If my life in the past few years, occupation and care free, has been like the Bach number, then my life now, in my current job is starting to sound a lot like the crazy Liszt's tune.
Here we go again...
It's only been a week so far and I'm frazzled already! This so-called training, just like that E2E position, is nothing more than another shit show on ice. Started off with last Thursday and Friday where I never did get a complete 8 hours each day, mainly because the materials that I had to cover only took a few hours. The majority of this position is all in the field, and it's all very hands-on, yet is also extremely restricted to only those persons that pass state approval. Well that can take up to 3 weeks so what we're left with is me standing around with my dick in my hand trying to figure out what's what and how I can make my coin.
This week, so far, not so much better. Started off with Monday and Tuesday attending one of the most boring seminars I've ever been to which was all about a program that my agency may or may not run with. From the track record, that I've been able to dig up so far in my hours and hours spent self-absorbing material, in the obsolete and decrepit little office that I share with two other people, it looks like this new program, that was part of this presentation, will go absolutely nowhere. Which brings us through the next two days of this week so far where I've gotten sketchy, at best, hands-on training, dealing with only paperwork, not real clients, since, again, that needs the state approval. I've been under the shaky tutelage of Maddie, my coworker, who reminds me totally of one of Stephnie Weir's characters from Mad TV. To say she's ditzy, like the character Dot, is putting it mildly. Aside from those frustrations there's again the near impossibility to make 8 hours a day unless I just "read a book." More about that in a second.
Red flags, red flags! Oh the field of red flags! First off let me clarify it's Thursday evening and because of a lack of both training material and persons that are willing to do said training I've completed my work week. I won't be working tomorrow, so, yeah, I'm starting off a full-time position and just making part-time pay.
I asked Val, the Gal Friday, if it looks like I'd have an amended week again next week and she made this fish eyes face saying - I don't know - I expressed to her this is a big concern and she nodded as if to say yeah, but...
When I told her I was spending hour after hour alone in that windowless little office reading through three ring binder after three ring binder filled with redundant pages, all printed out from websites, most of which were at least a couple years old, and much of which went as far back as 2015. More fish eye looks...but was it a look of shock that the department is in a shambles or was she dismayed that I got nosey and snooped and "found shit out?"
Being my high strung self, she could tell I was experiencing near panic levels of anxiety. Hopefully she was also aware, that in my mind, I was mulling over the value of going through all of this if the job in and of itself has a shaky foundation. Her first suggestion, as she leaned to me and breathed it almost under her breath, was to "bring a book." In other words, clock in, spend the day idling away, chewing the hours down until clocking out for the day. Not knowing if this was perhaps some devious morality check trap, I told her I really wanted to do things that were of value, so then her next suggestion was to use my organization skills and computer savvy, that she already knew I had, and revamp the department, suggesting it's been a bit disarrayed since at least 2019. Well, of course I've already learned through that horror day at E2E's ADT program, that people acting all Jesus flipping the money tables in the temple ain't going to fly too well, and then that got me thinking, well maybe that's what she's hoping! Ugh, I can't figure out where these people are in their headspace!
I'm finding faults everywhere, just like I did on that day in that little ADT, and I get the creepy feeling the more I bitch and complain, the more it'll come back and snap me in the ass.
Here are some of the fucked up things I've had to deal with so far:
There's this guy Mike, who has reduced his hours to part-time but has over 8 years experience in this department ,so he's lauded as being the god of Employment Development. Well, when I met him, he immediately asks me I saw the game Sunday and I go "I don't really follow sports..." and for the next 10 minutes he proceeds to go on and on about the plays, the players, the game, the teams... as I'm glazing over and nodding wordlessly since all I'm thinking is "Does this guy have a fucking clue?" I just told him I don't follow sports so why the fuck is he talking to me about sports? Narcissist much?
I was supposed to be somewhat tagging along under his tutelage this week but he had to leave for a family death in Michigan so he's out of town. I did get a chance to read through his "printed internet collection" though. You see, he's that guy from the Progressive commercials that is "becoming his Dad" and likes to print every email, every website he's visited, every form, multiple times, to make big dusty stacks of paper. He's got shit on his desk that goes back years, yet, oddly, nothing from the past year or so. More on that later.
So I'm stuck with Maddie yesterday. She literally has virtually no computer skills. She still uses a paper day-planner. She writes down, on lined notepaper, in painfully pretty penmanship (that must have taken many minutes to write out) all of her logins for the various websites she needs to access. She tried to access one of her clients online payroll systems and didn't know that the company the client is employed with changed systems before the end of 2022. So here's where we get into one of the other big red flags...What does she and Mike (and Jesse, the dude that was recently separated due to health issues; not sure if it was his choice or the company) do, as real work, other than the follow-up stuff that, as far as I can tell, shouldn't take even one person more than some 20 hours a week to do? Why is it this department only has about seven clients in community placed employment?
Well, I at least didn't stop to buy me some beverages, as you might expect. I'd be inclined to, regarding all of these developments. I got to take it day by day. I got to tamp down my negative attitude. I got to look at things with more rose-colored glasses. I've got to chill man.
It's all a cacophony right now, of those wild and crazy notes in Mephisto Waltz, and I highly doubt, staying in this position, I'll ever reach the sublime purity of Air on the G-String. But I have a feeling it will get better. At least I hope.
And for crying out loud, the music better not switch to something like this: