Grumpy work grumble....grrrrrrr.....

Sounds like the typical masterpiece of public service planning. It always amazes me when people are expected to work in stupid or unsafe conditions, or in ways that really block productivity.

I work for a software company, yet, until a year or so ago, our computers were so old and memory-deficient, we couldn't run for testing the software we were maintaining. It wasn't until the company was bought out by a company with a can-do culture that we got the equipment we needed to do our jobs. Unbelievable!

During the time I worked for a pharmaceutical company, there was a company wide survey on working conditions. In every professional area, lack of support to get the job done was the biggest issue raised. Guess what! ? The company listened. We got clerical support staff who actually did things. Computer help desk staff were employed who actually listened and helped! The whole company culture in that office turned around. We moved into the 20th century (well - this was last century - but at the end of it!) Sure, it was a bit expensive, but productivity, sales, morale, any measure you like, all went through the roof. Compared to the gains made the costs were minimal. Today it's the big pharmaceutical company.

Some places, and the public service is a great example, don't seem to see staff productivity as any sort of valuable commodity. Your work situation is obviously just plain stupid - but no-one with any clout cares sufficiently to do anything about it!

No solutions, I'm afraid - just commiserations!

We used to have a great IT guy...

He ran the department (the IT dept.) then had a heart attack....so he came back to do the fix it stuff. He was old, had a trolley, and could be gruff...but he came quickly and muttered and cursed until he fixed things. He didn't sit at the desk and tell you your problem couldn't possibly exist and stuff...he came and looked, realised that the printer down the hall really DID exist, despite some damn screen up in IT saying it didn't, and connected you to it...or that your email really wasn't functional, even though it tested several buildings away as ok, and futzed until it worked.


Then he had a second MI and died.


Schniff.

Hand-writing envelopes is pretty typical, as printing them would involve loading them into the printer (and you already have paper loaded, and most people are printing on paper, not envelopes). Plus, envelopes tend to stick together a lot more than paper does.

As for the typing, etc., I haven't had a clerical person type for me since I was practicing law. As in 1990. But if you have clerical staff who are specifically hired for this purpose, they should be typing.

Also, why can't you just set up your stuff to print downstairs all the time? Just set the downstairs printer as the default. So long as the elevator is working, who cares? At least your stuff will be printed. If anyone asks, tell them what you told us, that the upstairs printer breaks all the time and you need to get the reports out and could someone please fix it? You will need to keep saying this to the powers that be, and showing them just how inefficient the system is, before they take any action. Keep showing them how much of a pain it is, and what it's costing them, when you have to keep traveling all around just to get a stupid letter printed. It's basic infrastructure, and they should be able to do that without a big committee meeting or any other such nonsense.

As for the traffic, I sympathize with you. Can you write to the town and ask them to change the timing of the traffic lights?

That sounds awful! I hate when the corporate culture is so thoroughly messed up -- have dealt with that a few times.

When I've printed stuff for envelopes it's been that I printed labels that were then stuck on the envelopes rather than hand-addressing. Though honestly I guess that was more for bulk stuff (say 10 or more) -- if it was a single letter to a single person I'd usually hand-address that.

It sounds like dlowan CAN'T connect to the downstairs printer, and that that is the problem -- she has to email it in this complicated thing.

Ooh, this does sound familiar...

Sympathy!

Yeah... the printers don't connect.


I have NEVER sent out hand written envelopes before...that is just weird here, I don't care what anyone says.

I could go downstairs and find a typewriter, but who has time?


Actually, the IT and maintenance stuff is better than my last job...there we were 15 kilometres from where it all happened. We didn't even GET email until a couple of years ago...or computers that weren't shared between about five of us.

The lifts going bung is a real bummer...we have to run up and downstairs numerous times a day...though we do have coffee and stuff on our floor now.


The clericals used to type, apparently...I don't know when it all stopped....


I can see it with the reports...plus people who had to do their essays and exams and all can type damn fast.....I hand wrote all mine, until the last couple of formal degree thingies i have done...and the paper stuff was pretty minimal for them. My letters look like ****, and frankly my priorities are other than perfecting bloody letter typing....plus it takes ages working from the dumb templates.


Heehee...a lot of the offices are now over the road.....you get to see the CEO and bigwigs of various descriptions also leaping across the road, also where we are all forbidden to do it (work says it won't pay worker's comp if we get splatted anywhere but on the proper crossing...)

Sounds like a bridge would help. (Hah, I know it's too expensive.)

Lol! We often talk about an underpass.....or perhaps a couple of sturdy ladders with long planks?


Hehee...here is where we scuttle across......but there is no traffic at all in the photo....

So let me get this straight... You killed the IT guy by scaring him to death when he had to cross a busy street?

Murderess!

I hope your printer causes streaks.

Dlowan should be thinking about the muscular structure of fleas rather than carrying on about this nonsense at work.

I shall make it a priority to speak serverly with Gail and John. We'll have this despicable situation rectified toot sweet.

Poor bunny, having to risk life and limb in Adelaide traffic. Gosh peak hour must last all of.... what....5 minutes?

On the contrary (to someone a post or two back), I love urban design puzzles....

**** your black heart marsupial brain.
And Gail and John have black hearts too.

For Colleen



I heard today that an old workmate, Colleen, died of metastatic breast cancer recently.

Colleen was, for a long time, the only, and then the senior, admin person at my previous workplace.

She was four foot something, delicately built, sixty something...though her hair remained a stubborn black (we suspect with help).

Colleen was a brilliant admin/receptionist person.

She listened empathically to every outpouring from frazzled clinical staff, or clients, while calmly continuing with her work. She kept the confidences that needed to be kept, and retained and used wisely the information that needed to be shared.

She was able to soothe a savage client, in person or on the phone, as though with magic. Colleen was able to make people accept therapist illness, and the need to cancel appointments, with serenity....she could repel violent and controlling people (who made a habit of intruding on admin space, and refusing to get out of it, often in a scary way) with aplomb and as though with no effort.

Somehow, (sorcery is suspected) she was able to maintain a hopelessly complicated and convoluted and chronically too busy record system without losing everything and losing track of everything (as all her colleagues did without fail).

She was the heart of the place.


In private, she nursed a broken heart from the sudden ending of what she had thought was a happy marriage, which gave her a nice house and a comfortable life. She ended up with nothing, no home, no money.....and started again at fifty something.....with the dream of making enough to buy a little house, make a garden, and enjoy her poxy but deeply beloved little yappy dogs....and her nice cats.

This also left her socially phobic (except at work, where she had social grace and aplomb) and with a cigarette habit that she largely concealed, and a cough that terrified us all. All of this got worse when she found her beloved mother dead on the floor when she went to pick her up for Christmas day.

Interestingly, everyone thought they had the only really close relationship with her on the team......hmmmm.....


She could be infuriatingly stubborn and bloody minded. We only had one serious conflict (which was when she thought nobody from the team was organising a farewell for a beloved team member, didn't happen to be there when we all discussed the present and farewell that WERE being arranged, didn't ask anyone, and blamed me for the lack of care when she had a tantrum about it, and I happened to be the one who told her it was all arranged, and had to get back the money for the gift, which had been collected (she had circulated an enveople) which she had sent down, in a wild temper, to be added to the money for a general organizational gift. "Nobody CARED enough about Linley to arrange anything." "But Colleen, it IS all arranged....we have the present, the place is booked." "None of you care, you're all selfish!" Which was her way of grieving for the loss of the person who was going.

She DID get to buy her little house...which she loved with a great and intense passion, and where she created a beautiful garden, which gave her great joy.

She never ceased to tinker with both.....moving garden beds, retiling and repainting endlessly.

She had a small menagerie of beloved wee yappers and cats....whom she adored. She allowed her brother and sister to be in her life...and almost nobody else.

She would never visit a doctor, and we all worried that she had lung cancer, what with the wracking cough.

When she decided to retire, instead of acknowledging her sadness at leaving us, we got months of increasingly alienating behaviour.

She yelled at us. She bit our heads off. She used the "f you" sign I had so carefully taught her (she used to use the wrong finger). She refused to train her replacement. We walked on eggshells...and the braver of us commented that this was about grief.....and had to pick our heads up from the floor yet again.


She refused to have a farewell.....she said she would not have any gifts (two of us smuggled a glorious standard rose in an achingly lovely pot around to her place while she was at work on her last day...and EVERYONE gave her a personal present.......)


A few months later she sent me a letter, saying I was right, she couldn't face leaving us all, and had been through a terrible time after she left when she really fell apart, but was better now.


Now and then we heard she was having a lovely time......her garden was glorious, she had a new dog, she was loving her retirement.....she let her hair go white.


We all kept missing her.


True to form, she did not go to the doctor with her cancer until it was unavoidable. I hear she spent nine weeks in hospital, insisted on going home, told her brother to go out for a while, got all her animals onto her bed, cuddled them, and died. They were all still curled up together when her brother found her...the animals asleep, Colleen peacefully dead.


Just as she wanted.

Wow.


She sounds like a treasure. And achingly human. Who wouldn't want such a eulogy?

She was.


Oh, and she had a great sense of humour...I used to adore making her laugh until she cried and lost all the careful containment she tried to maintain at all times.


I kept hoping I could make her laugh until she farted....

A beautiful soul, dlowan. Thank you for giving us a glimpse of her.

The world is a smaller place since her death.

Hold your dominion.