Well, school started two weeks ago, and I'm already behind. But I have every intention to use this, the three day Labor Day Holiday weekend to get all caught up. Wish me luck!!!
~~ The Overscheduled Wig
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Barenaked and Alive
TORONTO (AP) — Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson and three others have survived a float-plane crash near Bancroft, in southeastern Ontario, the band's manager, Adam Smith, said in an e-mail.
The private float-plane went down Sunday afternoon. The singer, who received pilot's license in 2005, was behind the controls.
Robertson's friend Gord Peel told The Intelligencer that the other passengers were Robertson's wife, Natalie, and their friends Julie and Jeff Jones.
Smith said Sunday night in an e-mail that everyone was fine, but would make no other comment.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada was assessing the scene of the accident, spokeswoman Julie Leroux said Monday.
~~ The Wig, who's glad everyone made it home okay.
The private float-plane went down Sunday afternoon. The singer, who received pilot's license in 2005, was behind the controls.
Robertson's friend Gord Peel told The Intelligencer that the other passengers were Robertson's wife, Natalie, and their friends Julie and Jeff Jones.
Smith said Sunday night in an e-mail that everyone was fine, but would make no other comment.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada was assessing the scene of the accident, spokeswoman Julie Leroux said Monday.
~~ The Wig, who's glad everyone made it home okay.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A Shitty Day, A Pleasant Evening
It is a rare day that I come home after 8 hours of work, a cross town commute in rush hour traffic, and 3 hours of dry law classes, in a good mood. And never in my life did I think that today would be one of those days. Because at work, I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
It all started with needing to play catch up because the systems were down for the first half of yesterday, didn't come back up until after I had left at noon for class. Which means that I had to play make up as if I had missed a day of work, without the benefit of playing hooky the previous day. In addition, about half of my clients were inherited from a rep who was on leave for several months before leaving all together, and all her former clients have all these time sensitive issues that they email her about 3 months ago, but because she's been out, they haven't been addressed. So I have about 3 months of work to do on 200 clients, most of which is time sensitive. Then, I was going over my teams errors, and some weird errors came up for the client that my trainee is running corrections on. On his first day on the phones, he inherited 150 clients from a rep who was fired for doing absolutely nothing for his clients. The former rep's supervisor gave very complicated corrections to my trainee, corrections that as the former rep's supervisor, he should have done himself before passing the account off to a brand new rep. Not only did he dump these corrections on my trainee, but he gave him incorrect instructions as far as which check date to use when entering the corrections. Plus, the whole point of the corrections was to back out wage info that was entered with incorrect coding, correct the coding, then reenter the info. Well, the supervisor changed the coding before giving my trainee the corrections to do. Meaning that the two weeks he spent backing everything out was a waste of time, because now we have to reenter it, change the coding back to what it was originally, back everything out again to bring the whole account to zero, enter the correct coding, and reissue everything. By jumping the gun and changing the coding early, the supervisor created 2x as much work for my trainee, and more work for me. Work that I don't have time to do. So after all these frustrations, and 45 minutes in rush hour traffic, I was prepared for a mind-numbing evening in class.
I had very low expectations regarding the professor's ability to make my Tuesday Thursday classes interesting. Administrative Law and Legal Ethics were my classes tonight. And right away, Admin surpassed my every expectation, because the prof managed to justify giving the class free beverages (sodas, juice, even beer) as an object lesson in how widespread Admin law is in our lives. And that beer made all the difference. In addition, in Ethics, the prof told us that the final would be an objective, multiple choice exam, (i love objective exams) and then we had a fun problem to discuss using only our preconceived notions of the tensions btwn morality and ethics. Then, on the way to my car, I ran into Monique, my buddy from my history class last Spring. I left with a smile on my face, not because the day was finally over, but because I was in a great mood.
Now I'm printing out the form that I need to have notarized to become a notary, because it's worth the $10 fee every for years to be able to notarize my own stuff.
So I'm winding down my evening, watching the balance beam finals on the Olympics, reveling in my cheap beer buzz, and smiling.
~~ The Wig, in a rare, post-class good mood
It all started with needing to play catch up because the systems were down for the first half of yesterday, didn't come back up until after I had left at noon for class. Which means that I had to play make up as if I had missed a day of work, without the benefit of playing hooky the previous day. In addition, about half of my clients were inherited from a rep who was on leave for several months before leaving all together, and all her former clients have all these time sensitive issues that they email her about 3 months ago, but because she's been out, they haven't been addressed. So I have about 3 months of work to do on 200 clients, most of which is time sensitive. Then, I was going over my teams errors, and some weird errors came up for the client that my trainee is running corrections on. On his first day on the phones, he inherited 150 clients from a rep who was fired for doing absolutely nothing for his clients. The former rep's supervisor gave very complicated corrections to my trainee, corrections that as the former rep's supervisor, he should have done himself before passing the account off to a brand new rep. Not only did he dump these corrections on my trainee, but he gave him incorrect instructions as far as which check date to use when entering the corrections. Plus, the whole point of the corrections was to back out wage info that was entered with incorrect coding, correct the coding, then reenter the info. Well, the supervisor changed the coding before giving my trainee the corrections to do. Meaning that the two weeks he spent backing everything out was a waste of time, because now we have to reenter it, change the coding back to what it was originally, back everything out again to bring the whole account to zero, enter the correct coding, and reissue everything. By jumping the gun and changing the coding early, the supervisor created 2x as much work for my trainee, and more work for me. Work that I don't have time to do. So after all these frustrations, and 45 minutes in rush hour traffic, I was prepared for a mind-numbing evening in class.
I had very low expectations regarding the professor's ability to make my Tuesday Thursday classes interesting. Administrative Law and Legal Ethics were my classes tonight. And right away, Admin surpassed my every expectation, because the prof managed to justify giving the class free beverages (sodas, juice, even beer) as an object lesson in how widespread Admin law is in our lives. And that beer made all the difference. In addition, in Ethics, the prof told us that the final would be an objective, multiple choice exam, (i love objective exams) and then we had a fun problem to discuss using only our preconceived notions of the tensions btwn morality and ethics. Then, on the way to my car, I ran into Monique, my buddy from my history class last Spring. I left with a smile on my face, not because the day was finally over, but because I was in a great mood.
Now I'm printing out the form that I need to have notarized to become a notary, because it's worth the $10 fee every for years to be able to notarize my own stuff.
So I'm winding down my evening, watching the balance beam finals on the Olympics, reveling in my cheap beer buzz, and smiling.
~~ The Wig, in a rare, post-class good mood
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
PISSED THE FUCK OFF
My cubical mate, Josh, and I will take microbreaks from time to time, kick up our feet, and chat for a few minutes, just to stop looking at our computers. Well, sometime last week, someone took a picture of us in this position with their phone. Today, they decided to circulate that picture as a way to undermine us as members of a new project. We don't take phone calls, but we are responsible for 3x as many clients as those who are taking phone calls. But since our client base went up, and theirs went down, their availability requirement went up 15%, and most of them are kinda upset. So, Josh and I got called into an office today, not by our supervisor, or our supervisor's manager, both of whom are out of the office this week, but by one of the two supervisors who gets off on micromanaging other teams rather than their own. He pulled us in an office, and told us that if we wanted to stay on the new project, we needed to fill any time we had on our hands by helping our teammates or jumping in to take phone calls. He showed us the picture, and told us that it was going to the branch manager on Friday, and that we'll have to answer for ourselves.
The project started three days ago. The picture was taken last week. Last week, we had less than half the clients we do now, and were kicking back, waiting for the phone to ring. Neither one of us have had follow up problems, in fact, we were chosen for this project because of our great follow up skills. We are the two people on the team who, when a client asks to be reassigned for lack of follow up, are the person to whom the client is reassigned. We were tapped because our strength at works lies more in the follow up, and less in the customer service. So management gave us more follow up, and less customer service, and for the employees who excel at customer service, and are less reliable on follow up, were given more customer service responsibilities. It seems fair to me, but some blow hole didn't like that they didn't get picked, and decided to exact stupid, petty, childish revenge.
My annual review is in 4 weeks, and if I get reprimanded for some asshole's tainted version of the truth, and my raise is affected by this person's sophmoric prank, I'm seriously gonna have to kick some verbal ass. The way I figure, if I'm gonna get in trouble, I might as well do something to get in trouble for.
I hate office politics. There's no fucking point.
~~ One Pissed Off Wig
The project started three days ago. The picture was taken last week. Last week, we had less than half the clients we do now, and were kicking back, waiting for the phone to ring. Neither one of us have had follow up problems, in fact, we were chosen for this project because of our great follow up skills. We are the two people on the team who, when a client asks to be reassigned for lack of follow up, are the person to whom the client is reassigned. We were tapped because our strength at works lies more in the follow up, and less in the customer service. So management gave us more follow up, and less customer service, and for the employees who excel at customer service, and are less reliable on follow up, were given more customer service responsibilities. It seems fair to me, but some blow hole didn't like that they didn't get picked, and decided to exact stupid, petty, childish revenge.
My annual review is in 4 weeks, and if I get reprimanded for some asshole's tainted version of the truth, and my raise is affected by this person's sophmoric prank, I'm seriously gonna have to kick some verbal ass. The way I figure, if I'm gonna get in trouble, I might as well do something to get in trouble for.
I hate office politics. There's no fucking point.
~~ One Pissed Off Wig
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