Biding My Time
Three days left pretty much. Can I survive?
Work has been unusually quiet today. I am waiting to get screwed at any minute. Because it's snowing I am the only one capable of coming into the office. So right at 8 A.M. I was told I "may" have to run to a client because another dumb idiot has gotten his computer infected with Spyware. Well, it's 2:43 at the moment and I haven't heard jack from anyone all day. I am afraid to assume at this point that it's no longer my issue. I may use the impending "blizzard" as an excuse to cut out of here even earlier than usual.
Hey, if everyone else can use it, why can't I?
I did manage, amazingly, to finish a task at work I'd start back in December. We have safes here in which we store customer backups, ghost images etc etc on DVDs mostly. A long while back Miss Managed reorganized everything in there. But organization really wasn't the result. And that plus a combination of two other things motivated me in December and then finally today to finish the inventorying task I took on.
1. About once every two weeks she would call up and ask about a particular backup. Even if it was one SHE burned to DVD and put in the safe herself. Since she can't manage me anymore it was like her way of making sure she fucked with me somehow at least a few times a month. So I'd have to go into the safe and look for said backup. Invariably, the backup she was looking for would never be in there. This would cause a long, drawn-out back and forth email exchange where she was almost trying to convince me it WAS in there and I was not seeing it. Even though it never was.
2. At some point along the line I suddenly became "master of the safes" and instead of putting items in there herself, she would just put them on my desk for ME to file in there. Even lamer, she stopped putting the DVDs in sleeves altogether and was just leaving stacks of DVDs on my desk. Many times not even in any order (i.e. if there were multiple disks containing the same ghost image). It never ceased to infuriate me and was my major motivation for the undertaking.
One amusing thing I discovered going through it, that I of course made the Boss aware of, was that she was at times burning two and sometimes three copies of the SAME backups. No doubt billing the customers double or triple for the time to do them. Idiot.
So, I created my spreadsheets and threw them up in the Outlook Public Folders. Everyone has access to them. I sent an email and basically said in a nutshell, everything in there is in the sheets, going forward all items can be put directly in the safe and the person who does so can update the spreadsheets themselves.
I sent the email over two hours ago now and I haven't heard a peep from her or the Boss. I have no doubt she is stewing about it, and I'd bet money on it too. It was just yesterday she tossed a stack on my desk while I was sitting here and since they were not in sleeves they all almost spilled off the side of the desk. I'm sure she feels I did this just to single her out, and she'd be right.
On top of all that, I've also EXPOSED her so to speak. There are certain tasks that are supposed to be done monthly, like taking PST backups of certain clients and quarterly Ghosts. The spreadsheets now show huge gaps in months where she did not get these backups for all her clients. I don't feel bad about this mostly, since I am expected to do my set of monthly/quarterly tasks and she will attack me behind my back about them if they are not done or they are delayed. The Boss, of course, knowing she is full of shit when she does it.
Anything to take the focus off the fact she isn't doing jack-shit.
That's my workday in a nutshell. Kinda bad because I'm not sure it was really billable time to any client, but going forward it'll save me a lot of headaches. Though we'll see what happens the first time she burns a backup. Will she put it in the safe or on my desk?
Other than that, I worked until after 8:30 last night which was brutal. I hadn't eaten and like a fool I swung through Melrose and got some pasta, which I can feel sitting on my gut right now. My only salvation is that I might get to go run on the treadmill at Rockwell's building after work. My weight is teetering on the edge with the limited activity I've had all winter. Spring cannot get here soon enough. I can't wait to run again outside.
And I finally found the excitement I'd been waiting for over my trip. I'd been really anxious about the money situation, but I finally got my December and January expense checks and there was an additional $300 in them because of a little bonus system the Boss has setup. Basically, if I work more than 150 billable customer hours a month, I get an additional $150 in my expense check. I had in the past worked that much but there must be a stipulation I don't know about because I didn't always get the $150. But, this time it's there and it'll be a nice cushion so I won't have to worry about money down in The Big Easy.
I just hope the weather here and there cooperates. I can't get snowed in. And the temp down there needs to rise about 45. This is a vacation from ALL things Chicago... and that includes weather.
Work has been unusually quiet today. I am waiting to get screwed at any minute. Because it's snowing I am the only one capable of coming into the office. So right at 8 A.M. I was told I "may" have to run to a client because another dumb idiot has gotten his computer infected with Spyware. Well, it's 2:43 at the moment and I haven't heard jack from anyone all day. I am afraid to assume at this point that it's no longer my issue. I may use the impending "blizzard" as an excuse to cut out of here even earlier than usual.
Hey, if everyone else can use it, why can't I?
I did manage, amazingly, to finish a task at work I'd start back in December. We have safes here in which we store customer backups, ghost images etc etc on DVDs mostly. A long while back Miss Managed reorganized everything in there. But organization really wasn't the result. And that plus a combination of two other things motivated me in December and then finally today to finish the inventorying task I took on.
1. About once every two weeks she would call up and ask about a particular backup. Even if it was one SHE burned to DVD and put in the safe herself. Since she can't manage me anymore it was like her way of making sure she fucked with me somehow at least a few times a month. So I'd have to go into the safe and look for said backup. Invariably, the backup she was looking for would never be in there. This would cause a long, drawn-out back and forth email exchange where she was almost trying to convince me it WAS in there and I was not seeing it. Even though it never was.
2. At some point along the line I suddenly became "master of the safes" and instead of putting items in there herself, she would just put them on my desk for ME to file in there. Even lamer, she stopped putting the DVDs in sleeves altogether and was just leaving stacks of DVDs on my desk. Many times not even in any order (i.e. if there were multiple disks containing the same ghost image). It never ceased to infuriate me and was my major motivation for the undertaking.
One amusing thing I discovered going through it, that I of course made the Boss aware of, was that she was at times burning two and sometimes three copies of the SAME backups. No doubt billing the customers double or triple for the time to do them. Idiot.
So, I created my spreadsheets and threw them up in the Outlook Public Folders. Everyone has access to them. I sent an email and basically said in a nutshell, everything in there is in the sheets, going forward all items can be put directly in the safe and the person who does so can update the spreadsheets themselves.
I sent the email over two hours ago now and I haven't heard a peep from her or the Boss. I have no doubt she is stewing about it, and I'd bet money on it too. It was just yesterday she tossed a stack on my desk while I was sitting here and since they were not in sleeves they all almost spilled off the side of the desk. I'm sure she feels I did this just to single her out, and she'd be right.
On top of all that, I've also EXPOSED her so to speak. There are certain tasks that are supposed to be done monthly, like taking PST backups of certain clients and quarterly Ghosts. The spreadsheets now show huge gaps in months where she did not get these backups for all her clients. I don't feel bad about this mostly, since I am expected to do my set of monthly/quarterly tasks and she will attack me behind my back about them if they are not done or they are delayed. The Boss, of course, knowing she is full of shit when she does it.
Anything to take the focus off the fact she isn't doing jack-shit.
That's my workday in a nutshell. Kinda bad because I'm not sure it was really billable time to any client, but going forward it'll save me a lot of headaches. Though we'll see what happens the first time she burns a backup. Will she put it in the safe or on my desk?
Other than that, I worked until after 8:30 last night which was brutal. I hadn't eaten and like a fool I swung through Melrose and got some pasta, which I can feel sitting on my gut right now. My only salvation is that I might get to go run on the treadmill at Rockwell's building after work. My weight is teetering on the edge with the limited activity I've had all winter. Spring cannot get here soon enough. I can't wait to run again outside.
And I finally found the excitement I'd been waiting for over my trip. I'd been really anxious about the money situation, but I finally got my December and January expense checks and there was an additional $300 in them because of a little bonus system the Boss has setup. Basically, if I work more than 150 billable customer hours a month, I get an additional $150 in my expense check. I had in the past worked that much but there must be a stipulation I don't know about because I didn't always get the $150. But, this time it's there and it'll be a nice cushion so I won't have to worry about money down in The Big Easy.
I just hope the weather here and there cooperates. I can't get snowed in. And the temp down there needs to rise about 45. This is a vacation from ALL things Chicago... and that includes weather.