Here, have a ranty word vomit
I'm obsessing over this so I have to get it off my chest for now, put my thoughts into words. I already came home and ranted to my mom, possibly the calmest rant I've ever had.
So A has been with the company for three years now. She's a great employee, caught on to everything quickly despite it being a totally new industry to her and never having worked with the computers/software we use.
Lately she's been... off. Like, really, really off.
She's usually never one to say boo about anything, to express any attitude or dissenting opinions or anything. Which is fine, if you have different opinions, but lately she's been getting very snotty about them and then having a huff.
She's in her first real relationship, since last year. The relationship isn't ideal but it's more, I think, just a lack of personality synchronicity and she's not one to really bring up any ISSUES she has with the dude. I know him, we all hang out together and they have a functional relationship and it's not a BAD one or anything. But she clearly has some issues and they don't ACT like a couple half the time. She's expressed some frustrations to me about his lack of commitment in making plans or doing anything together beyond going out to eat or staying in. Like, nothing huge but just not what she wants.
I'm pretty sure she's gone on the pill since, say, December or something, because HOLY FUCK. Her mood swings are atrocious! My boss has even started tracking dates and has noticed a huge swing during particular times of the month.
Everyone has off days, you know? Even her. And when she used to have them they'd be SO out of character and rare that we'd be like- holy shit, what's up? But the next day she'd be fine.
Now, though, she's arguing back with my boss and giving us the silent treatment, she doesn't make an attempt to grab the counter without being prompted or unless we WAIT for her to do it, by which time my boss has gotten irritated and jumped up herself. We both sit at the front of the department and can equally see who comes in and who needs help. But she basically ignores them.
She's in moods for DAYS. We ask her if there's anything wrong, if there's something wrong with the boy, if it's US and she's all, "No, 'm fine" which OF COURSE MEANS YOU'RE NOT FINE.
She had a part time job up to a couple months ago but she got a roommate and was able to quit, at which time she said she could be worked into the 3-hour Sunday shift we have to input the obituaries, put them on the pages and send our classifieds to print for the Monday paper (since we're closed weekends and don't have a Sunday paper). My boss and I have been doing them since March or even before because all of the positions and schedules got fucked up due to people getting sick and the majority of the creative department quitting so there's all new staff there.
The production manager basically forgot to include classifieds in any plans he made to cover off the rest of the paper during our transition period. So my boss and I were all- okay, I guess we got this.
The person who was sick came back and the creative team has evened out a bit again. So we were expecting things to go back the way they were or at least to have a few other people to share in our Sunday rotation.
We were going to train some of the creative team to learn how to input the obits into our system because we have to do a website upload to get them on the site for Monday but since that ISN'T in their union job description AND they would only be doing them once every few weeks they didn't feel comfortable using that system. Which we didn't learn for two weeks after the creative supervisor talked to the department manager and they just forgot to tell us. So we thought, okay, glitch in the system we had been planning on for at least a month now but okay, if creative wants to do it the old way (putting them directly on our pages without entering them in our system) fine, we'll ask our hosting company to change the time of the upload for Mondays so we don't miss it.
Some other things came about today to perhaps resolve all of our problems!
Well. The person who was sick was proposed to change her shifts from Mon-Fri to Sun-Thurs. She said no. Creative decided that since SHE said no, they could say no.
Um, prepress is in THEIR job description, not classifieds. Oh, but aren't obits classifieds? Sure, but they're ADS. And guess who builds fucking ADS?! CREATIVE. Who's supposed to SEND the pages? PREPRESS. Guess what you fucking do? ADS AND PREPRESS.
There was quite the to-do between the department manager, my boss and the creative supervisor this afternoon. My boss basically told creative that if they ever need any further help from us they could fuck themselves and that if we turned back to them ALL the ads we had to take because they couldn't get them to us on time or done CORRECTLY that they'd be even more screwed.
This was kind of the final straw for this matter today because we'd been trying to find a solution to this problem since last week now. So this morning before meeting my boss asked A if she would like to join the rotation on Sundays.
She said no. She said she works Monday to Friday and she doesn't want to work on Sundays.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Okay. Yes. She IS true. She's very, very true and she has EVERY RIGHT to refuse. Because she IS only supposed to work Monday to Friday. But know what? So am I. And what have I been doing since March? Trading off Sundays with my boss because I'm HELPING MY TEAM. If I said I didn't want to work on Sundays anymore I have EVERY RIGHT to do that. Know who would have to do them EVERY WEEK then? My boss because she's management so she gets a salary and no compensation for all the extra time she puts in.
My boss works INCREDIBLY hard. She's the advertising manager of two other of our papers, she's supposed to be kind of running/steering the classified department at our sister paper (which is basically a sinking ship right now with only one full time person bc they're HORRIBLE there and the ACTUAL supervisor is a newb who has NO idea what he's doing, hence my boss being sort of responsible, too), she launched a daily coffee paper at one of the two papers, is in the middle of launching one for the other one, we've had to take on the booking/billing for the first coffee paper since they fucked that up, she's preparing for us to upgrade our booking system for ALL of our papers since we're crippled without it, she launched our brand new website and online booking system with a company others told us flat out wouldn't work for us and MADE it work, and for the past six weeks she's been the project manager of that giant marketing/sales thing our reps had to do up to last week.
The last week that involved me helping her do presentation confirmations and re-bookings, manage the sales rep desks since they were all out of the office all week AND try to do our own department work.
Guess who didn't help out at ALL last week on any of that shit? Yeah. A.
So why don't I want my boss to have to do that 3 hour shift every week? Because her head might explode. And I've said this MANY times and I mean it- if she goes, I go. That department would fail if she wasn't there and I don't trust a single other manager to be able to run it OR defend US (her TEAM) with even an iota of the veracity she does.
She gets NO monetary or other compensation for the hard work she does. I, on the other hand, get time in lieu for those three hours I put in that I get to use however I want. Usually I use them to come in an hour late on the weeks I don't have to come in until 8:30 so I can go to the gym or sleep in a bit.
Guess who has a problem with that? YES. A. She told our boss a couple weeks ago that she didn't like that I did that. My boss was like, "Why?!" Because apparently IT COULD GET BUSY. AT 8:30 IN THE MORNING. My boss basically said "tough, she can do what she wants with her time."
I love our department. I love that we have a hand in literally every single department and not because we HAVE to, but because we JUST DO. We have a relationship with at least one person from every bit of the paper. There's a dude in the mailroom who brings his dog to visit us on his days off because we love it SO much. Editorial people come to our department to visit us because we're awesome. Got a problem? If we don't know what's going on we know exactly who you need to talk to. We make it a point of trying to stay positive and keep things happy and we even take a moment to have "positive moment moments" when things start to go south. WE. GET. SHIT. DONE.
We are a team.
Or I thought we were.
I'm just so incredibly pissed that we have ALL THIS SHIT happening around us and someone could be so selfish. I could see that from someone in another department (and this is BECAUSE selfishness in other departments who don't want to do THEIR JOBS) but not US. And yet we have A who refuses to do a second more work than she needs to. I've stayed until 7pm on a Friday because pages wouldn't send and I didn't even HAVE to. I could have said, "fuck it, you do it" to the prepress person. BUT I DON'T. Because THAT'S MY JOB.
I'm just so bitter because, I don't know, I work harder than I have to and it frustrates me when someone else who knows EXACTLY why I'm doing what I do doesn't feel the same way. Especially when she didn't used to be this way just six months ago.
UGH UGH UGH, you guys!
If you read through that all CONGRATULATIONS. I wish I had more to offer to you. Here are some cute and/or humorous gifs for your time!
In other news I tried those Crest Whitestrips and they were awful. The texture was the worst and there was a faint taste and I think they made me have pain in one of my teeth. I kept them on for an hour but I don't know if they did anything? YECH!
So A has been with the company for three years now. She's a great employee, caught on to everything quickly despite it being a totally new industry to her and never having worked with the computers/software we use.
Lately she's been... off. Like, really, really off.
She's usually never one to say boo about anything, to express any attitude or dissenting opinions or anything. Which is fine, if you have different opinions, but lately she's been getting very snotty about them and then having a huff.
She's in her first real relationship, since last year. The relationship isn't ideal but it's more, I think, just a lack of personality synchronicity and she's not one to really bring up any ISSUES she has with the dude. I know him, we all hang out together and they have a functional relationship and it's not a BAD one or anything. But she clearly has some issues and they don't ACT like a couple half the time. She's expressed some frustrations to me about his lack of commitment in making plans or doing anything together beyond going out to eat or staying in. Like, nothing huge but just not what she wants.
I'm pretty sure she's gone on the pill since, say, December or something, because HOLY FUCK. Her mood swings are atrocious! My boss has even started tracking dates and has noticed a huge swing during particular times of the month.
Everyone has off days, you know? Even her. And when she used to have them they'd be SO out of character and rare that we'd be like- holy shit, what's up? But the next day she'd be fine.
Now, though, she's arguing back with my boss and giving us the silent treatment, she doesn't make an attempt to grab the counter without being prompted or unless we WAIT for her to do it, by which time my boss has gotten irritated and jumped up herself. We both sit at the front of the department and can equally see who comes in and who needs help. But she basically ignores them.
She's in moods for DAYS. We ask her if there's anything wrong, if there's something wrong with the boy, if it's US and she's all, "No, 'm fine" which OF COURSE MEANS YOU'RE NOT FINE.
She had a part time job up to a couple months ago but she got a roommate and was able to quit, at which time she said she could be worked into the 3-hour Sunday shift we have to input the obituaries, put them on the pages and send our classifieds to print for the Monday paper (since we're closed weekends and don't have a Sunday paper). My boss and I have been doing them since March or even before because all of the positions and schedules got fucked up due to people getting sick and the majority of the creative department quitting so there's all new staff there.
The production manager basically forgot to include classifieds in any plans he made to cover off the rest of the paper during our transition period. So my boss and I were all- okay, I guess we got this.
The person who was sick came back and the creative team has evened out a bit again. So we were expecting things to go back the way they were or at least to have a few other people to share in our Sunday rotation.
We were going to train some of the creative team to learn how to input the obits into our system because we have to do a website upload to get them on the site for Monday but since that ISN'T in their union job description AND they would only be doing them once every few weeks they didn't feel comfortable using that system. Which we didn't learn for two weeks after the creative supervisor talked to the department manager and they just forgot to tell us. So we thought, okay, glitch in the system we had been planning on for at least a month now but okay, if creative wants to do it the old way (putting them directly on our pages without entering them in our system) fine, we'll ask our hosting company to change the time of the upload for Mondays so we don't miss it.
Some other things came about today to perhaps resolve all of our problems!
Well. The person who was sick was proposed to change her shifts from Mon-Fri to Sun-Thurs. She said no. Creative decided that since SHE said no, they could say no.
Um, prepress is in THEIR job description, not classifieds. Oh, but aren't obits classifieds? Sure, but they're ADS. And guess who builds fucking ADS?! CREATIVE. Who's supposed to SEND the pages? PREPRESS. Guess what you fucking do? ADS AND PREPRESS.
There was quite the to-do between the department manager, my boss and the creative supervisor this afternoon. My boss basically told creative that if they ever need any further help from us they could fuck themselves and that if we turned back to them ALL the ads we had to take because they couldn't get them to us on time or done CORRECTLY that they'd be even more screwed.
This was kind of the final straw for this matter today because we'd been trying to find a solution to this problem since last week now. So this morning before meeting my boss asked A if she would like to join the rotation on Sundays.
She said no. She said she works Monday to Friday and she doesn't want to work on Sundays.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Okay. Yes. She IS true. She's very, very true and she has EVERY RIGHT to refuse. Because she IS only supposed to work Monday to Friday. But know what? So am I. And what have I been doing since March? Trading off Sundays with my boss because I'm HELPING MY TEAM. If I said I didn't want to work on Sundays anymore I have EVERY RIGHT to do that. Know who would have to do them EVERY WEEK then? My boss because she's management so she gets a salary and no compensation for all the extra time she puts in.
My boss works INCREDIBLY hard. She's the advertising manager of two other of our papers, she's supposed to be kind of running/steering the classified department at our sister paper (which is basically a sinking ship right now with only one full time person bc they're HORRIBLE there and the ACTUAL supervisor is a newb who has NO idea what he's doing, hence my boss being sort of responsible, too), she launched a daily coffee paper at one of the two papers, is in the middle of launching one for the other one, we've had to take on the booking/billing for the first coffee paper since they fucked that up, she's preparing for us to upgrade our booking system for ALL of our papers since we're crippled without it, she launched our brand new website and online booking system with a company others told us flat out wouldn't work for us and MADE it work, and for the past six weeks she's been the project manager of that giant marketing/sales thing our reps had to do up to last week.
The last week that involved me helping her do presentation confirmations and re-bookings, manage the sales rep desks since they were all out of the office all week AND try to do our own department work.
Guess who didn't help out at ALL last week on any of that shit? Yeah. A.
So why don't I want my boss to have to do that 3 hour shift every week? Because her head might explode. And I've said this MANY times and I mean it- if she goes, I go. That department would fail if she wasn't there and I don't trust a single other manager to be able to run it OR defend US (her TEAM) with even an iota of the veracity she does.
She gets NO monetary or other compensation for the hard work she does. I, on the other hand, get time in lieu for those three hours I put in that I get to use however I want. Usually I use them to come in an hour late on the weeks I don't have to come in until 8:30 so I can go to the gym or sleep in a bit.
Guess who has a problem with that? YES. A. She told our boss a couple weeks ago that she didn't like that I did that. My boss was like, "Why?!" Because apparently IT COULD GET BUSY. AT 8:30 IN THE MORNING. My boss basically said "tough, she can do what she wants with her time."
I love our department. I love that we have a hand in literally every single department and not because we HAVE to, but because we JUST DO. We have a relationship with at least one person from every bit of the paper. There's a dude in the mailroom who brings his dog to visit us on his days off because we love it SO much. Editorial people come to our department to visit us because we're awesome. Got a problem? If we don't know what's going on we know exactly who you need to talk to. We make it a point of trying to stay positive and keep things happy and we even take a moment to have "positive moment moments" when things start to go south. WE. GET. SHIT. DONE.
We are a team.
Or I thought we were.
I'm just so incredibly pissed that we have ALL THIS SHIT happening around us and someone could be so selfish. I could see that from someone in another department (and this is BECAUSE selfishness in other departments who don't want to do THEIR JOBS) but not US. And yet we have A who refuses to do a second more work than she needs to. I've stayed until 7pm on a Friday because pages wouldn't send and I didn't even HAVE to. I could have said, "fuck it, you do it" to the prepress person. BUT I DON'T. Because THAT'S MY JOB.
I'm just so bitter because, I don't know, I work harder than I have to and it frustrates me when someone else who knows EXACTLY why I'm doing what I do doesn't feel the same way. Especially when she didn't used to be this way just six months ago.
UGH UGH UGH, you guys!
If you read through that all CONGRATULATIONS. I wish I had more to offer to you. Here are some cute and/or humorous gifs for your time!
In other news I tried those Crest Whitestrips and they were awful. The texture was the worst and there was a faint taste and I think they made me have pain in one of my teeth. I kept them on for an hour but I don't know if they did anything? YECH!