take this job and

I hate my job. I just hate it. My supervisor is great and (most of) my peer level co-workers are great. But the fact that I'm responsible for a lot of the operational logistics of a small unit within a large large large organization with a tremendous amount of central - yet not cohesive - structure and tons of layers of authority, means that I can never be good at my job. If I learn how to accomplish something, chances are the process will be different the next time I try to accomplish it. And the people who were made aware (and who arguably should have made me aware) of the change never seem to have any patience for me if I'm a step behind. Or heaven forbid, if it's the kind of task that comes up once or twice a year, I forget a step. The consequences of my not accomplishing some of these tasks are, on occasion, that a person may not get paid for work they finished a month ago. Messing up someone's income is not something I ever ever ever want to be responsible for.

This stresses me out.

I've had two other administrative jobs like this before, jobs where I had to learn processes and procedures and lingo and stuff like that. I learned from those two jobs to cut myself some slack for a while in the beginning, give myself time to learn and understand what was expected. In both of those jobs the learning curve was about four months. There were other things that took a little longer to master, but I had nailed about 90% of it in the first three months.

I've been at my current job for two years. Two years, and I'm still calling people asking for help as though it's my first week on the job.

In undergrad as a Sociology major, I learned about different theories of organization, Weber and his idealized bureaucracy sticking out in my memory. It made so much sense at the time, if you let people specialize then the whole organization can do more than the sum of its parts. Efficiency is increased and profits and productivity can go up. But when I'm trying to figure out how to accomplish something for my unit, I have to call four different "specialized" people before I get an answer. And the first three people are virtually guaranteed to be annoyed at me for bothering them when it's not their job to answer my question.

A friend of mine posted this a while ago on facebook, basically yet another article about how stress is killing us. The focus of this article though is that it's when your work is demeaning or feels endlessly frustrating that you're at the greatest risk for stress-related bad health outcomes. I should get better health care benefits.

Just went for a walk

Because even though it's 82F outside at 9:30pm, and even though my apartment has central ac, I could not spend one more minute inside.

In the 20 minutes I spent walking around my neighborhood, I saw teenagers playing basketball, two girls walking, a couple of guys playing guitar, a little boy catching lightning bugs in his backyard, and an old woman talking on the phone about a medical procedure that involved "gettin' a tube in there to drain it."

And this is why summer is my favorite season. =)

Oh, long suffering readers

I just turned in a take home final. And with that, my academic obligations for the semester are complete.

So now I may actually post here again sometime. I said on multiple occasions over the course of the past few months that I was getting good grades in grad school and barely passing grades in rest of my life. But now I have a whole month (!) before the crazy starts again. So many books to read, tv on dvd to get addicted to, random things to knit, I hardly know where to start. =)

Jello shots are the new shark cupcakes

Today is A Day Without Cats so I thought I should get that tiny kitten off of the top of my page. I was going to do a weekend wrap-up, but I don't have the energy since I got sick because the weekend was so awesome. Instead, I'm posting just one aspect and I'll let you deduce what kind of weekend I had based on that.

WVU had its first football game on Saturday and in honor, I made these:


We won the game. And the tailgate.

'Scuse me while I feed this tiny kitten

We found a tiny kitten back in a box behind some crates at work yesterday. Took a forklift to move all the stuff that was in the way. And then my co-workers went to PetCo and bought a little bottle and some milk. And then I spent the better part of the afternoon doing this:

Cats 'n Racks


Cute or Sad? ResQte™

I really like my accessories in this picture.

I crack myself up

Yesterday I was driving downtown and I came up behind a woman in a Smart car with a vanity plate that read PILATES.

I thought to myself, "Now does this woman make her own granola, or DOES THIS WOMAN MAKE HER OWN GRANOLA? Amiright? I mean, seriously what's up with that?"

Thanks I'll be here all week.

It's Still There

I like to include pictures as much as possible, but I think you'll thank me for not doing that with this post.

Remember that bat? The one that woke me up from my clothing optional beauty sleep? The one that my landlord killed and then laid to rest in an Amazon box, placed gingerly in the bottom of the trashcan? Because I can be a paranoid person, I had a lot of issues surrounding that trashcan for quite a while. Allow me to share them with you.

The entrance to my apartment is on the side of the house, right next to where the trashcans live. So until trash day, I had to think about that dead bat body in the bottom of that trashcan, less than a foot from my door. I got very very good at keeping my gaze far away from the inside of that can. And then on trash day I had to muster up all my squeamish-girl-living-on-her-own guts and carry that trashcan/coffin to the curb. And then I went to work and spent the whole day imagining what I'd come back home to. What if the garbage men don't shake the can enough and the bat doesn't make it out? What if they throw the can back and it falls over and the bat comes tumbling out onto the curb and I have to see it??? How will I ever manage to bring the trashcan back to it's spot beside the house if it potentially still has a dead bat body in the bottom?!?!?

I avoided this by coming home as late as possible on trash day, increasing the chances that one of the other women downstairs would bring it back for me. And that worked well for a few weeks. Then I realized the trashcan was light enough when it's empty that I can carry it with my arm stretched out far away from me so I can't see inside. And that worked even better. I had no idea whether or not it was still there, and that was fine because I could just pretend it wasn't. I shared all this with my boyfriend and he looked, but I made him promise not to tell me what he did or did not see.

Well the other day I had some junk mail and I thought I'd just toss it in the can rather than take it upstairs. My guard was down, and there were no bags in the can, and I leaned over just a little too far... I saw the box, smashed. I saw something black underneath it, smashed. I stifled a scream and managed not to faint, turned the key and went upstairs to pour myself a stiff drink.