Time is going by way, way, WAY too fast!!
The time between when I left work on Friday and got back to work on Monday morning felt like a 10 minute break when I was at work. Which sucks, because I had a good weekend!
Friday night I got to see Meghan’s new place with none of the furniture in it yet. It’s a nice little one-bedroom condo on the second floor. The balcony is cool, and the whole grounds look fantastic (fountains and trees, and the architecture).
Saturday I headed up to my parents’ for the weekend. We basically just hung out at home all weekend, since the weather was crappy. It is, to date, the most time at once that I’ve spent with my nephew, Keegan. He’s so derned cute. He did a lot of poopin’ and eatin’ and sleepin’. ;^D
My mom has torn apart a good chunk of the main floor of their house. It used to be covered in carpet, but now she’s ripped all that up to reveal the original hardwood flooring. Also, she’s taken down all the wallpaper in one of the rooms.
My sister is staying there through today or tomorrow.
As often happens when I visit my parents, I came home with a bunch more stuff than I had when I went there. This time I inherited two end tables that my mom was getting rid of; also, I got a Vikings jersey from my sister and her husband for my birthday, a gift certificate to Best Buy (another birthday present), and I found several old t-shirts that cracked me up enough to want to bring them home. My favorite of which so far is a white t-shirt with an old school Prong logo on the front:
I also found an Esko Pep Band shirt that for some reason makes me look like some kind of bruiser, even though it’s one of the dorkiest things a person could possibly wear.
I also found a 1991 Minnesota North Stars shirt that I’ll probably never wear, but it seemed like a pretty cool shirt. Maybe I could sell it on eBay!
Sunday night after I got home, I went over and hung out with Meghan at her new place (now fully furnished), and we watched Stuck On You. It was pretty funny. Some of the sports-related things were hilarious, simply because they were basically just cheating at everything. The ending seemed a little long, though (seems to be a common theme with movies Meghan & I watch together… weird).
The past two days of work have been two of crappiest in a long time.
For some reason, the powers that be decided that it’s a good idea to train our department to another departments job in addition to the work we already do. The idea being that the customer won’t have to be transferred around too much if they happen to have a question for each of the two departments (and, of course, to try and save money). Of course, people don’t really seem to mind getting transferred to a different department to get their question answered.
So now, our department will get like 80% of one type of call and 20% of the other. I wonder how well we’ll know the material covered in that 20%…? So then customers will get less quality service, because we won’t know the material as well as someone who only handles that type of issue. Is that why the two duties were departmentalized in the first place?
Anyway, they also decided to train groups of 6 people at time, when we only have something like 30 people in our department. So 20% of our workforce is off on a side project while the rest of us are picking up their portion of the work. So now customers get to talk to frustrated representatives when they call, too, and we only get a 15 minute lunch on Monday & Tuesday.
To make matters even better, they’re trying to get reps to complete another little training course that we each do on our own. So they’re randomly taking additional people off the phone to sit for an hour watching a cartoon about our business model. So, even though we’re required to work overtime to keep the service levels up, some of us get to take an hour off to watch a cartoon.
Mind you, I blame upper management for their poor planning on this. If I was one of the people in the training (which I could have been–and that irks me most; I turned it down because I’m dumb), I’d probably be complaining about how boring it is, and wouldn’t feel bad for any of the people taking calls.
At least I’ve had free lunches the past two days. And the overtime pay will be nice.