Extremities: Work!

I'll just tell The Story of Today here as I told it to Mr. X ...


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Today has been one of those days that try the worthiness of any paycheck. I think I told you yesterday about the situation with the wrong name on a new hire. Today, I came in and began to tackle the outstanding issues, because I needed to do that to distract myself. (My sick friend) has been on my mind, and I was pushing through.  I know I blow on and on about how great I am at work - but since coming here, I really DO take especial pride in it, and put in very high effort as well. So today I determined to deal with my weepiness and distraction, and beat on it with a lot of very concrete, very useful action. I lobbed a lot of "please confirm" and "let me know what to do" around and felt next steps should be progress.

By 2:00 I could see three new hires whose accounts (though background is confirmed cleared) were still not enabled. I had also just received word that the huge several-days of meetings I'd set and begun firming up had been blown out of the water. So I'm working to (a) reach out on the accounts, and (b) find new meeting space, which in a twelve-bank system spanning the nation, I probably need not tell you is not a minor job. And (coworker) is pinging me a LOT asking about progress on (b) - to the point where I sort of gave her a sit-down via text and told her I was having to prioritize the new hires' accounts, and was working on the meeting as I could.  In a few minutes, I was midway down my existing list, and compiling the (grim/lack of) results already. I fired those off and commenced a new round of calls on the accounts.

In the end, it took until midafternoon for me to winkle out that the account contact was out - so I followed her voice mail's instructions and left a message at the service center. Who "usually respond within an hour." An hour and a half later, I am calling again, and receive the instruction to call the central Help Desk. Which: no. This is almost as good as the time I did call the central HD and received the instruction, regarding my broken printer, "contact your department admin."

Sigh.

So today has been a war zone, and ever-increasingly stressful. I just received my ping that my 5:00 "dailies" are due for my boss - a pinger I am usually ahead of by a couple of hours. I haven't even looked at his day tomorrow, so this could run me into overtime - I can't expect to get out of here anything like on time - and I've got grass to mow, and limited daylight to do it (though I don't think we did get the rain I was hearing about).

Oh and then there was the trip to the restroom, where one paper seat cover fell in before I could get situated.  The second - thanks to The Wonder of Modern Technology - auto-flushed even as I was READY (ahem) to get situated, but not quite there yet.  So I stood there and pulled out a third, so stressed at this point (and no puppies handy to poke in the eyeballs), literally screaming just a little bit from frustration.

Anyway. I finally reach a relevant human body on the new accounts and learn that the background clearance hasn't come through. Which I know I saw yesterday MORNING - and here we are, it's after 4:00 p.m. I reach out to HR and leave a message saying as sweetly (as someone can who is in an emotional state to gleefully poke puppies in the eye by now) as I can, please LET ME KNOW WHAT I CAN DO. I'm hardly off the phone when my phone rings again - and it's Relevant Human Body, saying, "gee, found that clearance - with so-and-so out, I hadn't looked today - hey thanks for the reminder."

Bits of me keep passing out at this point, and I believe my brains and some strategically important teeth and organs fell out on my desk.

So ... because so-and-so was out of the office ... nobody LOOKED FOR CLEARANCES ... ??? Is what you are telling me?

Yeah. You are welcome for that REMINDER.

Within ten minutes, three confirmations banged into my inbox in QUICK succession. Bam! Bam! Bam! New acconts, all enabled.

Dang.

Off to set up the dailies and GTFO if you get my drift. The confirmations did help me out, but just having the backwash of stress like this is enough to make you want to bolt.