Profesional Admin Day

Ahh, it's my favorite day of the year. Professional Admin Day. It's like Christmas for us receptionists. We wake up, get to go to work and get showered in a million warm wishes, flowers, presents, maybe some chocolates and the best - a big ol' pat on the back from the boss while she tells us just how much she - and the company - appreciates you.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!

I can't even type that without laughing. What a world it would if that actually happened for me. But then again, if things were that awesome at work, I most likely wouldn't be blogging and all of your lives wouldn't be sweetened by stories.

So today, a florist truck pulled up outside and the driver came in carrying the biggest box ever of flowers. There were 6 bouquets inside and immediately my spirits lifted. Maybe they would remember me this year, maybe this would be the year that I got acknowledged and got flowers like the rest of the admins/executive assistants in the building!

While scanning all the cards, I sighed. Totally bummed. The flowers were for the rest of the E.A's, and 2 of them recently had titles changed and aren't really even considered E.A's anymore. What the hell.

So what did I do? I immediately opened the nearest card to see who they were from. Yup, HR. Well F you, HR! You did it again! Last year they had an administration luncheon, and I learned about since I manage all the conference rooms calendars. Naturally, instead of just sulking in private, I marched right up to the girl in HR that reserved the room and asked her just what the dilly was. Why wasn't I invited? And wasn't this day called RECEPTIONIST'S day before it became PC and changed to Admin day? Her response was classic. She didn't know why I wasn't invited, and unfortunately they didn't have another "boxed" lunch for me. (It was from a catering place that does individual sandwiches and presents each in a bag). But don't worry, go pick a place, and HR will buy me a lunch.

Um, no thank you. You missed the entire point. I left there thinking there would be no way they would forget me this year. Wrong.
To top it off, this month at my work April is considered "Employee Appreciation Month". They do fun things as have a breakfast for the entire company and have "appreciation days" which basically we're just allowed to wear jeans, which everyone absolutely loves. One of the recent appreciation days was buy your coworker a brownie day. Sounds silly, but again, we all love it. This year they passed out the brownies to be delivered on Admin Day. I should totally be getting one this year, if anything, at least from my boss. Nope! Bill and I even had a contest of who get more, and he unfortunately won. I got 2, both from co-workers, none from my boss.

With my day looking like a repeat of last year, when I returned
to my desk I had to smile. There at my desk was flowers, for me, from my amazing sister. Her card was the best part, it read - and I quote - "To the best F-ing admin ever! I hope you have a great day!"

I may not be appreciated and recognized at work, but it's nice to know I am loved - even if it is by family. I still got to leave work holding flowers, having people ask me what they were for.

So take that, work!

Pizzas and kids

I like kids, I really do. However, today was the dreaded, Bring Your Kid To Work day aka, the day where Ruby turns into an unofficial babysitter and somehow manages to not kill your children. Last year, two lovely children
decided it would be fun to go down the elevator, run into the lobby, have me "buzz them in" (because lets face it, their parents don't even have their pass to give them), run up the stairs, go back down the elevator and repeat. Joy.

So today, I went into work prepared for the battle. I thought it would be a good day when I got offered 2 munchkins from a little girl. I mean, that is a pretty awesome. But the day just went downhill from there.

Kathy is out this week, so I am in charge of her job since I'm her "assistant" for a couple hour a couple days a week. Kathy manages all meetings and conferences that take place in the corporate office and arranging all food deliveries for them. How hard would it be to do that while she was gone? Apparently really hard. Doing someone's full time job, on top of my job, wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.

Of course, today there were 3 lunches coming in. Two of them were huge orders, one for all the lil kiddies and one for 25 people. Kathy and I thought we were being smart last week when we were reviewing the upcoming meetings, and ordering from the same pizza place for both meetings. I mean, one pizza place, one delivery, easy right? NOPE!


Of course, since we had such a large order (we're talking about 15 pizzas and 4 bulk salads), it was late and the lobby was quickly filling up with hungry little tummies. Finally, the order arrives and this is where I realize ordering in bulk wasn't the smartest idea. When I placed the order on Wednesday, I specified two different orders so I could be charged appropriately. Yeah, well most pizza places don't care that certain pizzas are going to different conference rooms. Bill and I were trying to divide up all the pizzas, all while trying to get the kids and HR rep "in charge" of the kids to leave us the hell alone.

Once the pizzas were sorted, we realized that of course, we were short two pizzas. No problem, I'll call them up, the kiddos will be fine, at least they have 10 pizzas to hold them over.

Once that order was placed, Graham the "host" of the other meeting comes down to question what Kathy and I had done. There were 30 people in his meeting, not 25 and he was freaking out that there wouldn't be enough food.

Are you serious?? The 5 pizzas won't be enough??

Kathy and I do a little trick where we "cut" orders by 80% so we don't have left overs and/or waste food. So, a quick math lesson: 25people x 80% = 20 people. Assume 2 slices per person, that's 40 slices. Each pie has 8 slices, so 40/8=5. Ta-dahhhh 5 pizzas. So instead of explaining this logic to this guy since he's in no mood to hear it, I tell him I'll order another pizza (making it 6 total, since using my previous math equation would be enough pizza for 30 people.)

Nope!

The guy orders 5 more pizzas. That's a total of 10 pizzas for 30 people! And the place we're ordering from isn't cheap. So in order to get back to my own job, I don't argue the math and just order his pizzas. It was that moment that the delivery guy showed up with the forgotten 2 pizzas from the other order. Only he brought 4 because, well, I'm not sure why. So now the kids have 14 pizzas and I just placd an order for an additional 5.

I asked Bill what I should do, if I should take 2 of the pizzas that just arrived and give them to Graham. We reached the conclusion that it'd be easier for me to the leave 4 pizzas for the kids and not have to cancel any of Graham's order.

As if God knew I was freaking out, clock struck 1pm and it was time for my lunch. Since I have someone cover my lunches and they were standing there, instead of waiting for the other order to arrive, I took it as a sign to get the heck out of reception and take a breather at lunch.


29 minutes later as I'm walking back to my desk, I swing by both conference rooms. I have NEVER seen so much pizza. There were boxes everywhere!! Both rooms the food gets set up outside of the conference room, so I walked over and flipped the lids.

Full boxes of pizzas.



Now, what makes this story even more interesting is that Graham is the Controller for the company. He should theoretically be good at math. Please explain to me how he thought ordering all this extra food was a good idea.

In the end, the whole company lucked by by getting "free" lunch. I sure hope Graham enjoys his $380 lunch he just cost the company.

What a quitter!

Jade put in her 2 weeks.

Jade - who is back in school for her Masters - is leaving me for a paid internship to do something with her major...IN HISTORY.

Way to make the rest of us, aka ME, look bad. I mean, really... who even uses their degree anyways? But seriously, why can't I get a job with my degree? grr...

I think I'm more upset that she beat me to quitting than the fact that she's actually leaving.

As I've stating before, I'm still sitting in the same damn chair answering the same damn phone calls.

I need a beer.

Ok blovers, answer me this: do you think I'll ever get a new job doing something I love??

Death by... lemon seed?

So, according to last week's poll, you all want to hear more about daily happenings in the office. So as I've been waiting patiently for something blog worthy, I've been sitting at my desk drinking water with a lemon slice. Then it hit me. Literally.

While throwing my nalgene bottle back, I INHALED a lemon seed. Here I am, sitting in the lobby, alone (for the first time all day), choking on a freakin lemon seed. In between coughing and choking, I dislodge the seed.

Catching my breath, tears streaming down my bright red face looking like a mess, visitors start coming into the lobby. I can only imagine what they think of me. Do I tell them that I almost just died? Do I just sit there and act completely normal? Yup, I decided to act completely normal.

After calling who they were there to see, I immediately IM my friends, informing them about my near death encounter. You can imagine how sympathetic they were, I mean, who doesn't choke on lemon seeds? ;)

Trying to move on and forget about what just happened, I start going through paperwork from orders that were placed (by me) for new hires. We send a welcome basket, with a little note welcoming them to the company to arrive on their first day at work. Alison's basket arrived on Monday, and as I was attaching my receipt to my credit card statement, I realize I totally messed up on one. Alison's welcome note was address to Kathy. Kathy and Alison both started the same day, so I understand how I messed up, but really? c'mon! What the hell. I mean, I can't even blame that on my choking accident.

I guess when life hands you lemons.... ... try not to die on the seeds and blog about it

The computer monitor

I feel like my lobby is the only lobby in the world where everyone - visitors and employees - can see my computer screen. My desk is kind of low, and and has a weird shape, so most people don't walk in and walk to the front of my desk (where the sign in book is), they walk to the side of my desk, which I find extremely odd.

See exhibit A below. The X is where they SHOULD go, the ? is where they go. I thought maybe it was because the chair is kind of oddly placed, but even when its moved, they still like creeping up on my side.

Exhibit A:

Ew, I don't know why I can't load that to make it better quality and easier to read.

Any who, where the STAR is is where EVERYONE likes to sit. Forget about the comfy couch, or the chairs in front of me, the star chair is where every interviewee/guest/vendor loves to sit. It also so happens to be the only chair when sitting in it, you can see my monitor.

Now, I'm not doing anything crazy at work, but I really hate sitting there knowing people can see me check my personal email account and type non-work related emails. Or even go to any sort of website, even if it is just target.com.

It's always interesting when it's a group of people the come in, and they still migrate to that one chair. Now, I know what you're thinking. Duh, just move the chair. And trust me, I have. But due to the small nature of the lobby, there's only so many places where chairs can go. Also, every morning the chair is always back in its spot. Either the cleaning lady has it out for me, or Jim is doing it to annoy me.

Now, most visitors are usually in and out of the lobby pretty quickly, so I know it shouldn't bother me thaaaat much, but it's not just them! Employees come out and stand right there and talk to each other. Most of the time they want a private conversation so they stand there whispering back and forth. Um hi, I can hear you. And since you're standing on top of me, I can't keep myself occupied by looking at some fun website. I literally just sit there pretending all I do is wait for the phone to ring. So if you really want to talk about your husbands, go to the cafe. Go outside. Go to the kitchen and talk by the coffee like you're supposed to.

Just go away! I need to catch up on what I missed on Dancing With The Stars ;)

Ruby has a heart

Note: today's blog is not about a funny caller or employee. It's a little more serious and about Ruby caring.

Today was a rainy, cold, and miserable Monday. Callers were rude, my boss had an attitude and the office manager had only worked 5 hours again. So when quittin' time came, I was beyond estatic. I loaded up all my stuff, peaced out and hopped in my car. It was then that I realized I was literally stuck at work. My car decided to die on me and needed to be jumped.

I went back inside and complained to Jade (the PT receptionist) about how the world was against me. We called Brandan (another guy in the mail room), and since Jade had jumper cables and her car was right next to mine, her and Brandan went out to fix my car. I decided to stay far away, since I probably wouldn't be that helpful.

While sitting at the desk, pouting over my day, the phone continued to ring. Rolling my eyes, I answered the phone. In between a baby's screams, I could hear the tiniest whisper of someone on the other end asking me if they reached the hotline. I replied they reached the main switchboard and asked what department they were looking for. She replied, but I could barely her. I asked if she could speak up since I was having trouble hearing her. It was that instance when I felt like the biggest jerk ever. She apologized and ask:

"Have I reached the domestic abuse hotline?

I could have died. I immediately picture a woman with a black eye holding her crying child whispering with her hand over her mouth so no one could hear her ask if she'd reached a domestic abuse hotline. I felt awful telling the lady that she didn't reach her destination and that I wasn't able to help her. I really wished there was something I could have done besides just hang up with her.

Her one question made me realize that yeah, some Mondays suck, cars break down but I can count my lucky stars that I have never had to ever think about finding a hotline to talk to someone about domestic abuse. I've spent the remainder of my day thinking about this woman and can only hope everything works out for her.

I think Ruby is growing a heart.

Even Reader's Digest Agrees

Just a little blurb sent to me from one of my favorite followers. Straight from Reader's Digest. Maybe I should forward this to Susie ;)