Here, But Barely

Sounds almost like one of those Barely There underwear commercial lines, I know lol.

Anyway, it's been a painful week or so with little to absolutely no internet. I don't think I've had internet since my last post -- and no, it wasn't our connection, it was our neighbor's connection. Right now, I'm lucky and am piggybacking on my neighbor's connection again, but god knows how long this will last.

Luckily, I have been so busy with work that I'm too exhausted to do much when I get home. I also went to the gym over the weekend and ran off the frustration of being deprived of internet. I also played many hours of Final Fantasy XII. I would have liked it more, had I realized I could have purchased these magics and accessories a long, long time ago instead of waiting till like 3 battles before the final boss battle to realize "Hey, why won't this place sell me what I want!?"

Well... it probably would have been another day of video-gaming had I not decided to drive up to the Town Center and look for Radioshack, which supposedly had T-Mobile in it. I wanted to a get a mobile broadband USB stick, but couldn't decide among Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. I got very differing opinions from several different people and they always put me back on the same plane with the three options. I went to Verizon after Radioshack and they were charging for their USB sticks despite the 2-year contract plan for $60. If I went with either Sprint or AT&T, then I could get the stick for free and only pay the $60 for 2 years.

I decided not to buy anything today to give myself a chance to think on it some more. My mom is going to check out Comcast for me tonight, well, technically I can check it myself, but with such a volatile connection, I have to move about really slowly, otherwise it might just die on me =_= *sigh* I really can't deal with this lack of internet anymore. I might really go crazy if I have to go without it for another week. I'm sure I can survive, but I don't want to =_=

As for work... it's been really busy, but I prefer busy over slow any day. There was this one return that I worked on today and traditionally, it has been a major pain, but I got it all to work just fine since the client made it somewhat simpler this year. I also set up the file in a less convoluted way so my boss shouldn't be banging her head against her desk this year with this file either -- at least I hope she doesn't. In the past, people copied all the bank statements and checks, all the insurance and loan statements, but I just copied the the Jan & Dec bank statements to get the beginning and ending cash balances, then looked through their transaction summary plus the rest of the statements to make sure all the numbers match up. When things all matched what was on the statements, I just didn't make anymore copies. There's less paper to sift through this year, so hopefully that will make my boss happy. I don't want her to have to beat something again this year, because at the moment, when I see a lot of useless paper in a file, I want to beat something too lol.

We got a new admin person since last week or the week before last, and she is really nice, but I can't seem to warm up to her. For some reason... I just find her very annoying. The way I feel towards her is the same way my mother feels towards some of our waitresses at times. There are these moments where I'm just sitting there, going .... "... Seriously? Are you for real? Do you not use your brain?" I know that she is new, and we are all scared, weak little mice during our first year at a job, but there are some things where I am just like ... "Oh come on, you should know better than that. It doesn't take a kindergartner to figure that one out! It's just plain logic!"

So, there was this client who brought in all her receipts and our admin people have to usually copy main, important documents to put into the file for us, the accountants, to use to prepare the tax returns, but they don't ever copy receipts. It is a waste of resources, period -- paper, ink, time and labor. She copied 20 pages of receipts -- with 3-5 receipts on each page. She was carefully laying them all out on the copier and so it took her forever to copy documents for one client file. I was wondering why she was taking so long with these files my boss told her to copy and then give to me, and then realized that she was copying ALL the receipts. I felt my eyes just go rolling into the back of my head. I couldn't be angry with her 'cause she's new and chances are, no one has told her not to copy those receipts, but seriously... if you didn't see any in any of the other files, and if you didn't see it in last year's file, don't do it! I'm sure the senior admin had already given her a rundown of what are the important things to do, but she didn't ask and just went ahead and wasted maybe 2 hours copying over 40-something receipts.

The paper got jammed in the machine a couple times and I had to help her fix the problem, then she sat there and went through her copies, page-by-page to see if she got all the pages. While it may sound diligent, it's actually kind of negligent of time and budget. There are page numbers on the corner of the pages. You will know if you're missing a page by looking at the bloody corner. You don't have to look at page-by-page to see if you copied the right thing 'cause page 1 of Charles Schwab statement won't change into page 2! *bangs head on something* I even told her that there are page numbers and to just use those. She then replied that, because the paper got jammed, she had to make sure they were the right amounts ....................................... THE AMOUNTS WON'T F**KING CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY'RE ALREADY PRINTED, OMG!!!!!!! But I didn't say anything, I gave her my two cents, she didn't take it and decided to use more time. Fine then.

Also, she didn't file any of the documents the correct way. Cumulatively, I spent maybe an hour a day -- depending on the number of clients I worked on that day -- resorting and reorganizing her filing so that it would make some sense and my bosses won't kill me for not making sure it looked good before it went to them =_= The partners' times are very precious, we can't afford to waste their time so if the admin can't do their job right, it hinders me and my budget time, and if I can't do a good job within my budget, I end up wasting time, and then my boss gets pissed with me. I've been working like fire has been lit under me these last few days 'cause I have to move through her crap really fast. Yes, I understand that she is new, and yes, I do tell her not to do some of the things she's been doing wrong, but when I'm this busy and I have to correct all these mistakes for her, it just makes me really edgy.

I haven't bitten her head off, but I am not exactly the friendliest person either. I simply say the morning greeting and go straight to my desk to work. I have this "Don't bother" me look on for most of the day 'cause when I'm concentrating, I look pretty pissed -- I was born with the look and can't help it. She hardly comes to ask me questions 'cause I think she's afraid of me. While, I am not like my other coworker who yells at her sometimes or barks at her for pretty dumb reasons -- such as, don't turn on our boss' light 'cause I will think he is here and I can't eat breakfast -- if you don't want her to turn on the light, say something nicer like "It will conserve more energy that way." Yeah, I understand that an extra half hour of not having the light on probably doesn't make that much of a difference, but a half hour each day for an entire year is like pennies turned to dollars saved over a year. So yeah, if you want someone to not do something, don't give them some retarded excuse like that, tell them something that won't make them feel so bad and you look so dumb.

God. People.

Anyway, before I got off on a tangent... I know better than to frighten the newbie, so I always use an even, but stern voice to tell her what is the right way and why it is the right way rather than bark at her. My eyes might not be kind even though I'm smiling 'cause I'm tired, I'm annoyed, but I have to be patient 'cause I know how tough it is to be the new kid. I can't get angry, but I can't coddle you either, it's only for your own good. If I'm too nice, people will walk all over me. Be thankful that I don't bite your head off for no good reason. I think because of my approach though, I am somewhat intimidating like my boss. We're Scorpios. Scorpios are intimidating people and sometimes, that is a very good thing. She doesn't ask me questions. She asks my friend questions and when my friend has no idea, she asks me for the new lady. I'm not mean, I'm just not open and friendly right now 'cause I'm busy. I don't have time to be your best friend.

It's not that I want to be annoyed with her, but when you can't use common sense for some of these really trivial things, it's kind of counterproductive. The two returns she gave me a couple days ago, I could have finished them in one day had she given them to me within an hour of each other, but she gave them to me within three hours of each other. They were small returns. I don't get how it could have taken her so long to copy and organize the file. Yes, an hour seems reasonable per large file. Sometimes the filing and sorting takes the most time out of the budget, but if I have to redo it after it already takes her an hour to do it, then that is not productive at all. And like I said, yes, I understand that she is new and new people make mistakes. Hell, I still make mistakes, but I can't deal with an hour of fixing someone else's mistakes a day right now, not when it's busy and I don't have a whole lot of time to teach her.

My boss realized the pain and suffering we were going through though, so she doesn't do the copying anymore and if she does, she is to put the copies in the front pocket so we can organize it ourselves -- which is actually a better approach 'cause I have less of a headache than having to re-sort her stuff. She still needs to stop copying miscellaneous crap though =_= She copied instructions and fine print of statements... we seriously don't need those... I feel like I'm going to have a seizure when I see a page full of teeny, tiny, ant-like text =_=

And yeah, we're all on edge. It's almost March. I have yet to get my own taxes done, though I did plug in the numbers today and saw that I owe California $133 =_= Not pretty... I need to contribute some money into my HSA to lessen that blow next year. I'll get $98 from Federal lol. So sad. Anyway, I just felt like ranting a bit tonight. I did go several days straight without being online so, it was already pretty impressive for me to survive this long without complaining about something =_=