That’s how my immediate supervisor communicates. ALL CAPS, VERY STERNLY. When on paper, anyway. In person, she stutters and bumbles and looks panicked and gets flustered all over the place, but on paper, hoo boy, does she sound like she means it.

Today, I went into work to find not one, but THREE gigantic notes typed up in all caps, threatening doom if we watched television or surfed the internet, or dared sip a cup of coffee (haha, just kidding on that one) before we had all of our office complaints typed up in a terribly outdated log. For those not in the know, I work as a dispatcher at a sheriff’s office, so our “complaints” are literally complaints from the public, wanting us to take action in a) unlocking their cars, b) dealing with stolen gas, c) removing pesky trains from the tracks, or d) bringing peace and goodwill to all men (except that weirdo across the street who looked funny - could we please escort him out of town a.s.a.p.?). We take these complaints and handwrite them onto little slips of paper, and type up all the information in our daily logs, and then, at the end of the year, my supervisor FREAKS THE FUCK OUT and tosses all the year’s closed and cleared complaints at us in a panic, wanting them typed up in a separate complaint log YESTERDAY, because HOLY GOD IT’S NOVEMBER ALREADY!

Now, what she wants done here is for the complaints to be categorized, then put into numerical order, then typed up into categories (in numerical order, obviously) so someday, some poor sap can hunt through a billion binders full of logs and hopefully have a better chance of finding the specific complaint where Joe Blow called Jane Doe nasty names on the telephone. There’s a category for that - Telephone, in fact - but if Joe Blow was actually Jane Doe’s hubby, it might be filed under Domestic, or maybe Harassment, or maybe something else entirely. Now, you might be thinking to yourself: aren’t there computer programs that can do this sort of thing?

Why yes. There are. But we’re not going to use that new fangled shit, no way. We like paper. We like typing shit up ten thousand times in ten thousand ways. We like not having a fucking clue, and sitting in a paperific firetrap, thank you very much.

So anyway. Today, I walk into work, and she’s got this BIG SCARY NOTE taped up on two computers AND the foot-tall stack of complaints themselves. You know, in case we miss it. Or something.

More likely, because she’s a fucking psycho who is trying to be big and intimidating and scary, and really, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing and is trying to cover her ass with BIG LETTERS and REDUNDANCY.

Gah.

And then, she has this HORRIBLE microsoft word table document that’s fucked four ways from Sunday with weird boxes of text announcing that these are complaints, and gah, just much weirdness and badness, with margins that slide off the edges of the pages and all… and I am supposed to USE this?

Er. No. First thing I do? Hop on the internet to bitch to pals about my supervisor’s idiocy, and then draft out a new form that isn’t filled with bizarro. She’d gotten about 35 complaints typed up in her shift. And of course, her BIG SCARY NOTE. I got about 100 done, perhaps more, mostly during commercial breaks of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and I didn’t even start really, until my shift was halfway over, because my egocentric deputy (yes, egocentric, not eccentric) wouldn’t leave until FIVE A.M. He normally goes home at three. There was nothing going on. He just wanted to talk. And talk. And talk. About himself. And his thoughts. And his dreams (literal ones in his sleep, not “oh, I dream of going to Ireland one day!”). And his politics. And bitch about everyone but himself. And gah. Shoot. Me. Please.

So yeah. There you go. I told my supervisor in the morning not to touch the complaints, thank you very much, and to tell Ellen, who I work with, not to touch them either; I will type the damned things up myself so at least it looks professional, and not like a kindergartener was playing with the computer.

Tell me… why the hell do I work here?

Why?

2 Comments »

1. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. I wish you hadn’t told me that. Now I’m dreading work on Saturday, because nothing starts the day off TOTALLY wrong more than a redundant, frantic note from our fucking idiot supervisor. But funny, anyway, the way you explained it. :) Also, wake up! I want cheeseburgers!

   Comment by Amber — November 15, 2007 @ 6:29 pm

2. Sounds familiar.
   Like when my boss has me type up 16 “sets” of 40+ individual accounts revenue increases and decreases in an outdated spreadsheet that we will never read nor use.
   Have fun with that…every month.

   Good thing I am now a whiz at Excel.

   I think you should move to Billings.
   PS: Was asleep (gasp) at 8 pm when you called. No message? What kind of crap is that?

   Comment by Janna — November 20, 2007 @ 1:03 pm

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