Countrigal,
All of the above! I find the interview process excruciating (or at least I did, it's been a few years since I've had any external interviews). I get so nervous I start fidgeting and playing with my hair, stammer, can't answer questions, break out in flop sweat, stay amazingly stupid and/or unflattering things about myself and others, and on and on. I think I've done most of the things on those "Interview Don'ts" lists. Or at least it feels that way. Just typing this up makes my palms damp!

Thanks, everyone, for your excellent advice and kind words. It looks like I need to polish up my resume this weekend. I've been dragging my feet on it for various reasons, but I think I need to stop doing that and start looking elsewhere. I don't like interviewing - I'm terrible at it, in fact - and the only way I've gotten jobs in the past is by going temp to perm and treating temporary assignments like a very long interview. Deep sigh. Well, the sooner, the better, lest I get so bitter that I can't interview at all. Thanks again!

I had a complete meltdown this morning. Luckily, there was no one around as I burst into tears. I don't know what set me off, maybe everything. I really, really dislike my job. There's no reward in it anymore. I support a large group for my firm, second only to my immediate co-worker, who supports almost TWICE the average number of people. Our management admits that they use our group to keep their average at the level that the national office believes they should be. Since we work for a relatively small group, any complaints from the people we support results in "The admins need to provide better customer service," although occasionally they promise to add another support person to our group, but never follow through.

Anyway, my co-worker gave notice last week. She will stay on through December and management isn't working too hard to find a replacement. They like to wait until someone is "really" gone before hiring or transferring someone into a vacant position. I really dread trying to support the entire group at once. Vacations are bad enough, but if they don't hire someone soon, it will be a huge mess.

On to my issues: 2 of the people I support are big dogs in our group, and one is steadily taking on more and more regional and national responsibilities. The other people in my group tend to get pushed to the background, probably my fault, and it makes them cranky. I'm getting lost in my narrative here, but anyway, I'm just so frustrated and burnt out, all I ever do is put out fires. This isn't helped by the fact that, oh, let's give them names. Adam is very reclusive, doesn't say much and I have to pry everything out of him. He'll spring things on me at the last minute and then change his mind five or six times. He never, ever, ever makes a final decision, until it's too late. I have done everything I can to prompt, encourage, even beg and plead with him to give him answers, but no dice. Every suggestion I make, he has to think about it. For months. I follow up with him constantly, and he's still "thinking" about it. This is the one with increasing responsibilities.

My other guy, hey, let's just call him Guy. Guy is very aggressive, and very opinionated about everything, especially how the firm, and our practice in particular should be run. He seems to dislike most of the firm's policies and procedures. He did come from 20+ years at a rival firm, so has some basis for his opinions, but it's aggravating, and I'm always on the receiving end, at least initially. He's not quite reasonable about things and is a hard-driving perfectionist, which would be fine, except that he gets all wound up in something and then...drops it. Nothing. Don't worry about it. Until it's an emergency. And it's the firm's fault and on and on and on.

Between Guy and Adam, I feel like I am slowly being driven insane. On top of that, there is some ugly stuff going on that I am trying to stay well out of, because it's the kind of mud that splashes everyone nearby. And then there's my management, which is totally unsupportive and ignores us (me and my soon to be former co-worker) most of the time, except to occasionally demand that we provide better service to our customers and that if we just managed our time better, they wouldn't have to hire another person. Right. See above about our staffing levels.

Since I seem to have lost all objectivity over this, I would appreciate any feedback or insight you can give me. Please?

Thanks for reading my rant!

Hmmm. Do you want to hear about the office manager & A/P clerk who did a striptease on one of the dining tables? How about the drunken founder/CEO who had to be phyisically restrained and removed by the VP of Marketing (the party was at a winery, no less! ) $40,000 bar bills for approximately 350 people (many of them teetotalers due to religious beliefs, and who therefore did not contribute to the total cost)? Or drunken groping on the dance floor by married couples - married to other people, that is. People who drank until they threw up, and came back to drink some more? How about when the cops (and the paramedics) came? Why, yes, yes I did work in Silicon Valley during the boom, how did you guess? These were mostly different parties (and companies), by the way.

Our IT department "pushes" fixes out to everyone on the network, no need to do anything but reboot after installation as necessary. We got hit really hard by one of the viruses when we were working with an "update your computer whenever you feel like it" attitude, hence the push program. It works really well, too, so no need to check on updates anymore.

I have done two things that really embarrass me in the past couple of weeks. The first one, I set up a meeting, scheduled the conference room at another location, told bossie it was all set - and forgot to send out an Outlook invitation for the meeting. Weeks go by and on the day I scheduled the meeting for (in my mind, anyway) bossie asks, whatever happened to that meeting? Me: Oops! Um, didn't you get the ESP message I sent you all? I ended up rescheduling the meeting, but it's much later than it should have been.

The second time, a manager asked me to coordinate a conference call and after much email discussion, and cancelling and rescheduling, a date and time was finally settled on and the call happened as scheduled. But. One minor detail. I thought I was in her calendar when I scheduled the call, so I didn't invite her, and they had the call without her! I didn't realize it until yesterday, when she sent me an email asking why she had gotten an update on the call when she has thought that call was cancelled.! I am so embarrassed! I'm sure there are worse things than forgetting to tell someone when their own meeting is, but I can't think of any right now.

I'm just lucky I swallowed my tea BEFORE I read your post, Raindance! Yeah, I know some of those people, too. Do you suppose they're related?

I have to say the PD 220 seems to be endemic throughout Silicon Valley, and perhaps the known world (unknown ones, too, no doubt.)

Edited by jahdra on 02/08/04 07:15 PM.

Bossie is scheduling a trip to Asia to visit a client in October (client keeps changing their mind about which country, but that's another post!) and bossie is going to take his wife, since it's going to be a long trip. I find an excellent fare, fully refundable, and he asks me,  "Can you call my wife and find out if she..." and he trails off and says, "Never mind, that's my job." Good bossie! Nice bossie!

We used to have a fill in the blanks form, which, when completed, was sent around to the people we supported for them to rate us on. Since it was pretty random, one year I got a high review based on the quality of my candy jar! Another poor admin had her baking compare unfavorably to another's, and thus got a lower review. Um, we're an accounting firm, not a bakery. Finally, they instituted a proper process, but it's still pretty random, and if the people that you support don't feel like turning in their section, too bad for you! Raises are based off your evaluation ranking, so that can be a little bizarre sometimes. This year, my evaluation consisted of people that I support by making labels for them once a month, and the bossie that takes up 90% of my time didn't turn anything in. On the other hand, he grades a lot more harshly than the people who did do my eval (lots of grade inflation from them), so I'll be getting a higher raise than I would if he did turn something in. Which seems to be pretty unfair all the way around, even if it did work out in my favor.

On the other hand, I do get an annual appraisal, which I never received before working here. No, wait, in 10 years, I received 2 appraisals, which consisted of here's your raise, now sign here.

We get 18 days PTO the first 5 years, 23 days after 10 years and 28 days after 15 years. We have a use it or lose it policy, but since I'm in California, that doesn't apply. For a long time, no one wanted to take the time, but lately, everyone seems to be burning out and taking as much time as they can. We can also "borrow" 40 hours, once we've used up all of our accrued time. Since we are paid in advance, not in arrears, this makes sense for the employee as well, just in case. Nothing like owing the firm money, instead of getting a final paycheck (that happened to someone who was laid off a couple of weeks ago. Talk about insult to injury!)

I take all of my leave, and have borrowed time from next year's accrual on some years. My 5 year anniversary is next February, so I will start accruing an extra 5 days PTO; I can't wait!

We have a generous short term disability program, and bereavement leave is decided on an individual basis, depending on the needs of the employee. We are also paid  for jury duty, no matter how long the trial.

I came back from vacation today, and discovered that they have given us two more paid holidays this year! They are going to make the 4th of July and Labor Day four day weekends.And, they are finally going to add Martin Luther King day to the holiday roster next year. That brings me up to 27 paid days off a year, counting holidays and PTO. Next year, I'll start accruing 5 more days of PTO, and I'll really feel rich.

I still can't believe that they are actually going to let us have more time off during the year. Actually, I'll believe it when it happens, and not before. They've cancelled time off before...

My bossies keep it mostly business. Occasionally, one of them will ask me to check fares for a family trip, but they book the trips themselves. Or their wife does!

I once had a bossie who had me exchange his theater tickets, get his watch battery replaced, pick up lunch, those sorts of small errands, but he usually gave me his extra theater tickets and bought me lunch if I picked it up for him, so we were even.

I came in this morning and found 5 boxes of Ten Ren teas on my desk, along with a little note of apology for being so snappish lately. How sweet of him to bring me tea and to write the note. I'd noticed he was snappy lately, but didn't think anything of it. We've all been growling lately, what with too much work and not enough people to do it all, and no qualified candidates to be found anywhere. At any rate, it's nice to be remembered, especially by someone I don't even support.

Gee,
Not swearing, none of the "banned" words (don't know if the UK has the same standards as the US), but those grey area words that you don't necessarily let your kids use, but hear on TV and radio. Frankly, my boss was embarrassed to say anything about it, because people get pretty foul-mouthed in our office, and I wasn't swearing. At any rate, I need to quit using those words as well, which will be difficult when everyone around me continues to use them. Thanks for the advice, everyone, I'll just watch what I say very carefully from now on.

I've been told I'm using inappropriate language (sort of, you know not the bad words, but their close cousins.) I didn't realize that I was doing this, so how can I stop?

How embarrassing to be offending people and not even notice! I should also say that while this office is not as profane as some, it's not exactly pure as snow, either, so that makes it more difficult to stop doing something that everyone else is doing. (They're wrong, too, but...I'm an admin and held to a higher standard.) Advice greatly appreciated!