Bitter - Sweeeeeeeeet

Apparently someone was listening to my angsty rant yesterday....

I had a meeting today with the office manager. At first, I was a little concerned (OK, a lot concerned) that it was going to be some sort of disciplinary meetng regarding my psychotic break yesterday. My job is very stressful and taxing during the spring months, and while I do try to remain as calm as possible while on the clock, the whole vacation fiasco was the breaking point. I was pissed off, and the entire department knew it. (Staying until 9:00 pm hadn't helped my mood either. As of last night, I'd already put in 12 hours of unpaid overtime. The only thing that had kept me from going completely postal was the fact that CSI: was a rerun, so my time off the clock wasn't interfering with my Grissom love.)

As it turns out, my little freak-out had made it obvious to the directors of the department that I was the only person whose job couldn't be covered for a week by anyone else (except my supervisor, who will be leading an expedition of teachers in Trinidad). All of the other support staff members are able to cover each other's desks for lunches and holidays, but because I am on a different floor, I have missed out on the cross-training fun. (Some of the folks upstairs know how to take the basic information for a school trip, but have no idea how to actually enter it into the system.) Since they've been talking about cross-training all of the registrars for nearly three years, they decided this would be as good enough a time as any. I went through my now-very-outdated job description with the office manager and explained some of the finer points of the outline I'd written way back in 2002. While "booking a school field trip" sounds pretty straightforward, there are a lot of details and nuances to this seemingly simple task. I explained the differences between day care summer camps (which we do handle) and YMCA summer camps (which we used to handle, but no longer do). I explained the fact that animal demonstrations have to be entered on three separate calendars in addition to the registration system. I explained the home school policies and the short-notice emails. I explained the room reservation system, and the Room Setup Report of Redundancy.

I think I made her brain explode.

The good news is the vacation appears to be back on. The less-busy registrar willl be covering my desk in my absence, and will be trained to do pretty much everything that would come up.

The bad news? I'll be cross-training her during the busiest time of the year, when all three phone lines are ringing and IMBD packets need to be assembled and sent out and half of the known universe is wandering through my lobby. Oh yeah, and I volunteered to write a detailed manual of all of my duties this weekend. (It's already 15 pages long, and I've only covered the basic procedures.) And we still haven't addressed the fact that I'm working a buttload of hours that I'm not geting paid for and getting charged for a lunch break that I'm not able to take.

I'll tackle those issues later. For now, I'm content in the knowledge that I will be in New York in June to see Richard Cheese (and possibly Avenue Q if we can swing the tickets).

I'm also thrilled that the office manager also thinks that the Room Setup Report of Redundancy is pointless, and will back my in my ongoing fight to get the stupid thing taken off my plate.

Oh, and my supervisor has ordered me to take a lunch when my friends drop by the office on Monday.

Sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease. And I plan to bask in the glory of that platitude for the next few minutes.