inpromissum

Administrative Fury

*sigh* If only receptionists got any credit. Granted, it's easy for someone who treats the girls at the front desk with respect to say "Well, I sure know that there's a big difference between a good receptionist and a bad receptionist, and I appreciate the good ones", but really now, unless you have sat at that desk and taken a lashing from a pissed off client who is angry about a project you've never even heard of, you can't really appreciate this job.

Friday one of our young engineers told me the urinal in the men's bathroom near my new front desk (which is temporarily in a busy, noisy part of the building while we remodel the front) was about to overflow. Our full time maintenance guy is gone because one of his best friends was killed in a horrible accident. Apparently, 24-year old Mario thinks that fixing the urinal is somehow my responsiblity. I looked at him and said "I really don't know what to do about that. Jeff isn't here. Can you try and deal with it?" "No." "It's all you, man" I say jokingly. He stands around looking pissed off and offended that I find him equally qualified to fix a urinal and then disappears into the ether.

Today a slacker engineer, a senior engineer, and the head of our survey department each told me that the urinal was about to overflow. For the love of God! You are 50-year old men and I have just told you the maintenance guy isn't here! How did the urinal become my problem? Well, slacker guy didn't have much to do so he took the time to find the maintenance guy's boss (who happens to be the HR director). She was on an important phone call, so her direct report (who is also my boss) got recruited to be in charge of the spewing fixture and the flooded floor. As a 25-year old woman fixing the urinal was clearly her problem . . .

But I digress. Last time I held this position I had limited information on a particular project and wasn't allowed to give out the information I did have because the bid was on hold; I apologized profusely for not more being more helpful when a particular man called looking for information (he wasn't even a client). His response? With a nasty chuckle, "That's okay. That's why you are where you are." WTF. I can't even begin to describe how infuriated/offended I was. Earlier in the week the CFO bawled me out for sending her a call she didn't want, and the head of our survey department had also given me a stern lecture about wasting his time with calls I didn't know how to better direct. So basically I spent the rest of that day crying. You can tell me to suck it up all you want, but if you find yourself, as a young, petite, woman in a position that does not inherently indicate intelligence or education yet demands that you be nice to every a**hole that crosses your path I doubt you will have any easier of a time.

Recently, it is a super tall socially-inept badly balding ogre boy who has been brightening my day. He'll come down to demand that I bitch at the rental car people about the vehicle he just had to drive for two days. "Tell them I have their piece of crap ready. And they brought it with no gas. And tell them that there was some kind of disgusting bodily fluid on the steering wheel and they should do a better job cleaning up the car next time. Anyway, that car's for people . . . like you. Well, I was going to say midgets, but I thought that'd be mean." Again, WTF? Last week he decided to tell me, mid-sentence about some other complaint, that my glasses "really don't work." Okay, you're 6'8", 180 lbs., wear oversized round glasses (sorry, hon), are dorky as hell, and everyone's least favorite person, and you're giving me sh*t about my style? Suck it!

Wow, I have so many more stories right now. But maybe I will save some for a later date. I know some people think that the primary indicator of pay should be barrier to entry, but I would like to add the amount of crap you have to take from people to the list.