Don't Be A Complete Tool

EmployeeVonMunchausen:

I'm done with you.  If it were up to me, I would tell you to just stay the hell home.  You called in again yesterday.  This is now the 7th Monday that you've called in this year.  The other days: a Tuesday after a holiday, a Friday (you also called in the following Monday) and the day after you were scheduled for a day off.

To say that I see an unhealthy pattern is like saying I see the sky is blue.  I like 3-day weekends as much as the next girl, but you're going to need to bite the bullet and get your ass into work on Mondays going forward.

Oh, and also, I don't know who the hell you worked for before me, but please kindly get out of this mindset that you don't need to give me any information about why you're not making it into work.

Your actual conversation with me:

I won't be able to make it in today.  I pulled the daily reports when I was in on Saturday, they're in the green filing cabinet in the middle part under (something unintelligible).

This is really all you have to say to me?  (F.Y.I.: we don't even have a green filing cabinet...)  I had to dig to find out that you were calling out sick for your ailment-of-the-week: The Blood Pressure.

Lady, if your blood pressure is truly so out of control that you can't stand up, as you claim, I'm sure your tests would not have "come back inconclusive" and your doctor would have put you on some medication.  Please come up with a better excuse.

MisManager:

You used to work in Human Resources.  Your husband does work in Human Resources.  Maybe you should either remember your training or ask his advice before proceeding the next time you lose your shit when an employee calls in.

What did you do?  You called EVM and demanded that she come in.  Really?  I'm just as frustrated as you that she's calling in -- again.  Actually, I'm more frustrated than you because I have to do her job when she's not there.  Somehow I'm also supposed to write up her documentation and a formal warning while doing her job and my job while she's gone too.  Yeah, I'm not her biggest fan right now.

But to call someone who's claiming to have serious health issues and demand she come in?  Please.  That's a rookie mistake.  Especially someone who is as potentially litigious as EVM.  Remember that?  The whole reason we call H.R. every time she's absent?  We've finally got enough background on her to start the disciplinary process, but now she's got a good reason to complain about us too.  Thanks for handing that to her.

Oh, and also...

Why are you fighting so hard to make her Employee Of The Month for last month?  (Oh no, no one is misreading that.)

She is so unreliable it is beyond believable.  She performed so poorly during my vacation, in fact, that I'm afraid to leave her alone with my staff in the office again.  I've begun a very serious program of leadership skill training with her because I really need to impress on her that she is far from where she needs to be to lead my staff in my absence.  She's either going to take to that or she's going get told that she had better keep to her regularly scheduled job duties.

I don't care that one of the other employees nominated her.  She was nominated by one of your sales staff that she helped with one problem while I was gone.  An employee who did not incur her wrath at all while I was gone, unlike the rest of my staff.  I finally got done unraveling all of that bullshit and I sure as hell am not rewarding her for being an asshole just because she straightened something out while I was gone.

Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. -- Andy Dufresne "The Shawshank Redemption"

I thought maybe I should give up this 9-5 shit and just start inspiring people for a living like that douche Dr. Phil (but with more hair...and less slime).  Until you started chit-chatting about the new book series that you're reading.  It started out great: you were totally excited about some books that you found.  I was happy to hear the passion in your voice as you were describing the plot of this amazing new series.  And then the details start pouring in:

It's a teen series.

About vampires.

Or, I'm sorry, people who are "marked" by vampires.

And they have to go to vampire school.

Where they learn to ...? I guess give each other blowies in front of their classmates?

Vampire porn.

You're talking to me about your vampire porn?  On a list of things I don't want to know about you, this ranks at #2.  It's only holding the #2 spot because I'm sure there's something else about you that will eventually top that.  I just hope I never find out.

You're a 33-year old lonely gal who craves attention and has a strong fixation with the current vampire craze. I have a hard time hearing about your smut books without also picturing...

Anyway, for the love of all that is holy, please shut the fuck up about your porno books.

Sincerely,

Awesomeness

The continuing saga...

I get in to work yesterday, fully anticipating a craptacular time.  I was not disappointed.  It was moments after arriving that I discover two things: 1) EmployeeVonMunchausen is piiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed about something.  I don't really have time to coddle her, so I chose to ignore the shit out of her and 2) the intern was not coming in until later that day.  Oh, awesome.  Me and Lil Miss Sunshine alone.  For hours.  Spectacular.

I made you guys some brownies because I want us to have a good day.  I want to make it clear, though, that if you screw around I will tell MisManager.

Facepalm.

Oh, EmployeeVonMunchausen, no.  You had them at brownies!!!  Really, with them you just had to say, "Brownies!" (if you had to say anything) and they would have been your best friends.

This was my big concern because, according to MisManager The Boys were avoiding EVM for the rest of the week and their cooperation and communication totally broke down.  Oh man, I do not like coming back to personnel squabbles.

What did I do today?

I got everyone's stories.  Funny enough, no one else thought that The Boys were a problem.  Hmmmmm...  Oh, except for EmployeeVonMunchausen.  Surprise!  She actually started crying when I talked to her because last week was HELL for her.  Yeah, well, that's what happen when you say stupid shit to your coworkers and they don't want to talk to you.  Funny how that works.

Things are back to normal now.  I declared a "breather" day and we all just concentrated on having fun.  Together.  Even you EVM, even you.

Get ready for Part 3, however, because EmployeeVonMunchausen has a very interesting idea of how to contribute to group fun...

Sigh.  Thanks for the blog fodder, EVM.

The Monday after vacation is never pleasant, but this Monday was horrible for all the wrong reasons.  This will be in 2 parts, as I can pretty much guarantee I will get the rest of the story from my employees tomorrow--if they bother to show up, that is.

Here's what happened before I ever even made it in the door to work today:

• I felt a little off.  I haven't been feeling very well the last couple of days, and I did have a scratchy throat, but I was in full-on illness denial mode.  Until I checked my temperature and, sure enough, 100.2.  Awesome.  Of course, calling in the day after your vacation is extremely douche-baggy, so I just though I'd go in and hang out at my desk for 8 hours "catching up" on the no work that I would probably have.  Not to mention all 20 emails...  I could have stretched it out, but then....
  
• Jailbait called in.  Was he sick too?  Nope.  His brand new baby niece was in the hospital, so he stayed there all night with his family.  I don't want to be an asshole about that, but that's really not cool. Unless you're going to actually perform the medical functions necessary to save that baby's life, just get some rest and get in to work.  We could have made allowances for him to make and take calls from them all day, not to mention an extended lunch to visit in the middle of the day.  There were alternatives.  And because Jailbait called in...
  
• I was stuck with a sourpuss EmployeeVonMunchausen all day.  OH YEAH!  Her, the brand new intern and me.  Holy crap was I excited about the day. (<--- real irony Alanis)
  
• But before I can start my glorious day, I have to drop my daughter off at the preschool.  Her school is currently undergoing some renovations right now to add on 2 rooms, which is outstanding, except when the lady at the front desk doesn't know where to send us.
  
  Typically, what happens is that all of the kids get gathered up into one room until around 8:00 or so and then they're all shipped off to their age-appropriate classes.  So we were a little confused when the front desk lady told us to take our daughter straight to her class.  We questioned it further when the door that takes you out of the main building and leads out to the classrooms was locked.  She said, "It's okay to unlock it.  Someone must have accidentally done that."  Ooookaaaaaaay....
  
  My daughter's classroom is the farthest away from the main building and we have to cross 2 playgrounds to get there.  So imagine how pissed we are when we get there and THERE'S NO ONE IN THE FUCKING CLASSROOM.  We walked over to the class next door, where the slightly confused teacher told us to take our daughter back to the main building and put her in the room she usually starts out in.
  
  The trek back was filled with visions of violently shaking the front desk lady.  I get my daughter where he needs to go, while Mr. A tells Bad Direction Bertha that she's a dumbass.  Her response, "Heehee.  Oops!  I thought I saw them take the big kids over there." My daughter is a "big" kid only in height.  She seriously towers over everyone in her class and even some of the kids in the class ahead of her.  However, the lady's been there long enough to know that she's not a kindergartener.  I don't know what she was smoking today, but it was good shit.
  
  So now were running late thanks to Captain Dipshit...
  
• And we run into road construction.  A megaton of it.  Everything is blocked off to one lane (down from 3 + a turn lane) in both directions.  Oh my fucking god.
  
• We finally make it to Mr. A's work and laugh about the crappy day we're about to have.  Aww.
  
• On to my work, where I do a last minute check in the mirror to make sure I don't look hideous and I found IT.  A gray hair.  My first.  Bummer.  I wouldn't even so much care, because at 34 it's just a matter of when anymore, but today?  Really?

The back story:

A few months ago, we ran a production contest and the prize was a coupon for shopping in the company catalog.  Not a super exciting prize, but whatever.  We had fun and made our goals.

My Lead employee won (I really need to come up with a nickname for her...) and she was all jazzed about ordering a travel mug.  Seriously, seriously way jazzed about this mug.

"Carlos" does the ordering, and was actually placing an order at the time that the contest ended.  Unfortunately, he forgot the mug.  We order every 2-4 weeks to cut shipping costs, so she had to wait a little longer for her mug.

The next order, she was up his ass about that mug.  Until she saw a confirmation, she reminded him every 30 minutes that she expected her prize on the next shipment over.  It got a little annoying, but we got her taken care of.

Until we got a notice a week later that the mug was on backorder.  It's like the groundhog saw his shadow.  It was potentially 6-8 more weeks of a blizzard of bitching.  I was hoping for some good news.

Well, we got news.  News that the mug was never going to come.  Oh, shit.  Okay. . . Maybe we can find a different travel mug in the catalog.  No.  Oh, shit.

Now she's whining about how she doesn't want anything else and she feels like she got ripped off.  Oh my god, please shoot me.  It took everything for me to not shake her and tell her to just SHUT THE FUCK UP.  We're on it.

We were so on it that we start to search the internet for a goddam mug.  If we do this, we know we have to pay for it out of our own pockets, but we don't care.  We just wanted her to shut the hell up about this mug.

We finally found this personalization website.  Thank goodness.  We though it would be sweet, after all that waiting, to have the mug engraved with her name.  Then we noticed that we had 4 lines of engraving available to us, so we thought it would be funny to put a special message on there for her.  Had we known that, in the week and a half it took for the thing to get here, that MisManager was going to take everything we did and label it as harassment -- despite the lack of actual complaint -- we would have thought twice about getting it delivered to the office...

So, during this week's meeting, she announces that our completion certificate for the harassment course is due by the end of the day.  She lays out her list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and topics.  She made sure we all know we would get either written up or fired if she caught us violating the rules.

Ten minutes later, the mug arrives.  We were trying desperately to get the girl's attention to let her know that maybe she should wait to open it, but she made such a huge deal about finally getting her mug that a crowd formed.  So, in front of everyone, she gets her mug with her special message from all of us:

Dear (Name)
Here's your freakin' mug
Quit your bitching

She loved it!  She was laughing her ass off.  She couldn't wait to take it home and show her family.

MisManager...not so thrilled with it.  So how did I get out of the write up she wanted to give me? By pointing out:

• We ordered the mug before this whole mess started.
• We ordered the mug on our own time.
• We used our own money.

I escaped impending doom, but the sweet mug was thereafter banished from the office.  Bummer.