The Pink Shoe Diaries

Working in the administrative field, I have come to expect that with my job duties will come a modicum of BS work. I know I am not the highest on the totem pole (though I am perhaps the most fabulous) and I realize that not everything I do is vital to the well being of this company.

However, I do NOT like when this point is made clear to me trough the actions of others. Especially annoying others.

I work with someone, let’s call him Giacomo (pronounced: Jack-o-moe)

(I love that name)

In his past career he must have either been president of a company, and thus he was never asked to change his attitude, or else he worked in a box with no human contact at all. Because he is FATALLY annoying. I mean, his annoyingness is going to kill me one day, I am sure of it.

Now, there are several kinds of annoying coworkers as we all know and these kinds of annoying coworkers can further be broken down into OTHER classifications. a kind of Genus/Phylum of the work place. Now, Giacomo is of the genus “Question Asker” as in someone who perpetually asks questions that NO ONE CARES about the answers to, such as “Why are the couches in the lobby maroon?” and “Why do you have a flat screen monitor and I don’t?”. and Giacomo’s particular breed of Question-Asker falls under the “Is There A Particular Reason?” phylum. As in “Is there a particular reason we have Foldgers coffee in the break room?” and “Is there a particular reason you have smiley-face post-its?"

It is MADDENING.

But you know, I can even deal with this up to a certain point. Dealing with it could also be called “ignoring it” and “throwing things at it” but whatever.

but i digress

So, I spent the good part of the morning working on some contracts that were supposed to go out yesterday. I made sure there were no typos, that all the necessary info was in there, dates correct all that jazz. I even made mailing labels and postage stamped all the envelopes so Giacomo could just sign them and I could ship them out immediately. Because yesterday was a very busy day (traning a new hire, and the assorted Monday-Crunch-Time work that I always have to do) so I wanted this to be done quickly. So I dropped off the foot-high stack of contracts in his office and said I would be back in ½ hour to pick them up.

½ hour later Giacomo’s assistant Fernando came by and told me I was going to kill him.

“why?”, I laughed.

“Well, it appears that Giacomo has lost the contracts and he asked that you just print out new ones and get all the envelopes and postage ready that way he doesn’t have to look for them.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “How could he lose them? I gave them to him ½ hour ago!? It’s impossible!”

“Well, he is too busy to look for them and I can’t find them so you need to go ahead and redo them.”

Now, its not a big deal to print these out again. I mean, yes, ther are 10 contracts about 6 pages long each, and I will have to redo mailing labels for 10 envelopes not to mention that I just wasted about $20 in postage. But it wasn’t any of these things that bothered me. It was that he thought he was so important that him looking on his desk for 2 minutes was less appealing then asking me to do all this work over again. Like my time is not important at all. And I could understand if I had given him these contracts like 3 days ago because I lose things too, but ½ hour!!? Are you kidding?

“I’m not doing it” I said firmly.

Fernando was shocked “Excuse me?”

“He should reprint them himself” I said (I can’t even believe I said that but there it is)

“Well, that’s not his job”. Fernando said

“Well is it my job? I literally put them in his hands 30 minutes ago and he has not left his office yet! They have to be in there, probably under a set of plans and I don’t think I should have to waste my time because he thinks he is too busy to look for something that is right under his nose!”

“Are you in a bad mood or something?” he asked

“ARGH!!”

so, long story shorter, I didn’t do them. I probably will have to today, but at least for yesterday I maintained my self respect enough to HOPE that he would find them and/or realize that I have things to do too and he should respect my time.

Of course, I am waiting for Giacomo to come by my office any minute now “Is there a particular reason those contracts haven’t been reprinted yet?”

Sigh.