Work Rant

Many of you may not know what I do because I don't often talk about work and well, it's kind of hard to explain.

In short, I am kind of like a librarian. Except I don't have books, I have blueprints and project documents. Manuals and records. I am a paper pusher.

One of the jobs I am tasked with is distribution of documents. I also get to dictate what constitutes an acceptable document. Prior to my position being created, it was not unheard of for an acceptable drawing to come in on a napkin. We have come a long way in 4 years.

Enter nightmare. director who is an old school engineer. who contracts to other old school engineers. the contractors constantly send me drawings with misspellings (yeah, coming from me, that says a lot) typos, lacking title blocks, project names, numbers, and once, with the Os in "look" filled in like eyeballs. I tell myself that at least they are electronic in CAD format. (even if sometimes they are drawn to scale in CAD format and have to be monkeyed with before they are useful to me) (this morning said OSE sent me files labelled simply VTV. I replied asking what they are. Need to know that so they can be recorded and filed.)

Then Director comes in. With some lovely drawings he did. On letter size graph paper. In pencil. Since I hold the archives, I generally reject pencil because it smears and fades. it is not at all permanent. That's why it can be ERASED.No project number. No title block. And when I requested CAD drawings, I was told to use these anyway. Never mind that he has staff who have CAD and can transfer the document. Never mind that OSE can do it too. I was told that pencil is archival.

The bossman said there is nothing I can do. It would be awfully nice to get some support. The big bossman won't do anything either. So basically, I have been tasked with putting out a good product, but I am not allowed to demand good materials. So I passed along the shit.

Arguing or refusing amounts to insubordination. So I just copied exactly what he gave me and stuck it in the boxes of the people I was supposed to give it to. I didn't check to make sure the copies were good, I didn't put a number or a recipient name on it. and I learned that my angry walk shakes the whole trailer. So at least if I can't make men quiver in their boots, at least I can shake a doublewide on it's footings.

One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Steven King. "If you don't have time to do something right, when are you going to have time to fix it?"

Of course, I am a very fortunate person in that the universe is always finding ways to cheer me up. So first coworker needs me to roll her butt with the lint roller which, made me goofy and embarrassed because neither of us is touchy feely and that's really getting into her personal space. (I touched her belly once when she was pregnant. I think that is all the physical contact I have had with her in two years) And we had a good giggle over it. Then I had the conversation with bossman...

B: yeah, this show where he eats all this weird stuff. He was in the Philippines and he ate, that baby duck thing. you know the, um, um, pun tang.

G: snort. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! you mean (giggle) Balut! AHAHAHAHAHAHA! (sniff)

B: Don't ever tell anyone I said that.

G: Oh no, I'm blogging it right now. heh. (sniff)