I'll let it go 'cause I won't see you later, and I'm not allowed to figure it out.
I am exhausted. Mentally. I don't even know what my job is this week. I miss my normal Support job. A lot.
I mentioned that I was going to be helping Input with keying, right? Well, yesterday was fine and dandy. I got back into the swing of keying and all was fine. Even had pretty good numbers, which felt nice, because I thought I had forgotten a whole lot more. Came in the morning, cleaned out my own high priority things for the first half hour, then dove right back into keying. By 2pm I had input more than I did yesterday, which was a nice feeling... then things changed. One of the other AP managers, not my own, came up and said that I would be helping with our other clients. Now, I work solely with the book publisher. That is all I have ever known. We have a completely separate AP department that handles all of the other clients, because none of them are anywhere near as huge as the publisher. Well, we had a new client come on recently, a pretty large music comany. We already have 4 dedicated people on that team, and they just hired two more, yet somehow they are apparently insanely behind. The team has been working 6:30a-9p for the past week or more, and can't catch up. They ended up asking me and the coworker who helped me cover for the vacationer to help with the other clients.
Well, I say ask.
One of the other AP managers walked up and told me this was happening. I was volunteered.
The woman that "trained" me and my coworker on it breezed right through the entire thing, speaking in acronyms like we understood her client's lingo, and when I would ask for clarification all she did was repeat herself verbatim. So, you know, fat lot of help that was. I was even logged into not only our system, but my entire computer as her, which personally I feel is a huge breach of both security and ethics. So now her name is tagged on things next to my fingerprints and people over her head have no idea who on earth I am, but she had me verifying and posting documents. That's like asking your neighbor to come to the bank with you and letting them pay all your bills without you looking at what they are doing. You just keep handing them the bills straight from the mail with blank checks pre-signed. If I were the client I would not be ok with this situation. But then, the client is already pissed because they are so far behind. Everything I looked at today was over a month past due. Whoops.
So I have no idea what is gong or what I am supposed to do wen I get to work tomorrow.
Even better is that a water main broke early this mornign right outside of our building. The whole office was without running water. They offered liberal leave, put a bunch of port-a-johns in the parking lot, and even shuttled people back and forth between our building and the warehouse around the corner (about 1/4 mile) because they have water. The shuttles were the small scooters they use to drive people around the warehouse. The batteries were melting, literally, by halfway through the day and the temp never got over 84 degrees. That tells you how much use they were getting. Some of upper level management brought in coffee for everyone, which honestly was not the best idea, given that, you know, it's coffee and people chug it and then have to keep using the restroom... Have I mentioned that most of my immediate department (all 8 of us on support) are older women? Every hour and a half they would go as a group down to the shuttle scooters and spend the next forty minutes on their bathroom break. They spent more time on break, factoring in their hour lunch, than they did at their desks today.
I really hope they can fix the water by tomorrow. And as much as I don't mind helping other groups, it does no one any good when the person giving me instruction doesn't have the patience to even let me ask a question and instead just spouts off acronyms and phrases that mean nothing to anyone outside of that client. And there is no one else that can explain the client because the other three people on that team are all new. I am really hoping that tomorrow I am told to either go back to my support work like is my actual job, or that I can go back to helping Input.
Anyway, I am not at work anymore. I feel better after venting about it all here. I know tomorrow is going to be another pain and a half just like today, but I will deal with that tomorrow when it is relevant and I can do something about it. Until then, I am going to let it go and enjoy my nice, quiet apartment, and maybe even read a book! Gasp!
We all got advanced readers of Vox, by Christina Dalcher, at work yesterday. It is about the near future, where girls are only allowed to say 100 words a day. They wear a bracelet that tracks it and emits severe electrical shocks if they go over it. I miss fiction for the sake of fiction, as opposed to all of this activism taking over even scifi and fantasy. That being said though, I am really enjoying the author's writing style, so I am continuing on with it. She manages to actually evoke emotion in the reader. Rather than telling you that something was shocking or appalling or painful, she gets you to feel it right aon with the main character. I enjoy that kind of writing style because I like being drawn into a book and living the story, not just hearing it. Anyway, If you like dystopian AUs with a focus on women's rights, check it out right here! It hits the shelves on 8/21!
I mentioned that I was going to be helping Input with keying, right? Well, yesterday was fine and dandy. I got back into the swing of keying and all was fine. Even had pretty good numbers, which felt nice, because I thought I had forgotten a whole lot more. Came in the morning, cleaned out my own high priority things for the first half hour, then dove right back into keying. By 2pm I had input more than I did yesterday, which was a nice feeling... then things changed. One of the other AP managers, not my own, came up and said that I would be helping with our other clients. Now, I work solely with the book publisher. That is all I have ever known. We have a completely separate AP department that handles all of the other clients, because none of them are anywhere near as huge as the publisher. Well, we had a new client come on recently, a pretty large music comany. We already have 4 dedicated people on that team, and they just hired two more, yet somehow they are apparently insanely behind. The team has been working 6:30a-9p for the past week or more, and can't catch up. They ended up asking me and the coworker who helped me cover for the vacationer to help with the other clients.
Well, I say ask.
One of the other AP managers walked up and told me this was happening. I was volunteered.
The woman that "trained" me and my coworker on it breezed right through the entire thing, speaking in acronyms like we understood her client's lingo, and when I would ask for clarification all she did was repeat herself verbatim. So, you know, fat lot of help that was. I was even logged into not only our system, but my entire computer as her, which personally I feel is a huge breach of both security and ethics. So now her name is tagged on things next to my fingerprints and people over her head have no idea who on earth I am, but she had me verifying and posting documents. That's like asking your neighbor to come to the bank with you and letting them pay all your bills without you looking at what they are doing. You just keep handing them the bills straight from the mail with blank checks pre-signed. If I were the client I would not be ok with this situation. But then, the client is already pissed because they are so far behind. Everything I looked at today was over a month past due. Whoops.
So I have no idea what is gong or what I am supposed to do wen I get to work tomorrow.
Even better is that a water main broke early this mornign right outside of our building. The whole office was without running water. They offered liberal leave, put a bunch of port-a-johns in the parking lot, and even shuttled people back and forth between our building and the warehouse around the corner (about 1/4 mile) because they have water. The shuttles were the small scooters they use to drive people around the warehouse. The batteries were melting, literally, by halfway through the day and the temp never got over 84 degrees. That tells you how much use they were getting. Some of upper level management brought in coffee for everyone, which honestly was not the best idea, given that, you know, it's coffee and people chug it and then have to keep using the restroom... Have I mentioned that most of my immediate department (all 8 of us on support) are older women? Every hour and a half they would go as a group down to the shuttle scooters and spend the next forty minutes on their bathroom break. They spent more time on break, factoring in their hour lunch, than they did at their desks today.
I really hope they can fix the water by tomorrow. And as much as I don't mind helping other groups, it does no one any good when the person giving me instruction doesn't have the patience to even let me ask a question and instead just spouts off acronyms and phrases that mean nothing to anyone outside of that client. And there is no one else that can explain the client because the other three people on that team are all new. I am really hoping that tomorrow I am told to either go back to my support work like is my actual job, or that I can go back to helping Input.
Anyway, I am not at work anymore. I feel better after venting about it all here. I know tomorrow is going to be another pain and a half just like today, but I will deal with that tomorrow when it is relevant and I can do something about it. Until then, I am going to let it go and enjoy my nice, quiet apartment, and maybe even read a book! Gasp!
We all got advanced readers of Vox, by Christina Dalcher, at work yesterday. It is about the near future, where girls are only allowed to say 100 words a day. They wear a bracelet that tracks it and emits severe electrical shocks if they go over it. I miss fiction for the sake of fiction, as opposed to all of this activism taking over even scifi and fantasy. That being said though, I am really enjoying the author's writing style, so I am continuing on with it. She manages to actually evoke emotion in the reader. Rather than telling you that something was shocking or appalling or painful, she gets you to feel it right aon with the main character. I enjoy that kind of writing style because I like being drawn into a book and living the story, not just hearing it. Anyway, If you like dystopian AUs with a focus on women's rights, check it out right here! It hits the shelves on 8/21!