June 26, 2003~~12:33 p.m.
And the Craziness Continues....
Recall, for a moment, Mrs. MacGyver, known in these parts as the most incompetent member of the registration team in our department. Remember how she is ScieNtoLogIst (Religion that Dare Not Speak Its Name) and the mother of another member of the Religion that Dare Not Speak Its Name at the company, and thus, despite her complete idiocy, there is no chance of her ever being fired? And remember how C was off to be brainwashed in Florida? Well, she�s there now, and things in the registration section have gone downhill like an avalanche. It has been over a month since C left, and Mrs. MacGyver has taken it upon herself to appoint herself resident �Senior� (SciEntolOgY for �boss�) over the other two girls in the department, Linda (who is actually the next Seniormost person behind C and is the smartest, most competent of the four in the group and is practically running the whole show) and Natasha, who is a smart girl, but as of late has been, in my opinion, putting forth only minimal effort to help out Linda. Basically, everything in the registration section was going to hell in a handbasket BEFORE C took off for Brainwashing, but now that she�s really gone and it appears that her �working from the beach� plan isn�t panning out so well for those of us back here in the office, the flaws in the section are beginning to show themselves like a streaker at a baseball game. Linda has been working mad hours trying to make up for C's flakiness and incompetent managing and half of her day is spent answering the same 10 questions Mrs. MacGyver has about how to turn her computer on. Meanwhile, Natasha, who has only been employed at e.SciEntOloGy for about 6 months, appears to be gone a LOT and has taken at least 2 days off in the past couple of months for her daughter�s first birthday and for moving, both of which would be decent reasons to take time off, if your section wasn�t about to crumble and destroy itself. In my opinion, those kinds of days off are reserved for when things are slow and it is convenient for the rest of the team to have you be gone. Last week, Natasha took 2 days off to have her wisdom teeth pulled. This is fine, being it was a medical issue, but probably, when her daughter�s birthday arrived a month ago, she could have anticipated the medical leave she would need, and perhaps should have thought twice about taking the birthday day off. Just my observation. I only take days off when absolutely necessary because I feel like I have a job to do and my team needs me to be here. In addition, if she has only worked here for 6 months, there is no way she has more than about 2 � days of accrued vacation time yet, so my guess is that she�s been taking a lot of days off without pay, which it is C's decision to approve, but the point is that if she doesn't even HAVE the days to take off, and the team is suffering already, she shouldn't be allowed to take extra time off. Bottom line. At any rate, right or wrong, good reasons or bad reasons, it is noticeable that Natasha is not here a lot. And when she IS here, she is making personal calls half the time, to her boyfriend and other people. Now, we all know my opinion on personal calls. I am not opposed to them, in moderation. But this girl either needs to be more discreet when she�s talking about stupid shit or just not chit chat on the phone EVERY DAY. Once in awhile, it�s fine. Like on a lazy Friday or something, but constant baby talk to your one-year-old and gossip about friends in drug rehab? I don�t think it�s necessary, that�s all. To be fair, Natasha is a smart girl and works hard when she�s working, which is the majority of the time. My point is that sometimes, her �slacking� is noticeable. To be a good work slacker, you have to be incognito. There is an art to this, people. Otherwise, you�ll get nailed. Which is exactly what happens next. So Mrs. MacGyver has been complaining about both Linda and Natasha not working on the right things (i.e. making phone calls to potential conference attendees to sign them up for conferences). She apparently feels like she�s the only one making calls. In fact, this morning, I heard her on the phone with C chirping perkily, �Yep! It�s just me here!� probably in an attempt to plant a seed that she�s the only one working tirelessly while everyone else flakes off, when in fact, Linda was downstairs and Natasha is traveling to one of our events today. (Aside: one night, at about 5:00 PST, my friend was walking out of the office and Mrs. MacGyver was still at her computer. When asked what she was still doing here, she answered, �Just trying to get these Maryland people to get registered! Gotta make those phone calls!!� Yes. At 5:00 PACIFIC TIME. Where it was 8:00 in the EVENING in Maryland. Good luck, Mrs. MacGyver. Good luck with that.)Well, this may or may not be true, but making calls is not the only job to do in the registration area, and Linda is up to her eyeballs in all the other crap she gets dumped on her to do. Natasha does make calls and in the end, it�s not up to Mrs. MacGyver to complain about how much she is or isn�t doing, because did it ever occur to her that since she is completely computer illiterate, the other two girls have a lot more data entry stuff to take care of to make up for her and thus, might not be ONLY calling all the time? And maybe, just maybe, calling is the only thing Mrs. MacGyver can half-way do and that�s why she�s doing it day in and day out? So two days ago, Mrs. MacGyver took it upon herself to submit an Observation Report (SciEntOlogy for Tattletale Form) which is something you turn in when you have a gripe about someone. In SciEntOloGYland, they think that if you get things �out in the open� you solve problems because you �take your attention off the problem.� This method is nice in theory, but only if the person you are bitching about takes it as constructive criticism and not personally. Otherwise, you just end up with a pissed off co-worker who, if it were me, would work all that much harder to make you miserable and piss you off. So Mrs. MacGyver submits this form, out of the blue, and doesn�t route it to C, THE BOSS, but instead, sends it directly to Natasha. A meeting with the Bitch in Charge of Personnel ensues and there is all this office drama abounding. As if there weren�t enough to do in registration. That night, Natasha sets up the fax blast program on her computer (WinFax is a program we use to send out faxes to zillions of numbers. It�s quite ineffectual as far as raising attendance, but since C is at the helm, the registration team is forced to do pointless things like this daily). The next morning, the registration team discovers that a glitch in the computer caused WinFax to pull about 10 emails from Natasha�s Outlook account and fax them nationwide. The emails included, yes, you guessed it, the Observation Report submitted by Mrs. MacGyver the previous day. It�s not funny, but it is. Just a minute ago, I heard Mrs. MacGyver comment that the people in a state she�s calling today don�t like to use email and she can�t understand it because it�s �so easy�! This, coming from the world�s largest proponent of using a chisel and stone to communicate.
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