The Age of Responsibility


The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.



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    since Feb 9, 2005
    The never-ending week....

    What I'm listening to: Interpol, Next Exit


    This week has just been...yeah. Work has me alternating between shaking my head in wide-eyed disbelief and pounding it against the wall. There is so, so, so much for me to do and so, so, so little time. It's actually scaring me.
    I conducted my first interview this week. That's right, I was put in charge of evaluating a candidates suitability for a job. Nevermind that it's a little piddly contract job that a monkey of slightly above average intelligence could do- I still was responsible for hiring said monkey. Which means that if it turns out to be the poo-flinging kind (yes, yes, Karen, I know- monkeys don't throw poo) I feel like it's going to be my ass.
    I was put in charge of another set of data sheets this week, but due to time constraints and scheduling conflicts I was not able to actually "train" with our I.T. person. So, come Monday, I will be winging it with an untested set of instructions from Raleigh.
    Oh, yes, Raleigh. I am moving this weekend. Somehow.
    I sat in six hours of meetings this week, which suddenly gave me new feelings of empathy for the lead character in Office Space. Uhm, yeah...I'm gonna need you to come in this weekend...so...yeah...9 would be great.
    We have a huge sale coming up which I am apparently in charge of orchestrating. The wonderful thing is that they wanted this sale to happen yesterday. After telling me and the image department about it Tuesday. Yes, two days to organize our biggest sale of the season. That sounds reasonable. Indeed. Fortunately we were able to delay it.
    Finally, today, I received an email in which a coworker had copied and pasted part of an IM conversation with our spreadsheet developer regarding a spreadsheet I had not completed. Her catty remarks prompted the following response from me:


    Hi all,
    I feel like I need to clarify a few things in regards to spreadsheets. I was asked by Chris and Nancy in April if I would mind taking on the occasional spreadsheet or two in addition to my regular responsibilities because we were having problems with some of our spreadsheet developers. Somehow it went from doing a spreadsheet every now and then to being asked between the last week or so of June and the first couple weeks of July to do four spreadsheets from the Lilo lines (Espana, Espuela, Esperanza, and Mundo), two for MH, one for Ariat, one for Kyra K, one for Perri's Leather, one for Sporteze, two for Henri de Rivel- and I believe another one or two little ones that are slipping my mind.
    I'd like to point out that this is a minimum of twelve spreadsheets in the span of about three to four weeks- which is around three to four spreadsheets a week. We assume that it takes 2.5 hours a spreadsheet for a typical developer, so this means that to keep up with them it would have taken 7-10 hours a week in addition to my regular work- in other words, I would have had to allocate 20-25% of my "office time"
    to spreadsheet work. Or, looking at it another way, an entire day a week or more to spreadsheets.
    This was, and is, simply not feasible. I felt I was pretty clear with Nancy that my workload was pretty stretched as it was, and that while I would do the spreadsheets as quickly as I could, I could not guarantee completion dates- simply put, financial sheets, data feeds, sales/specials, and maintenance of the admin site really do take
    priority.
    Hillary, you requested the Kyra K packet on Tuesday- I apologize for taking two days to get it into the office, but since then I've been putting in 9-6 or 9-6:30 here, and then trying to pack, set up utilities, and generally prepare to move on Saturday. It completely slipped my mind until I received your email yesterday. I would be
    more than happy to overnight it to you today, so you would get it tomorrow or Monday and could theoretically prepare it for one of the new spreadsheet hires to train on or take home- let me know if this would help. Unfortunately, between the move and trying to prepare for the tent sale, there is no way I can get it done this weekend.
    I also have word documents with the completed Ariat and MH descriptions that still need to go up, and in addition I still need to do descriptions for eleven Lilo Espana items that were on the spreadsheet I overlooked when I imported all the other Lilo sheets.
    I've been trying to get them done this week, and they just keep getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. If you would like them to get done sooner, I suggest you give them to one of the new developers- I'd be happy to leave the material here, and email the documents to you.
    We're all busy people, and getting tense about the workload doesn't help anyone. The spreadsheets do need to go up as quickly as possible, and I'll certainly do all I can to help with that- I'd just like to ask that everyone remembers that spreadsheets are not my primary responsibility, and that over the next couple months I'm supposed to be streamlining my responsibilities, not adding to them.
    Thanks!
    Libby

    So there, bitches. Take that.

    After 22 posted at 2:48 PM

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