Message #62993

[Atlanta Z3]

My description - I called her the office island.  I came into the company and was trained by the island.  She wouldn't let go of any work, and her methods created so much more work, it was not a wonder she needed to work 80 hours a week.  We were a facility mgmt company and had taken on a new account.  The accounts payable was a wreck, researching payments by the old mgmt company and really past due accounts was difficult and our accounts payable department was not fully staffed to handle the additional work.  However the spreadsheets and filing system she used was only understood by the island.  This passed and we separated with the island supporting the operations buildings and myself supporting the property managers.  The island would only support the director and ignored the property managers of her building.  
Then the next level up decided we needed to POOL admin resources cross train and have one senior PA directing the flow of work.  The island was not the senior PA and at this point gave a draft resignation letter.  (I still to this day do not know what a draft resignation letter is.)  She had the goods on someone is all I could ever figure out - because she was there nine months after I left and two years after the pool situation did not work.
The POOL situation was supposed to help me and another PA lighten our workloads - all the property and project managers had figured out who could accomplish work, know the systems and in general be pleasant to work with.  So as you might guess we were swamped while the island looked busy and was always overloaded with Critical Work Orders.  (I was later trained on Critical Work Orders - once again she made this impossible difficult - she was the only one who could do this and she didn't have time to train... ugh)

We also had an older lady who was the admin for the HR department.  She was close to retirement and marking time.  She refused to learn anything, telling us to our faces - you young girls have to keep current, I don't need to learn anything new since I'm retiring soon.  (I think she was in her late 50's)  She was french and wore the heaviest worst smelling perfume she could find.  Complaints to hr went unheard.  This lady would not even create folders in her email - if we needed an insurance form we had to wait at her desk while she scrolled through 1500+ emails (if you left she wouldn't send it to you) trying to find the form. She also work satin pajama bottoms to work as pants. (head shake)

Then there was the place that had a supply nazi - if you needed a pen you had to turn in the empty to get a new one.  You had to take your stapler to her desk to get one row of staples.  

Ah the good old days - I sure do love my curent job - no bullies, nice bosses!