You've been forewarned. This is not going to be a well-organized or concise piece of prose here.

Tonight I completely tweaked. It was a long time coming, let me tell ya.

Tonight was just another night that has followed a disturbing and seemingly more frequent trend: I walked in the door from work after 7:30 p.m.

UNACCEPTABLE!!!!

I think I need to take up boxing, karate, or some other sport that encourages me to hit and/or break things on a regular basis, because in the past two weeks, my job has finally crossed the line from barely-managed chaos into absolute insanity. Folks, the business that my office does is currently held together with bubblegum and safety pins, and things are getting worse, not better. It just took me being out of the office in Arizona for five days for things to completely implode.

As a general rule, I hesitate to put anything too personal out here in cyberland most of the time. My normal M.O. is never to write anything that I wouldn't want my family, friends, or employer to see.

But guess what? I've had enough and the gloves are coming off now.

MY BOSS IS BATSHIT CRAZY. OK, maybe not crazy, but she is deluded, no doubt about it. She's also a bad manager with not very well-developed people skills. She's unprofessional. Unorganized to the extreme. And I also think she's a liar with questionable ethics. That last one I can't really get into here, but just take my word for it.

On a personal level, I suppose she's nice enough. She's also very bright and is a good resource for our industry.

But she has no place being a manager. She has no idea about, or appreciation of, how busy I am every single day. I am ONE person doing the work of at least two, and perhaps even three, people. My coworker was fired at the end of September 2007 and I was promised that the firm would be hiring another person to replace him within a month of that.

I sucked it up and took on a much heavier workload, thinking that if I could only keep it together for a little while, surely the position would be filled soon enough.

Haaaaa.

I've finally come to accept that I've taken over SO well that the company has just let me run with it.

Really, the thing that just kills me is the fact that she (the boss) is NEVER there. She wants to be a full-time stay-at-home mother and a full-time director of retirement plan services. Well guess what? You can't frickin' have it both ways. The management team at every other job I've ever worked at was in the office at least forty hours a week, minimum.

Conversely, she is more often absent than not, on mysterious "meetings" that we later learn are hair appointments, her kids' sporting events, and who the hell knows what else. She also coaches an intramural basketball team which means she leaves the office for long periods in the middle of the day. In January, we moved our office from one building to another, an undertaking that required a huge amount of preparation and work for us all. On moving day, she left us in the new office with the movers at 2 p.m. to go coach one of her damn games. Don't you think that the boss should be present during an event as major as an office relocation?

And it's beyond me how she's managed to retain any of her clients after all these years. She hardly ever returns phone calls. I've taken repeat messages for her in which the caller even asks me if she still works for the company! It's a disgrace and I am embarrassed.

I love what I do, but if someone I knew wanted to bring their business to us, I couldn't in good conscience recommend the services of this firm. There is no organization, no leadership, and morale is so low that it can't even be measured. Everyone I work with is constantly pissed off at the boss and yet NO ONE says anything to change the situation.

Welp, I finally spoke up today at our staff meeting. Finally.

She was explaining something to one of my coworkers and she looked over at me and referred to ME as the "daily val people."

I laughed out loud, which caused everyone to look over at me.

"'People'?" I repeated. "What 'daily val people'? As far as I knew, it's just me doing the work. Are there any plans to hire someone to help me?"

Hoo boy. If looks could kill, I wouldn't be laying in bed, typing this right now.

So we'll see what happens. Thank dog tomorrow's Friday.

Labels: bitching, sheer insanity, work

I've decided that I need to resume my Spanish lessons muy pronto.

A few weeks ago, our administrative assistant here stuck her head in my office doorway.

"You don't know Spanish, do you?"

I rolled my eyes and bit my lip. "Well, kiiiiiinda...I took it for seven years throughout high school and college. Why?"

She said, "There's a guy on hold right now who needs a Spanish speaker. He's got questions about his 401(k) account. Can you help him?"

And that, my friends, is how a can of worms opens. Sure, I'll help him. I love helping people...that's the main reason I work in this field, right?

I picked up the phone and told the man that I haven't spoken Spanish in many years, and asked him to speak slowly. I somehow figured out how to ask him to verify his Social Security Number, address, and date of birth...and that's where things went south.

I don't remember learning in any of the Spanish literature or Latin American culture classes I took in college how to discuss the finer points of company mergers and acquisitions, or how to invest money in your retirement account, or how to explain the tax implications of a distribution from said account. Hell, I didn't even know the Spanish translation of "mutual fund."

Somehow I muddled through it by frantically Googling "English Spanish dictionary" while murmuring "Lo siento, senor, un momento mas," punctuated by a lot of apologetic, nervous laughter. The poor man probably thought I was insane.

But it gets worse: just about an hour ago, our admin assistant again pokes her head into my office and says brightly, "Habla espanol?"

Turns out that I was SO helpful that the man I spoke to a few weeks ago gave my name ("Laura" en espanol) to the rest of his Spanish-speaking coworkers at the company. I believe I'll be hearing from them all in the coming weeks, since the company was bought and is discontinuing the 401(k) plan for its employees, and everyone will be entitled to withdraw their money.

So I need to find out how I can take a business Spanish class. There are lots of community education classes in my area but they are more geared toward conversational Spanish.

Any ideas?

Labels: education, goals, work

Tonight is a night of firsts for me.

I have created a slideshow with music in Adobe Photoshop (which I just bought last week and have never used before now).

I have uploaded said slideshow on YouTube.

Now, I'm posting my maiden presentation here on my blog for your enjoyment. It's a compilation of some of the many (398!) pictures I took at the Foo Fighters' show last month, along with one of their songs.

Hope it works!

Labels: accomplishments, concerts, Foo Fighters, music, Philadelphia, pictures, technology

We didn't spend much time at all in Flagstaff yesterday, since it was just the pick-up/drop-off point of our Grand Canyon tour.

However, it appeared to be a beautiful, clean city, full of extraordinarily outdoorsy, healthy and fit-looking citizens. We saw lots of bikers and runners while we were there. The air is also pretty thin up there, due to its high elevation.




A view of the San Francisco Peaks outside of Flagstaff from I-17.

Labels: pictures, travel

I really lucked out getting this shot of a coyote on the side of the road. We were going pretty fast and I almost missed him!

Labels: pictures, travel

We're in Sedona now! My conference ended in Phoenix this afternoon, and we got on the road around 3 p.m. The Ritz Carlton hotel was UNBELIEVABLE.

I've taken TONS of pics in the past three days, but here's just a few that I took today on the drive up here.

It's gorgeous here, incidentally. The temps are in the mid-70s. Quite a nice change from the low 40s in Philly!

Tomorrow we have our trip to the Grand Canyon--can't wait!

I took this picture from the passenger seat of our rental car, going 80 mph up I-17 North from Phoenix to Sedona. I can't believe the image came out as clearly as it did but am thrilled! This is my latest screensaver.

Labels: pictures, travel, work