#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - what's worse than mind-numbingly boring data entry tasks?
...*practice* mind-numbingly boring data entry tasks, that's what.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - I feel as if I've been yoinked out of the driver's seat of a very fast sports car and stuffed into the rear-facing jump seat of a 1982 station wagon trundling down a single-lane dirt road.
Well, if this team won't let me drive on the highway, hopefully I can find a position with another team that'll let me do more interesting work. I talked to some folks today about that. Fingers crossed.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - one of my coworkers just messaged me to say that they miss writing in the template I'd created for our former team. Aww. 💚
The new company's template isn't *bad* - it's had a lot of thought put into it and much of it makes sense to me even without having it explained - but it's not *mine*.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - O, the glorious moment: A particular coworker whose writing is difficult to read and untangle asked me if I had time to look at a white paper for him, and I got to say "all of my work gets assigned through [New Manager] now since I've been re-org'd to [group]."
Ahhh, what a delight to consider that I may never have to proof/edit his white papers again :)
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - The company is having a "team photo" competition (very much themed as "year-end highlights")... and someone on my new team has sent out this meeting invitation:
"I thought it would be fun to get on a teams call, have everyone turn their cameras on, be festive (Christmas hat, Christmas sweater, funny glasses, etc.) and take a screen shot of the team to submit in the competition. Please try to join for a quick cheers/Christmas photo. 😊"
If I say anything, I'm sure I will get a very false-understanding "well you can have something for Chanukah in the photo then" and that is... not the point. At all.
And like. This is my new team. Is this really how I want to start off my interactions with them? No. No it is not.
(I am not looking for advice about this situation.)
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - not only has the proposal manager not apologized to me, she did not even acknowledge my response to her.
I spent 11 hours proofreading today because apparently the proposal manager wants to submit it tomorrow, even though it's not due until Friday. But there is one section still not finished, so how is that going to work?
I commented to the coordinator, "Wait, so we had to work late tonight so that we could submit tomorrow, instead of working normal length days today and tomorrow and submitting on Friday? I see. Okay."
She agrees that this seems incredibly hasty.
I'm trying not to be too salty. I'm not succeeding very well.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - Got to my desk this morning to find an email from the proposal manager asking me not to do something that I didn't do (basically, accusing me of doing it), with some passive-aggressive "all I asked you to do was $thing" wording and a guilt trip about how she and two other people spent more than ten minutes trying to figure out what I'd done (that I hadn't done) - which she could have easily seen for herself by pulling up the previous version of the document, which is in SharePoint with version control.
Instead, she asked ME to pull up the previous version and send her a screenshot of what it used to look like. But nowhere in this missive did she tell me which document or where to find it.
The coordinator helped me find the document. I sent the proposal manager before-and-after screenshots showing that I hadn't done the thing she was accusing me of doing.
I'm sure the appropriate thing for me to do next is to acknowledge to myself that it was a misunderstanding on her part because she's been staring at this thing for too long, and let it go. Instead, I'm still all shaky and furious.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - I have to work this weekend, proofreading sections of a proposal that I already proofread prior to their review last week. But now they've been reviewed and changed, so they need proofreading before going to review next week... after which they will have been changed, and need more proofreading. I have no idea how this process makes any sense, but I'm pretty sure that a document going into Gold Team review should already be 99% finished... and these are, well, not.
I don't wanna read 55 pages of Quality Management Plan again, but I think there's just me and one other person to do all the proof/edit work on this whole proposal, and each section is supposed to get looked at by two people... so one of them is gonna be me.
Oh well. The hours I book this weekend will be flexed to making my Thanksgiving weekend even longer.
#TalesFromTheHomeOffice - One of the hardest lessons I'm still incorporating is that if I teach people to do for themselves the very very simple things they're asking of me, then I won't be needed anymore.
For clarity, my definition of "very very simple" is a task which takes less time to accomplish (if one knows how) than the time it takes to ask someone else to do it.
ink and yarn