Subtitle: In which my flakes are sufficiently frosted and my ass is magically covered
RC made a good point today, that this week at work should have just been furloughed. I sincerely can’t come up with an argument on that one. The few of us who are here are literally sitting with our thumbs up our asses. I mean, I’ve cleaned my office, cleaned my hard drive, ripped/burned dozens of CDs, gone shopping and had intense discussions with Shan about nothing in particular. I should’ve just taken vacation time.
As far as furloughs, my idea is that we should, for a year, just reduce the workweek by two hours instead of killing off days at a time (next days: Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, not to mention having Jan. 19 as a paid day off). Those are three days I will need to be in the office to do the paper. But I have no problem leaving the office a little bit early each day — honestly, I tend to want to slit my wrists sometime around 1 p.m. Eastern time anyway, so shaving off a few minutes each day would make me way happier.
I was just thinking how there is literally one good thing at each of my jobs. It’s like building the perfect mate: you want to take the good qualities of a bunch of people instead of just settling for one with some redeeming qualities. At Easter Seals, I was ridiculously passionate about the cause. At Two Strikes, I loved how progressive it was, particularly in regard to employee wellness (i.e., we shut down every other Thursday at 3 so we could do our doctor’s appointments or get our nails done). Here, I like the freedom — people really do tend to leave me alone to do my thing. I would like to have all of those qualities in one job. I haven’t had passion for a cause since 2000, and ultimately, that’s a major reason I failed at my last job — I had the skills but not the heart, and everybody knew it.
It’s a lotta ass to cover, but I did it
In good news, I got some people in trouble yesterday. Normally, I would rather just fix the mistake and keep on going, but I am going to blow this one wide open. I got a call on Saturday from the publisher, stating that my magazines were literally sitting at the post office, waiting to be mailed. Why? Because my company never sent the postage check. See, we had a knock-down, drag-out fight months ago when I was told I could no longer hand-deliver checks, and I was promised that there would be no interruption in my process. Well, I got the call while I was in Pittsburgh, and I couldn’t resolve it till yesterday.
I was nervous that I hadn’t even requested the money, but not only did I request it, I also made a note that the post office needed to have received the money by Dec. 19. So here it was, Dec. 29, and the check was found sitting on someone’s desk. Of course, she’s going to catch hell from her supervisor. But as far as I can tell, she left it sitting on her desk on Dec. 24 — why wasn’t it mailed on the 17th? Because it wasn’t cut on time, that’s why. So I had to drive the check out to Bumfuck Egypt so that the paper could be mailed. Yes, after I busted my ass to get the fucker out the door before Christmas — all my rushing was for nothing.
I found out that the check for the print shop was also ready but not signed. So one of the gals in finance had to run around like a moron, trying to find two authorized signers. The weirdest positions are allowed to sign checks — I can’t do it, as a manager, but the dipshit who delivers the mail and my boss’s bland secretary can sign. Problem was, we couldn’t find anybody for hours. So the checks arrived late, but they did arrive. And I took the afternoon off to go to the mall, seeing as though I was already inconvenienced. Yes, I always make the best of a bad situation, but I do look forward to telling my boss about this debacle — she has nothing else to do but create trouble, and I’m glad to give her that little something to do. 😉