April Fool 2010

I had meant to keep up with my blog better than this, and cover more subjects than just document centers, but ever since I walked into work a week or so ago and saw this sign on the door (posted there in haste as my co-worker had run home to a sick child), I have had no time to think! I was just extremely grateful that my co-worker realized that although my shift supposedly starts at 10:30 A.M. that I realistically would not have arrived and gotten myself up and running until at least 11 A.M.! And I also think this is perfectly in the spirit of April Fool's Day. I'm an April Fool every day!

Also in the spirit of April Fools, we are up to Jan. 19 in my niece's cute calendar (see my post of March 6, 2010 entitled "Just Another Saturday in My Whole New Life") and I am completely stumped by this calendar page. I can't figure out what they are talking about.

And I, who consider myself such an expert on document centers, have come to fear that I won't be able to keep up in them much longer. It seems that lately we have gotten requests that far exceed the skills in our document center. I just sent an email to one of our regional doc centers to thank them for saving my butt on many occasions. I told them I am in awe of their skills, they were my heroes, and I wished I had an autographed picture of all of them. I've sent them stuff that would have been hours of work for us in our center, working on it in shifts around the clock, and they would get it done in 20 minutes. And today our manager had to search far and wide to find someone to do an Excel job with formulas. She finally found out that our accountant could do it! And we are getting documents in now with algebraic equations! And documents in Spanish or Chinese, which no one in our center speaks, nor do we have keyboards to accommodate those languages. Someone in Orange County wanted to know if we could do handwriting analysis?  Denver wanted to know can we translate Korean?  My job has become find out who knows how to do the job more than having the ability to do it myself. Which is not at all scary.

Happy Birthday Pat!!

This is an email I sent today:

I had intended to call you on my lunch hour to wish you Happy Birthday today, but my day went kind of like this:

I started a huge clean/format/scheme/cross-reference job which all by itself could take a whole shift of concentrated attention.

I was able to give it 4 hours, when my co-worker left. As soon as he walked out, the emails started:

User A sends a request wondering if User B may have already sent the same one.

I spent a moment wondering why she did not inquire of User B before submitting the request to us, while responding “let me check.” While I’m checking the work log and deleted emails, I get the following email:

[From the NY Doc Center in response to my plea for help with the documents which were now flooding in]: I think Miami already did this request earlier today. I spent a moment wondering why he hadn’t checked first, while responding back “let me check.” While I’m checking the work log and deleted emails, I get the following email:

Please clean the attached document. I forward this request to the help desk.

20 min. later I have established we have no record of having received the request prior to User A sending it, and I am about to let her know that when an email from User B, forwarding her original request, which she had sent last week, arrives, asking “did I send it to the correct address?” No, she had not, but we now have her request and it is now logged in.

I take this moment to email my manager that I am getting backed up with jobs that I can't farm out. She emails back "What do you have?" I tell her. She never responds again.

20 min. later I have established we have no record of having received the same request that the NY Doc Center was asking about, and am about to let NY Doc Ctr know when an email from NY arrives that the guy there has established the same and will now start working on that request. I did not reflect too long on the fact that the last 20 minutes of my life had been a total waste, and clocked out for lunch. Just then I get this email:

[From the helpdesk] “Ticket #54932 has been resolved.” I wonder what the f*** does that mean? Is this ticket for my cleaning request? I don’t have too much time to ponder this, because the phone rings at that moment. It’s some techie in Phoenix asking me if my document had ever gotten cleaned? I tell him I’m not sure. Is my request associated with Ticket #54932 by any chance? After a few minutes he has verified, yes, it is. So, in that case, can’t you tell ME if my document ever got cleaned? No, he doesn’t know. I asked him, how has anything related to this ticket been resolved? He had no explanation to offer. He cleaned the document.

While all the above was going on I receive a request for status on a job. I reply that his request has not been started, that I am the only one in the doc center, and that I have asked my manager for help, and copied manager. He replies, "I'll find other help." I reply, "Thank you!!!" By the way, this was an attorney I have never seen a request from before. He was probably new, sending his first request, and has now probably been scared away from the doc center for life. My dismay is short lived as my attention is diverted to an incoming email:

The SV (Silicon Valley) operator is informing us that she is in SF (San Francisco) today, and that we should expect some requests from SV. Just as I'm wondering what the ramifications of this are, I receive a request from SV. I log it in.

I realize that although I clocked out, I never took lunch or punched back in, meaning I went into unauthorized overtime. I email my manager: "I clocked out for lunch but have been in nonstop emails and phones. Please advise." I never hear back from her.

Receive email from SV to All Document Centers that she is experiencing "a lull,” can she help out with anything quick?

I inquire if she can take the request we just received from SV. Yes, she can.

Some more jobs come in that I am able to farm out to other regions.

I take a short lunch break. Your birthday has completely left my mind for some reason.

I haul a** and manage to finish the job I had originally started just before my shift ends, put on the out-of-office assistant, and bolt out the door.

So, here I am at home, having just uninstalled my virus protection that was conflicting with my computer and getting ready to install a whole other one, and looking forward to being up all night downloading security software, with just 10 more minutes left in today to wish you:

Happy Birthday!! Happy St. P Day!! I sure hope your day was better than mine!

Love

L

The FIRST & ONLY word processor to speak out!!

I searched the entire internet, for “document center,” “document centers,” “word processing center,” and “word processing centers” and not only did none of those phrases come up in a blog, but none of those phrases came up ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET, and none of those words even came up on any relevant site. Nobody is talking about this stuff!! If you want the truth about word processing and word processing centers, you can only get it here on MY blog!

I AM THE SOLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE HIDDEN WORKINGS OF DOCUMENT CENTERS IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE!!

All FREE to you, just because I have nothing better to do than gripe about my life! Many years of which were spent in document centers, word processing, document processing, whatever you call them “you need your garbage taken out? Have someone in WP do it, they’re highly paid technicians,” or “have the doc center deal with that crap,” have echoed through the hallowed halls of law firms everywhere. At least everywhere in my town, Any Metropolis, USA, and I know, because I have worked in a LOT of them in law firms in the valley, on the coast and downtown, as well as the scientific and engineering corporations way east and south where law firms would never deign to slum.

The biggest document center I ever worked in served 8 floors of attorneys, and was in this enormous room, with 6 word processors working round the clock in the front by the supervisor’s office (a wonderful lady I wish I had kept in touch with), and 6 proofers that worked in the back. Those proofers were FUNNY. Their banter among themselves kept me laughing all night long.

The smallest document center I ever worked in, I was it! Consequently, I was also the “tech department.” It was the first and only time I ever worked 9 to 5. I loved that place. They thought I was a genius no matter what crappy work I produced. I never intended to produce crappy work, but sometimes it just can’t be avoided. Something had gone awry with a program, and the best I could do on the amount of time they had (none), was to press a button on a faulty program that spits out exactly what they need, but full of errors, but it spits it out in 2 seconds. They didn’t care that it was full of errors they had no time to correct before filing with the court, they were just amazed and gratified that I even knew of such a program that could produce a mere semblance of what was needed so their filing wouldn’t get tossed. There’s no more wonderful feeling in this world than being thought of as a miracle worker, and I guess that’s what has kept me in document centers. That, and it was the only thing I knew how to do that anyone would pay me for.

When Jane Fonda made the film 9 to 5 (with Dolly Parton) she came into the document center at 20th Century Fox to check out how a real office works. She only looked around for a moment, saw me working furiously as my co-worker filed her nails while watching soaps on a pocket-sized TV, and Jane probably made the same mistake everyone does, that the center was far away from the action, in a windowless office, full of losers, and was of no account. She missed what everybody misses about document centers: We run the world. We service ALL the attorneys, and ALL the secretaries, and ALL the departments in the firm. Seriously, I work in a regional center right now. This is my region (see all those little white dots in the USA?):

We hold the fate of lives firm-wide in our flying fingers. It’s a dangerous life. I won’t even go into what could happen to an operator that inadvertently leaves out a zero in a document.  Literally.  I saw what happened to an operator that did that once.  I've been a nervous wreck for 30 years from incidents like that, and deadline pressure. Document Centers have been begging their users for more time since my first job in one in the late '70s, while the users never fail to be amazed that we don't have a magic button to push and spit out exactly what they want in 10 seconds. Oh, so what does my firm go and do? Removes the least senior member of the document center and reassigns him as a litigation secretary. Ok, litigation secretaries like go to school to learn how to do that, right? This guy's last job before working in the center was at Lensecrafters. But, he was so essential to the document center that basically we are now getting comments like this recent one: "I have used the document center twice, both with very disappointing results." Our manager's comment: "She'll get used to it." Soon after we lost him, they saw fit to move another operator out of the center. This does not make me feel insecure about my job at all. Oh, and to add to all the stress, they are constantly changing my work hours. In fact, today I was so wigged out I worked an hour past my shift because I didn't know when it was time to go home until someone asked me when I was going home and I figured out I should have left an hour ago. Oh, and did I mention I'm 60 and completely burned out and praying every day I'll just get through the next 3.5 years when I can retire?

So, my search turned up nothing relevant. Among the irrelevant things it turned up was this email from "Region Twelve Headquarters" (whatever that is):

It says:

Written by Administrator
Thursday, 25 February 2010
A Typeable VRR is now available to all in the Document Center
Last Updated ( Friday, 26 February 2010 )

No website, nothing being advertised, just an ordinary email I might get at work letting everybody know that “A Typeable VRR” (whatever that is) is now available in the Document Center, only actually, I wouldn’t get that email at work! Everybody else would, but document centers are invariably not copied on any emails announcing the new things they do, and will not be informed they do them until some poor sap comes in wanting it. How far the shit flies is entirely dependent on exactly who that poor sap is. A secretary? A senior partner? Some poor paralegal pulling an all-nighter for a huge case, while the name partner on the case is home watching TV?

Anyway, it really creeps me out that the only thing that comes up on a search is that creepy email!

I still have an article somewhere about word processors having more on-the-job stress than air traffic controllers. I will find a way to link that article to this page so you can read it.

REMEMBER: YOU CAN ONLY FIND THIS STUFF HERE.

Just another Saturday in My Whole New Life

Characters:
Ted, my roommate
Keira, my niece
Lu (or Lulu), my cat (who is a real lulu)
David, my dead husband

I stayed up until 5:30 am perfecting my blog! I am addicted to my blog! It’s my new drug! I didn’t get up until 2:30 pm and boy did I need the sleep. They have been working me like a pack mule at work, and changing my schedule all the time.

Today I received a gift from Keira of a “too-cute” calendar. I love it, but was struck by the note inside it all covered with stickers. She has just entered her fourth decade and her letters to me still look like this. How adorable is that?
I had to go to the post office to pick it up. That’s because my new mailbox doesn’t hold anything bigger than a postage stamp. I was struck by how short the line was, as was the man ahead of me in line. We got to chatting, discussed the future of the post office, and when his turn came up our chat ended this way:

Man in post office: “… because of what I do.”
Me: “What do you do?”
Man in post office: “I consult with attorneys about their financial needs.
Me: “Oh! I consult with attorneys about their document needs.”
Man in post office: Weak smile, unimpressed nod.

When I returned from the post office I made bacon and eggs. What had happened was Ted is always having Les Girls over cooking, and one of them left half a package of bacon here, which Ted wasn’t going to eat, and I wasn’t going to let go to waste. I think I last cooked bacon in the 70s. I had no idea how to do it. Well, I put the slices in the pan, and they were sizzling too slowly for a really long time, during which Lu cried for food, really annoying me.

I told her how dismayed I was at her doing that, because she’s so good about everything else. I had a very serious talk with her for about 5 minutes explaining exactly why I wasn’t going to feed her every time I’m doing something in the kitchen. She finally went away and let me make my bacon and eggs in peace. Wow! That needed way more explanation than most things, but she usually makes the best of things not going her way once I explain them to her, but for some reason I thought I could never make her understand that. I finally realized that was just another belief ("all cats do that and can't change") that I had not examined.* I examined it, tossed it, and broke a new record on what I could make my cat understand!!

Back to the bacon, I finally figured out that I should up the heat. Eventually some slices were ready to be taken out of the pan, while others were still frying, and it suddenly came back to me. When I used to do this, I drained them on paper towels! I was cooking now! Haha.

So, just as I was cleaning up the kitchen, Ted comes home and asks me if I had cooked bacon. I told him I had. He said that was really bad timing as he had just cleaned all the surfaces. (This from the man that told me the other day, “I’m dusting this table with my dirty sock.”) I showed Ted the too-cute calendar from Keira and he loved it, so I left it out where he could see it too. And then I told Ted about winning the battle with Lu after a 5 minute explanation and Ted said to Lu, “Your mommy can get very wordy.” I thought that was so funny I had to put it in my blog.

I have been having so much fun blogging! Really, my heart is just singing! And nobody is even reading this! I’m just playing with myself, as usual! That’s what widows do. That, and wonder who they will play with next.

On my journey back to me today, I made bacon and eggs, reached new heights with my cat, received a gift from my niece and got to write about it. Really, could life be better?

__________________
* David and I had developed our own individual healing system, which came about in conversation when we realized listening to each other that we had unexamined beliefs, which we began to examine as they came up. One of us would say something and the other would say, “you might want to take a look at that belief.” We examined every belief that came up to decide if we still agreed with it or not. There were a lot of laughs and tears, a lot of self-discovery, and a lot of growth. We eventually reached a new plateau where we had no more unexamined beliefs, and were thinking only with beliefs that we agreed with. It was a new height for both of us, physically, spiritually, mentally, psychically, romantically, in every way. We even started writing a book about it, as we thought others might benefit from our technique, but he died just as we were getting started on it.