10:19 PM - 20.04.05
Time out
The message light on my telephone was flashing when I arrived at work this morning. I was pretty certain it was from the dance studio, because the organizer of the event threw another curve ball at me mid afternoon yesterday. It almost seemed as though she wanted to limit the choices offered now - about 8 - to one. Her means of achieving that was to cut the amount of the deposit by more than half. Means the studio owner can't book the amount of space necessary for the other programs, unless it is out of his own pocket. The committee approved the entire program as it was submitted over two weeks ago. It is really inappropriate for one peron to override that decision. I included the owner in our emails with the chair's permission and he responded at the end of his workday yesterday with a proposal that would work. I forwarded his email to the chair first thing this morning, then tried to access the message. No dial tone. The time/date display was lit up, as was the message button, so it couldn't be ascribed to a bad power source. I asked the one supervisor who was in if I could use her phone to call tech support. No problem.
Now remember, in a lot of my assignments I haven't even been assigned a phone. I carry my cell for that reason. When the tech answered, he stated that my issue was a priority one and would be addressed immediately. Wow. Even when the computers crash in most companies one can expect at least an hour of lost work time, but the average is more like half the day. No ma'am, the rules for us are that it has to be addressed within an hour of being reported. Have I mentioned how much I like this company? As it was it actually took almost three hours before it was operational, but one of the senior staff called me from home - she had the day off - to check that things were being addressed. The tech had called just before and asked me to check the physical setup to see if some sort of damage had been done to the unit. None that I could see, but then I wouldn't really know anyway. There was an email yesterday saying all the locks on every door in the building were going to be changed. Each time I looked up this morning, it was to see workmen checking out fire code materials and alarms, plus a number of other safety features on the floor. Added all up, something just didn't sit right somehow.
Returned to my desk and pulled out some work that needed to be done for the open house before it began today. Then spent the balance of the morning at my desk, keying away. I listened to Il Divos. Spanish group from South America whose lyrics and voices melted my heart as well as my knees. Wow. Their one song about Mamma brought tears to my eyes, so I decided it was time to get my hormone balance checked. I'm getting weepy over too many things. Most of their songs were in Spanish, but 8 years of French lessons and a couple of German meant I could guess at a good portion of the lyrics. Besides love songs are a lot alike regardless of language or culture. Right?
Toward noon, one of the longtime supervisors came up to my desk and made a big to do about my absent co-worker's area, in a weird kind of way. She came rushing over to me whispering that it was dreadful. What should she do? Silly me bought in to the drama and asked what she meant. She stated that there were terrible messes at the absent person's station and that she was going to get into major trouble for it when she returned to work and it was found out - don't tell anyone. If she hadn't gone through that worker's desk and shelves, neither she nor I would have had any tale to tell, now would we. There was no reason for her invasion of another person's workspace and even less for the comments she was making about her. One doesn't talk to the peers of someone you are supevising about their potential disciplinary actions. The other supervisor who made the threatening comments about what happens to people who listend to others' conversations - the cookie incident - who sits on the other side of the coworker in question came barreling up and confronted the other supervisor. It seems to me that the coworker is being used as a pawn in the other two's fight for power over the other in the department. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Have to think about it.
Watched a video shot pre-Enron about records management over the lunch hour. It spoke of document destruction and when not to shred. Evidence is an issue and it is one that affects every company. Shredding it is illegal. Too bad some CEOs didn't have a chance to see it. Might have saved their companies from bankruptcy and them the stint that they will have to do in jail.
I was assigned to be a greeter for the open house after lunch so I got to watch the "box building" race between our department manager - the one who commented about the amount of extra work I was creating when we visited the zoo - and the Vice President of that division. It didn't matter how hard she tried, she still couldn't lose to him even after half disassembling the box several times. I don't think the VP had found any free time to practice beforehand. The rest of the afternoon was a steady stream of visitors and hosting duties. With all the other dynamics going on in the department, I was just glad to be able to go home at th end of the day.
I cleaned up when I arrived home and spent about an hour talking to one of the other Returning Officers, just trying to tease truth from fiction from the media reports about the state of our government without much success. Smoke and mirrors all, I think. My assistant picked me up just after I hung up from that conversation so we could go to a community meeting set up by the investigator in to the municipal election fraud case. The intent was to discuss ways to make it easier for New Canadians to be involved in the political process. When I can sort a bit more of it out, I'll tell you another story.
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