My job is as an assistant to a financial planner. She's certainly savvy when it comes to picking some good mutual funds and she's not just earned money for her clients but managed to protect them pretty well in this volatile market. It seems her life skills start and end there though. She fancies herself organized, she's a micro manager (on details that are not vital, while leaving the big things go), she's too anxious to be a good negotiator and she's at best, scatterbrained.

She loses everything. Literally, everything. She loses her keys, cell phone, documents, pens, post-it notes, rulers, calculators, her briefcase (full of client personal information) on a regular basis. She isn't technically savvy in the least and she continually screws up her computer. She makes odd choices and decisions in her rush to do something and then regrets it later. She cannot accept these flaws in herself, she doesn't see them, she argues for them.

Today we moved a co-worker's office from a small area she had set up to a new small area (it's a different configuration though, so somewhat better setup). This probably cost her a bundle with having to wire the office for the computer (they both though because there was a jack in there that it'd be fine until I tested it with the laptop and found it was dead). She had the phone hooked up in there but neglected to tell the guy to switch the intercom assignment and is astonished this person doesn't have the same intercom number. She bought new furniture for this person and is having shelves put in there. The best part? This is a part-time employee, she's in the office at most 2 days a week.

The other day I was sitting at my desk, doing work when the wheel on my chair broke. It just disintegrated. I dragged a spare chair in and it was too low, not adjustable and quite uncomfortable. My boss knew this because she had used that chair for a bit. I told her I needed a new chair and the part-timer says "why don't you drag my chair in and use it when I'm not here". I wanted to say "why don't you accept the fact that your fat ass would be better off walking to the shared printer instead of us having to buy you your own" but I didn't. I looked at my boss and said "I need a new chair, today" (I'd already been in the munchkin chair for a week and was ready to call out on workers' comp if she refused. That day we went to Staples, I found a good chair, on sale and very comfy, it was $129 (I negotiated the price, the store didn't have it on sale but the website did, so we got it for the sale price). My boss bought a printer for the part timer (which I picked out, she was going for a printer that had very expensive cartridges) and she bought herself a ruler, exactly like the one I bought for her a few weeks ago and she lost. Surprise.

As we were driving back to the office she said "we need to have some money coming in". I know this was in confidence to me and I felt bad because I don't think it was so much directed to the fact that I needed a chair but to the outlay of money overall. BUT...this is the same boss who doesn't come to the office before noon and she lives UPSTAIRS from the office. She called me at 9:30 this morning and said "I'll be down in 10 or 15 minutes". It was 11:00 before she came down and that's early for her. Then we spent the whole day listening to the part-timer whine and complain (I like the woman but I want to tell her to shut up already, she does complain about EVERYTHING). I'm sure in a few weeks they'll be something wrong with the new office.

But back to my boss. She gets 3 workers in to help with this move. Then she calls them off to do personal things for her, specifically to take some enormously heavy objects from her storage units and bring them up three flights of narrow victorian windings stairs to her guest room. The movers that brought the stuff from downstate refused to do it, so she hired some schmucks. They drag this stuff up and she decides she doesn't like it and makes them take it down 4 flights to the basement. 2 of these guys had never met her before, and they all had the same impression when they left that I have. She doesn't really think things through.

The laptop. It was her work computer but it wasn't very powerful so we opted to get her a desktop. The tech guys came in and set up the laptop and it worked fine, I know because I was there and watched it work. Two weeks later she complains it's not working but doesn't give me a chance to fix it because other crisis arise. Finally allows a "techy friend" to try it (I'm not there when this happens) and he declares that the wireless router isn't hooked up. I tell her that's not the case but she won't believe me. She leaves me the laptop to test but it doesn't have the wireless card (which is what was used to configure it to the router) in it. I tell her. She says her friend claims there's a wireless card built-in and he can access a neighor's wireless but it's secure so he can't really do anything. I try to explain but it's useless her friend knows everything. Now she wants me to call the techy people and yell at them. I ask her to let me try, with the wireless card installed first, before I call (I HATE being in the middle of her disputes, mostly because she's wrong and looking for someone to blame and also because I don't like to be in the middle of someone else' argument, passing the information back and forth). Finally, when she's out of the office I grab the laptop and play with some settings (I'm not even sure what I did). It connects. I walk around the entire building, including her personal bathroom upstairs and it never drops the signal. I leave it with a note that it works fine and set her home page to CNBC. She hasn't said "thank you" yet.

It's a constant battle, she thinks she's smart, rich and organized. She's pretty smart, kinda rich and a walking tornado.

// posted by dollyllama @ 8:29 PM

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Much ado about nothing much 

It will be one year on May 1st since I officially moved out of (godforsaken) New Jersey to upstate NY. I owned a home in NJ, a tiny one on a postage stamp of land smooshed in next to a mob of other identical houses (some expanded, but all with the same original bone structure) on identical postage stamps of land. For the average home in NJ that postage stamp was actually a fairly large lot. I had a fenced in yard and no privacy. Everything I did in my own yard became a fight with the neighbors. After 15 years of it, I'd had enough.

I was born in Queens, NY and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY. How I ended up in NJ is a long (and not very interesting) story and I had wanted out of NJ for many years. I sold my house and searched for one in the Catskills since my brother lives up here and it would be nice to be closer to family. It was also less expensive to buy a house here with any sort of land and I wanted space. Big space between me and any neighbor and enough land for my cats to roam and for me to have peace and quiet. I searched for 4 months and found a nice home on 4+ acres complete with streams and waterfalls. No neighbor within eyesight or earshot.

One of my favorite things to do is take pictures. I'd like to call it photography but I'm not that good yet so it's just taking pictures for now. My new life offered abundant scenery and new sights and locations for doing just that. Unfortunately, having spent the first several months trying to get settled and starting a new job I only got out a few times during the past year to do so. Then the cold weather hit.

I'm not a fan of very cold weather and I'm less of a fan of snow. Assurances from my brother, my real estate agent and most everyone I encountered during house hunting led me to believe that there hasn't been that much snow here in (and I quote) 14 years. LIARS. Or maybe their version of "not much snow" means "less than 30 feet deep". No. They're LIARS.

I also seem to have purchased the only house in 3 counties (I live in Albany County and work in Columbia County and need to pass through Greene County during my commute) that continues to have snow when everyone else has lawn. The nearest neighbors have none as I type this and I still have at least 2". It also snows every day. It snows when the sun is shining, it snows when there are no clouds, it snows all the time. Snow can be beautiful. On a postcard.

I have a bunch of cats. I don't know how many. I am a crazy cat lady. I'm not a collector though. I don't go to shelters to seek them out, they are all born here. I don't give many away. I don't trust many people to take good care of them. My cats are well fed and well cared for and pretty damn healthy for a bunch of inbreds. They all have distinct personalities and most of those personalities I like. The cats are very attached to me but don't much like other people. Most will run and avoid others, even my brother and sister-in-law who they have seen more often than anyone else.

I don't have a boyfriend, significant other, partner (whatever the popular term is for a love interest). I know, shocking that no one is interested in the crazy cat lady. Well, that's partially true I suppose. I don't really interact with many people that aren't on the internet. I don't have much interest in a relationship, I'm not very good at them. I tend to be opinionated and stubborn and not all that domestic. My cooking isn't great and my housekeeping is nearly non-existent. My laundry skills are superlative though.

There are a few things I miss about NJ. My friends. I miss them. We talk on the phone but it's not like I can just pop over and see them whenever I want. I miss that. I miss the gas prices in NJ too, they were easily $.50 less than here and I miss having my gas pumped for me. That's not the biggest deal except when it's cold out. I miss having gas heat too. Never worried about running out and it was a damn sight cheaper than oil. I sometimes miss having the convenience of stores nearby. I have to drive at least 10 miles to get to the supermarket. However, since traffic is so bad in NJ it took nearly as long to get to one that was 1 mile away than it does to get to the one 10 miles away. I don't miss the look of strip malls everywhere though. I don't miss that one bit. I like being able to go to the grocery store, look up and see beautiful mountains just off the parking lot, as opposed to another strip mall and miles of cars.

Everything is a trade-off, but in this case, I still think it's a trade-up.

// posted by dollyllama @ 9:04 AM