Pardon me, but your incompetence is showing

This post is courtesy of my friend and former co-worker. Wednesday she forwarded me an e-mail exchange featuring one of her not-so-bright co-workers. She then asked me if she'd told me the Tijuana story. She hadn't but I could tell it would a good one. She called me to relay the story, and it was indeed quite entertaining.

We'll call her annoying co-worker Associate I for incompetent. Associate I's job is to book travel for team members at the company. She booked a trip for 2 team members to visit a facility near Tijuana. First, she had them fly into California. Now, the last time I checked, Tijuana was in Mexico. They then rent a car and drive into Mexico. I told my friend that we don't let our people drive in Mexico. She said it's against their policy too. Oopsy. Next, their company insurance, like ours, doesn't cover rental vehicles outside the U.S. and Canada. Did she have them purchase insurance from the rental car agency? No. She didn't even know the car wasn't covered, though my friend who is only a back up to Associate I did. Then the two members got lost, and they were driving around Tijuana for quite some time. Great. Two obvious foreigners driving around Mexico in a brand new Toyota Camry. They are lucky they weren't carjacked, kidnapped for ransom, or worse.

One thing for sure, I don't want Associate I booking any travel for me.

A Squirrel of a Different Color

This week I was explaining the purple squirrel concept to our IT intern. He grasped it quickly. I was telling him we have to settle for maroon squirrels when my boss chimed in "but a lot of times we get "mo-ron" squirrels". I loved it. My boss doesn't normally come up with things like that, but it was hilarious AND true.

Great New Quote

Last weekend I was watching Storage Wars at my Mom's house. Dave Hester said the following, and I loved it :"There's no strategy with crazy". Oh my goodness, how true is that? I knew I'd have to share it with my coworker as we frequently talk about and deal with tons of crazy in our job. She loved it too. Now whenever an applicable situation arises, we'll look at the other and say "there's no strategy". I'll bet you can use this one a lot in your daily life too.

And a pair of underwear too

Yesterday our Maintenance team was moving out old uniform lockers. We're getting all new ones to go in our newly remodeled locker rooms. It's been announced for a week that people needed to empty their lockers before today. Did everyone comply? Of course not. The Maintenance Team was not happy, and I don't blame them. They threw all items they found on the floor and left them there. One of the guys told me "If I find a pair of underwear, I'm going home." Less than five minutes later, he came across a pair of tighty-whiteys. AHAHAHAH. The lockers are labeled, so we know whose they were. They didn't join the pile of uniforms on the floor. The maintenance guy grabbed a piece of conduit probably at least six feet long and used the end to remove the undies and place them in the trash can in our cafeteria. I'm not sure if anyone else saw them in there or not. But believe me, I'm sure by now everyone in the building knows about this.

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Planning is a good thing- UPDATE

Today one of my friends asked if I was still using my old computer or my new one. I got the new one back, and it's about 95% functional. Printers were added so I can print from virtual machine. After two upgrades (since our version was SO old), our HR software  will now run on Windows 7 (we're still not running the current version, of course). A fix was found so I can use Outlook 2007 for almost all of the mailboxes that I monitor. This is good as I couldn't open attachments in virtual machine mode. I'd have to save them to my desktop, then open. That was a pain in the rear for sure. The only lingering problem is I can't open 2 of the mailboxes. I can, however, open the calendars for those resources. IT is stumped. For now I have to use Outlook in virtual machine mode to open those mailboxes. So, are we there yet? Not quite. But it is getting better.

P.S. The HR software upgrade was done Friday while my coworker was off. She came in Monday and of course couldn't use the program. She asked the two senior IT people about it. I told her they wouldn't be able to do it, and she figured that's what would happen. They told her they'd look at it. Later that day they asked her if she could wait until today while the most junior person on the team got back from funeral leave. Nothing like cross team capability is there? 

Norwegian Chocolate Pizza

I recently came across this recipe on the website of one of my favorite authors. It seemed tempting and easy to make, so I gave it a try last week. Here's the end result.

Wow, is it ever tasty. The crust is oats, butter, and brown sugar. The "sauce" is peanut butter and chocolate chips. The "cheese" is shredded coconut, and I used Reese's Pieces for the pepperoni. As the site warns, it is addictive. Even one of my super finicky coworkers really liked it.

It was indeed very easy to make too. I'd highly recommend you give it a try.

Planning is a good thing

Friday I got a new computer at work. I'll be there 12 years next month, and this is my 3rd computer. Let's just say the process did not go as hoped. First, there were no printers installed. Oops. IT came back and fixed that. Next I noticed our HR software wasn't there. Oops again. It gets better though. The version of our HR software that we are running (MANY versions behind the current version) is not compatible with Windows 7. There is also a problem running Outlook 2007 when you have multiple e-mail addresses. I have close to 10 other accounts I check for resumes, meeting room reservations, etc. When you switch for 1 account to the next, it can take minutes for it to open. Not good. To work around the issues for the last two, they gave me virtual machine access to the latter two programs. I don't really know what that means, but it worked.

Come Monday, I found out that I couldn't print in the virtual machine mode. That simply won't do as I have to print items from those two programs. I ended up getting my old computer back. At least it can run all my programs without crazy work arounds.

What gets me in all this is most if not all of these issues should have been foreseen. Again, this is my 3rd computer. Somewhere there should be profile showing what printers, programs, etc. I have. This should have been referenced when my new unit was set up. That's the purpose of having this documentation. Planning is as natural as breathing to me. It's almost as useful too.