WW meetings without mom

I usually just weigh in when I'm without mom at a meeting. I'm trying to stay today to get motivated to start tracking again. Its not because I didn't lose weight - I did. Its just because I know if I don't start tracking again that I'll really not do it when I need too.

However, there is this group in our meeting that drives me up the wall. They take over the one whole side of the room and take over the meeting. I feel like an outsider in their presence.

Ugh!

Will I Fight With Best Buy Staff?

So my home computer finally bit the big one – it blue screen beyond repaired. If I could figure out how many components went bad at the same time, it might be worth replacing the parts – but it is rather old and it is a Dell. I know that some people swear by Dell and when I first got it, I loved it. However, I soon found out that it was Dell Hell for me. Plus, I’ve been maxed out on USB ports for well over three years now and I’m running two USB port hubs. With the fact that I just got FOIS, it’s time to get a new machine – and I’m buying it today.

 

This means I have two real options: Best Buy or Circuit City. I just have an issue with buying a computer at Office Depot or somewhere like that. Plus, I will NEVER buy a computer from Wal-Mart. But my history with Best Buy vs. Circuit City is speckled with nothing but bad encounters because the staff they hire think that women don’t know computers. Hell, I’ve helped customers in their stores when I hear that the sales rep is giving them some line of bull crap. It’s when they start to talk down to me that I just start pulling out the big fancy words and pull the fact that I am a network administrator. You think that these fools would just walk away, but especially with the Best Buy staff, they try to hang it in there with me, to out do-me. Which is normally why I go to Circuit City – but the last time I was there I had a horrible experience because I had questions about televisions and I haven’t been back since.

 

If I could stand to wait, I would just order it via work and get an HP machine – but I can’t live without a computer in my bedroom. The work laptops just aren’t mine so I don’t feel like I can fill it up with my stuff. My mom asked if I should get a laptop, but the only laptop I would get is not even Windows based and then I have a whole bunch of conversion issues – plus, I REALLY can’t afford to buy a Mac right now because the one that I would want, well, geeka has it. That’s WAY out of my budget.

 

This is going to come down to brand and price between the two. I really just want an HP. I’m used to setting them up and they are good machines. Plus, whenever I’ve had to have repairs and such, HP doesn’t care where I ship parts – so if I have to have the part shipped to work because I don’t want a part sitting out on my porch, I can do that. So far, on the website Best Buy had 75 HP computer options. I have no idea how many of these will actually be in the store. All of them are Vista (which is another rant that I will have another day because I would MUCH rather have an XP machine, but I’m willing to deal with Vista if it gets me a machine today). But at least Circuit City lets me check stock availability online. They have less HP options – only 11 and they seem to be a model behind on the HPs – but of course it’s all Vista – and about the same price with Best Buy.

 

I’m going to go to Best Buy first – but then the question becomes, if they start to showboat – do I leave? I have done it in the pass... it just counts on how much they try to piss off this computer deprived geeka!

I should be focused on my CCNA training...

This week is the week that the PG is off on his tropical Hawaiian birthday holiday. I had plans. My plans included starting to study for my CCNA that I’m finally going to be allowed to test for in June when I go to Networkers. However, the plans aren’t going so well because I’m so stressed out about the yahoo-half-crazy-man that my PG thinks would be a perfect match to be my Part Time Tech Staff member. I need the PG to listen to me about this one, because I know in my heart that there is no good to come from this plan of his.

 

The horrible thing is, I fear that if I tell him “no way” that means I won’t get ANY staff. I need staff so badly, but I need staff who will work with me. This person... this thing... I’m going to chew him up and spit him out in less than a week. He still can’t talk to me after emails for the past week and a half. He is constantly in this “calming down in peace because I’m stressed out” mode that scares the crap out of me. Computer work is stressful, especially at my place of employment. We hire people who don’t even know what the power button is – so our staff members need their hands held so much. It would drive even the best technicians batty (and I’ve seen it happen in my own very eyes!)

 

But this is going to be my first true ‘supervisory’ experience, but I haven’t been given any choices in this. I’m being given a very possible volatile situation to work in if the PG’s plans stand. This is what has been stuck in my head all day – I should be studying. I need to get working on my CCNA training! I need to focused on that – not this!

Why waste time in pre-training?

I’ve been busy the past couple weeks at work getting ready to deploy fax services. One of the things that I have been so busy trying to do was to train everyone prior to us going live. That way there wouldn’t be much “downtime” and that we could theoretically have the training down and also get some people trying the faxing to work out the kinks. I have spent hours making videos and making them be SLOW videos. I have sent out reminders and even had Texas offering to train people one-on-one. This is all a great plan.

 

Too bad no one took advantage of it and now that we are live on fax services, it’s like no one is trained.

 

Biggest problem? Well, Texas only picked certain parts of the training videos to watch and gave out wrong information to staff. Plus, since she is supposed to be watching the fax machine like a hawk, she has decided that she is only going to that folder three times a day. This just means more people are going to be going into that folder to personally retrieve their faxes. It’s going to create mayhem and there is nothing that I can do to make that stop. She is going to cause everyone to go and try to get faxes and tempt them to send them to other staff members – which is exactly against what the directions are. Staff members are only supposed to deal with their own personal faxes and not handle any other faxes. But if the fax administrator is only going to check three times a day, this is SO not going to work.

 

Less than 24 hours into being live on fax services, I have one staff member who got two faxes that were hers – six times! On top of it, Texas didn’t watch the directions on the video to listen to the fact that she is supposed to DELETE a fax once she has forwarded it to someone. I asked her three times last week if she wanted to sit down and go over how to administer this before we went live, but she declared that it was easy and she didn’t need to.

I know when she finally decides to show up today that she is going to be throwing a fit to end all fits. I just know it. That’s what she does the best and from what I hear, that was what the staff stopped her from doing yesterday. Last night she was going to call me after five to bitch about the fax services because she was sure that everyone was getting copies of the faxes that were for someone else. Sigh.... it’s going to be a long week. Plus the boss isn’t here so she is going to be doing shit all week.

 

And here I thought I was going to be complaining about Queen Medusa who has actually been nice so far.

That freaking PG!

So, my PG is going on vacation on Sunday to Hawaii for 10 days. Do you think I found this out from him? Nope... I found out from my friends in the accounting department. Now, fine... he forgot to tell me. I won’t be too hard on him for that. So today he got busy with some things because our big honcho is in the hospital. I know that he was busy, but I also know that I’m off tomorrow and I need to speak to the PG before he goes on vacation.

I nicely sent him an email asking if he was coming back today and if so, explained that I needed to talk to him before he went on vacation. He responded back in the positive and even agreed that I could use his office while he is gone (yeah, some peace and quiet!). There are lots of things going on and since he has never allowed me to take decision making power, I wanted to get some direction on what I could say yes or no too. So things went on and he arrived back to the building. I was in the middle of getting our intranet back up (another side effect of the bad day yesterday) and I thought I had some time. He even came over to hand me this document that one of my coworkers was retyping because it was a 30 page table/grid thing that I say “NO” too. He wanted me to review it. That’s fine. I put it in my pile and continued to work on what I was doing.

 

So when I finally get myself ready to go talk to him, I walk to his office and find him ALREADY GONE! Now, what happened to me telling him that I needed to talk to him? What happened to me reminding him that I’m not here tomorrow and that I wanted to have some things in place for while he was on vacation? What happened to be a good boss and caring about what your employees do or do not do while you are on vacation?

I have it in my right mind to just cease doing anything and just study for my CCNA. In fact, other than Monday, I’m going to make it a point to do that each and every day while he is gone for at least ONE hour due to his lack of talking to me before his vacation. I might be compelled to do work instead, but if he can rudely stiff me the conversation that I nicely asked to have, then I can nicely decide that other things are less important than my CCNA.

 

But this has also put me in a jam. I’ve already had three emails since he disappeared silently that require decisions. Now, I guess I could wait for him to make the decision, but since he didn’t talk to me – I’m just going to make the decisions without him. He has left me no other options. Our support company wants to spend a couple days outlining a huge upgrade of our equipment. Two days isn’t that expensive – I’m going to improve it because I need this to get done so I can give our Fiscal Guru a budget number ASAP. The un-nicknamed Part Time Tech Staff person who finally spoke to me today for the first time EVER, really wants to know more of what I need him to do. I don’t know if the PG showed him the job description or not. I don’t know anything about if I’m to buy the full machine or not for this person. Well, what am I supposed to do? This position is to start less than 1 day after the PG returns from vacation. He is going to be swamped with Queen Medusa. I have to make the decision and just tell him what I’m going to do. I’m going to order the additional full machine and I’m going to show the job description to the un-nicknamed Part Time Tech Staff person because that is WHAT I NEED TO DO! This isn’t about what is best for my boss. If he can’t have the common courtesy to speak with me after I request the time to talk to him, then I feel that is a sign that he trusts me to make the decisions that need to be made.

Assertiveness. Boldness. Decision-maker. These aren’t really things that I think of when I think of myself, but screw it --- I’ve been screwed enough by not being these things that I’m just going to freaking do it. I’m sick of waiting for him to do these things and I would have been more than happy to let him feel like he was making the decisions if he would have talked to me. Seriously, if he has a gripe about this and how I’m going to handle this... I’ll let the battle cry ring out! DOWN WITH THE PG!

97 items on the To Do List

97 things on my To-Do List is not a bad thing. Actually, that is sort of low for me. I’m usually running in the 150’s or 200’s. But, when I see 97 as the number, I begin to worry about what have I all forgotten to place on the To Do List... because I know that there are things missing. I know that I must have generalized on some of these items to indicate one thing for something that takes about 25 steps.

One of these is the task “Move Queen Medusa’s account”. To everyone else, this sounds pretty darn easy. You just switch the computer and you are done. But it’s so much more than that. She doesn’t have a replacement yet, so I need to know who is going to need access to her current files. There is a phone to worry about and a database that she is the administrator of that all needs to be changed. I think 25 steps is probably an underestimate now that I got answers to some of my questions (i.e. Is Queen Medusa going to still have to do things for the department she is leaving? Finally got answered with the big “YES”).

 

Now, if this just happened on one or two of my items on my To-Do list, I’d probably be ok, but looking at it, I’m pretty darn screwed because a lot of these have multiple steps and there are going to be follow up tasks once I completed them. Additionally, a lot is about the “part-time tech staff” that I’m supposed to be getting. I know who it is (he doesn’t talk to me), and I have to come up with a  good nickname for him. He is of Indian descent but I don’t want to call him the Indian or anything like that. And I’m not going to call him “guru” because he isn’t better than me (although the boss still hasn’t told me what he does or doesn’t know so I have no idea of what level of skill I’m getting this person with and how out of date these skills may or may not be). So, I’m open for suggestions on a good nickname for him so I can blog about him without calling him the PT Tech Staff. That just seems way to long as it is!

 

Either way, all of the tasks I have for the PT Tech Staff is going to be MULTIPLE things to do – and that’s without putting any training into the equation. And since the boss hasn’t given me any details of when, where, how, and what pertaining to the PT Tech Staff, I’m kind of lost with what needs to be done until I have answers.

 

What’s scary today? Queen Medusa was nice to me.

 

 

How long can you go without talking to your boss?

I used to be in my boss’s office everyday three or for times a day. Since Thursday, I haven’t been in there. Sure, I’m very super busy, but the point is that things I would normally go in there for I’m just making an effort not to. If I go in there while he has been  complete stupid, it’s like I’ve absolved him of all wrong doing and he continues to do things like that.

I know that it’s getting to him because on top of not going into his office, I haven’t spoken a word to him either. If things can get done via email, it’s just better for both of us. I should be doing all the decision making either way with the technology and it is completely ridiculous that I have to go to him with every decision. Why should I have to continue to go into his office as if I’m here to serve him for questions that I could easily answer myself?

 

Additionally, his best friend, Queen Medusa, has been in there most of the day. No reason to wrestle with serpents and crap like that today. I’m trying to get ready for a tech committee meeting and he is being completely impossible. We have problems in all of my offices and everyone is treating me like shit. I don’t have the time for it.

So, I’m going on day 5 of not talking to him and not going into his office. I don’t count talking to him in Tech Committee meeting as talking to him. Talking to him would mean me talking to him in the hallway or in his office. The first thing that may crack may be the talking to him in general, but I’m doing my best to stay out of his office. There is nothing private we talk about either way. Everyone here knows all of everyone’s business either way.

 

I’m sure that all of this is leading up to him being pissed at me and then doing my review (i.e. anyone who works for my boss learns quickly that he only does your review when he is pissed with you and he has issues with ways you are handling things). I guess it’s good that I’m ‘acting up’ now because maybe he’ll do my review.

 

And this time, I have questions about my job and how things are done and why people who are the same level as me are able to do things that I’m not allowed to do. If our Facilities guy (The FG), is allowed to sign off of the bills for the building, why aren’t I allowed to sign off on the tech bills? If our FG and Texas are allowed to supervise and hire their own staff, why aren’t I? All three of us are Coordinators. That would seem to mean that we all have the same job responsibilities, but clearly he trusts me with our network, but not with anything else.

 

So I ask you all to think about this – how long can you go without talking to your boss? When was the last time you tried it?

Queen Medusa won't shut up!

It is hell today. Queen Medusa is still reigning loudly and being the center of attention even more. Plus on top of it, Queen Medusa has our CEO already around her finger along with one Board Member who can’t stop gushing over, “How great Queen Medusa is going to be!” and that “Queen Medusa is the best choice!”.

I can’t stand the attention seeking ploys that she has already employed to get everyone looking at her. She made our outgoing Development Director email all the Board Members to introduce her to them. She has been up here asking for boxes to move and asking about if she can send out her own letters about our fundraising walk coming up on the agency’s bill now that she is the Development Director. They are letters to her friends and family! Ok, maybe it’s time for me to send out letters to my friends and family and have the agency pay for it.

 

Plus, Queen Medusa is leaving a mess with what is going on downstairs. She has basically washed her hands of all activities down there and is sending messages out, “I don’t know who can answer these for you any longer that I have taken a new job.” Well, come on, now... I know that you are taking a new job. I’m not a moron and I’m not deaf either. There is no way that anyone in our agency doesn’t know about this decision yet.

 

To make things even better, Texas is MIA again. It’s just a lovely way to start a week. No Texas here to fill up the paper in all of our printers, faxes and copiers. And since she said a while back that no one helps out – I’m not filling paper into these machines either. If no one helps out, that means no one helps out. I’m done covering for her!

 

I haven’t spoken to my boss in a couple days and I’m not going into his office. You treat me like crap, I’m not going to act like nothing is going on. Right now everything is messed up on my job and he knows it. He should be trying to help find solutions for what is going on. He should be trying to be supportive. However, he is just so busy with Queen Medusa that he could care less about how much more work I’m getting because of all of these changes. And I can’t send him emails with more than one question in it at a time, because his attention span is only one answer long. Just more proof that he probably hates me too.

The Shoes vs Queen Medusa

First, my boss is a jerk.

Ok, now I can move on with this post today. Yesterday my boss made the decision about a staff member who will technically sort of be above me. She was promoted internally and everyone else was told PRIOR to the staff who will be working with her were told. I would think it would only be common courtesy to tell me and the other development staff prior to the announcement and prior to finding out during a lunch for the much-loved outgoing development person. Especially when the person who is hired is Grace to my boss being Will. But it’s not like they are funny together. No, instead they are mean and exclusionary. I now will call her Queen Medusa (thanks geeka!)

 

So in the need for massive  retail therapy, I went shopping with geeka and of all wise wisdom, bought a pair of shoes that I probably would have never even tried on. At first I was really going for red, but these brown, peep-toe, high-heeled, slightly platform-wedgy shoes are SO MUCH BETTER! My boss is going to absolutely hate them. I’m going to tower over him. He hates when I wear heels. Now the question will be if he finds out that these are the “I-Hate-Queen-Medusa” shoes.

 

Going into this morning at home, when I put these shoes on, I felt like I could conquer the world. That was before I saw an email from my boss replying back to my message yesterday about how I was disappointed that we were told by others and in a ‘oh-by-the-way’ manner of the hiring decision. I have ethically decided not to read this response at this time. I am sure that I will only be more upset with his response. It will be better for me to read it this weekend when FAR away from him. I also decided that I have to make it my best effort to not go into his office and to spend as much time away from him. He should be spending time with Queen Medusa training her. Maybe he should teach her how to scan and how to use the specialty software. I’m way too busy to do such tasks and he is the boss – that should be his job.

 

But driving into work, my breakfast flipped in my stomach. I really hate work. I can’t even describe how badly I hate it right now. It’s the internal nepotism that was obviously visible to everyone in this hiring. Hiring your best friend for a job that she does not qualify to do is just the biggest example of this. It’s bad. It makes everyone upset and it makes everyone realize that it doesn’t matter the quality of your work, it matters how much someone likes you. I also know that from this point on, if I shrink away from the boss, Queen Medusa will do everything in her power to show him how bad I am and what I don’t do well and tell him how to manage my job and even make some more hiring decisions for him that I will have to live with (she PICKED my part-time tech staff member!).

 

I used to have a great relationship with my boss. He used to like me. I think he just deals with me now. I don’t think he likes me. I can tell you exactly when the turning point was. We were remodeling and Queen Medusa ended up across down in a temporary office while I was with my boss in another location. During that time, we would make ice cream runs almost every day by ourselves. He would actually drag me to go for ice cream even if I wasn’t buying any. He would be kind and say nice things when not even prompted and prodded by other people. He would actually form full sentences and talk to me. But then, he didn’t have Queen Medusa and I couldn’t see that this was Will without Grace – he was Graceless. I guess I was the fill in for Grace but as soon as Grace was reunited with Will, things went downhill very quickly. He started to look at me like he just couldn’t stand me. He wouldn’t go out unless it was for a tech-company related thing. He wouldn’t go for ice cream anymore or anything. Those were things that he all did with Grace. Now Grace is going to be working with him and she will pick what’s left of me in front of him. I don’t stand a chance.

 

I just want to stick it in here, get my CCNA, and then start looking elsewhere. I know that he is sending me to a great conference, but I can’t help but know that it’s actually a payoff. It’s his way of knowing that by hiring Queen Medusa that he was going to piss me off and he hoped that by giving me a conference that I would be happy about that. He knows that I am going to be testing for my CCNA while down there, but my schedule that had been looking hectic, but manageable so I can study has suddenly exploded with a lot of crap and a lot of ‘one-on-one’ trainings for Queen Medusa. I think this is his way of giving me something that I want, but finding a way to make it impossible for me to study so I don’t pass my CCNA and so I don’t become marketable and so I can’t leave. I NEED that CCNA.

 

So the battle begins. The shoes are great, but I don’t know if they are a match to Queen Medusa. She already has Will on her side.

 

Impressing the CEO

When I was a bright-eyed naïve graduate student at the school of social work, I believed that nonprofits were one way to get out of the politics that seemed to be everywhere in school, in school groups, with families, and just everywhere. At first, I held that belief for a long time. Well, not that long. My first internship was where I currently work. In fact, I never left (don’t know if that was good or bad, but hey, it’s work). I took everyone as being sweet and kind and here for the greater good. It may have not been until the end of that second or third month that I started to see the politics. I started to see how everyone made nice to the higher ups and then turned around and stabbed others in the back. I realized pretty darn quick that I was lucky to be an intern for my boss (yep, same boss too) and not for other people in the organization.

 

Since then, I learned which people I have to just suck up and deal with when they are being mean and rude. This would be the woman who is my boss’ Grace (as in Will and Grace because that is EXACTLY who they are, even all the touching and feelie stuff they do). I can’t cross this woman and if I do, she goes running to my boss in a heartbeat. I don’t like her much. I have to buy anything that she is selling because she will hold it against you. I have to let her take over MY meetings as she just runs her mouth on and on and on. Even my boss knows that she takes over the meetings and he doesn’t like it – but he lets it happen. She is Grace.

 

The other thing I realized is that although my boss always says to no to it, it matters to talk to the CEO and give him the update of what is going on with you. Maybe that is the one thing that I’m pretty good at. I’m here early in the morning when the CEO walks in and we usually talk. I give him the update of what’s going on with the computers and he seems to converse pretty darn well with me (when my boss thinks he is a completely stupid as dirt when it comes to computers). I think he is a visionary and he usually is out of touch with what’s going on with the company, but you can’t alienate this man – that’s like shooting yourself in your own foot. I’ve perfected this skill and it’s part of the politics that go on around here. Talking to the CEO about what is going on PRIOR to any upcoming meeting, it’s golden. Making the CEO know that you talk to two board members on a consist basis, that’s even more important.

I used to think that I hated the politics. I don’t particularly enjoy that they go on to the extent that they go on here, but I can see the patterns and I can see how to manipulate myself into a better standing. I guess if I was that naïve grade student from the school of social work, I probably would just sit back and observe the patterns. Now, I do whatever I can to manipulate the politics into a better air of feeling around my standing at the agency and how it impacts my job. I know exactly when to bend my boss’ ear and I know exactly what to tell the CEO and what not to tell the CEO. It’s a matter of sustaining myself in the organization. I think they also take notice that I can manage it and I’m thriving it in. Even my boss has said to me during numerous reviews that he finds my knowledge of what is going on with the agency very interesting and shows that I’m on the ball. I think that is his way of saying that he can identify that I know what the political climate is in the agency and I know how to manage it. Maybe that scares him a little. Maybe it should scare him a lot.

It still doesn’t mean I don’t hate the politics. I really really do. But just as awful as all those political ads on TV, it’s a way of life now and there is no way around it. Maybe in high school I couldn’t handle it. I hated when those in power would just throw their weight around. I just didn’t know to create incentives or how to manipulate the climate around thoughts. I definitely couldn’t handle it in college when all the dancers had all the power. But I think the school of social work did one for me – it taught me all of the skills I needed to become politically-savvy. Who knew that social work would do that?

Tornado named Texas

This is the best way to describe my mostly insane coworker that I call Texas. She is a tornado of sorts. You can always kind of tell when the conditions are right for a tornado outbreak to happen. The clouds get really stormy and dark. The winds pick up and there is just this feeling in the area that nothing good is going to happen. That’s the way it is with Texas in many different ways. Yesterday was one of those times that I could just feel the tension building and waiting to be exploded. She had her review with the boss and from what I know, it didn’t go well. But as long as he was here, she was doing a good job hiding the fact that she was pissed at work. But as soon as he left, things started to unravel. This must be when the funnel cloud formed. She was snapping at staff and snatching papers all about the area. She was slamming drawers closed. She was evil and I knew that it was time to get out of Dodge – and I ran out of the building before the disaster known as a Tornado named Texas hit with full force.

 

I don’t know the facts of what happened after I left and I really don’t want to know either. But today, she came in early and was emailing everyone around how she is here to help everyone. This is the MO for when she has been put back in her place and/or when she has been super bad and she wants the boss to disbelieve what is being said about her. The problem is, this is really just another formation of the Tornado.

See right now she is promising all of these things. She is promising to help people learn how to use our brand new fax services – but then promptly disappears to help with the ‘stress relief class’ or because she is still ordering supplies (again, how hard is it to order 6 boxes of copy paper?). So when she does get back to her desk and there is a whole bunch of people looking for her because she offered this help, it’s all going to explode. This maybe more accurately called a Micro-Burst or something like that. The winds will be the whole hissing and yelling action going on. She is going to storm off downstairs like straight-line winds and just take anyone out between her desk and her escape outside. This all could be avoided if she didn’t stir up the requests for her by emailing everyone that she is going to train them in the next couple days.

 

To add to this, Texas has been on the surface offering support. She is whining now if I don’t give her something that she thinks she can do. I have been burned before – she never follows thru with her offers. She is acting like she wants to know everything that is going on so she can go complain about it behind my back. She acted like she didn’t know that I’m going down to Cisco’s Networkers event in June, although I heard her complaining about it the other day about how unfair it is that I get to go somewhere cool. (Yes, it’s in Orlando, but I’m taking a freaking certification test that I’m really scared about and I really don’t know how I’m going to find the time to study for it!) She has complimented my clothing today (which is a joke because I’m dressed down today and the clothes are WAY too big). I know that one change of the conditions, if I ask if she has done any of the things I have asked her to do, the papers are going to fly, the pencils are going to become projectiles, mail will be like flying cows, and up-up-up-away with the rest of the day.

 

The problem is - it seems as if we are in a permanent Tornado Warning condition at work. We never know when that funnel cloud is going to come down and just wipe us all out of the way. Like Tornados, there usually are no warnings. Our skies don’t turn that funky electric green color and we don’t have a woman on a bike turning into the wicked witch. There is no way for us to know what is going to happen and when it is going to happen – we just permanently know that it is about to happen.

 

So I’m just waiting for Texas to touch down and create more havoc again. Kind of a bad way to anticipate a whole day.

Finally, I'm not in the bad mood at work

I knew the day was going to come. My co-worker from h@ll (aka Texas) who thinks she runs the whole place while doing hardly any work, has been knocked down a peg or two by my boss. I really didn’t believe that my boss had it in him. I really thought that Texas was going to start to cry and he was just going to crumble under the tears. But I guess he has finally had it.

 

She is so trying to be “happy” by badly humming and putting on a fake smile, but when she doesn’t think anyone notices, she is muttering to herself and slamming things around. (Just because I have headphones on and I’m working on a video doesn’t mean that I can’t tell what she is doing.) She is having fights with the Russian Chick (yep, I can’t understand a word that she says either because she has such a heavy Russian accent, but then I don’t yell at her, I just get her boss). She is taking 6 hours on ordering supplies. She has been up and down stairs so many times it’s sickening. I have heard the “I don’t need to work here” and “I don’t have to put up with this” about 30 times in less than a half hour.

 

Maybe she has finally been called out on the way things are. Maybe she was put on notice that the boss does realize that she disappears for hours upon hours without anyone noticing where she is. Maybe she was called out for saying yesterday that no one pitches in when she isn’t here (yeah sure... the paper fairies come in every morning and fill the copier, fax machine and printers up with paper!) Maybe she finally got the review that she was due. Maybe she was told why I don’t talk to her anymore and how I don’t ask her to do anything (because she is all about saying she’ll do something and NOT following thru on it). Maybe she was called out on offering to train everyone on how to use our new fax services and how exactly 0 people have been trained since last week.

Sigh... this is enough to make a girl happy!

April Fool's Day

This is probably one of my favorite days at work. April Fool’s Day is the one time that things just seem to be a bit funnier than normal. It could be the fact that we pull pranks usually on the boss. The one year we moved his furniture in his office (which he then kept that way!). One year we stole is Egyptian blow-up Mummy and held it ransom. One year we took a huge giant box and made it into a little house with a pool, a dog, and even dog poop! Last year, we did nothing to him, lulled him into a sense of security. Instead, we got our facilities coordinator by turning everything backwards on his desk.

 

Well, we continued this year on with the facilities coordinator, as he just also happens to be an April Fool’s baby. Yep, he was born on April Fool’s Day. So there are Happy Birthday signs with his picture on it all over the building. It’s quite festive and he is finding them everywhere. Yep, even in the men’s bathroom (and I didn’t put it in there!)

 

But we did return to pranking the boss. It was brilliant. We have ballooned his office. There are balloons on the floor of his office. We couldn’t use helium because we didn’t have the funding and we didn’t want any of them to get up into our skylights by accident. So, his office is filled with balloons of all shapes (and even two beach balls). There a lot of those punching ball balloons which I’m sure is going to end up hitting me in the head at least a few times today.

 

But the brilliance in this plan is even better. He is going to clean his office out and I know exactly what he is going to do with the balloons. They are going to go into someone else’s office. It couldn’t be better. One prank – two people.

And here I was going to change ring tones – this one is much better!