Friday, October 09, 2009
So you think calling the doctor and explaining what a blatant dumbshit she was for calling in scripts for half the supplies we needed for the month would fix the problem, don't you? That would be because you live in the real world. You do not live in Insurance World, where logic is suspended whenever there's a chance money might be spent. So the doc called in the corrected script so I could get more test strips and lancets for DD. But now the insurance company won't pay for them because we already filled a script for these things this month. And of course I've got all the time in the world to sit around on hold for hours on end waiting for someone to pick up the phone and push the right buttons to make this happen.
You know, it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to think that 95% of my problems could be solved with money. And not even obscene amounts of money. I'll bet if I only had the pocket change that half the people I know had, more than half my problems would melt away. And it's not like I'm uneducated, ignorant, or spent my 20's too high to know where I was, or went to jail. I didn't do anything wrong, so why do I have to live like a fucking welfare Queen?
Work is quite the thing these days, too... The Boss went of vacation. Mind you, the man deserved a vacation, I don't begrudge him that. During the months of June and most of July, he worked 7 days a week, 11+ hours a day because the entire branch was being repopulated with new hires. I was quite nervous about the prospect of the enormous responsibility that would leave on me---basically, without him there, J and I are in charge. Yes, we still have to call other managers/asst. mgrs. at other branches for certain approvals and advice, but as far as day-to-day extemporaneous office stuff goes, it's J and Me. {SOOOOoooo not complaining, just pointing out the pressure of it.] So on day 1 of The Boss's vacation, S calls and informs Boss that she has to take a medical leave, she's got doctor's orders to stay out of work for a a week and a half.
Now, this isn't like a typical office where if one person's gone, you just go about your day. In a retail situation, everyone worries about Coverage about as much as the Romans worried about the Huns. We have to have 2 people on staff at all times. And to complicate matters, many daily duties require what's called dual control, meaning two people with two different sets of keys are necessary to complete it--it's a security thing meant to keep employees honest. The Boss, J and I have A keys, and S, B, and D'ball (the new guy) have B keys. So now, for the next week and a half, we have to rearrange the schedule to make sure that there are two people scheduled at all times to cover the shifts that S was supposed to work. This essentially means that B and D are screwed and will now have to work overtime whether they like it or not. And naturally, I'm jealous of the overtime because I'm in desperate need of extra money right now. However, I'm also in desperate need of extra time, too, because we're fucking moving next weekend and we still only have about 8% of our stuff packed and 0% of it moved to the other house. {I know, breathe, breathe...}
This is one of those things I don't dare say out loud, much less to anyone at work, though: I am restraining my pleasure at seeing J fail. She's had these tasks for at least 2 weeks longer than me, and I keep catching her mistakes. And not little mistakes, either, big ones; big ones that count against our monthly score--the score that directly effects our bonuses and our Boss's ability to keep his job. Let's compare the problems of the day for both me and J each of our first days after Boss went of vacation and we had to run the branch alone:
Me: Opened with D'ball, the new guy. I quickly became frustrated with him because he was actively avoiding tasks that he doesn't like doing. I was too busy to take the time to teach him, or hand-hold him through those things, though, so if he was shy about doing stuff on his own without supervision, he should have just said so. When B came in for the closing shift (I was working a double), she noticed we hadn't run branch capture--that is to say, we hadn't sent images of all the transactions we'd run that morning. You know how you can get images of your checks in your statements? We have a machine that scans each slip and uploads them to headquarters, and we're supposed to run it every hour on the hour, or it dings our scores. We have up to two hours to complete it, I'm told. So the first capture was due at 10am, which happened to coincide with a crazy rush that D and I could barely keep under control, and B came it at 11:20. So, does the two hours countdown start at 10 or 9, when we open? We ran the images as soon as we noticed. Two days later, our score remains in tact. So I'm thinking we're safe. {fingers crossed} It was a crazy day filled with typical angry customers who think that failing to balance their checkbooks is a good reason to get overdraft fees refunded, others who want to sit at the teller window and tell you their life story, and constant calls to other managers for approval on enormous transactions. {Why is it nobody ever needs to take just $50 out of their account anymore? Why is it perfectly reasonable to expect to walk in and cash a $3,000 check?} I had a customer who opened a brand new account yesterday at another branch with $7k in CASH, then came to MY branch and wanted to draw out $4k of it. Then two hours later he came back and wanted $1500 more. And naturally this was the day before a cash delivery, during a week when The Boss had grossly under ordered cash, and we were seriously at risk of actually RUNNING OUT of money. Just at the end of the day, the ATM ran out of money. But we didn't have enough $20's to fill it, so it'd have to wait until tomorrow for the cash delivery. And one more customer that kept calling trying to get someone new to answer the phone to bitch at, thinking it'd get him more refunds on his account, telling lie after lie about who-said-what and why he didn't deserve to have to pay his overdraft fees. I documented his statements, made copies of the proof we had that he was lying, and left detailed notes for J, knowing full well he was likely to call or come in the next day when I wasn't there and knew she wouldn't know as much backstory as I did. When I closed, we had twice the number of accounts as we were scheduled to have, all were completed correctly, and everything was in balance and signed off on.
J: She did a double yesterday, our slowest day of the week now, the day S called in. Yes it was an inconvenience to have to work all day with 3 people instead of 4, especially on a Cash Shipment day (a dual control task). Note that I happened to stop in the store just before noon that day due to the pharmacy bullshit, and spoke briefly with them, but neither B nor J asked for help on any issues they were dealing with. Nor did either one of them pick up the phone and call me throughout the day. So imagine my surprise when I came in this morning to discover that the ATM was still empty. Seriously--you can't begin to imagine how much money this stupid machine makes us. Having it down for an hour can cut into our profitability, a whole day?? There'd better be a good reason. The reason J didn't fill it? She couldn't get it open. She had the codes, but couldn't remember the procedures, and when she got the panels open, she couldn't get the cassettes that hold the money out, because they were still locked in place. It would have only taken a simple phone call to me, because she knows full well that I had this same problem last week when I changed it because I'd forgotten a simple step in the process. Last week it took me 2 minutes to figure out what I'd done wrong. She let this go all day without calling ANYONE to figure it out.
So OK, she let the ATM sit empty all day--chances are The Boss will never know it happened because there's no obvious alerts that would be sent to him telling him about it.
Next, part of my opening duties is to double-check all the new accounts that were opened the previous day for mistakes. Some mistakes are simple and easily correctable--an email address typed in wrong, for example. Others are major and can cause the account to be closed, which is major bad, not only because we lose the account (HQ is constantly pressuring us for more accounts, you know), and not also because it dings our score (again with the the SCORE!), but also because it annoys the shit out of a brand new customer to have to come in and re-sign papers they just signed the day before. This mistake pissed me off, though. They had a customer bring in her husband and add him to her account. This very issue had been explicitly discussed in our last meeting. The Boss actually said the words, "Sassy knows how to do this; if you have a problem and I'm not here, call Sassy, she'll help you." I don't want to downplay the difficulty in successfully adding a second person to an already existing account. The software we are using, I swear was written by Steven Hawking and meant only for the exclusive use of Post Doctorate MIT engineering students with a penchant for masochism. It competely lacks any recognizable logic in terms of user interface. One would think all that's needed is to find the account in question, and click a button or menu item that says "Add 2nd Party" or something of that nature. But no, there are secret, Tolkein-like processes that require you to seek out boxes to check off and lines to fill in that have absolutely nothing to do with related parties or account ownership. And all they had to do was call me and say, "Hey, am I doing this right? What else did I miss?" But no, even B told me that when she got stuck, J told her NOT to call me, that all they needed to do was slow down and figure it out themselves. Except they didn't do that, and while they managed to get the signature card to print with both the new co-owner's names printed on it, the account ownership box was still marked "Individual", and neither of them caught it. And so I had to fix it, print a new one, and call their customer and explain that they had to come back in and sign a new form. And naturally they had already scanned the signature card and sent it to HQ, who will certainly ding our score--and sadly, signature card errors are the biggest errors we can make.
Now, I have to point out that B & J {no jokes from the peanut gallery out there} both roll their eyes and make jokes at S's expense because she's a bit bubble-headed and makes some pretty stupid mistakes. But frankly, J has no place to talk, because she makes the same damned mistakes. She's just not cute, so she can't giggle them off to smooth things over with everyone else. Why it is that *S* is the one with the reputation for being a dingbat is beyond me, J is only inches behind her in the DumbShit Marathon.
So let me just once more cling to my ring and vow that when I am Queen, I will be a benevolent, loving Queen, but I will rule them all, and they will thank me for it.
You know, it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to think that 95% of my problems could be solved with money. And not even obscene amounts of money. I'll bet if I only had the pocket change that half the people I know had, more than half my problems would melt away. And it's not like I'm uneducated, ignorant, or spent my 20's too high to know where I was, or went to jail. I didn't do anything wrong, so why do I have to live like a fucking welfare Queen?
Work is quite the thing these days, too... The Boss went of vacation. Mind you, the man deserved a vacation, I don't begrudge him that. During the months of June and most of July, he worked 7 days a week, 11+ hours a day because the entire branch was being repopulated with new hires. I was quite nervous about the prospect of the enormous responsibility that would leave on me---basically, without him there, J and I are in charge. Yes, we still have to call other managers/asst. mgrs. at other branches for certain approvals and advice, but as far as day-to-day extemporaneous office stuff goes, it's J and Me. {SOOOOoooo not complaining, just pointing out the pressure of it.] So on day 1 of The Boss's vacation, S calls and informs Boss that she has to take a medical leave, she's got doctor's orders to stay out of work for a a week and a half.
Now, this isn't like a typical office where if one person's gone, you just go about your day. In a retail situation, everyone worries about Coverage about as much as the Romans worried about the Huns. We have to have 2 people on staff at all times. And to complicate matters, many daily duties require what's called dual control, meaning two people with two different sets of keys are necessary to complete it--it's a security thing meant to keep employees honest. The Boss, J and I have A keys, and S, B, and D'ball (the new guy) have B keys. So now, for the next week and a half, we have to rearrange the schedule to make sure that there are two people scheduled at all times to cover the shifts that S was supposed to work. This essentially means that B and D are screwed and will now have to work overtime whether they like it or not. And naturally, I'm jealous of the overtime because I'm in desperate need of extra money right now. However, I'm also in desperate need of extra time, too, because we're fucking moving next weekend and we still only have about 8% of our stuff packed and 0% of it moved to the other house. {I know, breathe, breathe...}
This is one of those things I don't dare say out loud, much less to anyone at work, though: I am restraining my pleasure at seeing J fail. She's had these tasks for at least 2 weeks longer than me, and I keep catching her mistakes. And not little mistakes, either, big ones; big ones that count against our monthly score--the score that directly effects our bonuses and our Boss's ability to keep his job. Let's compare the problems of the day for both me and J each of our first days after Boss went of vacation and we had to run the branch alone:
Me: Opened with D'ball, the new guy. I quickly became frustrated with him because he was actively avoiding tasks that he doesn't like doing. I was too busy to take the time to teach him, or hand-hold him through those things, though, so if he was shy about doing stuff on his own without supervision, he should have just said so. When B came in for the closing shift (I was working a double), she noticed we hadn't run branch capture--that is to say, we hadn't sent images of all the transactions we'd run that morning. You know how you can get images of your checks in your statements? We have a machine that scans each slip and uploads them to headquarters, and we're supposed to run it every hour on the hour, or it dings our scores. We have up to two hours to complete it, I'm told. So the first capture was due at 10am, which happened to coincide with a crazy rush that D and I could barely keep under control, and B came it at 11:20. So, does the two hours countdown start at 10 or 9, when we open? We ran the images as soon as we noticed. Two days later, our score remains in tact. So I'm thinking we're safe. {fingers crossed} It was a crazy day filled with typical angry customers who think that failing to balance their checkbooks is a good reason to get overdraft fees refunded, others who want to sit at the teller window and tell you their life story, and constant calls to other managers for approval on enormous transactions. {Why is it nobody ever needs to take just $50 out of their account anymore? Why is it perfectly reasonable to expect to walk in and cash a $3,000 check?} I had a customer who opened a brand new account yesterday at another branch with $7k in CASH, then came to MY branch and wanted to draw out $4k of it. Then two hours later he came back and wanted $1500 more. And naturally this was the day before a cash delivery, during a week when The Boss had grossly under ordered cash, and we were seriously at risk of actually RUNNING OUT of money. Just at the end of the day, the ATM ran out of money. But we didn't have enough $20's to fill it, so it'd have to wait until tomorrow for the cash delivery. And one more customer that kept calling trying to get someone new to answer the phone to bitch at, thinking it'd get him more refunds on his account, telling lie after lie about who-said-what and why he didn't deserve to have to pay his overdraft fees. I documented his statements, made copies of the proof we had that he was lying, and left detailed notes for J, knowing full well he was likely to call or come in the next day when I wasn't there and knew she wouldn't know as much backstory as I did. When I closed, we had twice the number of accounts as we were scheduled to have, all were completed correctly, and everything was in balance and signed off on.
J: She did a double yesterday, our slowest day of the week now, the day S called in. Yes it was an inconvenience to have to work all day with 3 people instead of 4, especially on a Cash Shipment day (a dual control task). Note that I happened to stop in the store just before noon that day due to the pharmacy bullshit, and spoke briefly with them, but neither B nor J asked for help on any issues they were dealing with. Nor did either one of them pick up the phone and call me throughout the day. So imagine my surprise when I came in this morning to discover that the ATM was still empty. Seriously--you can't begin to imagine how much money this stupid machine makes us. Having it down for an hour can cut into our profitability, a whole day?? There'd better be a good reason. The reason J didn't fill it? She couldn't get it open. She had the codes, but couldn't remember the procedures, and when she got the panels open, she couldn't get the cassettes that hold the money out, because they were still locked in place. It would have only taken a simple phone call to me, because she knows full well that I had this same problem last week when I changed it because I'd forgotten a simple step in the process. Last week it took me 2 minutes to figure out what I'd done wrong. She let this go all day without calling ANYONE to figure it out.
So OK, she let the ATM sit empty all day--chances are The Boss will never know it happened because there's no obvious alerts that would be sent to him telling him about it.
Next, part of my opening duties is to double-check all the new accounts that were opened the previous day for mistakes. Some mistakes are simple and easily correctable--an email address typed in wrong, for example. Others are major and can cause the account to be closed, which is major bad, not only because we lose the account (HQ is constantly pressuring us for more accounts, you know), and not also because it dings our score (again with the the SCORE!), but also because it annoys the shit out of a brand new customer to have to come in and re-sign papers they just signed the day before. This mistake pissed me off, though. They had a customer bring in her husband and add him to her account. This very issue had been explicitly discussed in our last meeting. The Boss actually said the words, "Sassy knows how to do this; if you have a problem and I'm not here, call Sassy, she'll help you." I don't want to downplay the difficulty in successfully adding a second person to an already existing account. The software we are using, I swear was written by Steven Hawking and meant only for the exclusive use of Post Doctorate MIT engineering students with a penchant for masochism. It competely lacks any recognizable logic in terms of user interface. One would think all that's needed is to find the account in question, and click a button or menu item that says "Add 2nd Party" or something of that nature. But no, there are secret, Tolkein-like processes that require you to seek out boxes to check off and lines to fill in that have absolutely nothing to do with related parties or account ownership. And all they had to do was call me and say, "Hey, am I doing this right? What else did I miss?" But no, even B told me that when she got stuck, J told her NOT to call me, that all they needed to do was slow down and figure it out themselves. Except they didn't do that, and while they managed to get the signature card to print with both the new co-owner's names printed on it, the account ownership box was still marked "Individual", and neither of them caught it. And so I had to fix it, print a new one, and call their customer and explain that they had to come back in and sign a new form. And naturally they had already scanned the signature card and sent it to HQ, who will certainly ding our score--and sadly, signature card errors are the biggest errors we can make.
Now, I have to point out that B & J {no jokes from the peanut gallery out there} both roll their eyes and make jokes at S's expense because she's a bit bubble-headed and makes some pretty stupid mistakes. But frankly, J has no place to talk, because she makes the same damned mistakes. She's just not cute, so she can't giggle them off to smooth things over with everyone else. Why it is that *S* is the one with the reputation for being a dingbat is beyond me, J is only inches behind her in the DumbShit Marathon.
So let me just once more cling to my ring and vow that when I am Queen, I will be a benevolent, loving Queen, but I will rule them all, and they will thank me for it.
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