Burn Out

So, one thing I noticed while reading all my old posts: I used to be fairly passionate about my job. Granted, it's obvious I was stressed and ranted quite a bit. But that speaks of passion. I cared enough to get upset. I also used to be really busy.

Life here has changed. I can honestly say I don't give two shits about this place.

That's depressing.

You know your life is pretty sad when...

... you're psyched that you made it through an entire day at work wearing a T shirt with bowel movements all over it.

I said "HA HA!"

Gooble gobble

So, it's official. KG was offered, and accepted, a position working for my company. In 2 weeks she will become the accounting coordinator at our Wellesley affiliate.

She's pretty happy. She's finally escaped Bif-dis, she'll be working 30 hours a week, and she's getting the same hourly rate. Of course, she's in for a tougher commute, but who doesn't have one these days.

I'm excited. Seinfeld jokes aside ("Worlds are colliding, Jerry!"), it'll be nice to have her working for the company. I enjoy my job there, and I'm sure she will as well.

That is all.

Unsupportable Stupidity

I was cc'd on the following email conversation this morning:

Manager: Do the clinicians need to do anything other than turning the computer on and signing in?

Help Desk: No, I have set it up such that regardless of who logs on they should be able to open Citrix, log in, and use it as desired.

Manager: Thanks very much – can someone please write up step-by-step instructions so that Extended Hours staff in need will know how to use the desktops correctly? Thanks!

Umm, excuse me?? Step by step instructions??

Step One: TURN ON THE FUCKING COMPUTER.
Step Two: USE THE FUCKING COMPUTER.

For the record, this exchange was prompted by the manager attempting to turn on a desk top PC . She pressed the power button on the monitor several times. When this failed to boot up the computer, she freaked out.

Thankfully I did not have to respond to this request. I probably would have been fired.

New digs

Today I was relocated to a new cube. While I've enjoyed being tucked away in relative seclusion, I did have to share my cube. Not any more.

Here's a shot of my former habitat. There was a bit of a buzz since my move was sudden this morning, and a lot of folks thought I had quit.
No such luck. Instead, I set up shop in the front of the office. While I'll be more exposed, there are a number of bonuses. First, it's my cube. No sharing. second, I'm getting a privacy screen to protect the sensitive information I spend all day manipulating. I suppose it'll also protect unwitting office drones from the occasional goatse or 2 girls 1 cup.
Double plus good: My snarky motivational poster is highly visible.
For those of you without super zoom glasses, it reads "Teamwork: A bunch of harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction."

Friday

This afternoon at work we got a pretty decent thunderstorm. There were at least 2 lightening strikes close enough to set off car alarms. Here's a shot of the sky as I was leaving work and the storm had passed:
There was some flooding due to the downpour. Turning to my car, I saw the traffic that awaited me on the lower deck.
Here I am 15 minutes later, not even 1/8 of a mile from my former parking space.
Thirty minutes after leaving work, I was just getting on to the Zakim. Don't know if you can see the two staties in front of me:
They were escorting a box truck that was being towed by a flatbed tow truck. The box truck was not ON the flatbed. It was being pulled behind by a chain and cable.

WTF?

A little over 2 hours later, I was home. The weekend begins.

Considered for dismissal Vol 2

Once again it's time to submit parking ticket appeals. Nothing quite as amusing as my first post, but I thought I'd share a few anyhow.

providing medically necessary services. - Ticket for Resident parking. Appeal is short and to the point.

...patient had begun to feel nauseated and soon began vomitting, some of which contained bright red blood... -Ticket for unpaid meter. Umm, TMI???

I was called to a patients home for an emergency situation and attempted to find resident parking but there was none available. - Ticket for resident parking. I'm not sure why she's appealing, since apparently she went out of her way to look for resident parking.

I was going to visit a pt who was discharged from hosp and needed medication and needed to be seen and admission. - Ticket for street cleaning. Nice use of the run on sentence, bonus points for verbing a noun.

When I parked meter said out of order. I put money in the meter but it did not register and still said out of order. When I returned to the car the meter no longer said out of order. -Ticket for unpaid meter. Obviously someone was fucking with her. I really like the fact that she put money in the meter despite the out of order notice. Like it's a freaking slot machine, and she might just get lucky.

Well, kids, that's all I have for today.

The chochotas strikes back

In the normal course of a day, I send roughly 20 some emails to various people asking them to complete, correct or re-do work. That's my job.

So the other day I noticed that both Rat-pizda and MD sent notes to the wrong clinician. I sent the following email to them:

I received a voice mail from CW this morning re: patient Joe Blow. CW received both an OASIS review and a Lock note for SOC visit of 5/22. However, CW did not admit this patient. CF did.Could you both please resend your notes to CF?
Thank you.

About 5 minutes later I received the following response from Rat-pizda:

Hi Chris, Just wanted to express how rude your manner is in this email. A simple Hi or good morning to start off an email wouldnt kill you to do so. Instead you start it off with an "I". We all get VM that dont belong to us. I got two yesterday for payer not showing up on cert creation which I helped both clinicians in doing so.
Im sure you wouldn't writer something like this to AMM or JH.
Plus it would of been easier for you to just forward the VM to MD and myself.
Have a nice day :)


Umm, OK. What the fuck, crazy bitch? That just about put me over the edge. I immediately forwarded her response to my manager, her manager, and the director of HR. Additionally, I filed an incident report.

I'm happy to report that the rabid little slit got in trouble, and was quite upset at the outcome. I don't think she expected to be called on the carpet. Ha ha!

Just now I got even better news... She just gave her two week notice. Oh, happy day.

Chochotas

It's only Tuesday, and so far it's been an overly painful week at work. Mostly due to three individuals.

I don't ask for much from other people. All I want is for them to do their jobs. Accurately, and in a timely fashion. Is that asking too much?

Apparently.

There's not a lot I can do about Rat-pizda. Eveyone there, from management on down is too afraid of her rabidity to do anything about it. Whatever. She's certifiable, there's no denying it.

MD, on the other hand, she stepped on the wrong toes.

I ended my day having a lengthy and surprisingly productive chat with the district manager. I explained how a certain someone was attempting to order my people around, how a number of times she has been wrong and insisted otherwise. She has made some unreasonable requests, and has been sporting a real attitude as of late. AMM is going to have a talk with her tomorrow about her "behavior."

I'd call this a victory for me, but knowing the vindictive nature of these people, I'm sure I'll end up paying for this. Again and again.

Short week ahead

I found myself in work this morning before the sun had even come up. That's just wrong.

I'm leaving early today to pick the boy up from preschool. I'm looking forward to actually being able to drive the speed limit on 93.

Even better, I have Thursday and Friday off. We get to celebrate Chinese new year because the baby's daycare will be closed.

I love short work weeks.

Life on the cube farm

In celebration of my new Canon PowerShot, I thought I'd share some snapshots of my cube.

I'm one of the only people in the office who doesn't have a LCD monitor. I don't mind so much, since I get to do this.
An accidental shot of my work surface. Note the red Swingline.

A Christmas present from one of the clinicians. Wind it up, and it jitters like an over caffeinated bug.
Last but not least, TKjr's portrait of Sheldon Plankton that he drew for me.

Now With 30% Less Snark!

So, I got a talking to from my boss today.

It would appear that my reputation at work is at stake due to my tendency to run my mouth. I have caused offense by making blunt, off the cuff remarks about coworkers. I have thrown people under the bus in an attempt to force senior management in to dealing with some of our biggest problems. I have been honest.

I have developed a bit of an attitude.

Duly noted.

My eval is due in a couple of months. I'm counting on that almighty 5% raise. So, if a kinder, gentler me is what they want, a kinder, gentler me they will get.

You want a team player? I'll be the "I" in team. You want me to play nice and play by the rules? OK. No prob, Bob.

Since the end result will be more money in my pocket and less acid in my stomach, I'm game. I'm going to let go of the stress, and just do what I'm paid to do. Shit, I'll be the hap-hap-happiest asshole that ever worked there. It might actually be fun.

Zen and the art of slack

Story time, kids. I was recently reminded of all the fun I used to have when I worked at Sears, so I thought I'd share a tale or two.

I was 17 when I worked at the Sears Auto Center. I was a stockroom clerk. I stocked tires, exhaust systems and car batteries. I worked the night shift, the shop manager was a drunk, the mechanics were drunks and loons, and my coworkers were fellow high school slackers.

One of my favorite activities at work was to pour lighter fluid down the exhaust pipes. We had a whole slew of them hanging on huge metal racks. One of my cohorts would climb the rolling ladder, dump the lighter fluid down the pipe and then step back as I held a lighter to the bottom end. The lighter fluid would ignite with a loud "whooping" sound, and shoot out 2 or 3 feet from each end. We stopped doing this one night when one of the other clerks lit the pipe too soon and the guy on the ladder got a tad singed.

Another past time was having dolly races up and down the aisles of tires. I drove smack into the shins of the shop manager one time. He stared at me, walked back into his office, and remained there for the rest of the shift.

We got pretty good at racing pallet jacks down the ramp out back. Rolling people down the same ramp after ringing them in snow tires would good for a laugh as well.

Sometimes we'd use the compression hoses to fire objects around the shop. Soda bottles, tire valves. Those valves hurt like hell when they nailed you.

When we weren't stocking shelves or fucking around, we swept out the bays at the end of the night. When the mechanic using that bay was done for the night, we'd put up the lift and clean.

One night I was leaning on the counter to the stockroom, absently watching my coworker Dana clean the bays. He was a tad slow. A really nice kid and actually quite bright. But his mind moved in low gear, and he was often not quite with us. He was holding down the lever to one of the lifts, staring off in space. He thought he was raising the lift in the bay he was standing in. He wasn't. It was for the lift next to it. Which had a car parked in it. At an angle. Not lined up on the lift.

It took a moment or two for me to register the car beginning to rise on one side. It had a fairly serious list by the time I started screaming Dana's name. By the time he looked up at me, smiled and waved, the car was about 3 feet off the ground on one side and rising fast. I started waving and pointing frantically, and other people in the shop started noticing and piping in. Dana finally turned and looked just as the car toppled over on to it's side, making a horrible crunching sound as the roof crumpled between the lifts.

True story.

There was one mechanic who did an oil change and forgot to refill the oil. The owner of the car realized his mistake about a mile or so from the garage when his engine seized. Sears was kind enough to retain this mechanic, asking only that he pay for and install a new engine for the customer.

They did, however, excuse him from work when he did it again a week later.

Another guy was filling a tire he had just changed. The tire lay flat on this machine while he used a compressor to fill it. He was having a rather animate chat with the guy in the bay next to him, leaning one arm on the tire as he talked. After a while, the tire exploded off of the machine and flew through the air fast enough to leave an imprint on the ceiling. The guy's arm was broken in 4 places.

I dressed a mannequin in one of my work uniforms and placed it in the trash compacter. As one of my coworkers held in the button to compact the trash, I let out a scream, threw some fake blood around and hid. He stopped the compacter, came running in, and screamed like a little girl.

Good times.

The best, though, was when I opted to take a work study my senior year of high school. My shift was 5-9, and they weren't going to pay me to work any more than that. I got out of school at noon, and was supposed to go to work. My manager was cool, and would fill out the time slips and sign the papers. I had to be at work, but I wasn't going to get paid.

It just so happened that the stock room for the garage abutted the stock room for hardware, appliances and sporting goods. I appropriated some cardboard stove and fridge boxes, and created a fort. From the aisle, it appeared to be a stack of appliances. In reality, there was a fairly large open space, as I had cut out the back of several of the boxes. I grabbed a sleeping bag, some cushions and a radio, and made myself a camp. I usually spent the hours between 12 and 5 napping away to some Zeppelin.

I got an A in work study that year.

Tulips on my organ

What a week.

Today I closed SW, all by myself. They haven't closed for the last few months, and usually when they do close it's a hectic mess that final day.

At 9:05 this morning I cleared the last error.

I did a happy dance, I received applause from the girls who have listened to me ranting for the last week. My bosses... absent.

Oh well. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow. I think I deserve it. My plan was to spend a day lounging on the couch i my boxers watching movies. However, I need to buy and install a wall mounted safety gate, and my lawn needs attention. I'd gripe, but I pretty much spent he whole day today poking around on the internet.

So, happy weekend y'all. Here's a little something for your amusement:

Considered for dismissal

One of my favorite tasks at work has nothing to do with my actual job description or position. It's a little duty I inherited from the last man to hold my title, and he dragged it with him for years until he got a well deserved cushy job.

Submitting parking tickets for dismissal.

It's a real treat. I get a charge out of reading the clinician's excuses. I get a totally inappropriate amount of glee (Glee, mind you! Real glee!) out of handing back the appeals that were denied. I make a point to hand deliver those.

Incidentally, I happened to actually read the Official Government Liaison Affidavit I sign and hand in every month with the tickets. It appears, unbeknownst to be until just now, that I hold an official government title. I am my company's "Official Liaison with the Office of the Parking Clerk for the City of Boston."

Cool. I'm recognized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as an Official Liaison. My first step on the path to galactic domination, no doubt.

At any rate, I was kindly enough to take the appeals home with me this weekend so I can mail them out on Monday. The written, or essay, portion of the appeal is a real treat. For your dubious pleasure, in my official capacity, I share:

" I was visiting a patient who lived on Commonwealth Ave. I parked on Newbury St. Prior to leaving my car I double checked signs and the one sign I saw was 'No parking in snow emergency' and 'No parking on Tuesdays between 2&7.' I would appreciate if this parking ticket could be considered for dismissal."
-Cited for parking in a loading zone


"I was visiting a patient and because of complications it took more than 2 hours to visit. It was 10:18am not PM."
-Time of violation 1:10PM

"I went to see patient who needed immediate service. I parked where there was a meter. When I came back I had a ticket. The street cleaning sign was twisted."
-It wasn't twisted when she parked there?

"While during the performance of my duties, I was doing a home visit to do a dressing changed that require being done at the same time each day. Due to the urgent nature of my visit I was forced to park where I did after driving around for 20 minutes looking for a spot so I could deliver nursing care to the patient."
-Read that first sentence three times fast. I dare you.

"I was ordered by MD to see a patient s/p laminectomy w/ increased pain. No other parking available in the area."
-Confuse the clerk with jargon. I'm impressed.

"I had parked to do a mandatory patient visit, deposited $.50 into the meter. Upon my return, I found I had been ticketed. I had prominently displayed my {name withheld} sign in the dashboard."
-The sign was in the glove box?

"I work for the {name withheld} as a physical therapist. It was of utmost importance that on 6/22/07 I visit my patient. There was an emergency situation that could have caused a fall for an elderly patient, and/or potential for injury. Please excuse it was an emergency."
-Cited for blocking a handicap ramp. Note the irony.

"Urgent Occupational Therapy visit per MD order to address safety in patient's home after recent return home from hospital. No visitor parking available."
-Note: She was ticketed at 11:53PM

Evaluate me!

It was five months late this year, but I finally got my annual eval at work. MC uses some sort of software program for her professional ecvals, and it always cracks me up to read it.

So, for both your reading pleasure and for the simple fact that I love to blow my own horn, here are some excerpts:

Verbal Communication: Outstanding

Chris is very articulate and persuasive, choosing the best style to suit his audience. He has presented at meetings, both clinical and clerical. When listening, he comprehends quickly, pays close attention and probes for clarification and additional information if needed. He is poised before groups, a skilled facilitator, and contributes significantly to the effectiveness of meetings. Chris also uses humor to deliver his message and provides some education along the way!

Written Communication: Exceeds

Chris continues to send written materials that communicate what is needed or "heads up" info. His communication is usually good and effective. Again, he specifically lists all actions that need to be taken to resolve an issue. Chris expertly edits his work for a clean product. Based on feedback from the receivers of Chris' messages, he needs to adjust his writing style to fit the audience he is addressing. Chris needs to balance the delivery of his written communications and how it will be received for total effectiveness.

There's three more pages of that bullshit, but I've grown bored with typing it out. The bit about adjusting my writing style really cracks me up. Some shithead took offense because I suggested something needed to be done as soon as possible. God forbid.

At any rate, I'm great.

Exile on Bradlee Street

Lucky me. I get the spend the next two weeks working out of our Hyde Park office. Sure, it's closer to home. However, the commute is about the same due to the convoluted route I drive. The office is old, creeky, and full of vermin. The clinicians are so fucking needy I'm supposed to let the receptionist know when I get in so she can make an overhead announcement. Yesterday I was asked to work 7-3 instead of my usual 8-4.

That's not happening.

When my sentence is up, I'm off for two weeks. Vacation? No. Moving, unpacking, doing yard work? Yes.

Top all that off with the case of the shits I got from drinking Coors Light, and you can probably guess the color of my mood ring these days.

HHNUC

I'm sitting in my hotel room in lovely Springfield, MO. Recovering from a very full and very boring day. One seminar after another, all barely touching on things that matter to me.

This after a night of very heavy drinking. With people from work. Most of them directors or senior managers.

We're going out again shortly. First stop, Bass Pro Shop. Sort of the LL Bean of the Mid-West. I'm going to buy a cowboy hat. Then dinner, more drinking I'm sure.

I've heard some horrible stories. Stories too wicked and stomach turning to post here. Things that I should never repeat, let alone even think about ever again.

Hehehe.

One of these days

It's been a long, tiring week. I'd normally be looking forward to it ending, but that's not the case this time around.

I have the day off tomorrow as KG and I are closing on the house. We have to get the kids to daycare, go to the bank for an assload of bank checks, do our final walk through, then drive down to Plymouth to close.

Saturday morning at 5:15AM my boss picks me up so we can drive to TF Green and then fly to Springfield, MO for 4 days.

I get back Tuesday, back to work the next day and then the crunch for closing starts again.

Woo freaking hoo

TPS Reports

Fuck work.

Fuck Harvard Freedom and all those cock sucking sales reps who went out and coersed old people into dropping their Medicare coverage and signing up with H Freedom.

None of those old folks informed us, and now 4 months later Medicare starts denying payments. I can't even begin to go into the nightmarish amount of work this is causing me.

Fuck MC. I should be glad you're broken ass is back, but I'm not. Since you've offered to assist me with closing, how about being a real pal and get off my fucking back.

Fuck the Earth for this shitty weather. It's snowing out, and it's friggin April.

Fuck all stupid, small minded, lazy ass co-workers. You people get paid to do a job. Stop bitching and just do it.

That's all I got.