Our Daisy Peanut

November 13, 2007 at 1:55 pm · Filed under Random Musings

This is Daisy Peanut when we first got her in April.  She was such a tiny thing.  I always said “She’s as pretty as a daisy and growing like a little sprout.”  She’s grown a lot now.  She is extremely smart.  Dale and I are such dorks that we’ll be sitting there talking about how great Daisy Peanut is and how much we love her while she’s sitting there 3 feet away.  We don’t know how our lives would be without our fair little lady.

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Yes, this is a part of my job description…

November 13, 2007 at 1:37 pm · Filed under Random Musings, Work

Sitting here occupying the same chair that I’m obligated to occupy for forty hours every week, generally, it’s a tolerable task.  Few people call the number I’m supposed to answer, my coworkers are all very focused on their ultra super important tasks (it IS an engineering firm after all; so a slacker like me being here is like being an alien because these people are the ones who live to work and are always putting in those long hours, really care about whatever it is they’re doing, and plan to continue to continue with this line of work for the next several decades, all of which I have absolutely no understanding).  We’re a small office of about 40, but we’re part of this big ass worldwide conglomerate, and as such, we’re the lucky recipients of useless little programs thought up by bored HR people, with the goal being that a happy employee is a productive one.  Or something like that.  You know what I’m talking about; every large firm has some form of this-silly little programs that make no difference whatsoever, are time consuming, and yup, you guessed it, usually get dropped in the laps of lackeys like me. 

For example, every month, we have a birthday celebration.  The people who are celebrating a birthday that month get to nominate a DVD, to be voted upon, with the winner ultimately joining our ever growing DVD library.  We also get a couple cakes one day and everyone gets an afternoon break.  No big deal, right?  Oh no.  This is what much of the staff LIVE for.

“What are the movies this month?”

“When is the party this month?”

“Where are you getting cakes from this month?”

“What if I don’t like any of these movies?”

“THAT movie won?  I have that one at home.”

“Why do we always have such crappy movies?”

And so on.  These little criticisms are harmless, but there are times when I’d like to give them a nice sarcastic response.  There are those who treat this … thing… with the same importance they give the projects that they themselves work on.  I think that’s what baffles me the most.  This is a time-consuming, tedious task which for some reason takes a LOT longer than you would imagine-try to contact the birthday people, try to get them to vote, get the titles on ballots, grab the synopsis from Amazon.com and then spend HOURS removing words so the descriptions will fit on the other side of these ballots, print them, cut them up, distribute them, set a date for the party, etc.  Then I get the privilege buying the cakes and the winning DVD, and I EVEN GET TO PAY FOR IT.  OK sure, I do get it back a few weeks later after sending my receipts in to where all accounts payable and expense reports go (See?  We have to go to Texas just to get reimbursed for a couple of cakes), and that’s kind of cool because it’s like a little surprise, but the folk here fail to realize that my compensation is an absolute pittance in relation to theirs, and getting all this together puts a pinch in my purse.

I’ve gotten used to the myriad tasks involved in helping to make this company a nicer place to work, but what gets me is that it’s just so silly?  Useless?  A waste of time?  There we go!  Then again, I’m in a job where the primary task is just to exist for the occasional phone ringing or door opening, so I should be thankful this season for having such a…task…that occupies at least some of my time.

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