Archives for Work rambles

That’s the file room where I started off as a File Room Custodian…..Custodian sounds so much like a janitor!! I worked in this room practically all by myself with very very little supervision. Actually, the first file room was a very very old room. Dark and dingy and smells very musty. The picture above is the new room shortly after I started (8 months later). The room wasn’t like this, so tidy with no files, papers all over the place, when I frist stepped foot in it. There were piles and piles of papers and files all lined up against the walls, every corner, under the tables and on top of file cabinets. My job was to clean up the room, file those files and documents back to the Lektriever, the two humongous filing system and create new folders if there are no files found.

Honestly, I really like working in that room mainly because I can work independently, have the boombox on and even do some workout during my lunch time!  There was a lot more space 9 years ago.  Now it’s full of cabinets and another set of filing system installed – brought in from the dinosaur ages!

The files on one of the shelves in the Lektriever

To operate the shelves to the shelf you want, look for the number that coincides with the three alphabets of the name (last name).

Last week was the last day for the lady who replaced me 9 years ago. My then boss took me out of the file room to work on recruiting system, immigration and affirmative action stuff which I love….a lot of variety. The company is shutting the file room down for good since the job has been vendored out. So so so so sad. I guess I have to say I created this “baby” and always have been since whoever has questions in regards to the file room, they still come to me! Sad also because of the company is getting rid of jobs and sending them elsewhere.

The HR area I’m in is located in an “enclosed” area.  There is a private room with a phone, which is for HR use only, for us folks who sit in open cubes who wants to make private and personal calls.

Since this private room is right at the entrance to the HR area, there are folks who would come in to have a private call on their cellphone or just make a quick phone call.

My cube is about 5 cubes away from the main door to the HR area.  This morning, I was working away and, out of the blue, I heard an Inidan lady’s voice, a very irritated sounding voice.  Initially I thought it was some Indian folks having a conversation outside the HR area.  I stood up, saw no one outside the area but the door to the private room was closed.  Then it struck me that the whole Indian commotion was from that room.  So I kay poh chee a little, walked over to see what was going on.  Obviously, an Indian lady on the phone, sounded like she is yelling at the other party, angry at some thing.  I shook my head, walked back to desk and still able to hear her loud and clear, crystal clear.

The loud commotion from the room went on for another 10 minutes.  I had enough of it – could hardly concentrate on what I’m doing.  I am a minority in this company, too.  I try not to speak my mother tougue when I’m in an English speaking, public environment.  There are a  lot of employees the company hired from India and China.  When these folks from their same country meet up, boy, all you hear is just St. Peter’s language, and they don’t talk softly either.  No offense, but I find it very rude them yakking in their own mother tougue.

Anyways, back to this “irritated” Indian lady.  I walked over and saw two of my other coworkers were standing there trying to figure out what they should do.  These two coworkers sit farther in than i do, yet they were still able to hear this Indian lady.  I told them we should knock on the door and tell her to tone it down as she is disrupting others in the area.  One of the coworker said it’s really annoying to know that any Tom, Dick or Harry walks in to the room where it has a sign that says “HR Use Only”, and jabber on the phone so loudly.  I concur with her.  So, the other coworker said give another 5 minutes, and if it continues, one of us will intervene.

5 minutes past, my coworker walked over, knocked on the door at least 8 times and finally heard the Indian lady acknowledge the knock.  See, she was yelling so loud she could not even hear the knock.  J.C., sister!!  My coworker told her to turn the volume down as she is disturbing a lot of other employees in the area.  Of course she didn’t tell her that there are also many others who are walking by the area stopped and had a WTF look.  The Indian lady said “sorry, sorry” a few times to my coworker.  My coworker went back to her desk, the conversation in the room went on but this time a little softer and yet I could still hear it, not as clear.  Probably she continued with her call for another couple of minutes and then SILENCE.  Phew….peace and quiet.

So there it is, the highlight of the day for me!

This is not the best picture.  The person sitting in the cube is Ms E.  That cube is my cube and I took this picture from the big boss’ office.  Yes, he is the big brother, staring out of his office right into my cube.  And the big boss even asked me to get privacy screens since there are quite a few wanderers to our area since our area is located next to the windows.

The privacy screens do not work at all.  They are suppose to block whatever is on our monitor which kinda look blackish.  As you can see, the big boss can just see what I have on my monitor.   I usually have Gmail and Yahoo Messenger on throughout the day, so it’s really sucks to have him see what I am doing the whole day.  Can’t goof off much at all.

That’s the time of the year again.  All employees received an email last month to remind them of the deadline when we need to complete and submit our self-evaluation to our managers.  January 11 is the deadline.  Boss came over yesterday and told me to get my self eval out soon.  To be honest, I totally forgot about this self eval crap.  I had to go through a year’s worth of stuff and put them down if I achieved my objectives or not.  Actually I copied and pasted them. 

One thing good about this performance system is it allows the employee to log their daily performance (if they want to) and whatever it’s on the log can be copied and pasted to the self-evaluation/mid-year check-in sections.  Also, I can review who are the stakeholders reviewing my performance, and mid-year review, too, from current to pass years.  Employees definitely cannot run away from this system.  It tracks the employee’s every single clicks, and if there is no action done within the specified timeframe, an email will be sent to the employee to act on the action.  

What I’m looking forward is the increment, and that is even if there is any.  Who knows, I might think I achieved my objectives, but my boss said I didn’t.  No meeting goals, no increment.   I will have to wait till April 11 to sit down with my boss for the review. 

I just found out  while I was filling out my online time card that my vacation and sick time balances were all f’ed up big time.  It showed that I owe the company vacation and sick times which is so damn wrong.  By right I should have 5.25 hours left for sick and 16 hours left for vacation, which the 16 hours will be forfeited come 2008, however, my coworker is going to find out for me since I’m in Corporate, employees with Corporate might not be able to carry the remaining hours over.  But again, the company is changing its vacation/sick/personal time policy to PTO (Personal Time Off), and if I’m not mistaken any remaining vacation from 2007 will be carried over automatically to 2008.

Just hope my coworker will get it fix for me this week.  Tell y’all, outsourcing to an incompetent group of HR folks screws up the employees’ lives.  This is not the first time they got my vacation all screwed up.  There are so much more that they messed up: tuition reimbursement, timecards, bonuses, vacation and sick times.  Cross my fingers and lets hope this will be fixed this week.  Idiots!

New Year’s eve, I’m at work and I think this is the first time I’m working on a New Year’s eve.  There’s only four poor souls in the office.  When I came in at 6 am, there was only Kris and she was on a conference call already.  Then Karen came in.  Today is her last day with the company.  She will be officially retired at the end of business day today.  She gave me a box of ginseng coffee which her Filipino DIL gave her.  I’m having a sachet right now.  Not bad.  There’s added sugar in it, but diluted it so it’s not so sweet.

Been here for 2 hours and I’m now chatting with Stef on Yahoo!  Yeah, when I get to work I leave both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts up to check my incoming emails.  I will probably work on the Excel spreadsheets when I’m out of posts to write. 

I was going to post up the pictures of the cross stitch works done by my sis, but too lazy last night.  Hopefully will get the pictures out tonight, or tomorrow morning. 

For now, it’s time to crank out some money.

Wha-ta-heh, the boss is here.  Actually every one in my department came in today.  My boss had the morning off and came in at noon, came in with her hubby and FIL for lunch and tour the campus.  Good thing I have only 45 minutes to go and then three days off.  Will meet with Forrest’s (Simmie’s BF) sister to collect the vacumm cleaner and shampoer at 5 today.  She will drive up to my area instead of me driving to Lakeville to  meet her.  Very nice of her.  For now, I have to act busy, pull up the Excel spreadsheet of reports and pretend I’m working on it.