Yippie!! I'm a Mail Clerk!
Filled you in on the environment and locale of my new work place. Now for the job itself. Oy vey.
The job I applied for and got hired for is a Word Processor at a law college. My specialty is working with Microsoft Word & Wordperfect and other software packages, creating and/or editing various legal documents, including pleadings, manuscripts, proposals, etc. I also am adept with various graphics packages and spreadsheet packages and pride myself on my expertise in creating complicated tables, working with Table of Contents, Table of Authorities, Redlining, and other legal word processing skills. I am also familiar with legal terminology and conventions. It's way more than just 'typing', and after many years of working within law firms, I have parlayed my experience into legal word processing which is an 'animal' unto itself. There are even legal document management system packages that I have learned as well. Having these skills puts me in a certain salary bracket in this job market, which is very good compared to just being a secretary or an administrative assistant. I have slaved too long and too hard to learn all this stuff to let it slide off. When I took this job, these are the tasks I thought I'd be doing.
WRONG!! Day one, I am told I will be doing the MAIL. HELLO? Evidently, there is a routine here which is that all 4 (!!) of us in the Word Processing Dept. have to go and sort out the mail everyday and put it in the various Professors, Deans and other staff mailboxes! And there are at least 200 mailboxes!!!
Now, before this office moved from their original building, the mail room was in that same building. But guess what now, folks.... the mail is still in the original building and we are not! Therefore, we have to exit the building and trek, among and between the riff-raff outside, way over to the other building to DO THE MAIL. The first time they took me over there, I was rather shocked. They hadn't done the mail since the move (over a week), and the mail had piled up into 8 mail cartons!! It took 4 of us over an hour and a half, and involved bending, stooping, reaching and lifting! Something I certainly wasn't told about! However, now that we have caught up on the sorting of all that piled up mail, they still require all 4 of us to trot over there every single day to do the mail TOGETHER. I certainly did not expect this to be a part of my job.
Day 2, the boss comes up to me and gives me a memo to do. Ok, no problemo. Easy. But then, after the memo was finished, I had to follow him down to a locked room , of which only HE has a key, make 8 copies, and then ...... here comes the good part...... we had to take these 8 copies to the various Professors & Deans in person to 3 different buildings and make sure that they were placed on the respective desks. No, the memo could not be faxed; no, the memo could not be emailed. Why? "Has never been done that way"... Oh. So it became apparent that another one of my job duties was to run around and deliver messages, memos, and whatnot whenever! I asked if they had a mailroom person or a messenger. They looked at me like I had asked if Brad Pitt delivers the mail. The boss ran me around to all these buildings taking 'short cuts' as he put it, where we went through exit doors, down long halls, up and down stairwells, in and out of freight elevators, and god knows what other secret passages! One building is the Dorm for the law students, and I almost fainted when he led me right through the laundromat room where people's socks and underwear were dancing and flopping around in the clothes dryers!! Yes, it truly was Wet Socks in The City!!
Now, what you need to understand is that I always make it quite clear in my interviews that I do not want to be in a position where I have to stand or be on my feet a lot, as I have totally flat feet (don't laugh - it's not funny!) and have immense pain and discomfort when I have to stand for periods of time or when I have to walk fast on cement or other hard surfaces... And it is NOT a question of wearing comfortable shoes... it's the foot itself that has a deformity which puts the weight on the foot all wrong, so it doesn't matter whether I wear thongs, tennis shoes, heels, socks or nothing! Plus, hey! I'm over a half century old, for Pete's sake! I am NOT a mail clerk, messenger girl or a gopher! I am supposed to be a Word Processor. Anyway, after that hour-long trek around 3 buildings and the palaver of re-entering our security building (taking off shoes, watches, going thru metal detector, etc), I was totally worn out! And this is SUMMER.... What fun it will be when it is winter and storming and raining out to have to trek out of the building several times a day with an umbrella in tow along with the memos!
The next morning, after just getting in and sitting down ready to enjoy my morning coffee, the boss comes in and informs me that he had made an error on yesterday's memo and we'd have to re-do it. This meant not only retyping it and re-copying it, but REDELIVERING it to the same 8 people in the 3 buildings as we did the day before!!! ACHHHHHHH!!! So before my first sip of coffee, I had to put my jacket back on, and make the trek again!
Later that afternoon, a guy walks into our Word Processing Dept. and upon seeing me, raises his hands and hails, "Ah YOU must be the ADMISSIONS SECRETARY!".... I turn around and say, well, no, I am one of the Word Processors. However, he goes on to inform me that my boss has told him that, indeed, I am the NEW ADMISSIONS SECRETARY! Say What????? Hmmmm.... it now seems that the task regarding the admissions which I thought was a computerized function, is actually a clerical, secretarial function! He excitedly goes on to explain how he and I will be closely working together to put new admissions resumes and data into the BIG BINDERS. In other words, I will be sorting resumes and other paperwork, collating them, punching holes in them, (Is this what I spent years in law firms learning to do???) and then putting them in binders! At that point, I was ready to run. This is exactly the type of work I DON'T want to do!
Just an hour ago, my boss called me in his office to familiarize me with the DHL and FedEx PROCEDURES....! Seems that too will be one of my tasks. Evidently Professors frequently come in and hand us stuff to send somewhere, and they are shipped DHL or FedEx. Have to know how to fill out the forms and the commercial invoice. Now, if it's FedEx, here's the humdinger..... Instead of dropping off the FedEx packet in the official FedEx bin downstairs, I am to walk it over to.... (and this is exactly how he told it to me...) ....THE CHINESE GUY on Market Street!!! This is what I was actually instructed to do! Evidently, some of the law school accounts with FedEx are behind in payment (!), so the official FedEx guy won't take them! So one has to leave the building, (once again!), and trod 2 blocks down the seedy part of Market Street to some hole-in-the-wall vendor run by some Chinese guy and hand the FedEx packet to him!!! You would have loved to see the look on my face when I heard this one! If I have ever had a Jennifer Wilbanks moment, that was it!!! I mean, it's not my fault some of their accounts are behind in their payments, and why the hell should I have to risk my safety schlepping stuff down the worst part of Market Street to some unknown non-employee! Unf****ing unbelievable.
It is now Monday of my second week. I almost didn't come back. I had a couple of tentative job things ready to pop Friday, and truly, if either one of those had panned out, I would have walked. As it went, however, neither has yet made a decision, so I don't want to quit unless I have something else to go to. I was soooooo ready to cut the cord Friday, that I took my coffee cup other personal items home with me. In the whole week I was here, I only typed that one memo. I did nothing else on the computer. Instead, I spent the whole week running back and forth from the various buildings delivering stuff or doing the mail! This is not for me. I literally went home with sore legs and arms. At this rate, all my word processing expertise will go down the drain and if I don't use it, I'll lose it, and be way behind if I ever want to go to any other Word Processing position within a company. On top of not doing the type of work I thought I was being hired to do, I am getting paid way below my market value, as this is a government job and not the more better-off private sector. Now, here is the kicker. I also found out on my first day, that payday is only ONCE A MONTH!!! And guess what? I started this job on July 5 and payday isn't until a month away on August 1!!!! How the hell am I gonna survive that long with no income!!!??? This is not good.
If it were just a case of putting up with working in an old building and even taking a lesser salary, I might be willing to stick this out. But I am not even doing the type of work I like and was hired for. This is completely a Bait and Switch, in my opinion. I feel duped. And I physically cannot handle having to do so much walking and climbing and lifting and toting. That is one of the reasons I love Word Processing, as at my age, I like to sit down and mostly stay down!
Over the weekend I thought to myself, "Well, Karen, just hang in there and get in some benefits first". I was thinking I could take care of my vision and get a much needed new lens prescription for my glasses. However, on coming back in today, Monday, I found out that I cannot apply for the vision care yet until I have one official payday! Which means not until after August 1st! And then the time it takes to get to a eye doctor, get examined, get the glasses, and get them paid for, could take another 2 weeks at least. Frankly, I don't know if I can stick it out that long.
Oh yes, one more irritant. Today I brought my lunch in and placed it in the big fridge that is in a room 2 doors down from our office. A woman was in there pouring coffee, and as I went to reach for the fridge door, she stood right in front of the fridge and said, "Who are you?"... I informed her where I worked and who I was, and attempted again to get the fridge door open. She literally stood right in front of it with her arms out at her side, BARRING me from from even touching it, saying "You are NOT allowed to put YOUR food in OUR fridge!". Evidently the fridge belongs to another department, but geez, so what?!! It's not like the fridge is a security-clearanced file cabinet!! I politely replied, "Well, why would it hurt if I put my sandwich on this empty shelf?".... Oh my god, you would have thought I had asked to store plastic explosives in there! So now, I have a sandwich that is sitting on my desk going limp. By lunch, it will be a goner!
Ok, so now it's lunch, and I have no other option but to venture out amongst the living dead in this area and find something to eat at one of the dives in this neighborhood.
Good luck to me if I next don't now die of food poisoning.
The job I applied for and got hired for is a Word Processor at a law college. My specialty is working with Microsoft Word & Wordperfect and other software packages, creating and/or editing various legal documents, including pleadings, manuscripts, proposals, etc. I also am adept with various graphics packages and spreadsheet packages and pride myself on my expertise in creating complicated tables, working with Table of Contents, Table of Authorities, Redlining, and other legal word processing skills. I am also familiar with legal terminology and conventions. It's way more than just 'typing', and after many years of working within law firms, I have parlayed my experience into legal word processing which is an 'animal' unto itself. There are even legal document management system packages that I have learned as well. Having these skills puts me in a certain salary bracket in this job market, which is very good compared to just being a secretary or an administrative assistant. I have slaved too long and too hard to learn all this stuff to let it slide off. When I took this job, these are the tasks I thought I'd be doing.
WRONG!! Day one, I am told I will be doing the MAIL. HELLO? Evidently, there is a routine here which is that all 4 (!!) of us in the Word Processing Dept. have to go and sort out the mail everyday and put it in the various Professors, Deans and other staff mailboxes! And there are at least 200 mailboxes!!!
Now, before this office moved from their original building, the mail room was in that same building. But guess what now, folks.... the mail is still in the original building and we are not! Therefore, we have to exit the building and trek, among and between the riff-raff outside, way over to the other building to DO THE MAIL. The first time they took me over there, I was rather shocked. They hadn't done the mail since the move (over a week), and the mail had piled up into 8 mail cartons!! It took 4 of us over an hour and a half, and involved bending, stooping, reaching and lifting! Something I certainly wasn't told about! However, now that we have caught up on the sorting of all that piled up mail, they still require all 4 of us to trot over there every single day to do the mail TOGETHER. I certainly did not expect this to be a part of my job.
Day 2, the boss comes up to me and gives me a memo to do. Ok, no problemo. Easy. But then, after the memo was finished, I had to follow him down to a locked room , of which only HE has a key, make 8 copies, and then ...... here comes the good part...... we had to take these 8 copies to the various Professors & Deans in person to 3 different buildings and make sure that they were placed on the respective desks. No, the memo could not be faxed; no, the memo could not be emailed. Why? "Has never been done that way"... Oh. So it became apparent that another one of my job duties was to run around and deliver messages, memos, and whatnot whenever! I asked if they had a mailroom person or a messenger. They looked at me like I had asked if Brad Pitt delivers the mail. The boss ran me around to all these buildings taking 'short cuts' as he put it, where we went through exit doors, down long halls, up and down stairwells, in and out of freight elevators, and god knows what other secret passages! One building is the Dorm for the law students, and I almost fainted when he led me right through the laundromat room where people's socks and underwear were dancing and flopping around in the clothes dryers!! Yes, it truly was Wet Socks in The City!!
Now, what you need to understand is that I always make it quite clear in my interviews that I do not want to be in a position where I have to stand or be on my feet a lot, as I have totally flat feet (don't laugh - it's not funny!) and have immense pain and discomfort when I have to stand for periods of time or when I have to walk fast on cement or other hard surfaces... And it is NOT a question of wearing comfortable shoes... it's the foot itself that has a deformity which puts the weight on the foot all wrong, so it doesn't matter whether I wear thongs, tennis shoes, heels, socks or nothing! Plus, hey! I'm over a half century old, for Pete's sake! I am NOT a mail clerk, messenger girl or a gopher! I am supposed to be a Word Processor. Anyway, after that hour-long trek around 3 buildings and the palaver of re-entering our security building (taking off shoes, watches, going thru metal detector, etc), I was totally worn out! And this is SUMMER.... What fun it will be when it is winter and storming and raining out to have to trek out of the building several times a day with an umbrella in tow along with the memos!
The next morning, after just getting in and sitting down ready to enjoy my morning coffee, the boss comes in and informs me that he had made an error on yesterday's memo and we'd have to re-do it. This meant not only retyping it and re-copying it, but REDELIVERING it to the same 8 people in the 3 buildings as we did the day before!!! ACHHHHHHH!!! So before my first sip of coffee, I had to put my jacket back on, and make the trek again!
Later that afternoon, a guy walks into our Word Processing Dept. and upon seeing me, raises his hands and hails, "Ah YOU must be the ADMISSIONS SECRETARY!".... I turn around and say, well, no, I am one of the Word Processors. However, he goes on to inform me that my boss has told him that, indeed, I am the NEW ADMISSIONS SECRETARY! Say What????? Hmmmm.... it now seems that the task regarding the admissions which I thought was a computerized function, is actually a clerical, secretarial function! He excitedly goes on to explain how he and I will be closely working together to put new admissions resumes and data into the BIG BINDERS. In other words, I will be sorting resumes and other paperwork, collating them, punching holes in them, (Is this what I spent years in law firms learning to do???) and then putting them in binders! At that point, I was ready to run. This is exactly the type of work I DON'T want to do!
Just an hour ago, my boss called me in his office to familiarize me with the DHL and FedEx PROCEDURES....! Seems that too will be one of my tasks. Evidently Professors frequently come in and hand us stuff to send somewhere, and they are shipped DHL or FedEx. Have to know how to fill out the forms and the commercial invoice. Now, if it's FedEx, here's the humdinger..... Instead of dropping off the FedEx packet in the official FedEx bin downstairs, I am to walk it over to.... (and this is exactly how he told it to me...) ....THE CHINESE GUY on Market Street!!! This is what I was actually instructed to do! Evidently, some of the law school accounts with FedEx are behind in payment (!), so the official FedEx guy won't take them! So one has to leave the building, (once again!), and trod 2 blocks down the seedy part of Market Street to some hole-in-the-wall vendor run by some Chinese guy and hand the FedEx packet to him!!! You would have loved to see the look on my face when I heard this one! If I have ever had a Jennifer Wilbanks moment, that was it!!! I mean, it's not my fault some of their accounts are behind in their payments, and why the hell should I have to risk my safety schlepping stuff down the worst part of Market Street to some unknown non-employee! Unf****ing unbelievable.
It is now Monday of my second week. I almost didn't come back. I had a couple of tentative job things ready to pop Friday, and truly, if either one of those had panned out, I would have walked. As it went, however, neither has yet made a decision, so I don't want to quit unless I have something else to go to. I was soooooo ready to cut the cord Friday, that I took my coffee cup other personal items home with me. In the whole week I was here, I only typed that one memo. I did nothing else on the computer. Instead, I spent the whole week running back and forth from the various buildings delivering stuff or doing the mail! This is not for me. I literally went home with sore legs and arms. At this rate, all my word processing expertise will go down the drain and if I don't use it, I'll lose it, and be way behind if I ever want to go to any other Word Processing position within a company. On top of not doing the type of work I thought I was being hired to do, I am getting paid way below my market value, as this is a government job and not the more better-off private sector. Now, here is the kicker. I also found out on my first day, that payday is only ONCE A MONTH!!! And guess what? I started this job on July 5 and payday isn't until a month away on August 1!!!! How the hell am I gonna survive that long with no income!!!??? This is not good.
If it were just a case of putting up with working in an old building and even taking a lesser salary, I might be willing to stick this out. But I am not even doing the type of work I like and was hired for. This is completely a Bait and Switch, in my opinion. I feel duped. And I physically cannot handle having to do so much walking and climbing and lifting and toting. That is one of the reasons I love Word Processing, as at my age, I like to sit down and mostly stay down!
Over the weekend I thought to myself, "Well, Karen, just hang in there and get in some benefits first". I was thinking I could take care of my vision and get a much needed new lens prescription for my glasses. However, on coming back in today, Monday, I found out that I cannot apply for the vision care yet until I have one official payday! Which means not until after August 1st! And then the time it takes to get to a eye doctor, get examined, get the glasses, and get them paid for, could take another 2 weeks at least. Frankly, I don't know if I can stick it out that long.
Oh yes, one more irritant. Today I brought my lunch in and placed it in the big fridge that is in a room 2 doors down from our office. A woman was in there pouring coffee, and as I went to reach for the fridge door, she stood right in front of the fridge and said, "Who are you?"... I informed her where I worked and who I was, and attempted again to get the fridge door open. She literally stood right in front of it with her arms out at her side, BARRING me from from even touching it, saying "You are NOT allowed to put YOUR food in OUR fridge!". Evidently the fridge belongs to another department, but geez, so what?!! It's not like the fridge is a security-clearanced file cabinet!! I politely replied, "Well, why would it hurt if I put my sandwich on this empty shelf?".... Oh my god, you would have thought I had asked to store plastic explosives in there! So now, I have a sandwich that is sitting on my desk going limp. By lunch, it will be a goner!
Ok, so now it's lunch, and I have no other option but to venture out amongst the living dead in this area and find something to eat at one of the dives in this neighborhood.
Good luck to me if I next don't now die of food poisoning.
posted by LADYGOLD at 10:38 AM
