Better Blog It!

Who knew "work" would qualify as one of my ongoing adventures? Surely it doesn't have the same "appeal" as bellydance or car-wreck attraction as marathoning.

Yesterday, as I was relaying this week's adventures about my new job to my mother in California she said yet again, "You had better be keeping a journal so you won't forget when it comes time to write your book." Yeah Mom. Yeah Mom, I nod to myself.

But she is right. However at this point I feel as if I could have written a book and it has been only THREE weeks! Here are some snippets:

1. No one has done my job before. I need to "create" my job. I spend the first three days "pretending" to look busy as I scout around for stuff to do and to figure out what it is I am to be doing. I spoke with some friends about this and they say this is "normal" in this day and age. Some people wander around their companies aimlessly for months before anyone notices their lack of productivity.

2. I realize that my "trainer" is thousands of miles away. Yes, I am to be trained by a soon to be former employee who keeps up the website remotely everyday. For some reason he never answers emails until 10:00 pm his time. He is a very sensitive and sometimes moody professor. Two days into trying to "figure" out my job a lightbulb went on and I realized how I was supposed to do that part of the job (daily updates on their radio newshow website), I jumped right in and made an update when some breaking news came down. Of course I immediately emailed my friend in Ireland with a heads-up so he wouldn't make the same update at the same time (which he wouldn't since he doesn't touch the site until the late pm anyway).

Well, he had a fit and sent a few missives to my bosses (a whole other story... I am blessed with at least two, possibly three) about my irresponsible actions of updating the website. I of course freaked out when I saw that email carbon-copied to everyone thinking I was going to be fired for being such an impatient upstart (hey, I was finaly taking the bull by the horns as I wanted my bosses to see they didn't hire me for naught) and had my first crying incident at work in front of the Station Manager.

Actually that incident was good (I am such an optimist as you can see) as it brought to light that the Irish fellow was not actually clued in as to the status of his job. I guess he thought he would remotely update the site forever. So I was the nice person who got the job of telling him, but not actually telling him, that he was soon to be through. Wow! I felt terrible about that.

The bosses were cool, told me not to worry and said they expected, "a few growing pains." How philosophical of them!

2. Work and food:

I lost almost three pounds my first week! One and a half of those I gained back the second week.

I can tell already the eating part is going to be a challenge. This office really relishes their "food holidays." Recall the "cake" announcement when I was first hired.

Since I've started we've celebrated two birthdays (see huge slab o'cake), eaten out half the time and am currently experiencing daily catering through the end of our pledge drive.

We have a volunteer especially stationed in the kitchen to "man" the post of Pledge Drive Chef. Actually he is a retiree named Mark who gives you a full plate of conversation along with your food. He is food-pushing Jewish mother/story-telling grandpa all rolled into one.

And there is a price for even the smallest trip to the kitchen. Want to refill your water mug? Pay 10 minutes of conversation. Want a Diet Coke? Will cost you 15 minutes.

No, I am not such a heartless wench that I don't have time nor do I not care to talk to a person freely giving of his time, but I am at work and I am new and hanging out in the kitchen talking may not be looked upon lightly by my bosses.

Anyway, regarding the pledge drive food... it is obscene to say the least.
Mornings usually consist of a pastry tray, a croissant-wich tray and some other bagel sandwich tray. Oh yeah, a gorgeous fruit platter is delivered only every other day of which I load up on first thing.

So far the lunch offerings have been fair to decadent... Jason's Deli, Chipotle, Memphis BBQ (was actually the best because aside from the pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw which wasn't too oily and beans there was BBQ chicken... just pull the skin off and voila, low points and high in protein lunch) and a fancy Italian restaurant (the most tempting, but that day I brought my own lunch and simply "supplemented" with a few bites of Italian).

Just in case you suddenly grew starving with a few hours of hard labor hunched over your computer, on the phones or on the air, a delectible cookie platter magically appears in the kitchen. That along with some fresh coffee will get your blood sugar right back up there, in the stratosphere where it belongs.

Of course that blood sugar is a hard thing to keep up, especially with all that labor-intensive work going on... an afternoon dunking donut combined with a 20 minute conversation with Mark about his lawn, the homeowners association or what to do about all that spam in his mailbox when he goes away (remember, I am the web person so people think I am now the "go-to" person with all things technical or Internet-related. Even the station manager thought I thought she was sounding stupid when she was trying to explain how the shows were switching on and off to the volunteers. I in fact was merely trying to understand the process like everyone else sitting there. I had absolutely no experience in radio until now.).

Anyway, if you can avoid the food gauntlet you have made it super-far into not gaining the pledge-drive 10 pounds. Yes, 10 pounds. I have been actually threatened by these 10 pounds. Other employees have been saying stuff like, "Expect to gain weight." "You will gain 10 pounds," etc. for days and even through the buffet line which makes for pleasant lunch conversation, doesn't it?

In my mind I am thinking, "Says who?" or "Speak for yourself." I made a secret, and not so secret pledge (if anyone asks me or brings up the topic) to not gain the freshman 15 or freshman anything.

Here are some steps I have taken:
1. I found a park nearby and have walked to the park, eaten my lunch there, walked around the park and walked back;
2. Walked out to lunch instead of driving. I have had offers for rides from fellow-employees who see me there and take pity on me -- it is only 1/2 a mile away -- sheesh;
3. I keep refilling my gigundo WW water mug, although now I am less about to fill it with the food sentinel standing duty in the kitchen since that errand now takes me 10 minutes;
4. I keep clean white professional-looking sneakers in my drawer for my walks;
5. I try to run most mornings. I have even worked out a couple times before work, although that makes for a rushed-feeling kind of morning which I don't like;
6. I go to bellydance one night a week and lead or work WW meetings another 2-3;
7. I bring my lunch even when they are catering. Most of the time the food isn't something I would have ordered myself. Sometimes I can "harvest" a few bites of this or that to soup up my own lunch.

This reminds me of yesterday. I brought a delicious three bean pasta and lettuce salad with bean salsa and marinated mushrooms in balsamic rice wine vinegar and olive oil for lunch (4 points). This salad was so good I could have served it to the office and everyone would have wanted seconds.

Well first I went to Mark and managed to leave with just a few bites of this and that(some mushrooms and chicken harvested out of the buttery rigatoni noodles and some lettuce out of the undressed ceasar to supplment my salad). Then I took it all back to my office, closed the door and dumped it all in my huge salad bowl. I started to eat my lunch at my desk, in hiding and thought that was stupid since everyone was in the kitchen laughing and talking. How sad. So I bit the bullet and took my huge bowl with me to the kitchen. Boy did I get the "eyes." Was it just me or did the conversation suddenly turn to food/plate justification?

However, everyone was shovelling and running and again I found myself alone with Mark so I left too... back to the office (too bad I was wearing knee high boots yesterday or else I would have walked to the park). A volunteer remarked, "You brought your lunch even with all the catered food?" I said, "My goal is not to gain 10 pounds during pledge drive. This is actually a delicious mix of some catered food and mostly my own." She said, "What fun is that?"

Well call me wierd, but I personally find it more fun to go shopping for cute stylish clothes during my off-time than to go on a feeding frenzy at work. My job is not going to pay me extra to buy fat clothes.

8. I chew a ton of gum;
9. I order smartly when I eat out.


Topic three: Ok, sorry this outline got all hosed up. The website. It is a dinosaur of a thing circa just post-Y2k. That is sort of good for me for it gives me time to bone up on the latest web design stuff without having to use it. On the other hand, it forces me to learn stuff I purposefully skipped learning at that time instead to focus on the next best thing since their website is stuck in a time warp.

First, I gotta learn some ColdFusion. It wasn't in the job requirement, but I gotta teach myself enough to be dangerous or else I will be really dangerous whenever I gotta make design changes (which wasn't in the job despcription, btw). Since it is an older version of a ColdFusion 5 manual, I got away with paying $1.98 plus $6.00 rush shipping -- bonus!

On the negative side, the code is so convoluted and complex, that making any design adjustments are like performing brain surgery: I am never sure of what its going to do to the page and these pages can't be tested on my computer. They must be loaded up and tested live -- eek! With every change, I am never sure if the page is going to break when some timed (unknown) function comes into play which is why I brought the FTP codes home this weekend in case I need to make some emergency changes.

Which brings me back to the guy in Ireland... his "helpful" emails surreptitiously stopped when I started asking questions about his page structure... hmm I bet he is feeling miffed about anyone digging around his precious code.

I do have to say the site is highly functional and the person who coded it certainly knew his stuff. However, the directory and table structures are overly complex for what they need to be making even the smallest adjustment a week long process of trial and error.

My bosses say they are going to pay an outside firm to "redesign" the site, but now it seems more like pie in the sky.

In any case, they hired a content coordinator/updater, not a ColdFusion programmer so I will have to suffice. I know CF programmers charge more per hour for sure!

Fourth: The part I like is working on the SON show. Each day several topics are covered on the show which requires me to write blurbs and research the topic for website content. That part I like! The part I don't like is having five show producers give me their stuff piecemeal or even micro-manage the website blurbs. Did they not hire me to do this? A tease can take me a few minutes to write if I am given the proper slant of the interview. If I am given nothing but a name or an issue, who knows what they are going to talk about. Occassionally the head producer gives me the teases and they are overly wordy for the web; however, I cannot argue with him since he is the head producer and I am new. But I am learning that he does get too busy to concern himself with my job and eventually will just leave it to me. I think he is just trying to be "nice" and "helpful" yet also feels now he can "control" the site more now that our gentleman in Ireland is mostly out of the picture.

It was a little crazy in the beginning trying to extract the show topics from the producers as they change day by day and often aren't known until the last second. I have learned which ones to go to and which ones to avoid asking and instead ask the head producer as he always seems to change certain producer's writing. Also I know never to take anything off the head producer's desk without asking even if an assistant producer says she does it all the time and hands you the actual file off his desk. (yeah, thanks for throwing me under the bus for that one). I am also learning which ones are the most knowledgable about any topic and who would make a good blogger when we we integrate that part of the site.

Anyone know of a good blogging software to implement for a business, btw?

Fifth, I am never bored. Between the colorful array of interviewees who grace our doors and my list of "items to be researched" or code to tinker with, there is always something to do. I kind of make up my own work. They were very happy with the Guy Savoy banner I designed for them for pledge drive, and I consider that very simple and kind of old-school since I don't have Flash, good fonts or even a royalty-free image library. I come up with half my tasks myself based on what I "hear" people want to see.

Anyway, there is more. I can get into the various office personalities another time.

Off to to my other job today.