Random Traces of Sanity in a Insane World

Today I blog out of frustration and boredom. Life has been weird and weirdness reins. As money grows tighter and things become more expensive, I appreciate my second job more, despite being about $0.50 and hour below abject poverty pay. It is rather, simply poverty level pay. I was the beneficiary of 2 raises. I was given a quarter on the hour a month ago after my 60 day slave period when I was making about $0.18 over minimum wage. Then last week I received another $.25 per hour. Of course, it's just me and the boss now as the other guy quit and I can pick up a little extra time on Fridays doing part of that job. Usually about an hour. It's hard to do it on any other day due to main job and needing to actually sleep.

Concerning the main job. They are still renovating the building. Since I work for the government, nothing about this is simple, and everything is done in a weird and slightly goofy fashion. Rather than move us to a temporary site, despite there being a recently renovated, yet still vacant former state building owned by the same leasing company up the hill from us with the necessary data and phone lines, it is decided to squish us into half the building while the other half is renovated. There is a special department of the state government that makes all decisions regarding locations, layouts, furnishings, ect. on all state government property whether owned or leased. They have no concept of our duties or functions, or what is necessary for us to do our jobs, yet they are in charge of this.

Anyway, the first group of local bozo's that came over to do the sidewalk and make a few structural changes were slower that Paris Hilton's mental process. They must have been taking hour long porn and masterbation breaks every 15 minutes or something. It took them months to do 2 days worth or actual work.

Then the fun part. We were told on a Thurdsay that we had until the next Wednesday to have all our personal and all unnecessary items out of our offices. We were told we would be getting boxes to pack stuff in and temporary chairs or desks. People kept touring our offices. We sent some of our less crappy furniture to branch offices. That Thursday, I packed about 90% of my personal stuff into my car as I was taking Friday off. I stopped in that Saturday to get some more stuff and found my desk had been cleaned out. That kind of pissed me off as I was told I had until Wednesday to have everything ready to go. I went in Monday and had no desk. Apparently a district manager decided he or she wanted 5 desks before they were shipped to central warehouse and just came and took them. I had court that morning and everything I had been working on was scattered around the room. My laptop was unplugged and the battery about dead sitting in the floor. I plugged it in and scrounged until I found my two files and went to court. I got out of court after lunch and came back to find I didn't have a chair. Someone from another office had come in and taken 20 chairs. We didn't have enough chairs left for staff meeting or training. When the boss called to find out when our temp furniture was coming, we found we were only getting temp tables, no chairs. Great. I am now working off my temp table in a very uncomfortable chair I scrounged out of the trash pile. My in and out boxes are setting on the floor. My files are stored in cardboard boxes.

The interior guys are as fast as the first crew were slow. These guys must be getting paid by the job rather than the hour. They even decided to lay the carpet tiles when those guys didn't show. The other day, they had the main room floor covered in adhesive. I was having to do out the back door and all the way around the building and into the lobby to get my clients. It was pretty weather fortunately because you had to circle the building on the outside to send a fax, pick up any printed paperwork, drop off a supervision fee, mail a letter, pick up mail, ect. I joked that it was the new state fitness program.

In the midst of this mess, I had a client due a drug screen. After all the jogging to get her in and do her thing, then find a female officer, then get to the drug room, of course she tested positive for almost half of the 10 things our tests pick up, so I got even more exercise.