Mutual Weirdness
Just the randomness that is my life.
11/9/2015
More Burnt CoffeeOn Monday mornings we have a staff meeting at 8:30am. I prepare for this meeting by setting out water and coffee in the conference room. Normally on Monday I make 2 pots of coffee as with the meeting we'll end up drinking it. But today I only made one as the main coffee drinker in the office is on vacation this week and a second pot this morning will just go to waste.
I put most of the single pot in a coffee pitcher and put it in the conference room leaving about two cups worth in the pot on the burner. I did this because the CFO comes to this meeting and will always get coffee from the pot rather than pitcher. I have no idea why. He also always grabs the largest mug he can find in the cabinet rather than using the disposable cups I put in the conference room with the pitcher. This annoys me to no end but I've learned to deal with it. After the meeting is over I cleaned up the room as normal but upon going into the kitchen with the coffee pitcher to put what was left back in the pot, I find that someone has started a second pot of coffee. Ok, now I'm pissed. I'm positive that the CFO, upon taking most of what was left in the pot in the kitchen, decided that we needed another pot made. He probably thought he was being nice, but all he has done is waste an entire pot of coffee. In fact right now in the kitchen I have one full pot and one half full pot. The only other person at the meeting who drank any coffee this morning drank one small tiny cup as she always does and as I knew she would. There is no one else in the office this morning that is going to drink any of that coffee and I'm going to have to dump it all out. I will be making a fresh pot this afternoon as I have people coming in who will want it, but the pots this morning will not be any good by then. If my outrage doesn't quite make sense, we do not have a coffee budget for the office. No office money is spent on coffee. Every single canister of ground coffee is paid for out of one of our employee's pockets which we then graciously put out for others attending meetings in our office to enjoy. So this nob of a CFO is coming to our office, drinking our coffee and wasting our coffee that he is in no way paying for. And I can't say a word to him as he is high enough in the chain of command that he can do pretty much whatever he wants.
11/2/2015
Burnt CoffeeAs coffee is the main life line for many office workers we of course of a coffee maker in the office. It is fairly old, but it gets the job done. This is what it looks like: We do not use the burner on the top though as that end of the machine is under the upper cabinets in the kitchen. But two is plenty as we have never needed to have more than two pots of coffee going at once. Water is poured into the opening at the top right and comes out at the pot in the bottom left.
The general rule for our office is that the first person in in the morning starts the first pot of coffee. Most of the time that's me, no big deal. Just put some coffee in a filter, add some water and we have coffee. So simple that I'm amazed at how many people have trouble doing this. Before I go home at the end of the day, one of the things I do is make sure that the old filter and grounds have been dumped out and that one of the pots is empty and ready in the bottom left burner for coffee the next morning. If I don't do this and someone else makes it to the office before me, there is about a 90% chance that they will not notice there is not a pot there and proceed to start the coffee. (I say 90% on that, but it has happened every time I have forgotten to put a pot there at the end of the night.) The water, once added to the top, will automatically start to run through the system. There is less than 5 seconds between when you add it and it starts to run out. Therefore if there is no pot coffee goes everywhere and guess who gets to clean it up? Though the last time this happened the person who did it tried to clean it up themselves only for me to find a half cleaned up a mess later. The cleaned up what was on the counter and made it to the floor, but not what ran under the machine or the puddle in the burner itself. I understand that they needed to get a pot in there to catch the coffee still coming out, but you hold it up while you mob up the liquid under it. You don't just let it sit there and burn away. Another thing that one might think would be a simple concept is that when the pot is empty, or there is less than a cup left, either dump what is left or at the very least turn the heat off under the pot. I don't know how many times I've walked into the kitchen just to find a small amount of coffee sizzling away in the bottom a pot and making an awful smell. Of course if they do decide to remove it from the heat, they just set the whole thing in the sink without even bothering to dump it out. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to run some water into the pot, rinse it out and set it aside, yet a pot will sit there in the sink until I notice. The next bit that I don't understand is those who are too impatient to actually wait for the coffee to finish brewing before pulling the pot to pour a cup. Doing this allows coffee to pour onto the burner and then they just put the pot right back on top of it. So now there is coffee directly on the burner sizzling away which is an even worse smell than when it is just burning in the pot. Nearly every day I'm having to clean burnt coffee off the burners and the bottom of the pots because they've either pulled it too early or they've simply spilled all over and not cleaned it up. As time goes by I become more and more amazed at how people who have been drinking coffee for years from this coffee maker still have no clue how to use it properly and don't bother to keep it clean in anyway. I really doubt they would leave messes like this at home, but it seems here 5 seconds to check the pot is in the right place or that you've not spilled every where is just too much to ask.
10/30/2015
Traffic IdiotSaw the most infuriating thing on my way to work this morning.
The road I take to work has 2 lanes each way with a turn lane in the middle, effectively 5 lanes wide. The speed limit is 40mph on this road. It is a major road in the town. We are going along in the far right (outside) lane when it suddenly comes to a stop with no stop lights in sight and the inside lane is moving just fine. So when a gap opens up we switch lanes to keep going as do several other cars. We get to where the blockage is and some ass hat in a huge SUV has shoved his nose out into the road to force traffic to stop so that he could cross the road. He obviously started by going out just far enough to block the one lane, and he was completely blocking it as we went by. And he kept creeping forward until he was able to block the second lane also. This idiot couldn't be bothered to wait for a proper lull in traffic so he created his own backing up early morning rush hour traffic for blocks and was damn lucky he wasn't plowed into by a car that couldn't see him as it was still dark out and he was in a dark vehicle. If he had been hit, he probably would have been killed as the person hitting him more than likely would have plowed right into his door. I know it sucks to get across traffic on busy roads, but its something you have to plan for. I leave my apartment parking lot a certain direction simply because one road is easier to turn across than the other. And I regularly go out of my way to roads with stop lights just to make sure I can cross in a timely manner. This BS of shoving your nose into traffic is what gets people killed.
10/28/2015
Loot Crate October 2015 UnboxingLoot Crate is a monthly mystery subscription box. For about $20 you get approximately $40 worth of goodies related to various games, movies, TV shows and other pop culture references. Just before the start of each month they announce the Theme for the following months crate as a clue to what will be in the box. This allows members to unsubscribe for a month if the theme isn't something they are interested in. I had seen advertisements for Loot Crate for a while but the items never looked very interesting to me until now. The October theme was Time and with the Back to the Future anniversary this month I knew there would be some items related to it in there. Also, you can't have a time crate with out Doctor Who and I'm a big fan there also. Most unboxings are done as a video but I simply don't have a good set up for that, so still pictures it is! This is how the box arrived via FedEx SmartPost, meaning it started with FedEx but the home delivery step was completely by USPS. A t-shirt featuring Bill & Ted's Exellent Adventure. If you don't know this time-travel movie, I recommend checking it out. Unfortunately this shirt is much to small for me to wear. I ordered a lady's 3XL which is the largest they offer, but the shirt is really only maybe a regular L at most. But I love the design so I'll figure something out for it. Over all I'm very happy with the items I got in my Loot Crate. If I could afford to keep my subscription year round I definitely would. But alas it just isn't in my budget right now. But I will be keeping an eye on future themes so that I can still try and get the ones that look really promising for awesome stuff!
10/27/2015
Happy Anniversary?One of my jobs is to send out New Hires and Anniversary post cards. The new hires cards just have a little blurb on them welcoming them to the company and are sent out every month to all the people hired the month before which averages at about 30 cards. The anniversary cards are sent out every month also but to all the people celebrating an anniversary of their start date with us. So everyone who has been here from 1 year to 50, (yes we've had some here that long) they get a card. I send out about 200 of these each month but before I do I give the list of names to the Manager to mark the people he knows personally. I pull those out first and he writes a short note on them before they go out. All the rest just have a pre-printed messages and a printed signature.
Back in June our Manager retired and the Assistant Manager has been in charge. Because of this all cards were changed to have the Assistant Manager's name on them. I just received a phone call from our print shop where they print all of the cards for me to send out. The lady there asked me to check my cards to see if any of them still had the old manager's name on them. A quick glance through tells me that they all have the correct name. She lets me know the reason she is asking is that another lady called her asking why we are still sending out cards with the old manager's name on them as an employee in her office has one. Huh? Not possible. I keep all of the spread sheets that I use to make the mailing labels for the cards so I pulled them up and started doing a quick search by the employees last name seeing if I could figure out what month he would have received his card. If it was a recent month there is no way it has the old manager's name on it. I go through my lists starting with the most recent month and work backwards. I don't find his name until I get to January. I inform the lady from the print shop that the employee in question started in January so the card he has would be from then and was when the old manager was still here. The only thing I can figure is that the employee must have pinned the card to his work station in a visible place and the lady who called the print shop must have only just noticed it and assumed it was recent. Why she cares I have no idea, but perhaps she should have asked her employee when he received his card first before bothering someone else.
10/26/2015
Leave it on the deskBecause the Law office is behind a locked door and I'm their reception, documents for their office are often left with me. Pretty normal right?
The ladies in the Law office log all mail that enters and leaves their office. The reason for this is of course in case something important goes missing they can immediately say if they received it or not or if it has left their office. Pretty logical. And in the log they write down specific information. Who the documents is for, who specifically hand delivered it, what office it came from, and what it is. Knowing that they want all of this information, when something is delivered that doesn't have it written on it, I would ask for names and write them on a note to attach to the documents. I would then call into their office to let them know I have something at my desk for them to pick up at their convenience. First thing this morning when checking my email I have one from my boss that was sent right at the end of the day on Friday that I didn't see before leaving. It was letting me know that the Law office would like for me to have anyone delivering documents to be let into their office so that they can place the items on their front desk. I had been asked to do this at one point a couple months ago as one of the ladies was very busy and the others were out. As far as I knew it was a temporary thing just for that week so after that week was done I went back to the old method. Until this email it was never mentioned to me that they would like to continue it. I would have gladly had they only asked. So I'm a bit miffed that they couldn't just ask me and had to go to my boss. But it really isn't a big deal, I'm more than happy to comply but I'm fairly certain that I'll get complaints from them about it. Most of the time when people bring documents by there is nothing on them to say who it is for or from. And I'm not going to spend the time inspecting the documents before letting them in as its wasteful. I expect I'll get questions of "Who dropped this off?" "Who is this for" etc. And my only reply will be "I don't know" because I won't know. Now I could be wrong and I won't get those questions but seeing as how they tend to ask them even when I'm handing them the items myself if I've not put it on a note, I doubt it.
10/26/2015
Case of the Missing News PapersPart of my job is to save news paper articles that are about my organization to an electronic drive. We get the large local paper daily and the small papers from other local towns once a week. Our PR Director or someone in her office will go through all the papers and circle the ones they want saved then give them to me. For the large daily paper I can find the articles fairly easy online and simply save the page to the proper folder. The smaller papers though have to have the articles cut out and scanned to a PDF before the can be saved. It is a tedious and boring job and I tend to let the papers stack up quite a bit before I do anything with them as I can get through an entire months worth in a single afternoon if I need to. But when I go through them I make sure the articles are cut out neatly, that the name of the paper and the date are written on them so that when they are scanned it can be added to the file name and I take care to make sure to get all portions of an article as sometimes they cross over multiple pages.
So I have recently let the papers stack up a bit on my desk though sorted neatly into two piles, one for those I can look up electronically and ones I have to cut out. Whenever I get more papers, I sort them into these stacks to wait for me to go through them. Now I do admit that I should be doing these sooner and I spend a lot of time reading random things on the internet when I could be taking care of the papers, but as it has never been expressed to me that they are a priority I always figured that having the papers for the month done by the end of the month is fine. Apparently that isn't actually the case. My stacks of news papers were on my desk upon arriving to work this morning. In fact they were there when I went to lunch. About an hour and a half after lunch though I noticed they were gone and asked my boss if she knew anything about it. She said that she didn't but that perhaps I should ask the lady who covered my lunch if she saw anyone take them. I called the lady and she told me that yes, she saw PR Director take the papers. And not only did she take them but apparently she made a big deal about doing so by making a lot of disapproving noises. I don't like PR Director mainly because I don't think she likes me. For the most part she treats me as though I can't possibly have a brain in my head since I'm just an Admin Assistant. I've actually been quite worried for several months that she has been looking for excuses to have me fired. I told my boss that PR Director is the one who took the papers and had I known she wasn't happy that they were not done yet I would have gladly set to working on them right away. My boss let me know that PR Director never said anything to her either, which she really should have if she was upset with how I was doing a particular job. Later in the afternoon I had to put a letter on PR Director's desk for her signature and I see all the papers I had so neatly stacked on my desk in a huge mess of a pile on the floor. From what I could tell she went through all of them and ripped out the articles without the aid of scissors, even from the papers where the articles can be found online. I do hope she realized that sometimes in the papers articles get printed back to back but don't line up perfect so you have to be careful how you cut them out or you lose part of the article on the back side. But I suppose that isn't my problem anymore. I will be rather ticked though if a pile of articles show up on my desk with a request to scan them into the system. I'm not positive but I don't think she actually knows how to use the scan feature of the copy machine. I'd like to be able to tell her that since she was obviously unhappy with how I was handling the papers that she is free to do them completely on her own and that includes the scanning. But I know I won't be able to. Had to share this as it completely ruined my afternoon and has left me feeling like crying for the last two hours at least. The only consolation is that she can't fire me, only my boss can. And since I've not had a single bad review in the time I've been here they will have to give me a chance to improve upon any short comings before they can fire me.
10/23/2015
Light SwitchesI'm a bit weird when it comes to light switches. I like that when the light is on the switch is up and when it is off the switch is down. I don't know why, but it is a peeve of mine and I get annoyed if a room has multiple switches and I can't make them line up the way I like.
This brings me to the main conference room in my office and the mess that is the light switches in that room. The conference room sits just off of the lobby and is entered into by a set of large double doors. The room itself is a large rectangle with the double doors on the eastern, long wall just south of center. There is a single door on the south wall by the east corner that is exit only and another single door on the west wall by the north corner that leads into our kitchen/break room. The lights in this room require 4 switches to turn them all on. In the center of the ceiling are rectangular florescent lights that have been divided into 2 sections requiring 2 switches to turn them all on. Along the edge of the room along the long walls and the southern short one are small round lights which are turned on by a 3rd switch. The last switch turns on 2 lights on the northern wall, though it makes sense that these are on their own as they are in front of a projection screen that comes down from the ceiling. Now, I've established the shape of the room and what is required to turn on the lights, so lets move on to the actual switches. Remember, it takes 4 switches to turn on all the lights in the room. To the left of the main double doors as you enter the room is 1 switch that turns on half of the florescent lights in the middle of the room. Beside the door on the south wall is another single switch that turns on half of the florescent lights but it turns on the SAME HALF as the switch beside the main doors! Beside the kitchen door there is a switch panel that actually has 4 switches, so all of the lights can be turned on from here but it is not beside the main door and it has a flaw in my eyes. The switch that controls the lights on the north end has to be up when off and down when on and it drives me crazy. Well, it isn't entirely true that the switch has to be like that because there is another panel of lights. On the west wall but on the south end where there are no doors is another panel of 4 switches that also turn on all the lights. This is the panel I use, so the switch on it that controls the northern lights is down when off for them on this one. I use this panel because it is the closest to walk to but also because it is next to another switch I need, the one that turns on the power to the SMART board in the room. Obviously I've figured out how the make the switches work for me so it shouldn't be a problem right? Wrong. Many people that come for meetings don't care about light switches! So if I don't make it into the room first to turn on the lights, they just start flipping switches! They'll use the one beside the double doors only getting a fraction of the lights (I keep the edge lights on all day) or someone will go in through the kitchen and start flipping switches there. Over all it really doesn't matter so long as they get the light they need. But I end up spending time after every meeting sorting the switches back out so that they don't drive me crazy.
10/23/2015
But Taxes Paid for it....I thought I was going to have a nice quiet Friday as usual. Then about 20 minutes before lunch I get a citizen who is a complete asshole.
A middle aged black man (this is relevant later) comes up to my desk and asks to use the law library. At first I thought he meant that he's looking for court records as they have a computer to look up court cases on the 6th floor. I start to direct him there but he insists this is where he needs to be and wants to use the law library. Now the Law office does have what they call a law library but its really just a conference room with some law reference books on a book shelf. I let the man know this and that it isn't open to the public. He asks me if it is paid for with tax dollars which is is as is everything here but that doesn't mean the public can just come use whatever they want. I tried explaining this but he kept arguing with me. So I called one of the ladies in the office as I needed some backup in telling him no. She asked one of the lawyers who also said no, its not open to the public and mentioned where one could be found (just a few blocks down the street). While I'm on the phone with her though, he's pulled out his cell phone and the back is facing me and suddenly the light on it lights up. I ask him to not take a picture of me. He says he isn't. I say well the light has lit up on the back of your phone and it is blinding me, please turn it away. I found out later that he was recording everything. I let him know once again that the library is not open to the public and gave him the address of the one he could go to. But he kept arguing with me saying that if it was paid for with taxes that the public should be able to use it. Nothing I said mattered. I tried explaining that not everything paid for with tax dollars is available for public use and he asked for an example. The only thing I could think of was the jail next door, so I said, well the jail is paid for with tax money but you can't just walk in there. Of course he asks why someone would want to. Well, if you are an advocate for inmates rights you might want to walk in and see how things are done in there, but they won't let you. He responds with "What if I'm an advocate for human rights?" I responded along the lines of it being the same thing but at this point I should have known what he was doing. He just kept arguing with me and started asking me if I was comparing inmates to books or something like that. I called into the Law office again and asked to have someone else come out who could possible explain better why it is not open to the public. While I'm on the phone he says "yes, see if someone can explain it to me in Black and White". Thankfully I didn't respond to that bait but he didn't stop even after I hung up. I finally told him that I was no longer speaking to him and refused to say another word. Two of our lawyers came out and proceeded to tell him the same things that I was telling him though he kept arguing with them. After a few minutes two security officers stepped off the elevator and stood at my desk. They never said a word to him but I believe they are why he finally left. He argued for just a couple more minutes after they arrived and then left. I really think he would have sat and argued with us all day had they not come up to help. This happened just before lunch and its nearly time to go home, but I'm still shaken up about it. Especially because he was recording it and I just know its going to be uploaded somewhere and misused to support some stupid cause that he is obviously a part of. I realized far to late into the encounter that he was being deliberately obtuse in an effort to prove some sort of point. He ruined my Friday and I want it back. I have a bottle of Tequila Cream in the fridge that I bought in Cozumel that tonight just might be the night to break it out.
10/22/2015
When to Wash Your HandsWorking in an office all day I'm obviously forced to use the shared lady's room through out the day. The one on my floor is actually quite nice compared to most of the others as we don't get as many people coming through to make it dirty as the day goes on. There is a window with a nice view outside and a few plants on the sill, a chair to sit in if the stalls are full, a full length mirror as well as a long one along the wall with a ledge under it where hair or makeup can be fixed away from the sinks. Of course there are also two stalls, two sinks with a mirror and a paper towel dispenser.
In this building, all of the toilets are automatic flush and the sinks motion detected to run water. The soap and paper towel dispensers both have a lever to push. Most of the ladies on our floor us the room in the proper order in my opinion. They use the toilet, wash their hands, then use the paper towel dispenser to dry. But there are a couple of ladies who do not do things in this order. They use the toilet, then push the lever to dispense paper towels but leave them hanging from the dispenser, go wash their hands and then come back to tear them off. This drives me bonkers. Doing things in the first order means everyone is touching the paper towel dispenser with clean hands even if they are wet. Doing so the second way means they are touch it with dirty hands and leaving it there for those who do things the other way to pick up. The reason they do things the odd way is so that they are using the dispenser with dry hands. Though oddly, they won't do it if someone else is already in the room as they don't want that person to be able to grab the towels they've dispensed. But if everyone is touching it with wet hands what does it matter if it is wet? I'd rather touch a wet lever that I at least know was touched with a clean hand than a dry one touched by a dirty hand. Maybe I'm just way to picky, but this really does bother me as I find it disgusting that they would touch it after using the toilet but before washing their hands. |