fights with old ladies

So, I got in a fight with Anne*.

She’s 65.

[I’ve always loved working with older generations, and have always gotten along with them great! Until this one. I have no idea what made “this one” different, but it is a starruggle to get along with her. Plus I LOVE my grandmas.]

I’ve been working my tail off on a huge public meeting at the Sheraton Hotel for one of our clients, and we’ve done all sorts of support stuff, including getting printing done offsite and purchasing office supplies, contracting A/V, etc, and the Hotel. So, I’ve had to do some financial stuff at work.

Last week, the print job was being set up, and when I called to see what form of payment they required, they said a Purchase Request and some other stuff I didn’t understand. I asked Anne to talk to them on the phone, to make sure I understood correctly. They then told her it would be fine to use the credit card. So that’s exactly what we did, because Anne said that it would be easier on the CC. The next day, my boss was asking about the total on the credit card, and SHE THREW ME UNDER THE BUS because she said that I had taken the card and put thousands of dollars on it for this meeting, so whatever the boss needed couldn’t be paid for. !!

Anyway, I don’t think she knew I was at my desk, listening to what she told him. I went in to him privately later (I was too mad earlier, lol) and said that it was with her full awareness and permission (and his original idea) that I used the card.

Anyway, fast forward to the Hotel and A/V charges, and it took forever for me to find out that I just needed to do a Purchase Request for them. On Friday, late afternoon (I wanted to leave for the Fourth of July weekend) my boss told me to do one (I’ve never done one) and so I just found it on the work Portal and gosh darn it, I did it on my own. Anne was there and knew that I needed to do the PR, then after I struggled through the process and finally got it sent off to Procurement, she had all sorts of things listed that I did wrong on the PR. LOL, I wasn’t too worried (I thought it would come back if it were that bad).
Good news is that it went through fine, and it’s been assigned a buyer, etc. However, then I needed to send in a separate PR for the A/V services, so I was working on that today, with what I “learned” from last week. After processing it, getting the boss to sign it, copying it for Anne, printing her out a copy of the original quote, she had other things that were wrong with the PR, and she was mad because she couldn’t “log it” correctly because I had to send it to another manager on the chain of command. She got all lippy and mad at me right in her office! I had to do the “calm down, this is the process I’m following” “take it easy” thing, and she was all sorts of mad. Not even sure why!

Oh well. She’s nuts. I think she has a crush on the boss.

*name changed to protect her identity, lol.

the girl and the geek

As I tell the hundredandeleventieth person “thanks” about their comments on my new haircut, the thought struck that the poor geek living in the cubicle next to me probably wants to pull out his own hair.

I come to this conclusion since this particular guy and I have a passing co-worker relationship, but not so much as to say hello in the morning or goodbye in the evening, even though we breathe pretty much the same air.

Let me explain the haircut issue, and why it probably does nothing to endear me to him, or him to me. I wrote a post awhile back specifically about this guy, then deleted the entire thing, because I discovered that my pregnant-angst (a VERY real thing) was driving my irritation with his penchant for crazy anime on his computer screens, screechy Japanese pop music he likes to play, his condescension when we actually talk because I lived in Japan, and I didn’t learn the language…but I digress.

Every time I see a new person who hasn’t seen my [drastic] new haircut, they have to stop at my desk and say something, and every time I start with: “they cut off a lot more than I thought” or “it looks nothing like the picture I had!” This has happened a dozen times or more in the week+ I’ve been “chopped”. While I hope my cubicle neighbor tunes out my broken record, he probably doesn’t because he’s a bit of a suck-up with the powers that be, and probably has his enviable position by my desk to “watch” me. As does the new guy who moved into the cube behind me. I’m sure they’re all spies. That might be paranoia or just my overactive imagination, or my habit of writing and blogging new posts at my desk. Hem, hem.

I’m sure he could recite my hair story verbatim by now:
“Too much got cut off”
“Not sure if I like it”
“Oh, thanks! You really think it’s alright?”
“I wanted a change for spring”
“It’s fun”
.
.
.
Anyway, I bear his strangeness and he has to bear my girlyness. OH, here he comes, the SPY, I must run.

Here's us at Ben and Heidi's last weekend. Note the hair.
Have a great weekend! We’re 17 weeks today!