10:39 p.m. - 2004-07-14
Coda
Well I almost feel normal again - at least as normal as I ever get. Going back to the day after the election...........
By law we have to check every single ballot box and the math on the statement of the votes to ensure there have been no errors. It is amazing how many people have difficulty adding a column of figures and reconciling it to the original number of ballots they were given. Going through about 225 boxes took four of us (required that my assistant and two others witness the validation) about six hours. There were approximately 8 "trouble" boxes that had to be set aside because they couldn't be validated without opening them. That's still not that bad I guess - less than a 4% failure rate, or to flip it around 96% of the people did a good job on the counting.
The next day was spent decommissioning the ballot boxes. Stripping them down and ensuring that all the legal documents have been properly managed and sealed. Not. Constant interruptions to get things like payroll and accounting duties done by deadline made for a very long day. With only 1/3 of the boxes opened by days end we had no choice but to work through Canada Day. Why because there is a statutory deadline for getting all the polling day registrations into the database and a legal one with respect to the lease in terms of decommissioning the office. Started early and completed all tasks by 7 pm. Went into work downtown on Friday. It was good to be somewhere where all I had to do was work on my own tasks and an added bonus was a visit from my supervisor at the end of the day.A bit unsettling though was discussion of the next assignments. He noted he wanted my co-worker to move to one place that we had originally discussed I would go to and that I had been looking forward to trying out. New discipline even though the same data. Something fresh to learn. Instead he said he wanted to go back to one of the other assignments that I've worked on twice before. They asked for me specifically. That's flattering in a way I suppose, but it was one of the places that wouldn't allow me access to locked space or a desk where I could store my stuff nor a telephone or any other basic sequipment. No mention of more appropriate pay for the work I do either. This in an office where employee relations are "snake pit" in form. If there was anything interesting or challenging offered in the assignment that would be one thing but I don't want to spend six months being bored out of my mind and having to look over my shoulder as well. I think that having put in three years of work for the data mangement firm I've earned the right to choose another placement. My co-worker has just started with the company so he should be sent there for a change. Maybe a male would have better luck with all the plotting going on for one thing.
Anyway went home stressed again. Can't turn down work without having omething else to go to but I hope that my protest of the assignment got through to my supervisor. I don't like feeling that I'm being given the less interesting work because of my gender but that's how it sits with me. Girls get secretarial junk while the guys get the technical work. I've never wanted or sought secretarial work - I've already raised six children. I don't want to babysit adults who were poorly raised by someone else. Grumble.
Slept all that Saturday because I was fighting that cold/flu that knocked my office co-ordinator out of commission for over a week. I can't afford to be off work no matter what the assignment is right now. Sunday I spent in the office with my technical staff and my finance officer trying to complete the next layer of statutory tasks required of us. Finally sent the office payroll off around three pm and locked up for the night around 4pm. My Assistant and the regulars in the office had finished packing all the election material in the monotainers Canada Post hauls back to storage in Ottawa at about 3 pm on Friday, so there was just some last minute clean up and about 10 boxes waiting for me to take back home. Ten? Yeah record that have to be kept on site so that I can continue working on other task over the next three months in my "free" time. Reporting and such.
Went back to my downtown job full time on the Monday, with my assisstant agreeing to pop into the office when necessary to let the various services like Canada Post in to do their part of the close down. Seemed like everything was fine until the landlord did his illegal entry thing. That took nearly three days to sort out. Friday - July 9 - was the beginning of the Stampede so the downtown office was closed per Calgary traditions. That meant I spent the morning in the election office decommissioning the finance software and being available for various service providers to get in and remove their goods. Took another half dozen boxes home and that means I've lost my living room for the time being again. It all has to be catalogued and sorted to filing cabinets "on my free time." There's a theme developing here isn't there?
Friday was supposed to be the last payday for the office staff. The people who had worked just the polling day had been paid on Wednesday. Well that's 500 happy campers right? Fine but the pay wasn't there for the office staff - about 80 people all together. A flood of phone calls and emails about it. EC finance not answering their phones AND disconnecting their voicemail system - what a surprise. Although a lot of my staff seemed to enjoy their work they also were doing it to do things like buy groceries and pay rent. Some had cheques coming due. Nothing I could do about it except commiserate - you heard my tales about dealing with the finance department at Elections Canada. A major overhaul needs to be done there. Word came back from all over the country that a lot of areas had the same problem. We had been given very ssstringent deadlines for ubmitting our accounts so that our staff would be paid on time and we met them by working the nights and weekends required. Is it really too much to ask that EC keep it's side of the bargain?
Anyway the past weekend was a repeat of the prior one. The Saturday I worked at home on mountains of paperwork. Sunday I was in and out of the office all day in order to do the purge of all the computers we have. We hadn't had permission to do that until then, but the computers have to be out of the office no later than Wednesday - today. Right. They have to be wiped clean of data before they are packed up and shipped off to Ottawa. The process is in several steps and takes hours. The final step was started at suppertime. By 9 pm we knew there was a problem and started calling the support line. We were put on hold and never did get an answer to the problems we were encountering. Finally just after 11 pm the purge stopped but was still showing as unsuccessful. I told my Automation Co-ordinator to restart the last step and decided that we would let it run overnight since we couldn't get any answers before Monday morning anyway. I had no intention of sitting there until early next morning with a 5:30 am wake up time to get to my downtown assignment.
Turned out whatever we did when restarting the last step of the purge did the trick. When my AC went in on the Monday the computers were wiped clean. IBM made an appointment to go in and pack everything up on Tuesday - we aren't allowed to touch them beasts even if they are not longer in commission and the telephone company obliged by setting their time for pickup on the same day and time. Canada Post arrived today to pick up the computers for their journey back to Ottawa and I sent in my statutory report of proceedings today as well - 2 lbs/1 kilo worth of paperwork done over the past two weeks assessing most aspects of the event from computers, to post service, from staffing to political issues, then from materials - management and quality to security issues. Lot of documentation. Done.
In addition this week I left work at noon on Tuesday because I had overdosed on asthma medication without getting things under control. The City has been spraying 'cides' in the community for the past 10 days and my system finally couldn't handle anymore. I went to bed when I got home and slept until late last night. Today was close to being a repeat of yesterday only I managed to stay downtown until the end of the work day. On the bright side it meant that lying down equated to devouring the novel "The DaVinci Code". I read a lot of the scholarly work cited in the story - the Nag Hammadi etc - years ago so the ideas presented weren't new and startling in any way. The stories about Mary Magdalene have been bubbling underground for as long as I can remember researching the topic of women in faith which started decades ago for me. It was entertaining to have them presented in a fiction work though. It also meant I just spent a lot of time cuddling with a houseful of kittens and cats who were just happy to be near me. No demands other than food and water and cuddles. Ditto for my sons. Getting back to normal maybe?
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