Sometimes I can’t help but wonder, which came first the cubicles or the over management?
If you’ve ever seen Office Space, you might remember the scene where Peter has “trouble” with the TPS reports and he is spoken to – twice – by his two bosses about the same exact thing. Yeah, that feels like my life these days.
Earlier this year I made the mistake of recycling what I thought were additional copies of a quarterly newsletter that is distributed to all employees. It was pointed out by my manager and another member of the department that I was supposed to file everything and not decide what is superfluous. As it turns out, although a new employee receives a copy of the quarterly newsletter along with everyone else, a second copy is included in a new hire packet that is distributed to during their fifth month with the company and the additional copies were needed for those packets. Even though I offered to print additional copies of the newsletter off of the producer’s website or in the alternative contact the producer and order more, the situation resurfaced during my midyear review.
A similar situation happened last summer with coupons from local businesses. There is an annual block party near my work, and since I was a temp during last year’s festivities it was all new to me. The day of the block party, coupons were delivered to the local residents and businesses for things like a free taco from Baja Fresh and free gorgonzola fries from Henry’s Tavern. The day after the block party, I took it upon myself to make the unclaimed coupons available to other employees. I didn’t check with my manager before doing this, but the other receptionist who had been with the company for over three years saw what I was going and didn’t stop me. Everything was fine until two weeks later when my manager wanted additional coupons. We talked about it then and we talked about it again when the company hired me a couple months later. I needed to check with her before doing things like giving away all of the free coupons the company had received. *
In addition to the block party, summer months also means that instead of the boring business casual attire we wear most of the week – this girl can wear jeans all day everyday as long as there are not expected visitors. If there are visitors, depending on how important the visitor is, we might need to suit up or simply avoid denim.
Since I’m half of a twosome that updates the intranet with the daily dress code, it’d be a problem if I gave jeans a thumbs up but was wrong. My manager pointed out that one of the things I needed to work on – in addition to decision making (see: above for the happy recycler) – is following protocol when it comes to determining the dress code. Listen, I’d love it if I didn’t have to ask about every single little thing, but when I have to suit up for Company A’s visit in February but can wear jeans when they come back in September, I get confused. Call me dense, but I don’t know what the rules are so I ask.
Even when I think I know what I’m doing, I seem to make the wrong decision. I help out with payroll by collecting all of the timesheets. If a timesheet isn’t turned in on time, I send a reminder. The only problem is that one week I jumped the gun, and went by the employee deadline. Managers have an additional 24 hours to approve timesheets, and I’m supposed to wait until the Manager’s deadline has passed to send out the reminders. Well, I had nothing else to do, so I started churning out the reminders – a day early. Some people were confused while others were annoyed.
My mistake was pointed out, and I haven’t done it again. Not even when I sent out the pre-deadline e-mail reminder for the next pay cycle and set an Outlook alarm to notify the recipients three hours before the employee deadline. Since the alarm had been used in the past, but not consistently used, people again became annoyed and/or confused when their alarms went off. Of course, HR thought I was sending out early reminders – again.
Last pay cycle I waited until after the manager deadline to send the reminder e-mails to the employee with their manager cced. Everything went off without a hitch. Well, until two days after the manager deadline when we were still missing ONE timesheet. HR assumed that I had missed that one employee on my reminder list. Well, I had sent the reminder, but since that employee reported to an executive I had not cced the manager or the manager’s assistant on the e-mail. So, I sent a second reminder last Wednesday and cced the whole gang. Last Wednesday, HR pointed out that executives should not be cced on the timesheet reminders, but the executive’s assistant could be cced. This morning a member of HR came down to my desk to reiterate that I should not cc executives on the timesheet reminder e-mails.
Well, I can promise both you and HR both that in the past week I have not sent out a single timesheet reminder – let alone a timesheet reminder where I would have accidently cced an executive. So, I really don’t know how these reiteration talks are scheduled.
*Fast forward to this year’s block party. My manager was taking a vacation day when the coupons were delivered. Although she appreciated the fact that I texted her to ask if she wanted me to hold coupons back for her, she thought it was ridiculous that I made it a point to ask her if she wanted me to set aside any additional coupons for her.
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