fuck this job.com

My inbox is full again with more mail. I've been doing this boring job for so long, one day bleeds into the next, and it seems that the mail is always full of mail for me to open and distribute. It's killing me. It's boring. It's constant. It's killing me. The very sight of it makes me want to throttle my boss. There are more degrading tasks to my day, but it's this one that depresses me most.

Nosy the New Girl just asked me how to use the canned air.

I swear, if she asks me one more time to find the "dot" (i.e., the period) on the QWERTY keyboard on the label maker, I'm gonna kill her.

The new woman can be very sweet, but she’s also really insecure and passive-aggressive. Her desk is five feet from mine, so I get a front row seat to her neuroses. She’s not all bad. She’s got a ton of experience, so I’m not having to explain to her how to use PowerPoint or how to figure out the rate of exchange when her boss gets back from a trip overseas, but I can see I’m going to have to establish some serious boundaries with this one.

Yesterday, she was congratulating herself for being able to leave on time, but then she stopped herself and said, “There’s three minutes left,” and looked at me expectantly. Yeah, my watch said 5:27, too, but she’d already turned off her computer and put on her commutin’ shoes. Why look to me for approval? I didn’t say anything and kept perusing the message board I was reading (hey, it was quittin’ time!). Next thing I know, her face is in my monitor asking, “What time do you have?” Hello, it’s 5:30; fuck off. OK, I didn’t tell her to fuck off, but I did give her time albeit in a very testy tone (and she did fuck off).

Me: Hey, In-House Travel Agent Guy, the Big Boss is going to Milan to meet with a potential client. What are the rates and is there still room available in Hotel A, Hotel B, Hotel C and Hotel D?

In-House Travel Agent Guy: Hotel A costs a buttload, Hotel B is also a buttload, Hotel C is a mega-buttload and Hotel D costs for one night what you make in one week.

Me: The Big Boss is meeting Potential Client at Restaurant X at 123 Via Something Italian, which is in the Brera district, and wants to stay in the hotel closest to the restaurant. Since two of my co-workers are out sick today and I'm swamped with their work, would you do me a favor and find out the distance between each hotel to the restaurant?

And now I'm having sex dreams about my boss. Or, rather, I had a sex dream about my boss, which made Tuesday morning very akward.

Even in my dreams, I don't get my first pick!

Word has recently come down from on high that the admin staff must now rotate lunch coverage for the front desk receptionist. Short Round has very testily agreed to the routine since it was her boss that came up with this idea, but, of course, she's put her own freakish twist to it. She insists on using her desk chair only, and, suddenly, she's become germ-phobic. She brings a can of Lysol with her and sprays down the front desk and phone at the start of her shift, and she uses a Kleenex to cover the handset when she has to pick up the phone.

I wonder how long her toenails are.

Chickee likes to talk at me when I'm wearing my headphones. She's uncomfortable with silences. Today she offered up, "Have you ever talked to [Jane Doe]? She's a sweetie!" And then she went back to work. Uh, ok. Once, late in the day when I was trying to burn through stuff in order to leave on time, she put her kid on speakerphone and made her repeat, "I love you, Momma!" I was supposed to be charmed, except I hate kids, so, instead, I was startled (she's such a stereotype when it comes to her kid, it's the smartest, sweetest, most unique child who ever walked the earth, and she keeps trying to convince me of that - she's two, so how entertaining can she be?!).

I work with the two biggest imcompetents the world has ever bred. Short Round supposedly has a degree from Columbia, and Chickee is raising a child - both landmarks requiring, I assume, at least a three-digit IQ. Yet, they're freakin' morons. How difficult is it to answer phones for a living that these two are incapable of saying anything but "I don't know" into the receiver? Why, why, why must they be specifically instructed to do work - at work, mind you - lest they spend eight hours perusing Yahoo and all its glories?

I didn't get in until the lunch hour because of a doctor's appointment, and I had just put down my purse when Chickee hands me the list of items that had been requested of me while I was away.

The new EA they hired is a freak! She voluntarily read aloud an e-mail she received from her brother saying he's hesitant to return to California because he has immunity where he's at and might get arrested if he returns here. Lady, we just met you last week, save some mystery. Then today she asked one of the receptionists if anyone would notice that she's wearing jeans today (yeah, she's wearing jeans on a Tuesday, and, no, it's not a jeans-on-Tuesday kind of office). She said it was either wear jeans or not come to work. Class act all the way, baby!

Jesus, where do they find these people?

I can't believe I haven't posted for almost two months. I was trying to put this in logical order, but fuck it. I need to vent.

I hate my stumpy bitch of a coworker. Wide as she is tall, which isn’t very tall at all, I call her Short Round. And mean! Ooo, she’s surly. She’s as surly as I would be if I were 65 years old and still a secretary, but, hey, I would take that energy and sublimate it into updating my resume and a job search. But I digress.

One day last week, Shorty decided she didn’t want to make a hotel reservation because said hotel was too expensive. The Engineer who asked her to make the reservation is one step away from being a partner in the firm. Dude deals with budgets all day long because if he wants to make partner, and he does, he has to prove himself as profitable as possible. I don’t know what her issue is anyway because IT’S NOT HER MONEY, but what is especially galling is that this guy is one of the few high level people who treat the secretarial staff as human beings. After arguing with her for a while, Engineer stepped aside and asked me if the firm had a corporate rate with this hotel, and, after confirming that, yes, indeed the firm has a special rate, he asked me to tell Shorty. I offered to make the reservation myself, but he said, “No, just tell her. Let’s not make this more difficult.” *sigh*

I work as an executive assistant at an architectural firm. The type of people they hire are Type A, Ivy League educated workaholics, except for the admin staff. If you can sit up and breathe unassisted, you can get a job answering phones where I work. Now, granted, if you're not responsible for, y'know, building buildings then you don't need a Harvard degree to do what I do. The problem I have with my peers at work is that the admins are expected to work as a team, and, if I have to work with lazy incompetents, the lion's share of the work inevitably falls in my lap. And since I'm considered overhead (the firm can't bill clients for my time), my complaints about the lack of parity in workload are met with a smile and a nod at best and with a label of "personality conflict" at worst. It's a fine line between establishing a manageable workload and being seen as a difficult employee.