Footprints on the Moon

A little while back, I won a Pepsi Throwback package from Elizabeth at Table 4 Five. The package arrived earlier this week and included a trucker hat that I passed on to my dad, a lunch box, a radio, a USB powered Glitter “lava” like lamp, and 2 cans of Throwback pop.

I don’t normally drink caffeinated beverages, so I stuck them in the fridge thinking I’d offer them to the next caffeine-imbibing person that came over. Yesterday morning though, I decided I wanted to drink one of those pops (gee, maybe that’s part of the reason I was still trying to make myself go to bed at 10:30 last night?) For some reason, I decided to flip the can over and look at the expiration date. Then I had to laugh.

When they say Throwback, they mean it! If you can’t read those, both of those cans of pop are past the expiration date… one by a week, and one by a month! I’m used to drinking out of date pop, so I drank it anyways, but I did find it amusing.

And it gave me something better to write about than the fact that there are no admin jobs ever available in the classifieds. (No, I’m not unemployed… I’m mostly looking for a friend who is really unhappy in her job, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t pursue something if it looked fantastic!)

Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder where some of these people come from, and whose job it is to do the employment screening because they’re obviously not doing a very good job! We’ve had quite a few decent people get hired, but the crazy ones sure do seem to outnumber them. My boss spent several hours doing new hire training and paperwork on Friday for an employee that was starting to work at another account across town. By the time this person left, we all were kind of breathing a sigh of relief that they weren’t hiring on at our location, but I was still surprised to hear this morning that they’d already been asked to leave.

Yeah, I thought they were weird, but man… 3 days? That’s such a waste of time and company resources.

This post comes to you straight from work, where I foolishly decided to pick up an extra shift. Which would have been a wonderful decision (come on, 8 hours overtime when I’m financially stressed?) except for the fact that it was third shift. Which I haven’t worked for about a year and a half now. Ouch. I’m soooo tired, and there are still about 4 hours to go. I’ve been out in the guardhouse bored to tears all night, so I decided to come inside for a walk about half an hour ago… it helped wake me up a lot, and I decided to stop by my own desk and write up a quick post. About the fact that I’m at work. At 2:30 on a Sunday morning. Reminding myself that this is very good for my paycheck, and the credit card that I want to pay off as soon as possible because they pissed me off.

I definitely don’t miss third shift. I like sleeping at night, thankyouverymuch. Additionally, when I’m working the reception desk Monday through Friday, I’ve never had somebody ask me to touch their boob. Apparently, third shift Saturday night is where the boob action is. And no, I didn’t. LOL

If normal is what you can call it, that is. In the midst of all my whining about my shower (still in plastic, just for the record) I completely forgot to tell you that I have my work space completely back to normal this week! Do they make memory cards for humans? Cause I’ve only been meaning to come over here and tell you about it all week! I knew they had opened the sidewalk because I drove by on Saturday, and apparently my boss came in on Sunday and they disconnected all the computers and moved them back out to the guardhouse. They left the lobby furniture out of place so the carpets could be swept, but by the time I came in at 6:45 on Monday morning, most of that had been put back where it belonged as well.

And let me tell you, people around here are clearly delusional because I cannot tell you how many comments I’ve gotten along the lines of: You must be so lonely now that your company is gone! You must really miss us/them!

HA! Not even one tiny little bit! (Well, maybe when I have to pee because, come on, that was just plain convenient.) It’s been nice and quiet, and I’ve actually been able to read and hear myself think. It hasn’t been too quiet though– we’re freshly back from shutdown, and it’s been like a zoo around here most mornings. I have been kind of stir crazy this week, especially during the afternoons. I just get to the point where I would rather be doing ANYTHING ELSE than sitting here for 5 more minutes. But trust me, it has nothing to do with “missing” my lobby roommates.

Thank goodness for another Friday. I finally have some good news to report on the work front too– they started pouring concrete this morning. YAY! When I left this afternoon, they were working on laying down the forms for the rest of the sidewalk. Don’t know how long the rest of it is going to take, but it is finally looking like there is an end in sight. Hallelujah!

I’m so ready to move everyone out of my lobby and get my peace and quiet back… The other day someone found a quarter on the floor and placed it on the ledge and called it my tip. Personally, I think freshwater pearls would probably be more appropriate tip, but that didn’t stop me from pocketing the quarter. Hey, that’s 1/10th of the way to washing and drying a load of laundry! Hard telling when I’ll get around to that though.

Today felt like the longest Friday in history. The last hour especially… the clock just simply refused to move forward. I just put in a movie, but I honestly doubt I’ll be able to stay awake long enough to watch it. I’ve been in bed at this time the rest of the week, and I’m already yawning tonight.

I’ve now been unwinding from the work week for 29 or so hours, so I think I’m ready for a little bit of human interaction again. LOL! The sidewalk project at work was finally making progress yesterday… and then they hit snag. To be more specific, they hit a gas line. *headdesk* I’m starting to think these “temporary” arrangements might last all summer long! If things aren’t headed back towards normal soon, I told my coworkers I might mysteriously “come down with something” that will conveniently leave me at home (or maybe I’ll head off to the Outer Banks) to miraculously “get better” as soon as the work is done. Really, it’s not THAT bad. It’s kind of convenient having the guards in the lobby, at least as far as potty breaks go! That one little convenience is all I’m willing to concede though. Just watch– by the time everything gets back to normal, I’ll be whining because I’m bored… I’m getting pretty used to having people to talk to!

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I would address why I hadn’t blogged in almost a week. It really is rather simple… it has everything to do with the too much company I wrote about here. I am not the type of person who constantly needs to be surrounded people. You could probably say I’m rather antisocial. I’m introverted, and I’m okay with that. The way it works out with all the extra foot traffic past my desk at work, it means that I get more than my fill of human interaction and small talk throughout the day. By the time 4 o’clock rolls around, I don’t want to come home and write on my blog and talk to people on the internet. I’m done chatting, I just want to disconnect. So that’s exactly what I’ve done. Sure, I could’ve taken 5 minutes and put up a post about lipovox, but realistically, I’d have come and written about how much I want things at work to get back to normal. I chose to spare you my whining… cause trust me, I have definitely been whining.

I am the type of person who definitely enjoys her personal space. Since I am the receptionist, my desk is in the lobby, and the only person up here with any regularity is my boss. It’s nice and quiet most of the day and I like it that way. So the arrangements this week are going to try my patience.

They are doing redoing the floors in the guardhouse, and it involves pouring concrete, so security had to move out. They got moved into the lobby, so there are two more people and four extra computers in here. The sidewalk going up to the employee entrance is being redone at the same time, so ALL the traffic in the entire building is passing through the lobby.

Shift change was a few minutes ago, and I kind of felt like I was going insane. I’m the type of person who gets claustrophobic in large crowds, so all the extra people passing through are making me lose my mind (no comments on that!)

I’m not the sort of person who generally gets excited about printers, but we’re getting a new machine at work, and I’m definitely excited about that. That might be kind of sad, but I don’t care. We have an old Xerox machine that has been going steadily downhill for quite some time. For example, even though I reset the date/time on it probably a week ago, the fax machine claims that it is March 14 at 5:06 PM. Finally, the hinge broke off of it, and they decided that it was time to upgrade us to the new HP anyways.

The new all-in-one machine arrives tomorrow, and they’ll be coming by to install it on Monday. I talked them into hooking the new machine up to the network so that we can use it as a printer rather than just a copy/fax machine. Once a week or so, I have a very large print job to do and it would be very nice to be able to use the big machine rather than my small personal printer that eats through ink at an amazing pace! So there you have it. I’m very excited about a piece of office equipment– I just hope the learning curve on the new machine isn’t too high!

I didn’t mean to let yesterday slip past me without a post… it just happened! I was busy doing other things while I was at work, and then when I got home, I had to fill out a “talent performance summary sheet” for work. So I worked on that for awhile, got dinner, and then it was time to church. When I got home, I watched the American Idol results and finished my summary sheet and went to bed!

Now I’m at work, and I’m thinking about the need to be a little more thick skinned. I don’t think it’s ever beneficial to cry at work, especially when your higher ups (and most of your coworkers) are male, but that hasn’t prevented me from doing so on a few occasions. It doesn’t help that I have a tendency to cry when I’m mad. But my big issue is that I take everything so danged personally, and I don’t know how to stop. I have a hard time accepting criticism, constructive or otherwise. And in the workplace, that’s just not the greatest attribute to have. I’d like to look as outwardly unaffected as if we were talking about medicare advantage or the weather, but I just don’t find that possible. I made a valiant effort the last time my boss called me into his office, and I made it for awhile… but the longer the meeting went, the harder it was to stay calm. One tear slipped out, he saw it and said “Oh, no don’t do that” and there was no staying composed after that. The fact that he gets really uncomfortable with the sight of tears just underscores the necessity to stay composed.

If anybody has some suggestions as to how to grow a thicker skin, and to stop taking things so personally, I’d love to hear them. I’ve got this on my mind today because some comments were made earlier that managed to get under my skin, and I’m trying not to let it bother me. Especially since it only started out serious, and now he’s just pushing the point because he saw that it got to me and he thinks it’s funny to push my buttons.