12 08 99

not idle

Well, I got the ping swag thingee turned around so that the plug is on the right (well, left actually) side.

See, this way I can plug the lights into the porch light. In previous years I've only had a small string of lights over the door, and had to shut the door on the cord. That always ripped up the extension cord. (Grr.) But I found this neat little thing... It's a plug receptacle that you can screw into a light socket. So when I turn on the porch light it turns on the Christmas lights! Yay!

Of course, I'm not sure if it's a Good Idea to use that plug receptacle outside. I've slathered it in electrical tape. Hopefully it'll be ok. If I don't update for a few days you can assume that I accidentally burned my apartment down.

After I got the plug receptacle I wanted something more than just lights over the door. So I got some fake pine swag stuff and some purple and gold garland, and wove it all together with new lights I got from Target*. They have these new lights called "light mesh." Basically it's a mesh with lights attached to it. You're supposed to just throw the net over a bush or something, and TA DA instant perfect bulb distribution.

(*You should pronounce Target as "tar-zhay" so it'll sound spiffier. Then when you tell people "I got this at 'Tar-zhay'" they'll be impressed, unless they know the trick.)

I got the light mesh for a tree trunk. It's basically a long column of lights. I wrapped it around the pine and garland, and it looks pretty nifty. (If I do say so myself.)

I was told today that my boss thinks I don't do enough.

This came as a bit of a shock, because I'm always running around doing things. But it's busy work crap, like I mentioned yesterday. Stuff that really doesn't get noticed. Now, my boss didn't actually tell me this. Someone else in the office told me, so I'm not sure how bad the "she's not doing anything" image is.

What do I do? Should I just ask her if she thinks I'm doing enough? I really don't see how I can do more, because all that filing stuff takes a while. Data entry is even worse for consuming vast amounts of time. Of course, if I ask her, she'll want to know who told me that.

I suppose that I could just ask her for stuff to do. But if I add whatever she comes up with (most likely busy-work) along with the crap that I already do, I'll never finish everything and I'll look even worse. "You asked for things to do and you're not getting them done."

Maybe I should just wait until my review. (Which, by the way, was supposed to have been a month ago.) Then again, maybe I'm just being paranoid.

True, there are times when I'm just sitting there. But we only have three computers in the office, and those computers "belong" to other people. So when they're using their computers, I don't have one. So I'm stuck looking for other non-computer things to do.

Filing can't be done during office hours because there's always people in the way. The filing cabinets are under the desks, and when people are sitting at their desks I can't get to them. I can't really put away vehicles until the vehicles get back from their routes, which isn't until the office staff leaves and there's plenty of computers to go around anyway. And there are some office things that my boss likes to keep for drivers, just in case they have down time and need something to do. So that's out.

For some reason I'm really pissed off about this. It was an off-hand remark, probably made half in jest, and I'm getting all annoyed.

Just for my own clarification, let me itemize what I did in the seven-and-a-half hours I was at work today.

• Clocked in.
  
• Took a place at a empty computer and started taking bookings. I booked over 15 trips today, and called all those people back with their pick-up times.
  
• Made a passenger counts sheet for the fixed routes, since our new software won't track that for us.
  
• Put in the passenger counts for November 29 through December 8 (today.)
  
• Did data entry for December 4 and December 5.
  
• Took a new vehicle out to a bus that was broken down and waited for the tow truck.
  
• Waited at the tow place for a ride back to the office.
  
• Went through each route for tomorrow looking for time violations.
  
• Printed out tomorrow's passenger manifests.
  
• Made modifications to the manifest cover sheets to reflect the new way of tallying passenger counts.
  
• Printed out the manifest cover sheets.
  
• Hand collated the manifests and cover sheets and stapled them together.
  
• Added in missing names to the manifests. (Still having problems with that.)
  
• Made out the dispatch sheet for tomorrow and printed it out.
  
• Spent half-an-hour rearranging vehicles in the garage.
  
• Did two days worth of filing for the Maintenance Manager.
  
• Handled countless random phone calls and radio calls throughout the day.
  
• Locked up after the last driver came in.
  
• Clocked out.

Yep. I didn't do shit today.

Looking Down

______ of the Day

Go Somewhere