For most of my life, I have been blessed weight-wise. I have been able to eat anything and everything, as much or as little, and I would not suffer from any negative ramifications. Food hasn’t really been a big ‘thing’ in my life-it’s not my friend, I don’t eat when I’m sad or happy, to celebrate or to battle depression. I have plenty of pharmaceuticals that achieve those things. So what I eat and my activity level have not been much of an issue.
“Could you do this project for me?” she asked as she headed to the elevator. It was something trivial, but something with which I had no familarity regardless. I visited many a website, made tons of calls, all to no avail. In Hawaii, there exists the phenomena known as “Hawaii Time,” which yes, means that EVERYTHING, ranging from having a call returned to laying a foundation for a house, it all takes at LEAST twice as long as it would anywhere else in the country.
Having run into a brick wall of unanswered voicemails, I asked her in passing a single question for further clarification. I was told “Let me tell you about managers. When they give someone a project to work on, they expect to not have to think about it until it is completed. I don’t have any time (she was socializing when I asked her) to give you further information. You’re just going to figure it out yourself. Or if you can’t, then you can’t.” O…K… that was helpful. I just made myself feel even MORE like a chump. Fortunately, I was ultimately able to get a hold of someone who had the information I was seeking.
I give this information to the manager, and from it, I was given a new assignment. It was similar in nature, and I lucked out to find the information I needed plus more on one of my first calls. I complete this task and give it to her. It was odd because there was this element of simple busywork to these ‘projects.’
Then the truth comes out. “We’re giving you these projects to see what you can handle.” She asked me of my other responsibilities in this job, which generally aren’t of much importance, but they do count as work. “We are seeing whether it’s even necessary to have this position at all, or whether it could be replaced by the phone. You need to show us that your position is justified in keeping.”
Eh? I always thought that even if it got down to 10 people in the office, they’d ALWAYS need a receptionist. Alas, how wrong I was.
I get stuck with all the work no one else wants to do. I am REQUIRED to possess a friendly demeanor-on the phone and to people coming in. I have to get permission to go to the BATHROOM for God’s sake in case the phone rings, I do all the low work no one else will, and in these hard times of recession, I’m the one you want to eliminate? What about all of your project workers who’ve been sitting at their cubicles doing nothing? If you’re going to save some money, why axe the lowest paid person? Doesn’t make sense to me.
So who knows? My days here may be limited. That’s all right; collecting unemployment for a while sounds kind of fun too.
I am not entirely thrilled today. No, it’s not the traffic or the crowds or anything like that, it’s not even the gaudy decorations on some houses. That’s all well and good. Except for one thing.
The Christmas Cards
Ok, I get the idea of sending out christmas cards on a personal level to let people know you’re thinking about them and let them know you hope they’re doing well and all that. However, when dealing with these folded pieces of paper in an office setting, it’s just a mess.
First, the number. We send out 550 Christmas cards to people. That’s $225.50. A drop in the bucket for large corporations. However, the number of process required to get these things from receiving to sending, you’d think we’re making a John Deer combine there are so many steps.
The Christmas card list is the most important thing and must not be lost. It contains all of the names of the people to whom we’re going to send these items of joy. Labels must be made, and they must be neat, because if one of the managers doesn’t like how the label looks, you’re making another one. All of the cards then have to be stuffed into their envelopes, but half of the card must remain open and out of the envelope so they can be signed by specific people who worked with that company this year. We were really fortunate this year because two relatively important people had nothing to do one day, and rather than cruise their favorite websites, they asked if there was anything they could do. So with cards inside envelopes, the labels must be affixed upon them. THEY MUST REMAIN IN ORDER or the whole thing will fall apart and it’ll be anarchy out there.
Now we have the card in the envelope, the envelope addressed and they’re sorted. All that remains is signing them. This is the part about which I am not entirely thrilled because here at my lowly reception desk, I’ve learned that when these cards are received by the place they’re supposed to go to, the person who reads exactly WHO signed each card is one person-someone like me. And I don’t care. However, the managers have a VERY different opinion of this; this is an important task because some of these recipients are IMPORTANT and help keep us in business. The overall feeling is that this person is going to open this card him/herself and is going to scrutinize everyone who signed it, and if someone didn’t sign it, well such a blatant show of disrespect would prevent that recipient from EVER wanting conduct business with our company again.
The other element to this is that the people who are the most reticent about signing these silly cards are the managers, and they’re the ones who believe this whole ‘thing’ is so important. It seems to me like a sign to the office “I am so important, and what I do is so crucial to the existence of this office that no one’s going to tell me when I’m going to sign them. I’m faaaaaaarrrr too busy right now.
The deadline has passed, and all through the office, all that remains is to take the cards BACK OUT and put the WHOLE thing in, sealing them, and posting them. Fortunately our mail machine seals them while it takes $.41 out of our balance. I put a big box on the floor, ran them through, and when they started falling down, into the box they went, unordered, in chaos and anarchy so there would be no going back had a name suddenly come up. I finished, found the cost of our cards from out of the country, posted them, took the box downstairs, and AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, the mail guy was there with a PERFECT amount of space to hold my box of cards. They were on their way.
In the last week, about 30 have come back due to incorrect address. We get a lot of cards here today now from other places, but 90% of them aren’t addressed to anyone in particular like ours were. I’ve made a show of this by posting them all on this bulletin board in the kitchen, as if to say “SEE? You guys are wasting a ton of your (and MY) time, when the reality is that people JUST DON’T CARE when it comes to these stupid cards.” In fact, most of our cards come to people who don’t even work here anymore. Also, breakthroughs in science have made it possible that the cards arrive PRE-SIGNED in that person’s handwriting! It even looks pretty real.
What this all comes down to is this: I know, I am FIRMLY aware, believe me, that I am the lowest person on the totem pole that is this office. I know that half my job involves nothing more than appearing busy. And I’m fine with that. I’m fine with doing work with the higher people. I’d love to help out in whatever capacity (even though I just took and passed my exam to become a certified project manager which has brought little success in getting me off this desk). Because I know that trivial as it may seem, sitting here doing nothing IS contributing a SMALL (oh so tiny) part in the betterment of society. I help give them the room to get their more important work done so they have one less thing to think about. However, these stupid cards have NO purpose, they take up a TON of time, in the process you all treat me as if I’m useless, deaf, and mentally challenged, you’re rude, and a lot of times downright mean. And it’s over a fucking CARD for God’s sake! Even if most of what I do is pretty unimportant, I just can’t stand with doing something that’s downright USELESS. And that’s what this was.
Fortunately, time has passed, the cards have been dealt with, and I only have 2 1/2 days before vacation. Hells yeah.
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.
Touching from a Distance by Ian Curtis
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Heat: An Amateur\’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Q by Bill Buford
Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman
What If I Had Never Tried It: The Autobiography by Valentino Rossi
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