Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Rough day

Wow, today was a long one. For starters, Allie missed the bus. Not through any fault of her own, the bus driver for some reason has been early a couple of times this year, and today was one of them. The bus is supposed to arrive at the stop at 7:03 am according to the "schedule". Well, we discovered that that was not the correct time around the second or third day. So Allie started leaving for the bus stop @ 6:45 am (it is only maybe a 2-3 minute walk), and she said that most days she had to wait for the bus. This morning, she left at 6:45 and came back at 6:55 because the kids were all gone and she had already missed it. So I had to try to rush to get myself and Conor ready, but I already knew she wasn't going to make it on time. School starts @ 7:20 and the traffic around the school is HORRIBLE. Stop and go, everyone trying to drop their kid off. So She got there around 7:30. When I arrived at work, I called the bus garage to register a complaint. If you have a bus stop in a subdivision where kids have to walk to the bus stop, don't be more than 5 minutes early. I mean come on!

So anyway, not the best way to start my morning. But not too bad. But the real fun began with someone at work not doing their job properly. This person works in our Corporate office, and not only made a smart remark directed at our "branch" (aka Jean and myself), but repeatedly made the same mistake with one call. I will not go into deep details, no one would know what I was talking about. :) So I went and talked to my boss about the situation and he told me to email her and copy him on it, and explain the situation to her. So I did.

Well, her response was to copy her boss, my boss, and my boss's boss and write a big long email about the mistakes that the "Dayton branch" made with this call. Every single thing she wrote in the email could be proven wrong by our internal system. She does not know the system well enough to know this, but oh how I wanted to tell her. As soon as that email was received, and read, my boss yells "Kate - don't respond to that!" He does know me very well. I had already started my response. And it would have made her look like the incompetent jerk that she was (and still is). But NO. Can't do that. Can't stir the corporate pot, so to speak. Just let it go, I was told, don't let it get to me. It's just a job, I shouldn't get so upset about it. So I walked out the door and walked around the building to "cool off". I had the facts on my side, and I had proof of her mistakes (not ours), but I wasn't allowed to defend what she said. Grrrrrr! I do care about my job, I care about doing a good job. But that is not something that matters in a corporate world. And I do understand where my boss is coming from. He is a lot like me - not the type to keep his mouth shut (so to speak) and he has been given the "Corporate" line so many times that it burns him out, too. "We don't know what is "best" for the company." To be quite honest, as many times as the people running this company have been switched around, the do not know what is "best" for the company. They do not even know how our system works. Or how to look up a call in our internal system.

It just burns me up that companies would rather do things the wrong way than to learn how, or teach their employees how to do something correctly. Corporate would never admit that they were wrong. So what would be the outcome? I would just look bad for "exchanging emails" in a negative light. Blabbity blah. So my boss sends her a "nice" email wanting her to send us written documentation on how this should have been handled so that there aren't any mistakes in the future. Oh, how that goes through me.

So I vented to one of my co-workers via email. My go-to guy for when something is bothering me... :) And his response will forever be one of the best "pick me up" emails that I have ever received. It made me feel tons better. But my day didn't get better.

I left earlier than usual for lunch because I wanted to get my dog some chew stuff and get home to let him in the house. I had left him out that morning because he has become quite the little chewer and I was tired of cleaning up messes when I came home. His latest project is the door frame at the front door. He also, during the night, got a plastic cup from out of his food bag and tore it to bit in the living room. Didn't bother with the FOOD that was in the bag. No... just the cup. So I figured it would not hurt him to be outside for 1/2 day, in the morning when it wasn't very hot. I put his water and food out for him.

So I went to the tractor supply store to see what kind of chewies they might have. I got several! I also asked if there was something to deter pets from chewing on things. I was directed to a spray that is used for horses to quit chewing. It is not harmful at all to any animal, just a really bitter taste to make them stop. So I got that, too.

I backed into my driveway and when I looked into my mirror, I saw my neighbor standing at the edge of my back yard, seemingly talking to my dog. Groan! What had he done now? Was he barking all day, what? So I went through the house and out the back door and of course, the dog had wrapped himself around my hammock in the back yard. That dog can get stuck on a 3 inch bush coming out of the ground. And that is no exaggeration, he does it all the time. So my neighbor proceeded to tell me that the dog had been able to reach her tree in her yard and had dug all the mulch from under it and messed up the grass around it. And yes, I could see that he had! I apologized profusely and she said it was OK, but she would appreciate it if we would shorten his leash so he couldn't do it any more. Done.

I will have to bake her something and send it over to apologize again. Had I not been on my lunch break (and wearing a skirt), I would have tried to fix it for her then! So I took him back in the house, put 4 different kinds of chewies out for him (bone, rawhide, chicken flavored something, and something else) that I had just bought. Then I sprayed all the door frames and base boards that were accessible by him. I made sure there wasn't ANYTHING available for him to chew on, and closed all the doors, then I headed back to work.

The afternoon was not as bad, but I was just worn out and drained, so it was a struggle to be there. I did my work and got out of there. 5:00, OUT THE DOOR. Picked up Conor, went home, sat out back on my hammock for a bit with Conor. The tree was already fixed, and it wasn't as bad as I thought. The grass wasn't messed up, it just looked that way with all the mulch in it. Either she or her husband had fixed it. Now I definitely need to do something to make up for it. The rest of the evening is uneventful. We eat, play, dance.... (OK it was just Conor dancing to the theme song from the season premier of one of my favorite shows - Gilmore Girls), then everyone is ready for bed. I am writing this and yawning at this time. But I thought since I hadn't written in here for a while, I would put a bit of an update on here.

Well it is off to bed for me! I have actually been going to bed quite early since school started. And, um, yeah, 11 is early compared to before. :)

Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow! For everyone! Good night!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Boy the Corporate Jungle , i remember it fondly. Glad ui left it behind 6 years ago

Anonymous said...

Awww, Poor Katie! Those things are so frustrating, I know!! Don't worry about it though, some day it will all come out and you will look like the gracious lady you are!

I know about the chewing stuff, we came home one day and found that our dog had eaten the sheer curtains right off the window! She gave them back though, about 7 little piles of barf all over the carpet. I'll remember that day for a very long time!


Love ya!

Anonymous said...

who was the jerk at corporate? and who was your go-to buddy that made you feel better? Helman?

What's Kuntz doing these days? Is he involved with Operations anymore? Do you think he would have been interested in the slurs thrown at Dayton (you and Jean).

Yeah. You should get another dog. Not that Yagrr ever really chewed on things he wasn't supposed to chew. He's perfect, after all. Bunny did, though. But, after she settled in, she stopped. It also helped when she started to sleep in my room. She's very insistent that she sleep in my room. If she accidentally falls asleep in Austin's room, she'll come down the hall and scratch on my bedroom door until I let her in.