3 days, 18 hours, 5 minutes, and 58 seconds

...it's no wonder a majority of business owners prefer the slow pain of keeping an unproductive worker on the company payroll, than the sudden, potentially sharper pain of taking them off.
"Think of it like someone who would rather suffer with a dull toothache than go to the dentist and face the drill,"

Yeah, that may be true, but if you make your good employees pick up the slack and let the incompetent employees continue to be incompetent, I guarantee you will lose those good employees.

And if you're like my current boss, you will be mad at the good employee for leaving. Even when she has just spent a year trying to get rid of the bad employees.

Also, giving the silent treatment until you are ready to ask the pardoned prisoner... I mean leaving employee.... to help you out whenever possible only confirms that said employee made the right choice.

Seriously.

I told her that giving me 90% of the previously departed paralegal's work was too much. After telling me she would change (i.e. not be so negative) and would take on some of that work herself, I watched her turn it all over to PL/Biller. Along with my job. Ummmmm. What am I missing here?

One more week.

I got a new job!

I rock!

Enough so, that when I told my current boss I was tendering my two-week notice, she canceled her dinner plans and spent the next hour and forty-five (or is that fourty-five) minutes trying to talk me into staying.

And she was pretty good at it.

But: I knew enough that I refused to make a decision under duress and within an hour of leaving the situation I knew I was not accepting her offer to work things out.

So, in 2 weeks I will be starting my new job. I wish I could say that I will not have as much to post, but, much to my dismay, I encouter stupidity so often even when I am not at work that I believe I will be able to keep this blog running strong. Though I may change the title since I will no longer be an Office Manager.

And aside from that, poor PL/Biller will still be in the office and will have plenty to share, so there will be plenty of links to her blog.

Speaking of: Would anyone like to hire her? I will give her an excellent reference. She works hard and has common sense. She can spell forty, and Pete, and dragon. Contact me if you are interested in hiring her.

I think I have found a new purpose for this blog. PL/Biller--we will get you out of there!

Fan mail

I received an e-mail from a fan (what can I say, I rock!), telling me how great my blog was and how he lived each day just waiting to read what I have to say.... or he had a story of his own to share, I dunno. Either way--

This gentleman was recently given a compost tumbler from an incredibly nice couple. I could write an entire blog on the goodness of this couple, they really are that great, but I'll just stick to his story...

The e-mail read:

"I started a load of compost last Sunday, 3/25/07, since the low temps are to be above 40 deg. for a few weeks. It is heating up to a core temp of 135 deg. which is good for this stage. Filling this tumbler, I came to question a few things, one being how full can I pack it before it will not have proper air circulation. I am guessing the door should be down to help the natural air flow. With this said, I e-mailed the compost tumbler company and asked if a user manual was available."

The response from the company came, via e-mail, wherein they requested his contact information so they could e-mail it to him.

The sad part is, I have heard similar stories.

I am not making this up....

PL/Biller to LS#1: "Make 4 copies.... no, wait, hold off on that for a minute, I have to check something."

LS#1: "Okay."

LS#1 walks to the copier and proceeds to make 4 copies.

PL/Biller to LS#1: "Uhhh, you're gonna want to stop that."

LS#1: "Why?"

Me to PL/Biller: "Didn't you just tell her not to make the copies?"

PL/Biller: "Yes."

LS#1: "You said to make 4 copies. Why do you want me to stop it."

Don't call me Israel yet.

I was going to refrain from calling anyone an idiot this week.

That was stupid. Just plain stupid.

Why was it stupid? Oh, please, let me tell you.

It's 9:50 a.m.. LS#1 and LS#2 both arrived just before 8:00 a.m.

Heard and seen in the last 2 hours at La Office de Stupidity:

LS#1: "What, exactly, is an affidavit?" e.t.a. To clarify--she said "What, exactly, is an affidavit? I am supposed to get an affidavit or sworn statement..."

LS#1: "I just got married a week ago and we've had several fights already. Hahahaha." (great start to your 4th marriage with a guy who still lives in Egypt, LS#1. Good luck with that.)

LS#2 makes copies of an order then hands the attorney the order. Does not put file copy of order in file. Does not give attorney file as she is leaving for court. Attorney calls from court indicating needs file brought over to her. LS#2 complains about attorney.

LS#2: "This 'post' weighs 14 ounces, so I'll have to take it to the 'post'. Do I put postage on it?"

LS#1: "What does (client last name) go under?"
Me: "(Client last name)"

LS#1: "These are two separate documents, do they get stapled together? Do they both get stamped?"

(Deep breath--exhale slowly)

Now, how about my co-workers?

Your Boss Isn't Psycho, but Your Boss Stinks

Your boss is probably not mental. Still, your boss is not competent or professional. You may want to transfer departments or get a new job, before your boss sucks out your soul.

Is Your Boss Psycho?

From the Files of "It Could Only Happen to the Biller"

I bring you Today:

LS#1 is in Egypt supposedly getting married. Again. I was given permission to organize and clean her desk and PL/Biller and I did. I really believe the desk was thanking us for cleaning it. It was just that bad.

Then we both had the urge to go clean and reorganize our desks. Again.

PL/Biller decides she wants her monitor in the corner. We have tried this before and her cords are not long enough, so she decides to try the cords from Miss I Got A New Job's computer. We unhook the cable and I can tell right away it is a standard cable and the reason that monitor fits in the corner has to do with the placing of the "cord holes" in the desk. This one is in the corner while hers is in the middle. We drop the cord in the desk and decide to worry about that later.

A couple minutes later she informs me she has managed to do it. Her monitor is in the corner. Hooray!

Then I get a call:
PL/Biller: "My screen is green. I don't know what I did. Oh no."

Luckily the attorney is in an office conference because when I went back there and saw that her screen really was green, I had no clue what to do. This wasn't the kind of green that you get when you mess with the contrast and brightness on your tv screen. It was like someone had placed a green, semi transparent film over her screen. Her settings were completely screwed and I think the people in the parking lot 3 miles down the street could read anything on her monitor, if they could get past the whole green thing. We tried playing with all of the picture-friendly buttons on the front and all of the display settings, then I decided to go do some internet research on the subject, not really sure that I would find anything because I swear this stuff only happens to the Biller.

She has been banned from touching anything with a power cord in that office more times than I can count.

I decided to save some time (it was about 1:45 and I had done nothing more than clean a desk, fix timeslips and play with a green monitor all day) and grab the aforementioned monitor, since the cords were already unhooked anyway. That didn't work. We gave up trying to unscrew the stupid screws holding the cord in the back of Biller's monitor and realized we would need more of that special sticky tape to put her document clip back on and it was all too much work.

I told her to go to lunch and I would try to figure it out. I got the monitor information and was about to do useless research when she tells me she got it. Nope, it's green again. No, wait, she got it.

Best that we can figure out (or make up) the cord was not plugged in all the way and was pulled out just enough to turn her monitor green. When she released the tension on the cord it was fine, so now she has the monitor "almost" in the corner.

Without fail, at 4:30 this afternoon I was handed an email. And a document to be sent with the email. It needed to be scanned in. The only scanner is hooked up to Miss I Got A New Job's computer. The one we took apart. And had not put back together.