going to be remembering all of the places that I have my resume posted online and going to take each of them down. I am wondering if just completely erasing the accounts and starting all over again is maybe the best way to go.

This doesn’t mean that I intend to lie about my past or my experience. I think there are ways to make myself more marketable and appealing, though, and I can’t do that with the current look/feel of my resume.

The hardest part is going to be references, though. Once you’ve left a job and haven’t been there for a while, the people who knew you who might be good references go away, too. And the best reference letter I have… well…. the person who wrote it has moved on multiple times and I doubt he is still reachable.

I’m hoping to get everything tracked down and taken care of by the end of the month and then can start on the new stuff. Then, by June I will be up and running with the new look.

I’ve known for a week and a half or so that we have people coming in from out of town. I did everything I was supposed to do to make this go smoothly and… yeahhhh… not so much.

There are 6 people coming. 4 of them let me make their travel arrangements. 2 of them would not cooperate with that. Fine. At least they all got their flights booked. I did manage to get everyone booked into the same hotel but had one guy tell me he cannot sleep if there’s noise. As if I can do anything about the noise level at the hotel. Whatever.

I was supposed to have agendas early last week so I could plan refreshments and lunches. Guess what I still did not have when I left Friday night? If you said agendas, you would be correct. So there are no lunches or refreshments on deck. Nor have I made any plan to pick up breakfast for tomorrow because no one gave me any instructions.

I am supposed to talk to our Borg Cube representative to get badges for visitors. Guess who was on vacation last week? So, the pseudo replacement guy, who I told on MONDAY that I needed badges pops in on FRIDAY at 4:30 to let me know that he “forgot”. Well, that’s SUPER. I only talked to him 3-4 times last week and he sat in my office with his laptop allegedly ordering the badges but apparently only PRETENDING to do so to placate me or something.

Now… the other part of this is… to have computer access at our facility, Computer Guru needs to have informaiton. Which I asked our travelers for. Twice. ONE of them got the information to me. One of SIX. Again, FABULOUS.

So, here’s what’s going to happen… we are going to have a bunch of overtired, jet-lagged visitors who won’t have badges, won’t have breakfast, won’t have lunch, won’t have computer access and won’t get a damn thing accomplished because no one has any sort of organized PLAN and who is going to be the one who looks like a schmuck who didn’t do her job? Yeah, that would be me.

I only hope I have the presence of mind to smile, nod my head, and take being yelled at for things that were not in my control and not totally lose my shit. I hate the whole “I’m not going to let some stupid SECRETARY tell me what to do” mentality.

I’m also looking forward to planning this big site celebration that I found out about totally accidentally and it looks like I will be given approximately a week to put together something that would optimistically take a month to put together well.

My mantra is “this is a contract position and the contract has an end”. If this was going to be a long term gig, I’d be losing sleep over the problems I KNOW are coming, but.. ummmm… knowing it’s only temporary I’m just trying to roll with the punches. And I have every reason to believe it is gonna be one of “those” weeks. I’ll let you know.

I think I may have noted that I’ve been told I have very inferior communication skills. But yet another situation has come up where I have to wonder if it is really MY communication skills that are the issue?

I got an email today from HR Lady @ Corporate Office. She is traveling to my office. She asked about the site celebration that is planned for the time she is in town. Wait, what? Site celebration? Not one peep had been said to ME about any site celebration.

So, I dutifully pinged Mr. Bossman. And he said “ummm, yeah, that’s supposed to be a secret” and I responded that HR Lady believes that I am planning this celebration. Some of the things mentioned take WEEKS of planning. This isn’t the sort of thing you can just throw together, but yet I am going to be left with approximately 2 weeks to plan and execute it.

Honestly, I am good at what I do but I will have to say that it is rare that I can pull off miracles. I plan things so I don’t have to rush (rushing leads to mistakes that would have been avoided with planning) and I hate that the lack of communication now puts me on a “rush this” time schedule. Not cool.

But you all know as well as I do… when/if things don’t happen perfectly, it won’t be Mr. Bossman who takes the heat. It’ll be the person who was tasked, however last minute, with pulling off the amazing with not enough time.

Dear Little Hannity,

I know you’ll never read this but I need to write it anyways. Because if I don’t there may be random acts of unpleasantness in your future and I just think it’s better for both of us if I write you a little letter.

My friend, we’ll just call my friend “Downtrodden” for the rest of this letter, works for you. Downtrodden knew that there was an on-call portion to the job when he started. He was TOLD it would be one weekend a month and, really, that isn’t all THAT awful. But on-call means you are working for 12 days in a row and then have a weekend (a mere 2 days off). So when you are working on call every other frickin week that’s 12 on/2 off/12 on/2 off and THAT is simply inhuman and not what Downtrodden signed up for. Add to that the fact that on-call USED to mean overtime most of the time and there was at least a paltry financial reward for being tethered to your phone all frickin weekend, answering the beck and call of the lonely. And yeah, most of the weekend calls are from LONELY people who want SOMEONE to pay attention. But now you’ve decided that the best plan EVAR is to “short” hours before oncall time thus making sure your employees don’t get any financial bonus and are, instead, compelled to come into the office if they don’t get enough emergency call action.

Another thing I am going to take issue with. Downtrodden now uses his own phone instead of the company phone on his oncall weekends. When, exactly, are you going to start chipping in to pay part of our cell phone bill? Yeah… I thought as much…. Hrumph.

Also, your habit of telling Downtrodden lies because you haven’t got the balls to be upfront about what a lazy fuck you are is not appealing nor is it making you any friends. And telling Downtrodden to do X and then getting mad when he does X and claiming you never said to do X? Let’s just say that I believe you are still amongst the living after that bullshit only because Downtrodden doesn’t REALLY want to have to watch his ass (literally) in a prison shower. Pray he never develops a fetish for playing rousing games of “we don’t DROP the soap in here, son!”

Finally (for this letter anyways), I’d like to address your bullshit reason that you are out of the oncall rotation. If you are SO BUSY on weekends for a friggin’ month ahead of inventory time that you cannot take your turn oncall, then maybe your happy ass better figure out a better system. Of all the people on call, I think YOU are the one who SHOULD take extra shifts. You make more money as a base salary than Downtrodden.

Hate & Pinches,
MsCleanslate

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been involved in arranging travel as a part of my job. Back in “the old days” you called up a travel agent and they gave you the fare that made them the biggest commission lowest possible fare, you booked it and were done.

Oh, those were the days. Now, in addition to the airlines having websites and the hotels having websites and the rental car companies having websites there are all the sites like Orbitz and Expedia and Travelocity and Pleasescrewmetheleast.com and the information any given site gives you on any given day about any given itinerary could change if you don’t book right NOW! No, you don’t have time to ask the traveler… book NOW! Ooops, too late, now your fare goes up $50! BWAHAHAHAHAHAA!

And then I have the joy of trying to coordinate travelers and Traveler A can’t POSSIBLY get up for an 8:30AM flight and Traveler B has to have a Vegetarian Kosher No Nut Product Within a 500 Square Mile Radius Meal and Traveler C cannot sleep if there is any noise but won’t invest in a 50 cent pair of earplugs and don’t you DARE book Traveler D in one of those hotels where the beds are as hard as a rock! As if I have been to each local hotel to test their beds! Next thing you know they’ll want me to do a personal inspection with a blacklight to “see how many fluids have been liberated” in their rooms! No, I cannot tell you if a particular hotel has “the naughty channels” nor can I tell you the cost per adult movie at each of the fine hotel establishments in this town. I can sheepishly confess to having stayed in the cracktacular motel that is just down the road (because I didn’t know any better and was broker than a celibate hooker).

I think I need to go wash this day off now… it’s got me feeling a little icky…

Come take a walk down Memory Lane with Ms. Cleanslate…

If we go back to grade school, I think we find where this all began. I was never a popular kid. I was always taller and bigger than most of the other kids. Plus, I came to the state I live in now when I was 6 and was always quite vocal about how I am not FROM here, not catching the fact that saying that tended to make the natives quite hostile.

Going to a boarding school when your parents aren’t “somebody” and when your family doesn’t have money and all of your college money is going towards paying tuition and your parents not understanding or caring that you not having the money to go out like the other kids do is a SERIOUS social crippler. And again, I wasn’t svelte nor willing to puke up all of my meals to fit in.

So, I think it’s safe to say that I have pretty much a lifetime of social awkwardness under my belt.

Back to the present day… I am working at a VBC and my workgroup goes out weekly. They talk shop at lunch and because I am not a programmer or an engineer, I will admit to being completely lost and having absolutely NOTHING to contribute to conversations. Add to that the fact that I don’t own my own vehicle so have to hitch a ride with someone and complete the picture of awkwardness.

So, I am now attempting to come up with some acceptable reasons for skipping these lunches. If I drove, I’d just sortve slip out to run errands when it was lunchtime. I am thinking that perhaps just saying that there is naught but dustbunnies in my wallet might work. In any case, I just think it would be better for everyone if I stopped trying to fit in.

Which leads me to my next musing.. I’m getting older now and wonder if I will ever stop caring about what other people think and about fitting in. I’ve never really made peace with being a loner. I sortve pretend that I’m ok with it, but I spend alot of time feeling awkward and trying to fight back tears and it’s very draining to try so hard and know that you are just NOT going to be “one of them”… ever…. EVER. I think some of it has to do with accepting one’s lot in life. Admins usually do not have peers because most offices have one Admin. It is the nature of the job. I don’t have a degree so there’s really not somewhere “up the ladder” for me to go and there isn’t the money nor the time to go and GET a degree.

So, I think it’s time to step out of the lunch line and embrace the Lone Admin status once again.