deird_lj

My job would be an excellent outlet for grumpy people.


"Be unpleasant to people" is practically part of my job description. Really, they could get ideal employees by advertising "Must Have A Horrible Personality".

Why? Because I have no power.


The larger part of my job involves getting people who work for another company to do things for the Minister's Office - things they are actually supposed to be doing anyway. The only problem is, I can't actually do anything to them if they won't do what I ask them to.

So I basically have two options.
1) Bluff, and pretend I can do something nasty to them.
2) Be horrible until they give in.

I spent most of today repeatedly ringing someone's office number, and also repeatedly ringing his mobile number, and sending him increasingly nasty emails, in the vain hope that he'll decide it's not worth dodging my horribleness any longer, and actually do his job.


*sighs*

This is not the sort of thing that leaves me in a nice and happy mood for the rest of my day...

So, yesterday my job completely changed.

I haven't switched jobs, exactly - but my boss has rearranged EVERY single responsibility in our team, so we're now all about to be doing stuff we've never heard of.

No longer will I be minute-taker, track-inspector, or... well, anything else I've ever mentioned. Instead, I will be doing stuff I don't know jack about.

This is going to be interesting...

You know what? In some ways, I am a very sensible person.

One of those ways is that, when my body starts showing signs of maybe being about to get sick, I don't push through the pain and keep on plugging away until I'm actually collapsing on the floor and coughing up blood.
Instead, I go "Huh. About to be sick. I'll take a sick day, and hopefully lots of rest and relaxation will prevent any sickness."

It's a good strategy. Instead of having a week away from work and feeling dreadful the entire time, I have a day off, feel mildly unwell, and then am back to work feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next morning.

( stupid sick leave system )

Let it be known that, on this the twenty-eighth day of May, I completed the task of writing minutes for a meeting which I attend monthly, and emailed them to all attenders of this meeting.

And I completed them within two hours of arriving at work, only one day after the meeting was held.

LET THE WORLD REJOICE!

As someone who normally finishes writing minutes about two days before the next meeting, this really is a brilliant accomplishment.



Now, though, I'm rather worried that my boss will decide that, clearly, I can write minutes really fast, and will start expecting me to do this well every month...

...so I just spent an entire day pulling staples out of pieces of paper.

With no internet, and no music. *sobs with boredom*

At the moment, in the lead-up to Christmas, work is either insanely hectic, or duller than it's ever been before.

Both of these, alternately, in quick succession.

You see, everyone is frantically trying to get all their work down before the holidays delay everything for three weeks, so we're getting HUGE amounts of paperwork sent in, without any warning.

At the same time, because there's about to be three weeks of holidays, there's a whole lot of stuff we usually have to get done that, right now, can be delayed until mid-January.
So we end up just sitting around, doing nothing, waiting for the next frantic paperwork delivery to send everything insane again.

It's odd, really.

Most of this week has been entirely uneventful, resulting in my running out of stuff to read on the internet, and resorting to reading people's old LJ posts...

This morning I did a course in CPR.

I am now certified* in rolling people into recovery positions, clearing vomit/food/dentures/etc out of their mouths, whacking their chests in medically-approved ways to keep their blood flowing, and using defibrillators (the new non-doctor friendly variety that have really helpful diagrams, and voice activation to tell you what to do next: "ATTACH THE LEFT PAD", "STEP AWAY FROM THE PATIENT SO THAT YOU DON'T GET ELECTROCUTED", "CONTINUE CPR", and so forth).

Apparently the rules of CPR change quite regularly. Our instructor made a point of telling us all the things that were different compared to CPR three years ago, and all the stuff that might be changing once our medicine catches up with Japan.
From what he said, it looks like we now think the guidelines from 10 years ago got a lot of stuff wrong - and now we think that the people in the 70s might have been right all along...

*ie, I have a little piece of paper saying that I can

When I become undisputed ruler of all mankind, I'm going to create a law saying that all engineers have to undertake a three year course in English (or the language of their choice) before being allowed to write reports.

Until then, I'll just have to be content with the following public announcement.

 I've been attending lots of meetings about Exciting Rail Projects lately. And today I suddenly realised how weird it was that I was sitting there saying "Oh, it's only a small project. $600,000 or so." when that's more than I'll make in the next ten years!

How my brain manages to compartmentalise like that, I'm really not sure.

Sure-fire way to get me yelling at you despite the fact that we're in different cars so you logically can't hear a word I'm saying:

1) get in your car
2) drive down the freeway at 110k
3) light a cigarette, and hold that in one hand
4) call one of your friends, and hold the phone in the other hand
5) start checking your street directory while doing all of the above
and finally...
6) tailgate me

When will these people learn some common sense?


I spent the last two days at a work conference. One of those events where you go to a hotel, play trust games and team-building exercises, and end up with several reams of butcher's paper fill up with random points from brainstorming sessions.
Fun, but time-consuming.

The hotel rooms were pretty standard, for the most part. But the bathrooms were... well, think about those bedrooms with the built-in wardrobes hidden behind full-length sliding mirrors. Got the idea? Now imagine that you slide back the right mirror and there, as you'd expect, is a wardrobe. Then you slide back the left mirror, and lo and behold, there's a bathroom.
Very clever idea, really, but certainly took some getting used to.


I got back last night, and babysat the boys all evening. Was fun.