8:50 AM - 07.10.04
Quit time
Tuesday started out well dear diary. There were moving crates next to quite a few of the offices and it was apparent that a lot of staff were shifting gears trying to complete their transition within the company. That also meant that they were trying to complete a lot of loose end. For me that meant one trip to the east tower to retrieve records in the morning somewhere between 10:30 and 11 am and then two more trips one around 2 pm and another around 3 - "because we need to ensure that the perception of service is maintained". However, a lot of the scientists were in playful moods and a couple even seemed to have sought me out just to joke a bit about things. One of the people in one of the other departments that I had worked with closely a couple of times in the first assignment made a point of introducing me to one of the new staff and expressed pleasure that I was back on duty. When I took a half hour break at lunch to go to the charity "gently used" book sale - books for 50� don`t you know - I met one of the HR people as I was heading back to the elevators with my armload of recycled treasures. Rather read than eat anyway, you know. She greeted me cheerfully after she realized it was me and said "congratulations, I hear you`re joining the company". I corrected her at once, said that I was contract, but it did seem an odd comment. When the liaison printed off the emailed requests for records from the scientists for one of the afternoon runs there was an internal posting for a temporary records administrator in her inbox, but she didn`t bring it up nor did I ask about it. You`ve heard my comments about this assignment ad nauseum dear diary, so you know it wouldn`t be something I`d apply for.
That all added in despite the fact that I was still under pressure to get all the material boxed up that had the deadline of last Friday to be sent to the auditors. Between 1 pm on Monday and 12:30 Tuesday lunch, 53 boxes were packed and the contents documented, so I could complete the final paperwork after I finished. With the breaks to go retrieve records - it meant that from the time I built each box, filled it, documented its contents, labelled and heaved it on to the shelf it was taking me an average of 7.5 minutes to complete. A team would have made it much quicker, but I was left to deal with it all on my own. At noon on Tuesday, the co-odinator buzzed by as she was leaving for lunch with the comment that we were supposed to record whether the records were scanned or not as well. 6 boxes of one set of properties left to fill out of over 60 and she waited until then to let me know. Just after lunch, the liaison asked if I could have everything ready, including all the final paperwork by 3:30 PM should they decide to get a rush courier, since the records had to be at the sale site for viewers next day. No, not really. As I mentioned in my Monday post there was about 3 days worth of work sitting there to be done and I was the only person working on it.
As a result of all the other running around I had been required to do I was just starting to create the transmittals for the courier at 3:30 pm and I put a few out on the boxes just in case the couriers arrived when I wasn`t there. No mention had been made of whether they were going to make it that day, but I was trying to get as much completed as possible so that the company could meet its deadline. I did the transmittals as I had in the first assignment, having been given no other instructions. The liaison looked at them as I was trying to get them attached. She stated that they didn`t look look like the ones the brother had done, but they would do given the short time we had to work with or just the master spreadsheet he had could be transmitted to the auditors later.
The brother arrived at work at about 4:30 PM. I was getting ready to leave, but he said he had to have the box number for each file entered in to the master spreadsheet he had been keeping before I left, including the information on scanning. I opened up the software to check that aspect, because it was faster than opening and going through each box once more - especially given I was tired at the end of the day and considerable lifting would have been involved. He told me I wasn`t allowed to do that, but I really didn`t want to stay later than I had to since I wasn`t feeling all that well - remember I had hoped to take some time off this week to rebuild some wellness. I entered the box numbers in to the spreadsheet and then tried to save it. It had apparently been set up to be "read only" for my PC, so I had to take screen shots and print off a hard copy since the brother said there would be no other way to do it. Usually one can save a copy of a spreadsheet under another name, but this spreadsheet had been set up to not allow copying at all. Up until Tuesday, I have been given editing privileges in the spreadsheets but he said that as of now just he, the liaison, and the co-ordinator were in that group, even though he had been transferred to work in another department as of last Monday.
At that point - 6 pm - he started to get quite angry and I just chose to ignore it thinking that the stress of family issues were the problem. I tried to calm the situation down, but he kept starting in on me whenever I had gotten things cooled down a bit. He started belittling me and my work, asking me if I couldn`t even follow a simple spreadsheet. He insisted that he had given me exhaustive instructions over the phone when he called from the hospital on Monday, but I showed him the notes I had taken down as he talked that contradicted what he was saying then. He demanded a photocopy of that and the pages of my daybook where I had recorded the files in each box. His voice was raised and he was belligerent. There was a mention in my notes of a spreadsheet but only with respect to three properties in another province and I showed him that. He said he was really incensed that I had written the box # and files in each box in my notebook although he has had no problem with my notetaking in the past - he has even encouraged and complimented it. He kept going back to the list he had given me so that I could pull the files and insisting that I was stupid, because I hadn`t put the files in the boxes in that order, although my notes said that I was to put them into the boxes the way I found them on the shelf without trying to put them in order. He kept insisting that he felt it was my intention to create a whole second set of records and processes just to waste time. Since all I had been told was to get the boxes packed as quickly as possible and since it wouldn`t have been possible for me to enter anything into the spreadsheet he had created let alone generate a transmittal from it I don`t see how he came up with that logic. As he escalated his yelling, I kept trying to just leave, but he kept insisting I had to do additional tasks to get it to the point where he could spend "several hours tonight" fixing my errors. I was crying at some point and there were other people around within hearing down the hall so it was also very humiliating. I told him I realized that he may be very stressed, but that he didn`t have the right to take it out on me especially when I had come in on days I had planned to be off because of my own health issues. He then started in on how no one had the right to feel any emotions about this work and I was the one causing problems with my emotional response. His cell phone rang about then and I left as quickly as I could after I got my belongings together.
I arrived home at 7:38 PM after taking a cab from downtown at about 7 PM. I was too upset to try transit. I called my supervisor as soon as I got in the door and told him I didn`t want to go back. Being that I was still crying I decided I`d better send an e-mail that was more coherent than the babbling I`d done. Waited all yesterday to hear from him,but no word at all. He called me this morning to say that the company had given notice of terminating the contract as a result, would I go in to try and reconcile with the brother and the liaison. No. But the records management company wants more work from this client. Fine but I`m not going to be the scarificial lamb again for everyone else`s benefit but my own. I`m worth something too.
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