I’ve waited all week for the floater who sat in my spot last week to come by my desk and make sense of the destruction she left in her wake. To refresh your memory, my cubicle looked like a bomb went off when I returned, despite leaving it in pristine condition with a nice two-page memo about all the things that Mr. BIL needed to accomplish while I was on vacation.
In return I got Armegeddon v.1.
Every day this week I’ve asked the floater to stop by for a few minutes just to run through the three dozen client folders laying around (I’m not even kidding), and every day she has hemmed and hahhed about why she can’t come to my desk. This afternoon after lunch I finally gave up when she refused again, and dived into the mess. It took an hour (which was surprisingly quick), but my area is now in order and much neater. I have no idea if I’ve put everything where it needs to go, but it’ll do.
See, when Mr. BIL sends things out, he wants paper copies of everything. Most notably, when he sends out emails, he wants a printout of the email AND all attachments so that if he needs to refer to the email he can immediately see not only WHAT he sent the client, but WHEN he sent it to him. However, the floater decided it was much better to print the unsent versions. So with 99% of the emails in my cubicle I don’t know if it’s in DRAFT form, or whether she sent it and just printed BEFORE she hit send. Either way it’s going to be a mess on Monday when I have to waste Mr. BIL’s billable time to make sure what was sent and what wasn’t. All because the non-billable floater won’t give me the time of day.
Also, that two-page memo that I left? Which outlined specific what the floater and Mr. BIL should try to get done? I found it at the very bottom of the huge stack on my ledge, with a sticky on it saying, “Mr. BIL, Jaynee says you need to do these things this week.”
Uh – THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!!! I made it very obvious that the FLOATER needed to take the lead on nagging Mr. BIL to do these tasks throughout the week, NOT to slap a sticky note on it and call her job done. Fortunately, out of the seven tasks I listed, three DID get done, so that’s something. Although one of them got done when I returned to the office on Tuesday. So really, only TWO got done while I was on vacation.
*sigh* It’s a good thing my next extended vacation isn’t until May 2008.