Weird Rants To Help Keep You Sane!

It might get better if we stopped pulling it....

Fine thanks Pdawg. aches a little sometimes and I'm frustrated with mylack of mobility but yeah I'm getting along.

Have ya got anyone around to wait on you?

Yeah, sure, if you say so.

Just don't talk to some of the old folks in Chicago, because they don't know it yet.

I haven't got the energy to do a real rant today. But if I did, and having just scanned the 'new posts' page, I'd do one on all the similar posts. How many do we have about soy & homosexuality, all stemming from the same story? Obviously, we have a group of posters who don't familiarize themselves with what others are talking about.

And then there are the perrenial favourites - abortion and the existence, or not, of God.

............................... ennui sets in .....................................................

Where's your promised work rant, dlowan?

So a week ago I was sitting pretty. Really close to being finished with Christmas shopping, and plenty of time to get things shipped. Planned to go to Pittsburgh for a quick trip, free rental car and free hotel room, could stop at Ikea, why not (E.G. was giving a talk there). Took some preparation, laundry, whatnot. Left Sunday, returned Monday night. TERRIBLE night Sunday, involving me sleeping on the floor (long story involving the two children I live with), and then mucho driving Monday, completely whupped and recovering Tuesday, attempting to get back in the saddle Wednesday but failing (see yesterday's rant), and then today facing the fact that I have accomplished pretty much nothing, Christmas-wise, in a whole week. ARGH, yet again.

It's not desperate yet but I'm feeling a bit panicky. The problem is that the easy stuff is gotten out of the way first, and then when I'm 90% done I'm all "oooh, I'm 90% done already, yay," but the problem is that the last 10% is the killer 10%. Like my mother-in-law. WHAT to get for my mother-in-law?! I haven't the slightest. I have a set of notecards I had made for her (a photo I took at the cabin, which belongs to her side of the family), but that's pretty small, need something else. Maybe the new Mayle book, if that's not too too I dunno cliche.

And then I found out today that while we have gifts from sozlet to her favorite cousin, her other cousin got her a gift, too, and she has nothing for him and he'll feel left out so we have to come up with something and and and and...

I'll live. I just hate this part of the season. And I especially hate that I'm in charge of coming up with gifts for everything anyone in the family "gives." Well except for sozlet, she's coming along.

See, that's the thing I hate about Christmas. It just becomes this enormously stressful event for so many people (not enough time, not enough money, not enough good will, too many obligations) that it loses any redeeming meaning it might have.

My favorite holiday is Labor Day. Just a stinking day off of the folks who made it so we could get days off work (among other things). No gifts, no obligatory visits, just blissfully unfettered time.

(No sympathy to those folks who join the herd and try to make it, say, the one camping trip of the year. None at all.)

I don't have time for my work rant...I have to go to work.

Which is, if you think about it, a work rant.

Patiodog, yeah, I know. My panicky periods get shorter and less panicky every year but I haven't eradicated them yet. Maybe next year. If everyone lived nearby it would be much simpler, it's the shipping (getting it there in time without paying an arm and a leg) that always kills me. Then again if everyone lived nearby that would be its own cause for panic...

Ok...work rant...which may go over a few posts, as I get distracted, or have to go.


My not so new workplace is driving me NUTS!!!!!

I am not sure if this is really

a feature of the place,

or a feature of me needing a holiday really badly (I am getting a few days off over christmas)

or a feature of my previous workplace being so utterly extraordinary, (most of the time), in terms of intellectual delight, intense support for creative work and for your work generally (from most colleagues, increasingly less and less from management) and just really, really liking most of the people, over 17 years of many changes in personnel (there was heaps there that drove me nuts too...mainly just how unrelentingly harder and harder the work got over that time, and the massive deterioration in upper management)


or a feature of being new when I was so used to being, well, frankly, a lynch pin


Or all of the above! Probably all of the above.


a. I feel as though I am in a therapeutic backwater, intellectually. The main focus of the place is forensic, with therapy kind of tacked on. A few of us do purely therapeutic work, but I wonder if there needs to be a certain percentage of therapy being done to provide a critical mass for there to be a real, shared buzz about it?

Also, I do think it possible that where I was before there was a level of trust where people generally felt really free to talk absolutely openly about mistakes, things that didn't go well, feeling utterly stuck etc....which was something we had created over time, and a team norm that I really valued and was able to help create and foster. I think this is likely very unusual...it was certainly not there in our "sister" team in th esame organization...

I think in my "new" team people are reluctant, as a group, to make themselves vulnerable.

There WAS a great moment at lunch the other day when I said to a colleague who shares the children of a particular family with me, that a session had gone awfully. This led, to my joy, to a general discussion about cases that are "stuck"...with a number of people looking really energised and "lighter" as they said things like: "Oh, does that happen to you, too!!!! I feel so much better!" This included a young woman who is one of the seniors, who always looks incredibly stressed and burdened (because she is, the senior job there is awful) sharing a stuck case of hers, and looking really animated and happy for one of the first times I have seen her do so.

Maybe things can gradually be changed?


Although


b. The clinical consultation I get really, really sucks.


Mind you, it had for at least ten of the previous years, where I was before, but the openness and calibre of colleagues managed to fill a lot of the gap.


There is hardly any clinical consultation, to begin with......and what there is is constantly interrupted by phone calls, people coming in to get crisis decisions adjudicated, stuff like that.

Now, the person supervising me is a great person, and skilled clinician, but she is also the boss....and it is a crisis response place. She's not being a bastid, she is doing her job: but, in my view, her job cannot include clinical supervision (it can include admin supervision, I think) because its nature renders quality clinical supervision untenable from her.


I have raised this, and had an external supervisor lined up (which she did not know), but she was quite distressed and wants to try to change things.


I went with this (in my head as a trial) and, of course, it is not working....but I am going to have to give it a few more months before I say anything again. Grrrrrrr........really, I think people ought to be able to self identify, at her level, when circumstances make them unable to do something important!!!!! Meanwhile I am feeling shitty and resentful



Partly for a reason which I only really identified the day before yesterday.


SHE ALMOST NEVER SAYS ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT YOUR WORK!

And when she does, she kind of half withdraws it.....


I think this is likely partly a product of the supervision she has had herself, partly a product of the constant crisis hurry and stress, and partly the nature of the agency, so that her mind is always on medico legal defensiveness and whether a decision may have been wrong.


My notion of supervision is that you really give a person space and that you give them what you want them to give the clients.

This means really noticing hard work and success, building on skills and strengths as well as working through problems and mistakes.


I am usually, in the speedy production line of the bit of attention I get, only getting to deal with things I think I am stuck on etc.....and almost none of that, too.



IT AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH......


For anyone.....it is a general complaint, not just mine.

I recognize all you're saying, Dlowan, though not having been in your field. Keep up the good rant.

For you deb.

bend away

Reading along & sympathizing, Deb.
Sounds like your new work place place could do with a big injection of new blood! Sounds very stagnant & stuck in its ways!

And was this the same boss who astonished you with a compliment on your work the other day? (add "lacking in generosity" to the list of her defects. :wink: )

Ever considered that you might be a threatening presence to some others in the place? You might just be a little too smart & on the ball for the operation!

Thankee, folks.

They bain't stagnant, but very, very pressured.


Stil drives me nuts, though.

Understandably.

New rant!


About the totally ******* useless clerical person who is assigned to clinical staff (eg me) where I now work.


She will do NOTHING for us.


Example:



I am teaching tomorrow....

I have to rewrite a previous presentation, and add to it....then print the results out and then photocopy the printout onto transparencies for an overhead projector.


I work on the seventh floor.


Our printer isn't working (AGAIN).

So...I will need to attach the presentation to an email, send it downstairs, get it printed down there, then photocopy it.


Yesterday, I let "our" clerical person know I would be doing that and asked her to print it out for me. (This involves opening the attachment and clicking "print". My view is that a normal clerical assistant would by now have offered to do to do the transparencies for me.)



Long discussion about could I not attach my computer to the other printer up there?


I explain that I have already tried that.


She says but have I tried this and that?


I say (very impatiently by now, since I have a client waiting) that I have had the IT people come up and try this and that, and it can't be done without new cabling.


She challenges this, and I say that I have no time to discuss it further, and thank her for her upcoming assistance.



Later that day, I send down an urgent legal letter to her to print. (Which she does.)




I notice her printer is very slow......so I am mulling re sending the presentation to another clerical person, and ask if that person's computer is attached to the fast printer?


Yes.


I mull further that it won't be a big issue for that person, as she only needs to click print, and can leave the rest to me.


Well, no, says the eager worker I am talking to, that isn't so, it wil take more work than that.


Oh, say I, alarmed...and imagining big problems I have not thought of....what more will it take?


And she says, utterly seriously, as though this is a big problem: "She will have to open the email and open the attachment."



Well, bugger me. I suppose that is worth higher duties pay in this crazy place.

Jeez, Deb, give the kid a break. She had to open the e-mail AND open the attachment. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Poor Deb. You got my sympathies, kid.

[quote[Staff of the Department work to achieve the health targets set out in (EDIT) the Strategic Plan.

We are always working to find better ways to reach the goals of healthy and fit South Australians, who can count on a well-managed system providing them with good health education, prevention and care.

The Department's role is to set directions, formulate policy and strategic planning, and monitor the performance of the State's health services and system.

We are implementing First Steps Forward, the Government's response to the Generational Health Review, by:

* providing health services closer to home
* giving greater priority to prevention, early intervention and health promotion
* strengthening primary health care services, with more opportunities for general practitioners, allied health workers and nurses to work together so that citizens have easier access to their services
* improving health services for the most vulnerable people in the community - Aboriginal people, children and young people, people with a mental illness and the frail aged, and
* developing a health system focusing on the needs of people rather than those of health institutions.

We do this by working in conjunction with agencies that provide health services, as well as with other government and non-government organisations.

Our key approach is inclusiveness. We work across all levels of Government, the community, and with the regional health services.

We are committed to ensuring a quality, safe and accessible health care system, and to improving the health and well-being of all South Australians.[/quote]


Nowhere, I repeat nowhere, does it say anything about photo copying printing opening attatchments or transparencies.
I think your out of order expecting clerical staff to actually
do anything aside from organise social outings after work and baby showers for collegues.

Would you like to send it to me I could get it done and post it back? It would probably be quicker.

Heh heh.


I smegged up the photocopier trying to do it, and had to go downstairs to Education, where THEIR clerical person spent an hour, standing over the machine and manually feeding it transparencies, while opening and closing its orifices after every second feed and unjamming it.


SHE is getting a present from me tomorrow.


I left her laziness struggling to unjam OUR photocopier.



I have more grey hairs, but it is done!



BTW, our other clerical staff work very hard.

However, we are on our SEVENTH baby here in one and a half years (number 5 safely delivered last week)...and the clinical staff organise the farewells and baby gifts!