My "Career" ~ Part 5 ~ Welcome to the I-Land

Three people.

That's how my new department began.  Well, four, if you count me.

The office facilities guy had dusted off a dank corner of the building, an area that had been used to pile broken-down computers and various unwanted office furniture.

He had assembled a glass-walled cubicle in the front of the room, and from there I sat and gazed out upon....my three employees.

They weren't even actual employees; they were temps.  I was yet to be convinced that the company had the utmost faith in this new enterprise.

Somebody from the home office in Philadelphia flew out to show me how to use my new software; how to view the inventory and the real-time production stats; and to show the four of us what the hell we were supposed to be doing.

Bugs in the system?  Perish the thought!  There were nothing but bugs in the system for....oh, I'll say...about a year.  Thus, the majority of my eight-to-nine-hour days were spent on the phone to IS in Pennsylvania.  I got to know those two IS guys really well, although our conversations weren't exactly uplifting.

ME:  The system seems to be frozen again.

IS GUY:  (sigh)

My three temps were real troopers, though.  They put up with all the starts and stops and they diligently logged every error that popped up, and they tracked their downtime, which was most of the day.

We bonded.  We were there alone on that island, the one that no one dare visit, except, of course, for Phil.

For Phil, having another place to wander off to, was a dream come true.  He could only hide out in the men's room for so long, after all.  So, when he wanted to disappear, he stopped by and visited with us.  No one would think to look for him there, if anyone actually was ever looking for him, which they weren't.

One of my three girls was Gaby.  She was a German emigrant, and smart and sassy.  Phil kept calling her "Gabby".  She'd correct him every time.  "It's GAH-bee".  And every single time, Phil would say, "Oh, I thought it was 'Gabby'; like Gabby Hayes."  She would just stare at him like he was insane, and then look at me with eyebrows raised, silently imploring, "Who the hell is Gabby Hayes?"

The most unfortunate aspect of all the system downtime was that I was never able to shoo Phil away on the pretext that I was "busy".  Because I was never busy.  Unless I was on the phone to IS.  So, Phil would just sit there, and drone on and on about Omaha (no offense to anyone from Omaha, but I've driven through Nebraska.  It ranks right up there with the most boring landscapes on the face of the earth; and I'm from North Dakota!)

Eventually, though, the bugs got worked out enough so that we were able to bring on more temps.  (The company still didn't want to take that last step of actually hiring anyone).  

We got quite the unit going after a time.  We had about 17 people within a few months.  And once the system actually started working semi-regularly, it snowballed.  Our company was huge, and we were entering claims for every office in the country.  We kept having to add people.

And the facilities guy had to set up more cubes to accommodate more people, and he had to find someplace else to throw the musty furniture castoffs.  We began to take over!  At least the unused space, that is.

And the company finally said, hey, let's hire some of these guys.  Gaby was my first official employee.

Remember Dave?  Dave, who saved me from the evil Connie?  Dave was the brains behind the IKFI outfit.  He had his minion in Philadelphia who functioned as the titular head of the operation, but she answered to Dave, like we all did.  And this project was Dave's baby, so he remained actively involved.

Dave would call me from time to time and yell at me for something or other.  Normally, that would stress the hell out of me.  But I don't know how I knew, but I instinctively did, that Dave was testing me.  He wanted to see if I would crumble.  I just didn't.  But to be frank, I couldn't have possibly been doing anything wrong, because nobody knew what was going on anyway, and we were just making it up as we went along, so I wasn't fazed by the yelling.

During one of those yelling sessions, I sort of raised my voice, too, which is something I never do!  And Dave's response was a soft chuckle.  So, then I knew for sure.  Bastard.  And I say that in a fond way.  Phil always shook in his boots whenever Dave would call and harangue him.  I, however, caught on to the game.  I liked Dave.  He expected a lot out of his people, but the one thing he hated was for people to back down.

Things progressed to the point that I had to have an assistant.  I did get to take a day off here and there, and somebody had to be around to monitor the "stats", and to put people into different queues when the workload required it.  I didn't have the option to hire an actual assistant, so I made Kristen an unofficial one.  She was smart.  She had no business doing data entry, which is a fine occupation; don't get me wrong, but people should live up to their potential.

So, Kristen handled things for me when I was away, and when I finally got the go-ahead to hire an assistant, well, guess who?

I essentially found myself playing mother hen to all my chicklings.  Jobs were scarce in my town, so people took jobs that were beneath their skill set.  I set about instilling some self-esteem in them.

After about a year, I still was working with a mix of regular employees and temps.  Whenever Dave would give the go-ahead to do more hiring, I would gently nudge certain people to apply.  One of my temps, Jessie, was an awesome producer.  Far and away the best in both production and quality.  And it frustrated the hell out of me that whenever a job opening came along, she wouldn't apply.

I pestered Jessie a lot about that, and she always brushed me off.  Then, one day, she came into my cubicle and sat down, and was silent for a good long while.  Finally, she said, "I can't apply.   When I was sixteen, I worked in a convenience store, and I stupidly, stupidly stole some money out of the til.  I have a record.  I can never apply."

After she went back to her desk, I picked up the phone and called the HR lady.  I asked, what would it take to get Jessie hired?  HR Lady said, write a letter; lay out your reasons for wanting to hire her, and you have to VOUCH for her.

So, I did.  Jessie got the job.

Everybody there had a story.  And little by little, they all found reasons to love the IKFI island.

Of course, this love did not sit well with the Claims folks...........


to be continued......

My "Career" ~ Part 6 ~ "Who Do You Think You Are?"

My "Career" ~ Part 7 ~ Another New Boss?

My "Career" ~ Part  8 ~ "Everything's Great!"

My "Career" ~ Part 9 ~ A Cold Wind

My "Career" ~ Part 10 ~  Thank You ~ Goodbye

My "Career" ~ Part 11 ~ Breaking the News 

My "Career" ~ Part 12 ~ Loose Ends 

My "Career" ~ Epilogue




Previous Chapters:


My "Career" ~ Part 4 ~ Phil


My "Career" ~ Part 3 ~ Karma


My "Career" ~ Part 2 ~ Evil Bosses

My "Career" ~ Chapter 1

My "Career" ~ Part 4 ~ Phil

(Scary in its familiarity)

With Connie gone, we were rudderless.  That's just silly, really, because Connie was a bust at being a rudder, except for those minions who constantly found excuses to stroll into her office and ask for her "advice".

The regional VP (again, we'll call him "Charles", since I can't remember his name) took over the sad task of supervising the supervisors.

I remember one early meeting with him, in which he expressed the sentiment, "I can't believe you guys don't already know this". 

Charles did send us off to learn how to use personal computers.  Up until that time, we didn't have computers (computers??).  We had CRT's.  CRT's did nothing except the very explicit task of allowing us to process claims.  I'm surprised, in retrospect, that the supervisors didn't have typewriters in their little glass-encased coffins. 

I knew nothing about personal computers, naturally.  I sat in that class, and dragged the mouse as far along that long table as it could possibly go, because I couldn't get the stupid pointer to point to the stupid thing that I wanted it to point to.  The instructor finally noticed my contortions, and said, "pick up the mouse (dummy)".  And everybody laughed and laughed, but I bet they didn't know that, either.

Then, one day, it was announced to us that a new manager would be joining our "team" (I always hated the term, "team", because that made it sound like we were all in it together, when, in fact, we were all in it to slash each others' throats, to be frank).

Phil had apparently once worked with our (at least my) guru, Dave, in Omaha, Nebraska.  What a smart man like Dave ever saw in a dolt like Phil remains one of life's mysteries.  Phil was a moron; scratch that ~ a lazy moron.

Phil got himself all situated in Connie's former office, and proceeded to thumb through his stack of women's magazines, prop his feet up on the desk, and promptly fall asleep.

Needless to say, we didn't have any respect for Phil.  At least those of us who were not consumed with kissing anyone and everyone's ass (LeeAnn).

Anytime that Phil woke up, he'd take a stroll around the office and see which supervisor he could offend. 

He'd sit in the extra chair inside the given supervisor's glass-walled cubicle and regale his hostage with tales of his glory days at Mutual of Omaha (wasn't that the company that sponsored that "Wild Kingdom" series, with Marlin Perkins, who always sent his assistant, Jim, out on the really dangerous assignments, while Marlin sat back in the studio and lisped his way through the narration?  Yea, that's the one).  I bet all the Mutual of Omaha guys talked that up a lot at every client meeting.  "We have Marlin Perkins, you know!"

With the supervisors he really liked, Phil would regale them with tales of the sex-capades that he and his wife had had the night before.  Phil was a geek, so picturing him as a sex God was nearly impossible.   Luckily, I was spared the details of Phil's extracurricular activities.  But, of course, like anything and everything that happens in an office, I heard about it secondhand.

Phil was big on grand pronouncements.  Once a month, he'd gather the entire staff together in an open space, ostensibly to announce the latest quality results, but in actuality, to pump himself up to the group.  "Three years ago, before I came here, you guys were nothing.  Nothing!  Now just look at you."  And we'd all look around at each other and roll our eyes, and think, yea, we were drooling idiots before you got here, Phil.  We could barely manage to write our own names.

Unlike the majority of the supervisors, I, unfortunately, did not suffer fools gladly.  Oh sure, I tried to stay awake whenever Phil chose to sit in my extra chair and impart his MOA wisdom.  But when he started pulling the, "you would be nothing without me" business, I admit; I bristled.

We used to have competitions from time to time; the kind of thing where one unit is pitted against another, to achieve some kind of production goal.  Because where would this world be, really, without a seething hatred for anyone who was perceived as a competitor?

During one of these exercises, my group (naturally) kicked ass.  But in order to spoil my pride in my group's accomplishment, Phil lolled on over to me and pronounced, "Your people are always the first ones to leave at the end of the day."

Something snapped in me, and I whirled around from the white board that I was erasing, and hissed, "My people work their asses off, and you damn well know it!"

Red-faced, Phil slithered away.  And I thought, ohhh shit, I'm in trouble now.

I didn't see Phil for awhile after that.  He visited other supervisors, but he avoided me.

Eventually, we had another one of those musical chairs supervisor/unit moves, that had absolutely no purpose, in which everybody had to pick up, pack up, and move to another location on the floor.  In essence, switch places with somebody else.  I never quite understood the reasoning, but because we'd done it so many times, I didn't question it.  I just packed up like everybody else, and moved.

Luckily (?) for me, my unit ended up situated right outside Phil's office.

I used to go around every day, from person to person, and answer my staff's processing questions.  The skirts we wore then were short, and Phil would stand in his doorway and ogle me, and make inappropriate remarks, which I pretended that I didn't hear, but I would surreptitiously roll my eyes at the person I happened to be assisting at the time.  All of shared a common loathing of Phil.

Out of the blue one day, Phil peeked around the corner and summoned me into his office.  He said that there was a new project upcoming (brand new!).  A new department, really.  Part of Claims, and yet not part of Claims.  It was data entry.  Phil said that "he" had chosen me to head it up (BS ~ "he" didn't have the power to make any decisions).  Phil said that this was a pilot program for the entire company, of which we were but a tiny satellite office.  I think I asked, why me?  I felt like I was being punished.  It felt like a giant step backwards.  I had gained a lot of claims knowledge, and now I was being asked to throw that all away?

I said, "Can I think about it?"

Phil said, "Sure".  "Think about it overnight".  "Then come back and tell me, yes."

Thus, I had no choice.  I felt like a loser.  Like all my peers would snicker about me behind my back.

I came back the next day and told Phil, "yes", like I had been instructed to do.

And I bid adieu to my staff and to the world of claims.

And I had absolutely no idea what was in store for me.



To be continued........

My "Career" ~ Part 5 ~ Welcome to the I-Land

My "Career" ~ Part 6 ~ "Who Do You Think You Are?"

My "Career" ~ Part 7 ~ Another New Boss?

My "Career" ~ Part  8 ~ "Everything's Great!"

My "Career" ~ Part 9 ~ A Cold Wind

My "Career" ~ Part 10 ~  Thank You ~ Goodbye

My "Career" ~ Part 11 ~ Breaking the News 

My "Career" ~ Part 12 ~ Loose Ends 

My "Career" ~ Epilogue






Previous Chapters:


My "Career ~ Part 3 ~ Karma


My "Career ~ Part 2 ~ Evil Bosses


My "Career" ~ Chapter 1