Hey, remember me? I used to blog here, back when I a) wasn’t spending vast amounts of time at work and b) wasn’t obsessed with getting the Holy Moly website / blog ready for primetime.

Yeah, between work and blog, a lot of VERY late nights this past week, and not sleeping well besides. I haven’t quite pulled an all-nighter, but there was one night when I was up tinkering under the hood until 4am.

Well, that’s gotta stop. At work yesterday I joked that I was accepting offerings of drugs, liquor, and chocolate and threatening to go to the roof and not come back. I got many laughs for that, but the funny thing is, I wasn’t half kidding.

Thursday I managed to get out for a dinner reservation on time, and we met Steve and his girlfriend Ruth at Davis Street Fish Market for all-you-can-eat crab. Whoa – they don’t often do this, so the crab they had was awesome and not the overcooked, watery stuff you get at the chain seafood restaurants. We all had bibs except David, and Ruth being a vegetarian sat well back as the rest of us ripped into our crab. I suppose we were a pretty frightening sight; at one point the owner of the restaurant stopped by our table and commented “you guys are some serious eaters.”

I think it was a compliment. We certainly gave every appearance of enjoying ourselves immensely, especially Steve. He was in “orgasmo mode” as far as savoring the flavor. Then he tried to dance with Ruth with his plastic bib hanging down his back. I could only remark “Kids, don’t try this at home.”

Unfortunately, that was only Thursday, and the Friday From Hell was yet to be experienced.

Really, I’m Not Always A Bitch, Just Most Of The Time

Here’s why my week at work was so, ah, “challenging.” My supervisor was on vacation starting from last Friday, so I was acting Fearless Leader for our team. I work until 6pm, closing time, which made me responsible for making sure everything’s done for the day along with a couple of other people who stay until all is well. Our regular ticket support people always leave pretty much promptly at 6, because they both have a family (insert obligatory childfree/no kids yet/no life grumble here). Usually, my supe tells the rest of us to go on home, and she’ll end up staying until 7 or 8pm working on her own things. But if she isn’t there, I’m the ticketing person for our account and two other low-volume accounts after hours. Usually, this means one or two late hits. Occasionally, there are a lot of late hits, and also there are records that errored out, never got corrected, and were “found” in the daily sweep for unticketed records.

Last Friday, I was there until 8pm. Late hits, and a lot of uncorrected records found. Same thing yesterday and today, because I was sole ticketer part of both afternoons. Also, I was spinning my wheels a little bit in the middle of the day trying to get some key macros set up to make the process flow better.

I pretty much refused to take res calls for this reason. Hey, the regular support people don’t take them, why should they expect I could and keep up with ticketing? I was really shocked that the subject was even broached. Up til then I’d had a pseudo-tough but funny no-nonsense attitude going, but jeez I just crumpled for a second. And then I tried to regroup, rise above, and demand more chocolate from all and sundry. That’s when I told the new guy I wasn’t always a bitch, just most of the time.

I am reasonably sure that I will not get in trouble with my TL on Monday for ordering a brand new Sharp high-volume heavy duty fax printer, because I did get the go-ahead from other management types. I asked my old manager, another TL who shares my supe’s load, and She Who Gets Things Done, who is admin to my old manager and handles all the equipment requests. It was my supe who “borrowed” the original fax; she honestly thought the person whose name appeared on it was leaving the company. Turns out she’s actually going to be working from home. And she’s management. Ooops.

I apologized profusely to her as one of my partners in crime crawled under her desk to reconnect it, and I reprogrammed it on the fly with her name and fax number rather than ours. She seemed pretty understanding, and no cops were involved. Then later in the day my partner in crime came up and said “Let’s go shopping, shall we?” and off we went to perform yet another emergency field requisition, since our group couldn’t be without a fax.

The second lady whose printer we stole thought it was all very funny in an email later that day; she’s not even in the office again until late next month, and her fax was really crappy and really only works for incoming faxes. My partner in crime actually removed a big sign with a big red STOP symbol taped to that one that said “DO NOT REMOVE EQUIPMENT FROM THIS CUBICLE! SOMEONE STILL WORKS HERE OCCASIONALLY!!” and snickered conspiratorially when I asked if he wanted to sign off on the theft ON THE NOTE.

I think he should have written, “Just the fax, ma’am. Signed, the Liberator.” 😉 Instead, he opted to send her a very funny email with “Sorry, sorry, sorry” all over it.

I didn’t get out last night until 8pm. Again. More uncorrected records and incorrect fare calculations on exchanges, plus various other things. There was no choice but to stay and make sure it all got done. And kvetch companionably with one of my buddies, who works from home and stayed logged in to help out with cleanup and corrections. And there was much bitching and complaining about how the heck it happened that 4 out of the 5 people capable of ticketing were allowed to schedule time off on the same Friday afternoon during the busy season.

I’m sure I’m going to hear about that next week, too.