Our receptionist left to spend a few weeks in Montreal at the end of last week and entrusted her job to a temp, which isn't in itself necessarily a bad thing. She's a nice enough girl. However,
(and it is a big however)
She's starting to get on my nerves because she screws things up. Now, admittedly, she hasn't been in the position for very long, and a lot of it is innocent little mistakes that can be blamed on her lack of experience. Fair enough. And these aren't really big, serious things, but they're enough to irritate me.
I found out yesterday that instead of giving my mail to me, she somehow or other thought that she should photocopy the front page of each thing I got and then send everything else to Ottawa. The reason why is completely beyond my comprehension. I went and talked to her about it, phrased it in a really positive, friendly sort of way, something to the tune of wow, thanks, but you really don't have to make all that extra work for yourself when all you need to do is drop the stuff in my inbox. Problem seems to be solved, I hope.
But now, when I get mail in, instead of stamping the date directly on the front page, she feels compelled to stamp a post-it note and stick that on there instead. This would be fine, except that a) post-it notes fall off and then I have no idea when the hell I recieved it, b) post-it notes just happen to increase the likelihood that the photocopier and fax machine will jam, c) this is the government and everything must be date stamped and finally d) a dated post-it note stuck to an original document is not all that kosher in a court of law.
I went out to talk to her again. Explained that she was doing a great job and that there must be a lot of things for her to remember and get used to. Then I told her that I would prefer to have her date stamp documents directly, and I brought out an example of something I would recieve, just so she would know what it looked like. Great.
When I went back into the office, I found out that I had not been the only person to have spoken to her about that subject, and that at least three other people had already done the same. So, has anything changed? No, not yet. In fact, she didn't even bother to change the date on the date stamp so now everything has post-it notes with the wrong date, which I have to then go and restamp with the correct one.
And then there are fax confirmations. She date stamps them too, in spite of the fact that the fax machine automatically prints a date on them. Not a big deal. I can live with that. But there's more. For some reason or other, she feels that she has to staple them all together. That in itself is alright, I guess, except that she doesn't staple them all all together. Instead she staples some and not others in random numbers and sometimes she gets really creative and staples my fax confirmations to things that have nothing to do with what I faxed. It's driving me fucking nuts.
I kick myself for getting worked up about such stupid things. I need more sleep.
sing it with me
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