Freakshow Friday

This past Friday was really strange, pretty much all day long. It's like I stepped onto the bus in the morning, and stepped off into a Twilight Zone episode.

My primary objective for Friday morning was of course to get the whole bounced paycheck thing straightened out. So my first destination was campus, where the most accessible branch of my credit union is located. I got off the bus and walked up to the branch, the equivalent of a block and a half or so. It took about ten minutes to get the appropriate information printed, marked, and faxed to the main office. Then I walked back down to the street to catch a bus to the office. So far, so good.

The bus dropped me off a block south of my destination, so another short walk was in order. When I got to the office, the controller's door was closed. The secretary said she'd been expecting me, though, and I was pleased to find that the fax had arrived safely. (I had kept a copy, just in case.) But she hadn't done anything about it yet. It took about twenty minutes to get the replacement check printed, mostly because her printer was tied up doing W-2 forms. So she finally figured out how to print to a different printer, and I had a check in my hand. Once again, so far, so good.

I didn't figure that I'd get any kind of meaningful answer, but I asked her what was happening anyway. I was right. She just said, "We've had some problems." Well, duh. Interesting that she used the past tense, though, since it seems to be an ongoing problem. I decided not to point out this fact to her.

On the advice of my credit union, I set off toward my company's bank (First National Bank of the Northern Hemisphere) to cash the check, then to take the cash to my credit union. I had decided that on the way to the bank, I would stop at the police building. I'm applying for a substitute teaching position, and they understandably require me to be fingerprinted. The building is about five blocks away from the office, and there are no convenient buses that do much to reduce the distance between the two. So I set off walking again.

Did I mention that it was snowing in Salt Lake City on Friday morning?

So I arrived at the police building soaked but relatively warm. I was wearing my big heavy coat, ankle-supporting boots, and wool socks. So really, it was only my coat that was soaked, not me. Anyway, I got there about 11:50 a.m. The timing was important, because I knew they only did fingerprinting from 9:00 to noon. There didn't seem to be much of a line, so I figured I was okay. That was until I saw the sigh stating that they only did fingerprinting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

So I began to make my way toward the bank. That was another five blocks. I got there, got the check out of my backpack, and shook my head. Apparently, my company doesn't bank with FNBotNH any more. They now use Prominent Local Bank. So I tried to remember where the nearest location of PLB would be. Fortunately, it was just a few blocks up the street. Even better, I could catch light rail on this block to take me to that block. Alas, I got to the door just in time to see the train pull into the station. By the time I could get there, it would be gone.

So I walked two blocks up the street to the next station, where I knew that a different train would be by in a few minutes. I caught that train and rode to the bank. I turned my ankle a bit on the stairs on the way in, but I was able to cash the check—while being solicited only twice to open an account with PLB. From there I caught a train to campus, deposited the money, and brought my account back into the black.

That left me enough time to catch the train back downtown, transfer to the other train, and still get me to work on time. Mission accomplished. Total elapsed time: just over 3¾ hours.

And that was the end of the freaky happenings on Friday. Or so I thought.

The evening's shift at work looked pretty mundane at first glance. We had a couple of jobs we needed to get done by Sunday and we were starting one new job, nothing out of the ordinary. I spent the first two hours or so of the shift with my leg elevated, trying to take some pressure off my injured ankle. But other than that, no worries.

The first strange thing to happen started in between the day shift (9-2) and the start of the evening shift (3-9). Someone not in our employ apparently tried to get just a bit too friendly with one of our interviewers. He was escorted off the property by another interviewer who happened to be there when it took place. Nothing serious happened, from what I understand; the guy just kind of freaked her out. So imagine our surprise when this same individual showed up in our front office a couple of hours later—wanting to fill out an application for employment. We declined.

Then we found that the new project was not going as expected. It was running at about a quarter of the rate it was supposed to run. Our QA manager got on the phones and started making calls. He got it to run at just under half the expected rate—and he's the best we've got. So I called the project manager, and we checked reports and crunched numbers. The conclusion: the project had been programmed incorrectly. It was not physically possible to run the job at the expected rate the way it had been set up. So the project was pulled for the weekend.

We had another project we were supposed to start on Friday night. It's an ongoing member satisfaction survey we do for an out-of-state credit union, and we call on it about twice a month. We make it a point to put our most polite, most competent interviewers on it when it comes up. So I was ready to start it at the appropriate time, and it wouldn't run. Come to find out that the project manager (a different one than previously mentioned) had set up the questionnaire in the computer, but hadn't set up any numbers for us to call. Oops. So that job was pulled, too.

And then there was the pièce de résistance. One of the supervisors came up to me and asked me to resolve a problem with one of our interviewers. When I found out who it was, it made my night. No, it wasn't the Tsarina. She's at least amiable most of the time. This interviewer is not.

First, some background. We trained a new supervisor last week. John has been picking up things pretty quickly, and he's turned out to be very efficient and helpful. Anyway April, the other supervisor for Friday's shift, left a note for this problematic interviewer to see her about switching to a different job. The interviewer (let's call her 'K') came to see April as directed, but April was on the phone at that moment. John tried to help K, who told him she was supposed to speak to April. John told her that he knew what it was about and could help her while April was occupied. K responded by turning around and walking away, ignoring his attempt to help.

K then returned to her seat and started complaining about how she'd been slighted or disrespected or some such. Her complaints were so loud that one of the other interviewers complained to April that she couldn't hear the people on the phone, which is not a good situation in our line of work. And that's when April made me aware of the situation. So I took a deep breath and called K into the office.

I asked her flat out what the problem was. She acted like she had no idea what I was talking about, so I explained to her everything that I've just explained to all of you. She was in full defensive mode before I even finished. First she wanted to know who had snitched on her. When I told her I wasn't going to go into that, she started ranting about how nobody—supervisors or employees—ever took her seriously and how disgusted she was that everybody ran to the supervisors to deal with their problems instead of coming to her. She also complained about how we supervisors fostered a culture of informantism by encouraging everyone to tell us what was wrong instead of solving their problems themselves.

She eventually worked her way around to how she didn't know John was a supervisor now (although everyone else in the call center had figured it out) and how he didn't like her anyway, so there was not way they'd be able to get along. I let her know that her personal feelings towards John were irrelevant; he's a supervisor now, and consequently, her boss. That didn't help, of course. She continued on with the same diatribe, only with greater vitriol and self-justification. I tried to suggest how we (i.e., she and everyone/anyone else) might solve these problems. That didn't help either. I knew it wouldn't. There's no way to get her involved in any solution, because she's never responsible for any of the problems.

So the end result was that for twenty minutes I listened to her blame everyone around her for everything that's gone wrong in her wretched, miserable little life. Twenty minutes. That's one-third of an hour of my life that I'll never get back. If I ever become that old and bitter, I hope someone will have the simple decency to shoot me. Put me—and everyone else—out of my misery.

Anyway, that pretty much wraps it up for last Friday's lunacy. If that day were a fish, I'd throw it back.

Imagine my anticipation at going back to work today.