There's no I in team - work horror
I work for idiots. I may not have mentioned this, what with not having bothered to update this blog for months.
It’s not that I’ve been without content, but more that every time I sit down to write something the only thing that pours from my fingertips is “I work for idiots, trabajo para idiotas, je travaille pour les idiots, lavoro per gli idioti.”
For anyone who’s still bothering to read my sporadic ramblings, it’s reasonable to say I’m not a particularly forgiving or patient person and so I expect the people who are senior to me in my organisation to know more than me, and indeed have some obvious skill from which I can learn.
The only skill I am currently learning is to not voice my internal monologue and to avoid eye contact with people at meetings.
As an example, I currently work with a person who is afraid of stairs. I kid you not. I have only been told this second hand sadly, although it’s probably a good thing as I doubt I could control my laughter if she told me this to my face. This is a person I have to tell to do things and she is afraid of stairs.
The number of kitchen signs (you know the ones: “your mother doesn’t live here, wash up your own cup…”) has risen exponentially since Stair Fearer has arrived and I suspect that when she isn’t sitting terrified by an inanimate object that she does not do the tasks I have asked of her but makes annoying signs, complete with coloured emoticons and sticks them around the office.
On my first day in this current work place I made a colleague cry it seems. Again, I heard this second hand. I have an open door policy as I know that no one who has a genuine problem will ever come to talk to me about it, so whether my door is wide open or locked shut it doesn’t matter. So I made my colleague cry it seems. Sadly I don’t know what I said, or how I said it, so I have not been able to repeat this since, and I have tried on a few occasions.
Then there is my current boss, who makes the telly tubbies look like Kate Moss. Honestly the woman is a plate of bacon away from a heart attack. But personal slights aside, I don’t dislike her because she is morbidly obese. I dislike her because she is stupid. Indeed so stupid she doesn’t know she is stupid, which I guess to be fair is the definition of stupidity.
She has those west coast posters of waterfalls and air ballooning with strap lines like "life is the biggest challenge of all" and "theres no I in team" around her office. She also likes emoticons. It's like being supervised by a intellectually delayed 5 year old.
She cannot spell, she cannot conjugate verbs, she does not understand the difference between a contraction and the possessive tense, she says everythink for christ’s sake. And she wears cheap shoes. I don’t care how fat you are, that’s no excuse to wear plastic sandals to work even if you do look like Tinky Winky.
Then there’s the New Girl. I have no idea what the New Girl does, except to say she is using google far more often than me. She is supervised by Stair Fearer. Possibly new girl is employed just to get Stair Fearer her lunch, as clearly Stair Fearer can’t pop out to get coffee or a sandwich when ever she feels like it (unlike my boss, who clearly does.)
I have previously asked the Stair Fearer for a detailed job description about what the New Girl does, but Stair Fearer started shaking so much during the exchange it made me feel like I was beating a puppy and I had to leave.
I have since taken to calling all meetings in our meeting room downstairs as I believe that the Stair Fearer should be made to confront the problem. I’m also considering holding monthly fire drills, under the guise of occupational health and safety training.
And so, after 3 months it would seem that the honeymoon period is well and truly over. Last week I had a tense altercation with Tinky Winky, where she yelled at me for making her do the same thing twice (presumably her time would have been better spent deep frying a pig) when I pointed out that the two items she had had to approve were, in fact, different. More big fat yelling: “how would I know that if you don’t tell me?”
“One is red. One is black. That wasn’t a heads up?”
Or alternately, read them you muppet.
I am meant to currently be at conference in Hawaii, ironically presenting a paper on work/life balance. But my boss didn’t follow up on the paper work and there was some suggestion that being out of the office for a week would be a burden too big for the rest of the unit to bear. Because it’s well know that the most productive week in the year is the week after New Year.
Anyway, the combination of hating my boss and not having been on a plane since September is starting to give me itchy feet. Toronto was nice. I wonder how hard it is to get a work visa for Canada?
It’s not that I’ve been without content, but more that every time I sit down to write something the only thing that pours from my fingertips is “I work for idiots, trabajo para idiotas, je travaille pour les idiots, lavoro per gli idioti.”
For anyone who’s still bothering to read my sporadic ramblings, it’s reasonable to say I’m not a particularly forgiving or patient person and so I expect the people who are senior to me in my organisation to know more than me, and indeed have some obvious skill from which I can learn.
The only skill I am currently learning is to not voice my internal monologue and to avoid eye contact with people at meetings.
As an example, I currently work with a person who is afraid of stairs. I kid you not. I have only been told this second hand sadly, although it’s probably a good thing as I doubt I could control my laughter if she told me this to my face. This is a person I have to tell to do things and she is afraid of stairs.
The number of kitchen signs (you know the ones: “your mother doesn’t live here, wash up your own cup…”) has risen exponentially since Stair Fearer has arrived and I suspect that when she isn’t sitting terrified by an inanimate object that she does not do the tasks I have asked of her but makes annoying signs, complete with coloured emoticons and sticks them around the office.
On my first day in this current work place I made a colleague cry it seems. Again, I heard this second hand. I have an open door policy as I know that no one who has a genuine problem will ever come to talk to me about it, so whether my door is wide open or locked shut it doesn’t matter. So I made my colleague cry it seems. Sadly I don’t know what I said, or how I said it, so I have not been able to repeat this since, and I have tried on a few occasions.
Then there is my current boss, who makes the telly tubbies look like Kate Moss. Honestly the woman is a plate of bacon away from a heart attack. But personal slights aside, I don’t dislike her because she is morbidly obese. I dislike her because she is stupid. Indeed so stupid she doesn’t know she is stupid, which I guess to be fair is the definition of stupidity.
She has those west coast posters of waterfalls and air ballooning with strap lines like "life is the biggest challenge of all" and "theres no I in team" around her office. She also likes emoticons. It's like being supervised by a intellectually delayed 5 year old.
She cannot spell, she cannot conjugate verbs, she does not understand the difference between a contraction and the possessive tense, she says everythink for christ’s sake. And she wears cheap shoes. I don’t care how fat you are, that’s no excuse to wear plastic sandals to work even if you do look like Tinky Winky.
Then there’s the New Girl. I have no idea what the New Girl does, except to say she is using google far more often than me. She is supervised by Stair Fearer. Possibly new girl is employed just to get Stair Fearer her lunch, as clearly Stair Fearer can’t pop out to get coffee or a sandwich when ever she feels like it (unlike my boss, who clearly does.)
I have previously asked the Stair Fearer for a detailed job description about what the New Girl does, but Stair Fearer started shaking so much during the exchange it made me feel like I was beating a puppy and I had to leave.
I have since taken to calling all meetings in our meeting room downstairs as I believe that the Stair Fearer should be made to confront the problem. I’m also considering holding monthly fire drills, under the guise of occupational health and safety training.
And so, after 3 months it would seem that the honeymoon period is well and truly over. Last week I had a tense altercation with Tinky Winky, where she yelled at me for making her do the same thing twice (presumably her time would have been better spent deep frying a pig) when I pointed out that the two items she had had to approve were, in fact, different. More big fat yelling: “how would I know that if you don’t tell me?”
“One is red. One is black. That wasn’t a heads up?”
Or alternately, read them you muppet.
I am meant to currently be at conference in Hawaii, ironically presenting a paper on work/life balance. But my boss didn’t follow up on the paper work and there was some suggestion that being out of the office for a week would be a burden too big for the rest of the unit to bear. Because it’s well know that the most productive week in the year is the week after New Year.
Anyway, the combination of hating my boss and not having been on a plane since September is starting to give me itchy feet. Toronto was nice. I wonder how hard it is to get a work visa for Canada?
1.) Type names and contact information into the database when the marketing director approves a registration.
2.) Send emails to delegates confirming we received their registrations and provide basic logistical details.
3.) Print name badges: First name, last name, company name.
Swear to God. This is how a grown human spends 80% of her work day. And she F***S something up. Every. Single. Time.
The time I made her cry was when I pointed out - politely at first - that some of the name badges didn't have company names on them. She was her usual sanctimonious, snotty self (because she really is that stupid) explaining to me that they were guests of delegates and "didn't have company names." Except some of the people who didn't have company names were the CEOs and other top execs from our sponsoring companies. She had to EAT IT as I pulled out one name badge after another, tossing them on the table and rattling off each person's title and each person's company.
It was 11:00 pm, and she'd already run out of pre-printed, special order badge stock. (She can't even think far enough ahead to order paper. ORDER PAPER, for the love of god.) With this she was, once again, face-to-face with her own undeniable incompetence and went running to the bathroom. Niagara Falls.
That was a good day.
'But there is a U in Cu*t!:
Yellow Brick Road
I bow down in deference.