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I’ve always been a very organized person at the office. This penchant for “a place for everything and everything in its place” falls apart at home, though. I TRY to keep things neat, organized and under control at home but it always ends up falling apart and I find myself scrambling to find things, keep things in order and have actual work surfaces that are not piled high with “stuff”.

My current desk at the office is far less than optimal. I often have multiple projects at any given time and I have things stashed here and there because there just is not enough room on my desk to keep everything “in progress” out and not get into a stack on a stack situation. I have to have room to use my computer and my adding machine (don’t judge me, I know there is a calculator on the computer but it doesn’t run a tape and sometimes I need to attach the tape to show Bosslady my reason for coming up with a number that I entered somewhere).

I am trying to keep my home office from falling into disarray, as well. I have multiple projects and need more “real estate” but it just isn’t practical in the space I have available. Sometimes I end up cleaning things off the desk that I need and then can’t find them when I really need them. Case in point, this morning I needed to pay the utility bill. It is one of three bills I pay with a check every month (all of them related to my apartment because they refuse to get with the program and get online!) and the checkbook was not in its place. Fortunately, I did recall a conversation with myself when I moved it which helped me to be able to find it quite quickly, but it would have been nice if I had just put it back where it was supposed to be. Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.

I am working on a big project. I am hoping that the end result is that I am MUCH more organized. Wish me luck!

Early last February, I contacted a company that my company buys a product from regarding some bills that we had been charged sales tax on and we are tax exempt so should not have been charged tax.

In April, I was FINALLY contacted by Person A at Very Big Corporate Entity (VBCE) who said “just short-pay the next invoice the amount of the taxes that you should not have been charged”.

In May, we got an invoice and I short-paid that invoice per the instructions of Person A.

In June, I got an email from Person B at VBCE saying “Hey! You are past due! You did not pay your invoice in full!” I responded that Person A had instructed me to do so.

In August, I got a fax from Person C at VBCE saying “I’m in the collections division and you are way past due and now you have 2 more invoices.. PAY UP DEADBEATS” to which I responded that Person A at VBCE had told me to do so and that I had informed Person B of that in June. I got a response that indicated that both Person A and Person B no longer worked for VBCE and why was I short-paying invoices? I explained that we were tax exempt. VBCE asked for a copy of our Tax Exempt Certificate, which I faxed.

In September, I got a fax requesting our Tax Exempt Certificate from Person D. 2 days later I go the same request, via email, from Person E. I faxed and emailed copies of the Tax Exempt Certificate to both parties.

In October, I got a harshly worded SECOND REQUEST letter from Person D stating that they still did not have our Tax Exempt Certificate on file. Now, I want to note here that VBCE is about 1500 miles from my office, so I cannot just drive over there. I re-send the Tax Exempt Certificate to Person D. A week later I get yet another invoice where we are being charged sales tax. I contact Person D only to be told that they no longer work for VBCE. I contact Person E and find out it is his last day with VBCE and he can’t really help me, but he gives me the contact email for Person F who is taking over his files. I email Person F about the new invoice and that we are not supposed to be charged sales tax and get a request for a copy of our Tax Exempt Certificate, which I sent to Person F. Person F responds that she will get back to me. A week goes by and I’ve heard nothing from Person F. Then I get an email (at 7AM) requesting our Tax Exempt Certificate. I respond, with Certificate attached at 8:30AM that very same day and get an autoresponse that this is Person F’s last day with the company.

At this point I admit I sortve snapped. I fired off an email asking why this was taking months to resolve and I’d sent multiple copies of our Tax Exempt Certificate and had corresponded with now SEVEN different people and pleaded with Person F to fix things. Person F did respond saying she couldn’t fix it, I needed to contact Person G.

I contacted Person G who… wait for it… REQUESTED A COPY OF OUR TAX EXEMPT CERTIFICATE. I enumerated to her each person that I had sent it to already but also attached it to the email I sent. (There are apparently no working phones at VBCE because I have BEGGED for a phone number to be able to speak with someone and every single request has been summarily IGNORED).

Person G contacts me at the beginning of November and says that she got a memo from Person H saying that they can’t enter our tax exempt status into their system because the Tax Exempt Certificate says “Small Corp, Inc” and they have us in their system as “Small Corp” and since it isn’t an exact match, the certificate is meaningless to them.

And so, I get a valid certificate which has “Small Corp” on it and send it off to Person G and Person H. That was 22 November 2011.

This morning I got an email from Person I at VBCE. Person I states that they have the email thread from Person G (who is no longer with VBCE) and did I ever send Person H the Tax Exempt Certificate and, by the way, we have an outstanding balance that needs to be resolved immediately. I refer Person I to the very email thread that she sent to me, specifically the 22 November correspondence in which I state “I have sent a copy of the Tax Exempt Certificate from “Small Corp” to yourself (Person G) and to (Person H)”.

I then send Person I a copy of the Tax Exempt Certifcate and request that she acknowledge receipt of the Certificate. Her response? “I will. Send. A email to Person H. And ask whether this was received.” (Punctuated in the quotes as it was in her email).

I respond that I would like the receipt of the certificate acknowledged. Response (3 hours later?) “I told you I’d asked Person H. She’s out of the office until next week. Harrassing me will not get this resolved overnight. You are very unprofessional and it’s YOUR fault that it’s taken so long for this to be resolved”.

Oh no she didn’t….

Yes, she did. She has blamed a failure of THEIR staff on me. I have complied with every single request that they’ve made of me and somehow this is MY fault? It’s my fault that 7 people before her who were sent the certificate by fax, email and US Postal Mail have not received it? It was my fault that it took them from February to November to see that “Oh, this corporation name does not match what we have in our system” even though they’ve been sending us invoices and we’ve been paying them? UNBELIEVABLE.

I responded that I have no hope of this being resolved overnight or, quite frankly of it being resolved at all given the history of this whole matter. I told her I did not need a response from her, I will deal with Person H when they come back to the office next week.

Meanwhile, I will begin searching for another source of the product we get from VBCE. Because a year to handle a simple issue is 11 and a half months too long.

So, I didn’t update much in 2011. I attribute this to having worked all year (yay!) and therefore I did not have large blocks of time in which to blog nor did I have too many catastrophes to blog about. This is both good and bad. Good that I didn’t have catastrophes, bad that it caused me to neglect posting to my blog.

So, my resolution for this year is to get a post in at least once a week. I also want to do more connecting with other bloggers and get to reading more blogs. To that end, I will try to visit the blog of anyone who comments on my blog as, really, that is the polite thing to do and I need to be much better about doing it.

I hope that everyone had a Happy and Safe New Year celebration. Are we all ready to get to work now? While I would like a few more days off, I am ready to get back to work, too.

Wish me luck on avoiding career catastrophes for another year! See you soon!

For those who were curious, Thanksgiving ended up being just fine. A tich awkward, but fine.

I have already signed up for some seminars for 2012. I have one per month so far. I figure that continuing education makes me more marketable and while I do not anticipate NEEDING to be marketable, the reality is that you should always be on your toes and ready to give your elevator speech. Still, I like it where I am and I would like to stay with a job for 3-5 years before I even think about moving on again. Of course, the clock is ticking as far as being an “older” employee and I know that my age will work against me more and more as the years pass. So, I am also hoping that some of the seminars I am taking will help me be a more marketable freelancer if it comes to that.

On the down side, I can pretty much rest assured that there will be no holiday bonus this year and that the 1st quarter of 2012 will be as stressful as the last quarter of 2011 is proving to be.

Still, I like what I do and I am still learning new things at work, so I can’t complain!

You might not think that a holiday dinner has anything to do with the workplace. And in most cases, you would be correct, which is why the two of those things converging for me this year makes my Thanksgiving plans a bit surreal.

I was at work yesterday, entering deposits. The phone rang and it was the owner’s wife. Not unusual, she calls sometimes. But today she didn’t want to talk to him. She had called for me. She was calling to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner. At their house. I think I was too surprised to say much more than “ok”… as she rattled off directions to their home.

After I hung up the phone, I sat for a minute reflecting on what had just happened. In a minute’s time I had gone from sitting home and probably having Chex Mix for my grand Thanksgiving Feast to being invited to the very posh home of one of the owners of the company I work for. I quickly realized that there was no way I could get a manicure or liposuction done on Thanksgiving and the panic set in. And although I had thought to ask what I could bring (and was told “nothing”) I also realized that to go without a hostess gift would surely be a fatal faux pas.

Now, I was not born in a barn and am far from uncultured. I spent three years at boarding school with the sons and daughters of some of the world’s elite families. But the last couple of decades of my life I’ve pretty much lived in urban settings that are, ummm, well let’s just say “less than posh”.

As tempting as it was to do something like bring a dessert, I figured that the other attendees of this meal are all going to be of the “you can never be too rich or too thin” mindset. I can’t afford a $ 70 bottle of wine and have no idea if they are red wine or white wine drinkers. And I almost think bringing the wrong wine is as bad as not bringing a gift at all. I am sure that WHATEVER I bring, it will be likely stowed in the back of a cabinet somewhere or brought out to be served to a business associate that Mrs. Owner does not particularly care for.

Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE Mr. Owner and I’ve only met Mrs. Owner a couple of times. Enough to know that I respect and admire her and that she and I are NOT in the same league from a socio-economic point of view and I am a little (ok, a LOT) intimidated by her.

Still, I will go to dinner and hope that I don’t do anything stupid. And then I will come home and breathe a huge sigh of relief. And probably have a good, stiff drink.

Hope everyone who celebrates has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Nov. 1 was my one year anniversary where I work. Technically, I started as “just a temp” and my REAL anniversary is December 27th, but this way I get to celebrate twice, which is pretty awesome!

I still like the job and am still very happy to be working there. I’m still learning things, too. I figure that’s a positive because it indicates that I am willing to keep my mind and options open.

One of my co-workers brought me a rose for my anniversary. I love getting flowers and almost never get them, so that was really cool.

This is a busy weekend. I’m not accomplishing everything I had hoped, but the weekend isn’t over yet. Speaking of which, I should get back to work!

I have to confess that in my younger days, I did work as a telemarketer very briefly. In spite of having a good phone voice, I wasn’t very good at getting people to buy things that they didn’t want to buy and so my career as a telemarketer was very short-lived. Even though I got paid per time I was able to finish my whole script, I was never pushy if someone said they weren’t interested (probably part of the reason why I didn’t last long in the job).

Where I work now, the telemarketers are relentless. Sometimes they will call EVERY DAY for a month at time and my boss doesn’t want to talk to them so it’s my job to screen them out and for the most part that’s pretty easy because they either mispronounce his name or use the long form of his name when he uses the diminutive with anyone who knows him. But these folks can be VERY rude and I’ve had them cuss at me and really, if you want my boss to buy something from you and you cuss at me, it isn’t going to happen. I don’t care if you have a Platinum Deluxe Ball Buffer Pro that you’re selling, if you cuss at me when I try to screen your call, your balls are going to be in the wringer, buddy.

The other thing that happens time and time again is that we get people who call for boss #1, make their pitch, get rejected, hang up and then seconds later, they call for boss # 2 and get rejected, hang up and then they want to talk to Office Manager… and yes, rejection AGAIN. One company has called twice a day each day this week and I try to be polite when they do this but eventually I get very firm with them, even when they don’t want to hear it.

I can’t believe that telemarketers actually sell enough to make their continued existence worthwhile, but apparently they do or I wouldn’t have to put up with them calling the office every day. Some days I feel like answering the phone and saying “if you are selling something, we don’t want it, please state your message at the tone and A GOOD DAY TO YOU!”

I can hardly believe that it is October already and that as of November 1, I will have a whole year in at my present job. I am still learning new things all the time and have got some tasks down really well, still working on completely mastering others. Given that this is an entirely new industry for me and focuses much more on skills that had been a smaller part of previous jobs, I think I’m doing pretty well.

I feel pretty fortunate to even have a job and even more fortunate to have a job I like. Sure, there are some days it gets frustrating but overall, I do enjoy my job. It’s much harder for many people that I know to find work that they can even tolerate, let alone like.

Lots of big changes on the homefront lately, too. By and large, it’s been pretty positive for me. I am managing to get things done that need to be done. On the down side, finances are tighter and I have a bigger workload now. Speaking of which, I need to get some dishes done.

I’ve had a hard time focusing lately. I feel like I am being pulled in multiple directions and I’m just not sure how to get on track. There is so much going on in my life…. so much going on in my head. I just want (need) things to calm down.

I have a contract to negotiate soon. It’s not related to my day job and it’s something I do annually but I get really worked up about having to do it every year. I am just hoping that the negotiation goes smoothly, that I’m not going to have to make too many compromises and that I can just get it done and get on with my life.

I am also thinking that between now and the end of the year, I need to get myself a makeover (a new look and a new outlook) and maybe make some decisions about what I want to be when I grow up. I still like my job, but I don’t feel invaluable and feel like it is my job to make myself invaluable. I have been taking in some seminars/classes to expand my skills & knowledge but I just feel like there is something else I need to/should be doing with my life.

I am also thinking of writing some bits here that may eventually get put together into a book. But I probably won’t get to that until 2012, there are just too many other things going on.

My work nemesis, Mr. Know-It-All, has left the company. I’m not sure when or if there will be a replacement hired. I wish I could say some magical “moment” happened before he left and that we came to some sort of understanding… that he wasn’t really a blowhard and I am not the ditzy moron he believes me to be. Alas, no such understanding was reached and I doubt if our paths will cross again. Sayonara, Work Nemesis.

However, things have been hopping at work lately. There is a lot going on and the coming week will probably be quite a challenge. We have two people going on vacation and I am slated to take a class on Wednesday. I am looking forward to the class but know it will put extra strain on the bosslady and that’s never a good thing. Tomorrow I will have to finish up some of the things I started on Friday and then commence the research I was told to do. It’ll be a busy day tomorrow. Tuesday is usually the heaviest mail day. Wednesday I have class. Thursday I’ll be making up for not working on Wednesday and Friday is check-writing day, which is always pretty busy. Then we’re heading into Labor Day Weekend, which will mean three days off!

Still looking for ways to streamline things at work. There should be a “flow” to things by now and it just isn’t quite there yet. So, for the next couple of weeks, that’ll be my focus. Trying to get my shit together in a lot of areas of my life right now, might as well add work to the fray, right?