for the love!

my work is being so stupid right now.

on friday an email was sent out saying that for summer semester instead of the 39 hours that we had been allowed (39 instead of 40 due to budget) we would only be allowed to work 30 hours. and then there was another email saying that we are now allowed to take on a second campus job to work 20 hours at each.

yeah. a second job.

now does that make sense to anyone else? because i don't get it.

also, keep in mind that this was sent to us 2 weeks before summer semester starts. which means that any position with on-campus jobs will have been filled. also, it's june. any job openings in provo have been filled. and if any of us manage to find another on-campus job, it won't pay as well as this one so we'd want to work 30 here and 10 there. but what other job is going to let us only work 10 hours?

now, those on my team had thought to avoid all this crap because we're doing roughly 1/3 the work of the entire call center where there are about 10 teams. are we exempt? no. they want us to cut back our hours so they can hire more people and make us train them. which only really serves to frustrate us more.

all of this is only because we're the peons in the entire operation.

i say we just delete everyone's accounts and then see how they feel about cutting back our hours.

new office

we have a new office at work. they moved us upstairs and now we have a new view. pretty, ne? we're on the third floor and the time clock is on the first so it makes it a little hard to clock in and out for lunch, but i think the view makes it better.

the only problem is that around 5.30 the sun starts shining in the windows so that i can't see unless i put on my sunglasses. in my office. yeah. but there's less noise and cooler temperatures (not sure why but it's cooler up here than it was where we were before). plus, there's more room. word on the street is that we'll be getting a plasma screen for the office, but i'm not sure when or if that will happen. it's pretty nice up here so i don't mind.

ew...some more

and i thought yesterday was bad.

who wants to start at 5 in the morning? not me, i tell you what.

i was going to come in at 6, but then emily (who drives me to work) was asked by her boss to come in early to help set up breakfast. so--since i would have had to get up and leave by 5 anyway to catch the bus--i went with her then and helped her set up.

it was gross.

ew

i'm at work.

ew.

engineering?

today at 5:30 pm the church will migrate to a new email system. why the engineers chose to do this, i don't know. why they chose to do it in the middle of the summer when everyone will be wanting time off, but can't take time off because of the migration, i will never know.

the old system was working fine, and it was something we all (support staff and users) knew. there may have been glitches somewhere that no user or support personnel or indeed anyone but the engineers will ever see, but they wanted to change it. fine.

along with the change in mail client, they have set up a new system for the computer log-in portion of it all. but not just any system, a system wherein the users gets to pick his own username. so now, along with all the usernames that follow the standard (lastnamefirstandmiddleinitials) we get things like irishwife42 or xhlllln. do you want to try to find users by their first and last name when there is no standard? i certainly don't.

and then on top of all of this...last night an engineer deleted all the accounts of all of the support staff.

all.

so yesterday my team - because we administrate accounts - worked all day trying to recreate and re-add all the rights on some 200+ accounts. again, why the engineer couldn't have conducted his testing on test accounts is something else i'll never know.

and did i mention that because of this change i get to go in to work at 6 in the morning instead of my usual 9:30. i'll be working a 12-hour shift trying to help out as much as i can. ew.

now, i love my brother-in-law, but i'm glad he's a chemical engineer and not one that i'll ever have to work with in my job doing technical support.

thanks for that, jared.