Life in the mundane

I have a virus, just an ordinary virus that is resulting in a HUGE HUGE headache and a temperature. I can hardly complain because it is such a relief to have something so ordinary and non threatening. Last Friday, I went to a local market for produce. I saw a woman shopping. Her hair was completely covered in plastic. She was wearing latex gloves and a medical mask and before touching her grocery cart, she sprayed it with Lysol and wiped it down with a disinfectant. She avoided all the Mexican workers in the store like the plague going out of her way to walk around them keeping her distance as far as she possibly could. I chuckled a bit at this fear of flu. I would swap the tumors for a bout with a virus any day, even swine flu.

At work this morning, I was hammered about statistics. I work in purchasing and we measure quality by how long it takes from a request to order to when the purchase order is actually cut and with the vendor. We have tools that we use but since July 07, I've been working an account that is not yet defined in our tools. We established a manual process and work arounds but it boils down to me getting an EXCEL spreadsheet with the order and entering it via cut and paste into our ordering tool as opposed to the usual way where all is dealt with electronically. I receive the orders via email which is a point of failure unto itself. After the PO is created, I enter the PO number and ship date etc. into a database which I haven't had access to since December, and a report is generated based on what is entered into that database. I had access to this database but it mysteriously stopped working on Dec 14, 2008 and support has been unable to figure out why. Of course, my company laid off all the programmers involved in this databases creation and all the support we have left is a Word doc with links to the files that I need to download and inttruction how to manually copy and paste the database files from their location on a shared drive to my personal machine. I have uninstalled and reinstalled these files countless times and have yet to regain access to the database and this has been a point of contention with my boss. When I click the database in an attempt to open it, I get an exception error and as I'm not a programmer, I have not a clue what the error means or what exactly is generating it. My boss decided that I should take my laptop in for a re-image as a last ditch effort to regain access. As I am a teleworker, my laptop is my sole access point into our corporate LAN. As we have no backup for broken laptops, it means that I was not able to work while this re-image was being done and I was trying to clear the way to take a day off and have our desktop support install a new image. My boss contacted me on April 21st and asked if I had scheduled it. I hadn't as I couldn't find a day without a million things in it. She said, "We'll have to take it on the chin while you do this. I want this done. I'll get you a backup." Ok, says I. I scheduled it, wrote my boss with the date, and she said she would contact her two dept managers to determine who can do my work. My out of office referred my customers to her and off I went. It took two days to complete the re-image. When I got my computer back, I had to reinstall all my applications which still isn't finished and I had issues getting onto the internet because the desktop person had not configured access. This took two calls to the helpdesk to fix. Once I was able to get onto the internet, I found to my dismay that no one had been assigned to do my work. Over 1000 emails downloaded from the server and I am still working through the fall out. Every week, we are directed to fill in a "Cycle time report" that tracks the misses and late orders. Due to the debacle last week, I had 3 on that report which was not too bad in my opinion due to the fact that my government accounts are hugely busy and installing over 2000 sites this year and this other manual account results in another 80 sites a month. In the world of emailing requests, these requests were simply lost in the piles of emails I received on those two lost days. I updated that they were late because of a "Tools issue" which is a pre-programmed reason code and I woke up this morning to a very angry boss wondering what tool had failed me. My laptop, I said. That resulted in a short rant on her part that I always have late orders and the reasons are not acceptable. As I was out of commision for two days, I reminded her she had promised me a back up. She replied, if the requests were in your email, how would a back up get them? I replied, if you had given me a back up, the team would have known who to send those orders to. *****crickets******

I don't think I scored points today. And to make matters worse, the database still doesn't work on my machine.

NOt the first time I have been through this. I was in trouble a month ago for not doing orders the day I got them. None of the orders were "Late" but I got my feet held to the fire anyway. One of the angry calls I got from my boss occurred two days after my lung biopsy. Same issue. Out of the office for two days because my biopsy had resulted in a slight pneumothorax. I was in pain and it was hard breathing and I was given no backup for those days either. Instead of being in bed where I should have been, I was sitting at my desk trying to catch up. I have heard the "Just be happy you have a job." "Be Grateful." But this mundane, run of the mill aspect of my life is not very satisfying. I am working into wee hours to get things done. Despite my best efforts, there will be issues with these manual orders preventing timely placement and these issues are 99% of the time out of my control. I have become deathly afraid of making mistakes, any mistake. I work in a Catch 22. Mind you, one of the things my boss bombasted me for was "Doesn't ask for help when needed." "Tries to fix issues on her own." DOH!!! My frustration level is hugely high. I pulled up my old resume and started updating it. Next step, start sending it out. Up until my re-diagnosis, my reviews were good. Now, I can't seem to do anything right and with all on my plate, outright publically flogging me is not helpful and I am sick of being uneasy. I know leaving for 3 hours to go to the Dr. every 3 weeks is not going over well either but on those days, I work in the morning, go to the Dr. and work the evening.

Two months ago, I cancelled my sons cell phone because he disobeyed me for the umpteenth time and downloaded from the internet and went way over on his IM limit resulting in a 300 dollar cell phone bill on just his number. It was the third time that he had done that and as I was not expecting that size bill, I did not run to the bank with a deposit which resulted in a chain reaction in my checking of bounced checks and witdrawals and overdraft fees, that is still an issue today. Last month, my cell phone was stolen and used to call Mexico three times. Today, I went to check my cell phone bill and was greeting with another $250 dollar bill when it should be 90. The culprit was Cassie and 120 instant messages all in the past 3 days. Her cell phone is now confiscated and I took away entirely her ability to text.

This morning, I went down to the laundry room only to find a pile of soaking wet laundry piled in the cats litter box. Culprit, my son. Don't ask. He is currently mad at me because I rescheduled his Saturday detention to next week instead of tomorrow with his buddy.

I still don't have a working oven. I have a graduation party for my daughter to plan, a birthday for my son coming up, and I don't know where the time and money will come from for those things.

At this moment, I am not 100% sure which aspect of my life is the most frustrating, the money problems, the job situation, working two jobs, the kids, the mess in the house, living with no back up in either home life or work life, the cancer, the placebo, the pets, the high cost of living, the high taxes or the fact that all I do is work and have little time to enjoy that which I am working so hard for. I bought a plasma TV last year before medical Hell. It's the only real luxury I own. I have watched it twice.