Someone Call A&E... We've Got A Hoarder Here!!

It took me so long to post tonight, mainly because I had payroll today (which is going to go into my weekend, thanks jerks!), and I figured I would say something about that. Figured I would go into a long rant about how my fellow co-workers just really don't give a shit about deadlines - a fact that is surprising, considering that a good number of them are lawyers! Or perhaps bitch about the fact that even though I clearly stated that these were due by noon, I was still being handed time sheets 15 minutes before my scheduled time to leave.

Now, while I could go into this long rant, I just have this other subject that keeps popping into my head and pulling my attention to it, in the way that a screaming 2 year old laying on the floor of the big box chain store grabs the attention of every shopper in the area. As much as the mom really, REALLY wants everyone to just look the other way and ignore her screaming, red-faced, little terrorist with chubby cheeks... We all know it simply cannot be done.

So, that being said, I have a feeling the subject of payroll will have to wait for another time. Like say, tomorrow night, after I've wasted a perfectly good day off, sitting at my desk scrutinizing whether or not people are really so stupid that they still don't know how to figure out how to properly fill in a basic time sheet after years of state service. And yes, even after many, MANY years of employment, there is still a very large number of people who can be reduced to the same intelligence levels of a newborn pygmy goat when asked if they really came into the office on a holiday.

No, I have a confession to make tonight, and it's really hard for me to do this, so I hope you will bear with me as I unveil the source of my work place shame. Okay, here goes:

I hoard pens.

There. I said it. God it feels good to get that off my chest! *Phew*

I'm serious, I do hoard pens. But, unlike most weird obsessions (Pamela Anderson's dental floss?? Really??), there is a sound, sane, and completely logical reasoning for why I hoard pens. Two words will explain everything!!

Budget cuts.

Things are getting to ridiculous levels around our division, to the point of beating staff morale so low, the emo kids in the local psych wards are looking down at us saying "dude. You should really get some help. And while you're at it, get your own razorblades, damn it."

The most ridiculous thing about the recent budget cuts is the very expensive we move we recently (i.e., last 3 months) made into our new digs on a separate floor. Moving an Administrative staff into new offices means new office furniture for the upper level management, hiring moving crews to move all of the furniture and boxes down a few floors, paying for the new phone lines, fax lines, and data lines. Oh yeah, and not to mention the rent of the office space. It's a little hard to listen to a director complain about not having any money for anything (including paper and pens), when you're looking at her sitting in her nice, new, big office, at her very expensive new desk.

It's even harder when you know for a fact that the governor of your state recently submitted a supplemental to the house finance committee specifically for your division because of "recent increases in case loads" in an amount so ridiculously high they were actually talking about it on the news reports. (The supplemental was approved as well - making me wonder where in the hell our "budget" is going!)

I'm still quite bitter about the move too. It has a lot to do with the fact that I used to have my own office. My own little corner that I could easily focus on my work, shut the door if things got too loud out in the hallway (which it ALWAYS does), I could listen to my music, take conference calls without bothering other people, and I could eat my damn lunch in peace. Now, I sit in a very wide open area, at what was previously the reception area for whatever business occupied the space before us. I was promised more natural light! The only light I get in my area is via the huge conference room next to my area, and that's only when they leave the blinds open. I have no walls, I have no way to shut out the noise from the other occupants in my section, and oh yeah, those monthly teleconferences I have to take part in because they're fucking mandatory? It gets really hard to focus on what's being said when I've got staff walking through my area chatting away, carrying on ridiculous conversations about what diet they're on, how many miles they ran yesterday, what they're having for lunch, blah blah blah. Now, I have to sit on guard at the main door, because it's locked at all times, and you're only getting in if you have the code. If you don't, you have to knock. And take a wild fucking guess who they assigned to answer those knocks? You guessed it, me! As if I didn't already have enough to do, now I have to be a fucking door greeter too?

This is where you learn the real meaning behind "Fuck My Life!" except, in my case, it's "Fuck My Job!"

Every Wednesday I'm responsible for taking an office inventory and submitting it the powers that be so they can decide what we're going to order. This has become a joke, because other than wasting an hour of my time as I count out how many Post-It flags we have in each color, the only thing they're ordering is paper for the Xerox machine. Our office supplies have dwindled down to dangerously low levels that I'm constantly living in fear of an all-out office riot taking place. I can see it now: staff, worn down from searching desperately for just one more pen, dirty from crawling around in the dust behind their desks in hopes of finding that one lone paperclip that fell back there a year ago, when it happens.... There's a single pen! A new pen! A pen full of that wonderful, blue, euphoria inducing ink!! "If only I could sneak over there and reach it before anyone else spots it....." And then they lock eyes.... Someone else has spotted it as well, and they know the other person has seen it too... A stand-off ensues. Who's going to move in first? Eyes narrow as each waits for the other to move.... When suddenly, someone else enters the picture, completely unaware of the current stand off, grabs the pen, thankful for this bounty, and is immediately tackled by both participants of the previous stand-off, and suddenly you're in the midst of full on office warfare.


Okay, so maybe it won't happen quite to that extent, but I'm telling you, things are becoming the veritable powder keg of anxiety and bloated egos around here. This thing could go off at any moment, and only the strong and really cunning will survive this fallout.


At least when it goes down, I'll have my stash of pens to get me through the fallout.

~GG

Another Over-Achiever Amongst Us!

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little over-ambitious tonight, or perhaps I just have SO much to talk about when it comes to my miserable work life. Or, it could simply mean I really have no "life" outside of the interwebs and work. Either way, I was taking care of some business in the bathroom (i.e., pooping), where all great ideas come from, and the thought suddenly struck me...

"Crap. (No pun intended) I've got payroll tomorrow."

So that got me thinking about how I could adequately express the nightmare that has become payroll. Because, really, this nightmare of mine would take more than an 800 page description by Stephen King to properly convey the 4+ days of hell I experience each month.

It would take an inordinate amount of time explaining "bargaining units", "flex-schedules", and how to properly calculate over-time when the work week is only 37.5 hours instead of the normal 40. And I'm pretty sure your eyes glazed over when I typed out "bargaining units".

I can tell you that there are strict deadlines for payroll, deadlines that no one seems to care about. No one cares about the deadlines because they get paid no matter when they turn in their time sheets or leave slips. Deadlines that no one else cares about because they aren't the one getting the angry phone call from the people in the capital who cut the checks, wondering why shit hasn't been done yet.

These are the same people who make payroll such a nightmare. Such as the people who have had "alternate work-weeks" for years and STILL don't know how to figure out their schedules. These are the people that send me their time sheets before they submit them TO ME, so I can review, revise and send back to them so they can then submit them.... TO ME!

This is normally where I would say "shoot me in the fucking face!" I use that expression a lot. Apparently, I would really rather be shot in the face than deal with these idiots. Of course, I can say this, having never actually been shot anywhere on my body, let alone my face.

Because I know for a fact that there are going to be at least 2 supervisors that are going to wait until the last possible second to submit time sheets, I've gotten in the habit of telling them these are due at least a full day before they actually are. Yet somehow, I still find myself staying late (uncompensated over-time, by the way), in order to ensure I can be the easiest department the capital people have to deal with.

What kills me about payroll is that I've been doing it for a little over a year now, and suddenly I'm the "go-to" person in our department. The chick ( a.k.a The Jogger - more on that later!) who had previously done payroll for quite some time, seems to have completely forgotten the process. I guess that's what happens when you ass-kiss your way into the 4th highest position in the department. You're given liberty to "forget" how to do shit. (This is especially true if you happen to have an iPhone, an iPad, or some other electronic gadget that you can roam around the office playing on while pretending to do actual work!)

I have no idea how many different ways I can state "Do not put your social security number on time sheets or leave slips. Use your employee number!" before the rest of the staff finally, FINALLY understands this concept!

I can't quite figure out the proper wording for "If you didn't work that day, do not put any hours in that day's In/Out section" either. I mean it seems fairly obvious to me what those words translate to... But then again, I'm not the one with the college degree, am I?

And I really wish that when these Bumbling Idiots (BI) get all pissy because I'm "hogging" the Xerox WorkCentre when I scan payroll to the capital that I could respond with "Fine. Cancel the damn job. But you won't get paid on time if you do!" I do payroll for over 120 employees, and when you take into consideration that at least half the staff has taken at least one day off in the past 2 weeks (which means those damn pesky leave slips), I'm scanning at least a 180 page document to our Capital People (CP). It's going to take a little bit. So either take your document to one of the other 5 WorkCentres we have, or go back to your office, do some work for once, and for the love all things Administrative, shut your fucking word hole.

One other point of contention here... And this is a topic you will most likely be seeing a LOT of reading material on, is the front desk coverage. Considering that payroll is an extremely time sensitive task, and it's on the top of the priority list (not mention that it's NOT MY JOB TO BACK UP THE FRONT DESK), you would think that these BI would get that and NOT have me back up the front desk on these particular days. But then again, if the understood that simple concept, they wouldn't really qualify under the BI category either, now would they?

Knowing that I have this awesomely fun task ahead of me tomorrow... Well, let's just say the fact that it's Friday is all that's keeping me from punching someone in the baby maker.

Well, now that I've had my sleeping pill induced payroll rant.... I'm off to hit the pillow instead of the keyboard (for the first time in a long time, my head has something to be thankful for)!

~GG

Welcome To Government Hell!!

You know, when I started this job 2 years ago, I was stoked! I was so excited I finally got my foot in the door for what I was sure was going to to turn out to be a fabulous government career. I was guaranteed a raise every year, pretty decent health benefits (hey, don't knock it... I spent over 10 years with NO insurance and I've got the debt to prove it), 13 paid holidays a year, and to top it all off, a damn good union - ensuring job security. Besides, everyone knows that you have to really fuck some shit up to get fired from a government job, and I was walking into this job with a vast knowledge bank for the position I accepted.

The first sign that my dreams and hopes were about to be slowly broken and melted down into a veritable fondue of bitterness, stress beyond belief, and a great disdain for those bumbling idiots in upper management was the fact that the previous person who held my job managed to completely fuck everything up and left a massive clean up in her wake that would make the janitors in a bulimic drunk house with faulty toilets say "No, thank you, I'll keep this job". To top it off, I had exactly 2 weeks to not only learn the accounting system, but also to try and decipher the previous employee's filing system (which, as it turns out, was just to simply throw stuff in random folders and baskets throughout the office, hoping that no one would need the receipt from the $4,00o trip last March - because, really, why would they?) and exactly 2 weeks to straighten out this huge mess in order to meet the state's deadline for the end of the calendar year reconciliations. I believe the exact words spoken to me on my first day were: "Yeah, you're kind of walking into a bee's nest of issues here. We have the utmost faith that you can handle it though!"

Go get 'em killer!

Well, through an awful lot of hard work on my part, and thankfully I'm an exceptionally fast learner (show me once and I've got it mastered), I managed to get every single transaction cleared by the December 31st deadline. I'm not even close to exaggerating when I say that at the first Administrative Meeting of the new year, when the question was posed to me as to where we stood on getting them cleared, when I answered in a very nonchalant manner that we were done, many cheers were heard through out our floor of the building. Apparently this was a completely foreign concept to this particular division. I was a hero.

At least for a few days, anyway.

That's when the work load started to get bigger and bigger. I was asked if I could help cover another sections (there's 7 different sections in our division) front counter. The person who had been the receptionist/law office assistant had been promoted to a Paralegal I position in another section, and now her previous section was without someone to answer phones and create case files. I was told it was really light work, and that I would only have to be up there until noon each day. They assured me that they didn't want me to feel over-whelmed, and that it was only for a temporary basis. Sure, I said. But, I need to be able to keep up with my workload first, I pointed out. This wasn't going to be problem, they said, they understood.

The first of many, many lies. Bastards.

At first, they said just go up, do the court run and sort the mail. As soon as you're done with that, you can come back to your office. So I did. Then it turned into "we need to make sure the attorney's motions are getting done". So I did the court run, sorted the mail, typed up motions for attorney's signatures and made sure they got sent out right away, then went back to my desk to resume my work. Then I was told I was needed to enter the case assignments. Then I was told I was needed to answer the phones for longer in the day.

Not surprisingly, my work load started to lag behind. First it was the filing. No biggie, I thought, that can easily wait. Then came the finalizing paperwork. No biggie, I'm sure the employees will understand that with the workload, their reimbursements will be a little slower than usual in getting to them. Besides, with the previous employee they were used to it taking at least 3 months. What's a couple weeks when you think about? Right? Wrong.

At first, my boss seemed like the coolest person. I could go in and talk to her about all sorts of things, have long conversations to pass hours when I really didn't have the focus to tackle my work.

When I went to talk to her about the current work load, and how it was affecting my actual assigned duties, she went into a long story about the previous employee and how bad things were, and how they were so grateful to have me now, as the previous employee was only ever able to handle the ONE task. No more, and apparently a lot less. I don't know how she did it, but when I left her office, all I could think was "ONE task? How pitiful! I can't even imagine!!"

This was my first 2 months working for the state. Little did I know, I had it SO easy at that point. If only I could go back to those carefree days of loving my job. How I so wish I could wake up in the morning and once again be eager to face the day!!

I feel like I've aged 20 years in these last 2 years. Thank The Union for good health insurance!

~GG