"I'm asking you for a little help - not the life of your firstborn child."
"Actually, yes, Miss, there is a reason we aren't paying your invoices at 30 days - it's because you are SUCH an annoying GIT that I've asked my boss to hold your payments just to piss you off even 1/2 as much as you piss ME off"
"Don't ask me... nobody tells me anything."
"Do I look like a farking private secretary???"
"Sorry, I died last week. I'm not being replaced for a month."
"This isn't brain surgery - I need those receipts!!"
"I'm sorry - I only take phone calls between 9:00 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. please try again later."
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Disclaimer: Not all of the above are actually relevant to my current job. I actually love my job, despite the small aggravations and irritations and foibles.
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It's amazing, really, when I think about it. The last thing in the world I wanted to be when I was "grown up" was an Accountant. I got to visit where my Dad worked several times and I thought it looked hideously boring and tedious and blah. And to an extent, it is. But it's also something I'm good at, it's marketable, and it incorporates two of my favorite things - research and puzzle-solving. The puzzle solving comes in the form of my all-time favorite thing in my job - balancing the bank statement to the GL and the checkbook. Yes, I know I'm strange. If you don't know it by now, you haven't been paying attention.
307 days
When I started my career as a Technical Writer way back when, women were a decided minority. So I was constantly being asked to sit in for the secretary or to make coffee. I solved the second one really easily. I learned to make the absolutely worst, god-awful coffee in the world. They soon stopped asking me.
ReplyDeleteThe second one took a lot longer, and ended only when a misogynist manager moved a male volunteer from the secretary's desk and ordered me to take care of it because "it doesn't sound right to have a guy answering the phone." Rather than make a fuss or argue, I asked if he wished me to cancel the tutorial session I had scheduled with a member of our team, to teach him some important presentation skills for an upcoming Air Force presentation that was worth over $50 million to the company.
The guy said yes. So I sent an email to the guy I was to tutor, and of course politely cc'd the Project Manager, who was the one who had been so delighted that I was able to do this in the first place. I was very professional and very non-confrontational. *evil grin*
The rest, as they say, was history. I could hear the PM screaming half way across the building, literally. To say he was mildly unhappy was putting it mildly. One of the phrases I recall was "if you want the GD phone covered, then cover it yourself. Don't take my people away from their real work."
I got a fairly well-deserved reputation for being a very easy to get along with, helpful to a fault person who actually didn't take much in the way of crap from anyone. It made my job ever so much easier.
I like my job fine too. I just want to take a machine gun to the arseholes (who are entirely management)
ReplyDeleteChe still lives in spirit eh? ;-)
I could not be an accountant. When I had my business's I took care of what I needed to do and hired bookkeepers for the boring details so that I could devote my time to making money and running the business.
ReplyDeleteI think it pretty much works like that everywhere. A sure way to fail is to do your own books when you should be spending the time doing more important details.
Just my thoughts based on my experiences.
What you are paying me is to come here and for going back home, you have to pay me extra to sit and work here.
ReplyDeleteI was a fork truck driver for a period of time in our plant. At inventory, everybody wanted things to "get lost." I'd ask where: "Put it somewhere, I don't care!" My standard answer was always, "I'm sorry. I don't know where somewhere is. Would you show me please?"
ReplyDeleteNEW POST !!!!
ReplyDelete