Mutual Weirdness

I mentioned in my background post that I work for a local government, it is a county government to be specific. Where I live the county handles all 911 (emergency) calls. They dispatch for both the county and all of the cities within. They also handle all EMS, though the major city has first responders on their fire department. The county has its own fire department also to handle calls that occur outside any city limits. Because the county has such a large force of emergency personnel, it was decided long before my time that the county would never close outside of weekends and holidays. 20 Feet of snow won't close our offices. The reason being that it would cost the county half a million dollars to close down for one day. This is because any time we close outside of weekends/ holidays we have to pay emergency personnel at minimum time and half (though more likely double time) and pay over time. If an employee feels that conditions are unsafe for them to travel to work, they can wo

Two years ago when my office was remodeled to put my desk in the hallway, the then Manager struck a deal with the then Head Lawyer in regards to coverage of my breaks and vacations. Because the Law office was able to eliminate their reception position and have me answer all of their calls and greet all of their guests they would be responsible for providing someone to cover my lunch breaks and my vacations. Pretty good deal right? They don't have to pay me yet their calls still get answered and all they have to deal with is someone losing a small bit of productivity for an hour a day. That is unless I take a vacation or I'm sick. In that case they have two options. They can all work together to split the time that I'm gone or they can hire a temp. When I went on vacation over the summer and I was gone for a week, they choose to hire a temp. I am taking a vacation day on Christmas Eve. This is something that I've done every year that I've been here. In the past the c

On Friday I went with my family to the local botanical garden here which is simply called Botanica. Every year at this time they decorate nearly every inch of the gardens with lights and call it Illuminations. The weather was perfect on Friday. Mid 50s and no wind. So of course everyone and their dog was there. Traffic was backed up on three different roads trying to get there. We didn't even try to park close and went straight to the over flow parking a mile away which was already overflowing also! The line for the shuttle was long so we walked the mile over to the garden. I didn't take as many pictures this year but I did take quite a few. This tree is always so fun with all of the stuff hanging from it. This large screen is actually made up of thousands of color changing Christmas lights. They had a bunch of different song clips from movies playing on it. Just some of the fun lights from around the gardens. And this was really neat. There was a

Yesterday the Board held their annual Holiday Open House at work. It last for two hours in the room down the hall. It's just a meet and greet with cookies, pretzels and punch. My office for whatever reason always buys the refreshments for the party and this year I was in charge of ordering. Not a big deal as I just pull up the invoice from last year, call the caterer and order the same as before. When the cookies arrived I wondered if I had made a mistake as the cookies were not up to the quality that I would have expected for $2.50 a cookie. I took a few pictures. But this isn't really about the bad cookies, its about what happened to them today. After the party we had tons of left overs as per usual. We pack up the cookies and send them off to departments that have 24 hour staff that aren't able to come. But we always keep a few for our office. This year we kept 1 large bag of cookies, maybe 2-3 dozen and a large bag of pretzels. These were placed on the break r

This is just a quick update on the newspapers that disappeared from my desk. As I mentioned in another post, the PR Director has decided that she will just take care of these herself. I can only assume she got tired of seeing the pile of them on my desk. From what I can tell, she is cutting out the articles and then just saving them in folders. She isn't scanning them, not sure that she could even if she wanted to because as far as I know she doesn't know how to use the scanner. So all the articles are just sitting there. I'm fairly certain that they will come to me for scanning at some point, but so far they haven't. The main reason for this update is because of something I've observed over the past week or so. A huge pile of newspapers on the table in her office. There is at least a week and a half worth of papers sitting there. It may be more than that as the pile looks to be a fair bit larger than anything I ever had sitting on my desk. So she has taken the pape

On Friday I had my annual performance evaluation. I am pleased to report that my boss had nothing bad to say and I even talked her into giving me a couple more easy responsibilities. She's been so swamped with the start of the new manager that many smaller things are slipping past her and I made sure to remind her that I'm here to help. We also discussed the PR Director a bit in regards to the news papers. My boss spoke to her about it and all she could get out of her is that she has decided to take care of the papers herself. She didn't give any other explanation. There probably is another reason, but since she didn't disclose it, nothing to be done. My boss let me know that she is intimidated by the PR Director also. So it isn't just me that feels like she looks down on them. So I'm in zero trouble there. And because I had a good evaluation I'm guaranteed a % increase to my pay for next year. Probably no more than 2% as is the normal, but it's better t

The new head honcho boss officially started work yesterday. Not a bad guy so far. He comes to us from the Military where he was a Brigadier General. This title was apparently a huge selling point for him getting the job from what I can tell. I'm certain he is qualified, but the chairman of the board has made a big deal out of the fact that we've managed to hire a Brigadier General. This has become apparent to me though the fact that the chairman insists on using the title even though the Manager does NOT want to use it anymore. He has left the military and just wants to be a normal guy with a job. To welcome the new manager to the community, a reception has been planned for Dec. 1 and invites have been printed to send out to the local community leaders. It is my job to print labels, stuff envelopes and make sure they get sent out. I was working on this yesterday. Around 3pm I started sealing the envelopes and as I am about halfway through I'm told to stop, wait. The invitat

On 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 th

As 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 mo

Saw 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

Loot 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 completel

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

Because 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

Part 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 so

I'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 t

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

Working 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 ord

Directly behind my desk is the lobby area for my office. Along the back wall are 2 doors one on the left and one on the right. My boss' desk is directly through the door on the right as you face them, directly behind where I sit with a glass wall in front of her. She has a direct view of my desk area. This is important because when I am not at my desk she is supposed to watch it in case anyone walks up needing help. Two years ago when my desk was first moved here I purposefully made no mention of the possibility of getting a bell for my desk. Bells are abused when they are sitting on a counter. Not by customers who come by but by other employees who think its funny to sit and ring it a whole bunch just to annoy whoever is sitting there. And I know of at least 3 people who would ring it every single time they walked by. My previous boss would come and sit at my desk whenever I needed to be away for more than just walking to the back of the office. This meant there was no need for a

As I mentioned in my background post, my desk at work sits in the hallway and I act as reception for 3 departments. In return for me handling reception for the Law office, their admin staff cover my lunch break as the desk has to be manned all day. In order to accommodate this, the desk is very large and has an extra computer and chair just for the use of their office when they are out here. The only storage for the entire desk are small 2 and 3 drawer file cabinets called “peds”. The desk, when bought new, came with one 2 drawer and two 3 drawer peds. I myself had two 2 drawer and one 3 drawer one from before the remodel. My three peds are full to bursting. When we first started using this desk, the new two drawer ped was designated as the one to hold interoffice mail folders and a few other things. One of the three drawer peds was graciously put beside the work area the Law office uses for general office supplies they need when they are here. And the last ped had some odds and ends i

It has been a slow week at work with out anything very interesting happening so I thought I'd give a bit of background about where I work. This way I don't have to explain it all with each post and can just refer back to this one. I work for a fairly good sized local government. I thought about leaving out that bit, but as I work in a court house, some of the most interesting things that happen are the people that come in for court appearances. So it's relevant. The way the organization is set up, is that there is an elected board of 5 members who are in charge of everything. They hold weekly meetings where they vote on the important decisions. They have Executive Secretaries in their office. Under the board is the Manager. He is the head honcho and takes care of all the day to day running of things. We have an Assistant Manager also. My boss is actually the Manager's Personal Assistant and I am the only Administrative Assistant in the department. We also have 3 intern

Two weeks ago we went to the State Fair and these metal flowers were my impulse buy for the day. They are sitting beside my front door.

Labor Day Weekend. The holiday here in the States where you are supposed to get a day off of work to relax because you work so hard the rest of the year. And the beginning of September is a wonderful time for it as it is still quite warm out but most of the high temperatures are fading to fall. I only wish my Labor Day was so relaxing. My parents bought a small cabin at Table Rock lake in Missouri which is about 5.5 hours from where we live. They decided they wanted the entire family to travel there for the long weekend and having no other plans, my husband and I agreed. My parents and one of my sisters left early Friday afternoon. My other sister and her family were on the road by about 5:30. Since I did not get off work until 5 and still had to pack, my husband and I were not on the road until about 6:45. This put us arriving at the cabin just about 11pm. But this story starts before we even arrive. The last good sized town on the trip was called Aurora and we went through it about a

Last week one of my cousin's messaged my sisters, myself and our mother's asking if we wanted to have a girl's night out, dinner, this coming Wednesday since we had a lot of fun the last time. So last night my mom, both my sister’s and their little girls (2 weeks and 2 years), my cousin and her mom (my aunt) head to Bricktown Brewery. They have several locations but the one in our town is still fairly new, opened just a few months back, and while I hadn’t eaten there yet I’d been wanting to. Also, Tuesday was my cousin’s birthday so we were celebrating her. Starting out we thought that going out on a Wednesday would mean the place wouldn’t be all that busy. Well, we were wrong, at least for this place. When we got there we told them we had 6 people plus a toddler and baby so we'd need a high chair and sling. They said no problem and went to push a couple of tables together. One of the girls comes back a few minutes later and tells us that the tables they were going to u

One more cruise post, this one featuring all of the towel art on the cruise. One of the things that Carnival Cruise lines is famous for is their towel animals. Each night while at dinner, the staff turns down the rooms for the evening. When they do, they leave the schedule of events for the next day along with a cute towel animal. I took a picture of the one in our room for each night. We never really figured out what this one is. It became a toss up between an elephant and an aardvark. It's wearing the hubby's sunglasses though. A few times they would pick up items we left out and add them to the animal. A monkey hanging from the mirror. The sunglasses and necklace were mine. Hubby thinks this was a rabbit lounging on the bed. I'm not so sure, but I don't know of any other animal that has ears like that. A crab being crabby. A cute puppy. A lovely lobster. But while these were super cute, the really amazing ones came one morning when we walked

This post is going to be all about some of the food I had while on vacation. I would go on another cruise just for the food! It was fantastic! Anything you could want to eat was likely to be found somewhere on the ship. The main buffet area was on the Lido Deck or deck 10 which happened to be the deck our rooms were on. It was also the deck with the swimming pools. The buffet had pretty much everything on it. Salad and fixings, all types of meats, pasta, breads, veggies and of course deserts. There was also a burrito bar. At the back of deck was a deli station that would make pretty much any sandwich you could want. Just above the buffet was an Italian restaurant. Out beside one of the pools was a 24 hour pizza bar and a 24 hour burger bar. So no matter what time of day you got hungry there was food you could get. And if you wanted desert instead there were soft serve ice cream machines also open 24 hours. On the 5th deck was a pub that served pub food, a salad bar where they lady