Dog days of work
Several of my coworkers have dogs. My newest coworker decided to bring hers in recently on several occasions; our high school helper has also brought hers by. They each have two. We are a dog-friendly business, as my boss' mom brings hers in probably 90% of the time she's there. However, it's one thing to bring them by once in a while. It's entirely another if it's several times in a week, or within a few weeks. It's a distraction, and when the newest coworker is supposed to be working in the front building, it means she has to corral the dogs when clients stop in. And she's spending her time doing that instead of helping the clients. My boss finally told her, no, you need to not do that. It also sounds like there were, er, messes created as well, and nobody wants to deal with that. Her dogs have stayed home since.
The boss had a meeting with her and BBC--actually two, one a week ago Friday to discuss their trip to a convention to talk about what they'd learned (postponed between my boss going out of town and the new coworker getting sick), and then on Tuesday to discuss their behavior. They've become thick as thieves in short order and his work output has severely decreased in that time. Like, this is not the time of year for your output to go down. You have dozens of projects that need to be completed in the next month or two, with more coming in all the time. Some of these have been awaiting completion for months. I guess you could call me the project manager, because I compile lists of said projects so we all know what's in the queue, but this is very time-consuming and I kind of have my own work to do. I had to not compile the lists for weeks in the late spring because I was so overwhelmed with my own duties. I resent having to baby-sit grown adults to be like, okay, this is what you need to do; it should be obvious. But BBC is a squirrel and needs blinders to be able to focus, and this new coworker is shiny and distracting, and it goes both ways, and not a ton is getting done in the other building.
My one saving grace was Penny. He was a nose to the grindstone kind of person, cranking out projects very quickly. I'm not used to that. He wasn't the greatest project person ever, but he was completely adequate, and for him to turn around many projects in a day or two was almost mind-blowing. At one point I had a pile building up at my workstation, since I call the clients to let them know they're completed. I knew a few of them weren't pressing, but I still changed the completed date for some of them since it would look bad otherwise, and at least one project took me two weeks to call. Yikes. But that's just how busy I was, and how quickly that certain item was finished, as it wasn't needed for a few months.
Alas, Penny's time with us is done. We've known it was coming for weeks. He was only in the area temporarily, while his fiancée, who works for a certain electric car company--let's call it the Coil--worked her way up. She was up for a particular promotion but had to come here to work toward it. Once she got it, she should've been able to work from anywhere, and they were going to return to their native Pennsylvania. And then the musk ox who owns Coil changed things up and everyone has to work in a physical building, something along those lines, and that messed up Penny's timeline. His fiancée has kind of been in limbo ever since, but they'd already had to vacate their apartment, and they cannot find anyplace willing to do a short-term lease that won't cost them at least $1500 a month, if not more--we're talking probably $2000 a month. It was something pretty outrageous. So, last week, Penny let us know it would be his final week; he'd be moving back to his parents' house (which was always their plan, at least to start) and his fiancée would live in an AirB&B for a bit. He was going to drive his car to PA, fly back, then pack up a truck with his stuff and do it again. He said it sucks going from IL to PA because the PA state line is only the halfway mark; it's six hours there, then another six hours because he's from the extreme eastern part of the state. He'd rather drive here because at least when you hit the PA state line westbound, it's not only the halfway mark, but you at least get to cross into three other states. And we didn't even get to do a going-away anything, not that we necessarily would've; he pulled a Michael Scott and left about 1:30 PM on Thursday*. I was just surprised he missed doughnut Friday. At least get a going-away doughnut! But he said he had way too much to do and he couldn't stay any longer. He did at least say goodbye to me. I know I could be a bit of a nemesis when it came to certain projects, but I'd like to think he gained some knowledge and insight into what he does and he can take that back to his old job. He definitely picked up new skills while he was here, but he's also going back to his old position, where he could focus on one subject area, rather than having to be more of a jack-of-all-trades like we had him do here. He was at least willing to learn and I greatly appreciate what he did for us.
He was a character; he broke out these Hawaiian shirts once it got warm out, and he's got this crazy curly hair (kinda jelly over here), so I told him he was giving off Weird Al vibes recently. He gets that a lot, but then again he does enjoy a good Hawaiian shirt. And then on Tuesday or so, he walked up to get coffee and was wearing this shirt that said Nirvana on it...but the picture was of mid-'90s Hanson. As in Mmm-Bop. What in the heck! Turns out he's a huge Hanson fan, says they're the nicest guys, and when he left his old job they got him a bunch of Hanson merch. Ha! OMG. He's a really neat guy and told some really interesting stories. I didn't get to spend a ton of time with him, but I enjoyed what little I did, and I hope he and his fiancée do well in the future.
(*I had to explain this reference to all of my coworkers I made it to. On The Office, when Michael moved out of state, he couldn't bear whatever going-away party the gang was throwing for him, knowing he'd be too emotional, so he left a day early. This ultimately leads to the scene at the airport where Pam runs up to him to say goodbye, having been out of the office "planning the party" all day, though she's really, like, been watching a movie.)
Speaking of former coworkers, YC popped in last week as well. She now has purple hair, though she was wearing a hat so it wasn't entirely visible at first. She and her boyfriend got a dog, so she was showing us pictures. Very cute, pretty pale blue eyes. I got to show her some of the projects I'm working on; I have several piles of things around my workstation. I've learned how to use mail merge to make labels and my labels look pretty sweet. (This is all part of the overarching project I'm working on, which is due in August, and related to several of the projects Penny had done; that's how I knew I didn't need to call those clients immediately.) I have roughly 175 units of stuff I need to put together, and I am slowly and steadily putting it all together. I have to wait on a few things but I've done a lot of what I can. The hard part for me is that I need to get into the other building to get at some stuff, but unless I have someone to cover for me, I can't get away. The new girl--I keep thinking I'll call her Puffy--primarily works in the other building and doesn't make it up to the front building until late in the day, so that doesn't help me much, but at this point in time she's way more useful back there (that is, when she and BBC get down to work), so I don't really want to pull her away from that. I think I'll try to get back there on Tuesdays, when I work late and I have her up front with me. She can man the workstation for an hour and a half, I'm sure. I'll need to try that this week. Time is running short.
The boss had a meeting with her and BBC--actually two, one a week ago Friday to discuss their trip to a convention to talk about what they'd learned (postponed between my boss going out of town and the new coworker getting sick), and then on Tuesday to discuss their behavior. They've become thick as thieves in short order and his work output has severely decreased in that time. Like, this is not the time of year for your output to go down. You have dozens of projects that need to be completed in the next month or two, with more coming in all the time. Some of these have been awaiting completion for months. I guess you could call me the project manager, because I compile lists of said projects so we all know what's in the queue, but this is very time-consuming and I kind of have my own work to do. I had to not compile the lists for weeks in the late spring because I was so overwhelmed with my own duties. I resent having to baby-sit grown adults to be like, okay, this is what you need to do; it should be obvious. But BBC is a squirrel and needs blinders to be able to focus, and this new coworker is shiny and distracting, and it goes both ways, and not a ton is getting done in the other building.
My one saving grace was Penny. He was a nose to the grindstone kind of person, cranking out projects very quickly. I'm not used to that. He wasn't the greatest project person ever, but he was completely adequate, and for him to turn around many projects in a day or two was almost mind-blowing. At one point I had a pile building up at my workstation, since I call the clients to let them know they're completed. I knew a few of them weren't pressing, but I still changed the completed date for some of them since it would look bad otherwise, and at least one project took me two weeks to call. Yikes. But that's just how busy I was, and how quickly that certain item was finished, as it wasn't needed for a few months.
Alas, Penny's time with us is done. We've known it was coming for weeks. He was only in the area temporarily, while his fiancée, who works for a certain electric car company--let's call it the Coil--worked her way up. She was up for a particular promotion but had to come here to work toward it. Once she got it, she should've been able to work from anywhere, and they were going to return to their native Pennsylvania. And then the musk ox who owns Coil changed things up and everyone has to work in a physical building, something along those lines, and that messed up Penny's timeline. His fiancée has kind of been in limbo ever since, but they'd already had to vacate their apartment, and they cannot find anyplace willing to do a short-term lease that won't cost them at least $1500 a month, if not more--we're talking probably $2000 a month. It was something pretty outrageous. So, last week, Penny let us know it would be his final week; he'd be moving back to his parents' house (which was always their plan, at least to start) and his fiancée would live in an AirB&B for a bit. He was going to drive his car to PA, fly back, then pack up a truck with his stuff and do it again. He said it sucks going from IL to PA because the PA state line is only the halfway mark; it's six hours there, then another six hours because he's from the extreme eastern part of the state. He'd rather drive here because at least when you hit the PA state line westbound, it's not only the halfway mark, but you at least get to cross into three other states. And we didn't even get to do a going-away anything, not that we necessarily would've; he pulled a Michael Scott and left about 1:30 PM on Thursday*. I was just surprised he missed doughnut Friday. At least get a going-away doughnut! But he said he had way too much to do and he couldn't stay any longer. He did at least say goodbye to me. I know I could be a bit of a nemesis when it came to certain projects, but I'd like to think he gained some knowledge and insight into what he does and he can take that back to his old job. He definitely picked up new skills while he was here, but he's also going back to his old position, where he could focus on one subject area, rather than having to be more of a jack-of-all-trades like we had him do here. He was at least willing to learn and I greatly appreciate what he did for us.
He was a character; he broke out these Hawaiian shirts once it got warm out, and he's got this crazy curly hair (kinda jelly over here), so I told him he was giving off Weird Al vibes recently. He gets that a lot, but then again he does enjoy a good Hawaiian shirt. And then on Tuesday or so, he walked up to get coffee and was wearing this shirt that said Nirvana on it...but the picture was of mid-'90s Hanson. As in Mmm-Bop. What in the heck! Turns out he's a huge Hanson fan, says they're the nicest guys, and when he left his old job they got him a bunch of Hanson merch. Ha! OMG. He's a really neat guy and told some really interesting stories. I didn't get to spend a ton of time with him, but I enjoyed what little I did, and I hope he and his fiancée do well in the future.
(*I had to explain this reference to all of my coworkers I made it to. On The Office, when Michael moved out of state, he couldn't bear whatever going-away party the gang was throwing for him, knowing he'd be too emotional, so he left a day early. This ultimately leads to the scene at the airport where Pam runs up to him to say goodbye, having been out of the office "planning the party" all day, though she's really, like, been watching a movie.)
Speaking of former coworkers, YC popped in last week as well. She now has purple hair, though she was wearing a hat so it wasn't entirely visible at first. She and her boyfriend got a dog, so she was showing us pictures. Very cute, pretty pale blue eyes. I got to show her some of the projects I'm working on; I have several piles of things around my workstation. I've learned how to use mail merge to make labels and my labels look pretty sweet. (This is all part of the overarching project I'm working on, which is due in August, and related to several of the projects Penny had done; that's how I knew I didn't need to call those clients immediately.) I have roughly 175 units of stuff I need to put together, and I am slowly and steadily putting it all together. I have to wait on a few things but I've done a lot of what I can. The hard part for me is that I need to get into the other building to get at some stuff, but unless I have someone to cover for me, I can't get away. The new girl--I keep thinking I'll call her Puffy--primarily works in the other building and doesn't make it up to the front building until late in the day, so that doesn't help me much, but at this point in time she's way more useful back there (that is, when she and BBC get down to work), so I don't really want to pull her away from that. I think I'll try to get back there on Tuesdays, when I work late and I have her up front with me. She can man the workstation for an hour and a half, I'm sure. I'll need to try that this week. Time is running short.