First crappy job 5

Let’s get this baby wrapped up and put to bed! Go over the hill and through the dell to read the other four parts.
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So our adventure resumes with the heroine as she picked herself off the floor while embarrassed, sore, and embarrassed. When she finally made her blind way from the darkened depths of Storage Hell to the first floor, she realized she must have done a Rip Van Winkle because things had changed in her employment status.

Not really. I just realized that I hate writing series posts and I’m covering all aspects in this single writing. You’ll find out the reason at the end.

For the entire year, I slaved at that copier and finally my perseverance paid off. Or rather, I saved the company’s ass because I noticed a mistake in three contracts that would have made them lose mega-bucks. In gratitude, they promoted me to the . . . drum roll, please . . . ba-dada-dada-boom!

Clerical position.

Now, not only did I have my duties as copy person, file person, and retriever of paperwork, I also created spreadsheets for the monthly budget, ordered supplies, ate lunch with vendors, shopped at Sam’s Club during business hours with the assistant executive, updated the computer systems, and read through projects to make sure they were appropriate to take on, which meant skimming through the pages because EVERYTHING was an appropriate project - even the 50,000page proposal from the crazy war veteran who had crazy theories about a crazy secret government cult brainwashing the American people. He came up with this theory while sitting naked in his kitchen with two puppies licking his genitals under the table as he polished his rifles.

No, I’m NOT JOKING.

So who did I have to murder to get all these tasks? I’LL NEVER TELL, YOU FILTHY COPPERS! Er, I mean no one. During the year I worked at this company, we had four people quit in just our department, plus the firing: Tech guy Ralph, Manager Annie, In-house Terry, and two assistant managers when Bill got upgraded to the manager’s position. Worse, we only had two hirings - the assistant managers. The company was too cheap to get anyone for the other positions. So secretary Sara took over the tech guy’s position with my help and I took on some duties of the manager’s position.

But wait! Didn’t we already have a manager?

Yes . . . and no. Manager Bill believed that once he got upgraded he now had all the perks granted as if he had an executive job, which meant arriving late every day and taking two-week vacations when only scheduled for three-days off. Since no one knew whether the assistant managers would just off and quit, they needed someone reliable who would actually arrive at work and be coherent enough to do the tasks.

Well, at least I showed up. The coherent part was up for debate. My mind was higher than a kite at my desk every day, and I found the spacebar on my keyboard was soft enough to make the perfect pillow for an afternoon nap.

Stupid plants.

I had (have) major allergies. Hay fever. Pollen sends me into sneezing fits with a runny nose and watery eyes. Unfortunately, the second floor was the Amazon jungle. We had potted plants everywhere. They even had a miniature palm tree. And whenever someone from the other departments received a houseplant, instead of taking the damn thing home they dropped it off on our floor because we had the extra office space.

Of course we had the extra office space. People kept quitting.

So I would get off the bus in the mornings and immediately head to the nearby drugstore to pick up a bottled drink to down the allergy medication. Unfortunately, with the quirks of my body, any time I take anything in pill form I need to take a nap afterward. I’ll even sleep after swallowing aspirin.

Now, I know what my readers are thinking. Why, Michelle! You had the perfect dream job. Basically, you were the manager while hobnobbing with the executives. You got free meals from the vendors. You shopped. And you could dope up while taking naps during the day. Best of all, if anything bad happened, you could point a finger at it being the REAL manager’s fault for his lackluster performance. Why would you ever want to quit there?

Four reasons.

1: They locked me into my salary for the clerical position and they don’t offer pay incentives despite all the added tasks I took on to keep the department running.

2: I would have to technically quit and get rehired to negotiate for a higher salary, which meant having the interview with the manager Bill who KNEW the situation and didn’t want me around to eventually take his job.

3: The executives were crazy.

4: The executives were crazy.

Any management people who had the secretary/tech person check the batteries for all office equipment in the entire building to find out which types were used and how much charge was left inside each (while the secretary was on a deadline in typing contracts) were crazy. There was no sugarcoating it. At any time, on a whim, they had the people in the Promotions department doing stupid tasks. It was the reason the manager quit. Annie had better things to do than count the pens in the filing cabinets to find out how many blue ones we had versus black ones when she had a desk overloaded with proposals needing sent out. In-house Terry had better things to do than go through a box of old floppy discs to find out what was on each and make a list when her real job involved reading proposals.

And I had better things to do than work three separate job positions while only getting paid for one. So I quit.
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Sorry for giving you such an untidy, unfinished post. But I have unexpected family business to attend to for several days. Be back soon! Scheduled post on Monday.

Edit to add: Silly me didn't say where it was I worked at. Well... it was a subsidy book publisher... or maybe a proctologist office? I could never figure that out.