Car Trouble Blues
[ sycobuny on Thu Mar 27 at 09:41 PM // category: life, life, work // comments: 3 ]
So, today could have gone better. This blog will be a stupid “I had a sandwich today” type blog and it’s going to be long so just sit down and shut up.
I entered the day pretty well. I made a todo list at work, and it’s going pretty well so far. That’s the good part. Then there came the issue of car trouble. Long story short, the car went into our standard car repairs place. Guy’s real nice, gives us rebates and discounts out the yin-yang for some unknown reason, but hey I’m not asking any questions. Well, here’s where it sucks: the problem can’t be solved there, has to be taken to a different kind of place. Fortunately, it is down the street.
Well, here’s the problem that’s confronted me since shortly after all of this started: I’m at work. I have to call everyone around and I hate talking to people I know on the phone. Well, none of this is a huge deal yet, the guy at the second place even says he’ll walk down and drive the car to his spot for me, being as how it’s so close. I wasn’t sure yet I wanted to go with him, so I put off the decision. Bad move.
Later on, I figured what the hell I don’t know any places at all, so it’s a crap shoot any way I go. I call back the first and second place and stumble and mutter my way through asking them to pick up the car. I need to fill out paperwork though to authorize the work. Well damn, I don’t even know when I leave work these days. I talk to my boss afterward though and supposedly we can leave in time.
Here’s where our other boss steps in and monopolizes everyone’s time (as he always does), until it’s too late to leave. Now I call back the place and ask them to fax me the paperwork instead. I tell my boss that after requesting we leave early, now we have to stay late. Super.
It takes them an hour and a half to try to fax the damn thing, we realize it isn’t working, and they then tell me that they can E-mail it. They could have done that a long time ago and we all would have been better off. So they do, and even that takes them a half an hour. Well, I print it out, fill it out, and then try to fax it back. It doesn’t work. Oh well, by now they’ve closed anyway, and we leave, with me not even having succeeded in my objective that delayed us two hours in leaving. What’s worse is that I spent a lot of that time on the phone and can’t even justify putting down hours for it; so I was at work for two hours that I won’t get paid for.
It wasn’t the worst day I’ve had but it was still pretty damn irritating. Also, I didn’t have a sandwich. I had pizza.
-- sycobuny // 2008.03.27 @ 09:41 PM
3 Comments
Comment #5
[ rakaur on Thu Mar 27 at 10:43 PM ]
What’s worse is that I spent a lot of that time on the phone and can’t even justify putting down hours for it; so I was at work for two hours that I won’t get paid for.
Fuck that. I don’t care what I’m doing, if I’m there I get paid. I am a professional clock-milker.
-- rakaur // 2008.03.27 @ 10:43 PM
Comment #6
[ sycobuny on Fri Mar 28 at 09:20 AM ]
I am a professional clock-milker.
As are many at my job. It’s not like I couldn’t get away with putting down the hours: there’s no reasonable way aside from setting up a punch-in punch-out system and watching what I do every second of the day to determine that I actually spend time doing what I say I’m doing; however, I feel fairly strongly that, for me, it is important to be honest. I don’t bust my co-worker’s balls for making up hours out of thin air, but I don’t do it myself.
I imagine it’s a lot easier to justify when you’re working for a massive corporate giant that won’t notice if a single employee grabs an hour here or there; they measure output in terms of years per day clocked in. The company I work for has maybe 50 employees, and I personally know the owner. He gives me a lot of slack and I feel obligated to at the very least be truthful in the work that I do.
-- sycobuny // 2008.03.28 @ 09:20 AM
Comment #7
[ rakaur on Fri Mar 28 at 11:38 AM ]
He gives me a lot of slack and I feel obligated to at the very least be truthful in the work that I do.
Yeah, I get that. I have no morals and I work for the biggest company in the world. They’re assholes anyway.
-- rakaur // 2008.03.28 @ 11:38 AM
