Small anecdotes about my office.
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The office across from us was having cake. Damn them.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that I loath my job. I don't hate it; that's too strong. No, I loath it.
loath [lohth, lohth]–adjective
unwilling; reluctant; disinclined; averse: to be loath to admit a mistake.
On my way back to work from a break- reluctantly - I was walking down the hall and saw the people in the other office space having cake. To quote one of my favorite comedians, Maria Bamford, "you could almost hear the happy scrape of plastic fork against paper plate." The people in that office looked happy. I used to be that happy. Our company used to celebrate birthdays in a two-month grouping. My company used to care about morale.
"I hate you, other office space," I thought to myself. "I don't loath you; I hate you." I hate you for bringing home clear that I should be in a different job.
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Today the big wigs from the bank that owns my company are in the office. The previous week we had cleaning crews come in every night after we all left the building for three nights straight. They mostly super duper cleaned the carpets. We had to remove everything from the floor to aid in this task. I forgot during the middle day of the three and had a sign waiting for me on my chair, reminding me to pick up my things off the floor. How nice.
My area actually needed the cleaning the most. About a month prior to this I had spilled milk all over myself. I spilled milk into my lap. My pants were splattered with milk stains, my chair was soaked in milk, and the carpet underneath had a nice puddle of milk. This happened when I accidently knocked over the Silo cup I was using as a bowl for my bowl of Corn Flakes.
I usually eat breakfast before I get to work. However, when I wake up too late for breakfast, I buy a pint of 2% milk and quickly eat my rushed "bowl" of cereal before 8am. I am also very good at not spilling things around my desk. Not on that morning. That morning in particular I had to carefully pick out of the carpet miniscule specks of Corn Flakes and soak up the milk with a ream of paper towels. My pants dried pretty quickly and the wet spots were hardly noticeable. I also grabbed a new chair.
As the big wigs walked through my area, they did not notice a dirty carpet. This is because it was indeed clean. They also did not notice the chair in the corner of the room. Good thing too, because this chair still has a milk stain on it.
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As I mentioned before, my company moved to our new office space back in December. On the second day at the new space, my co-worked threw a fit and quit in a huff. He was the mail room clerk. Until we hired a new clerk, I did the mail. That lasted 2 months. During that time my own daily work created a nice back log. Only recently have I worked through that mound of work and am close to being caught up.
Now that my desktop is almost clean, I was able to get my new cork board put in behind my computer screen. Before this, a white wall was behind my monitor. Now I have a nice beige three foot by five foot cork board to look at and pin papers too. This isn't much, but it's enough to make me slightly happier at work.
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I have to cover the reception desk during her lunch break. Most customers that call will be transfered to customer service. Around 99% of the call that come to the reception desk. Why they don't just all go to customer service in the first place is beyond me. After all, this is an office and logic and offices don't always coexist. I've gotten pretty good and not letting customers get me angered. Today I had a lady mildly cuss and I pointed it out by asking her "please to not cuss." I guess she thought "God damn" wasn't a cuss because that polite request set her off. She objected to cursing, cursed some more, wanted to speak to a manager, and threatened to cancel her policy and go to the Better Business Bureau. I quickly transfered her call but I still felt a hot wave of distress for a good 5 minutes after I transfered the call. I somehow felt personally attacked on some level or had my sanity questioned when I labeled "God damn" as a cuss.
But that lady's got nothing on the dude who called in a few months ago and immediately berated me and my company for having no one that spoke English and being based in India. When I told him that those thing were not the case and that we were located in Chicago, he then made a wonderfully racist comment against Hispanics. I had fun chewing him out, telling him "I've never been so insulted in my life" and "you should be ashamed as an American for saying such things" before hanging up on him.
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