I like my job, but it drives me bonkers.

Two entries in two days...I think that's some sort of record for this year. At any rate, I had planned to write about one thing, but after the day I had at work I feel the need to rant instead...

Now don't get me wrong, for the most part I really like my job. I enjoy the work, and I love the people I work with. I'm also grateful to even have a fairly well-paying job considering the state of the job market nowadays. I don't think this is something I will do for the rest of my life, but for the next couple of years at least it's great, and pretty much where I want to be. Just wanted to lay that out there before I let out some frustration over the next several paragraphs.

Our company, despite the economy and the difficulties some are facing, is doing quite well. We're constantly adding new merchandise and websites. We're expanding - we've hired new people in every department. Every department that is, except for mine. Literally. Every single department in the company except for mine has hired at least two more people. Some have hired half a dozen. And I'm not talking about the warehouse hiring seasonal help for the holidays, I'm talking about permanent office employees, to keep up with the demands of the new websites and additional work.

When I started in the purchasing department I bought for three stores. They were the three biggest stores our company had, and they kept me pretty busy. After a few months we were also given the responsibility of drop ship orders, so in addition to regular purchasing for three stores, I had drop ship orders for I think five, maybe six. Plus of course other job duties like keeping pricing for every single vendor for all of those stores up to date. It was pretty hectic for the first few weeks, but as I got to know what I was doing I worked out a system that worked for me. I was busier than I was before but for the most part I would get everything done most days. Or close enough.

However, since then it's just gotten worse and worse. As I said, we're expanding. We're adding new websites all the time, but our department remains with only two people. The other person essentially takes care of only one store, because it deals with a lot of shoes and clothes...between new styles/colors/sizes coming out or being discontinued constantly, that store is literally a full-time job in and of itself. She used to have a couple other smaller stores, but my manager and I have pretty much taken them over in an attempt to actually get everything done. Which means at this point I purchase for ten stores and do drop ship orders for about fifteen. Again, plus other work and keeping the pricing for all of our vendors current. Granted, a lot of the stores are smaller without a lot of sales, but there's still work to be done. Plus add everything up, and the stores I handle make up approximately 90% of our company's business. NINETY.

We've been asking for more help for months, to no avail. Christmas season will pick up very shortly, and I'm already in a panic. I remember how stressed and busy I was last Christmas, and back then I only had three stores and no drop ships. Of course, I'd just started in the department last year and I'm much quicker and more efficient now...but still. So I try and keep track of everything I do and quantify my time, in hopes the upper management will agree to hire another person for us.

My supervisor put in a formal request last week, and all that's happened there is we might hire an inventory specialist. Not really sure what that's supposed to be. Technically they're going to be in my department I believe, but reading the job description they're going to be more help to some of the other departments. And they will take over the China ordering, which we never did. So essentially we may now be hiring someone new who will take absolutely no work away from the other people in the department, but they will help out everyone else! Awesome.

I'm just tired that no one seems to see how much work we're doing or to think that we could use more help. We only have 8 hours a day. We place over a thousand orders per week between all the stores, and we need to have ETAs or tracking or something for every one of them within three days. We have over 800 vendors and there are always at least a dozen that need their pricing updated. We need to contact vendors whenever there are items that don't come in, are sent incorrectly, are damaged in shipment, etc, and we have to have complete resolution on all of those issues within 24 hours. Never mind the fact that some people take a day to even respond to emails and don't answer their phones either. That is no excuse, and if I don't have a concrete answer after 24 hours it is my fault. Period.

I'm sick of being told that I need to get all of these things done in the allocated time frames or I am going to lose my job. I'm fed up with everything being my top fucking priority. Every single one of my many responsibilities are apparently vital and need done immediately. Never mind the complete impossibility of that. And never mind the fact that with hundreds of orders I just don't have the time to spend a couple of hours on ONE trying to do something small like get a $3 credit for a broken jar of goddamned jam.

I have my yearly review coming up later this month, and I'm terrified. I know that I will probably be told that I need to work faster. That's what the other person in my department was told at her review - that the amount of work she had was reasonable and if she couldn't get it done she needed to learn to be faster and more efficient. What's funny, is that they said our workloads were tough but reasonable back in March (which I agreed with), and I have twice as many stores now. How can the workload be so much heavier now and still be considered reasonable? I'm just really hoping I don't get slammed during my review, or even written up because I'm not getting all of my work done daily.

Through all of this though I am so grateful for my manager. She helps us out with as much as she can, and sticks up for us and takes the heat when something is done a bit behind schedule, because she knows we're working our asses off. I know she'll keep trying to get us more help...and I'm just hoping that she'll pull it off before I end up going completely insane!

Wow...that was much longer than I actually expected it to be, but I feel much better now. Should be back to my normal entries and what I was planning to blog about within the next day or two. But for now it's bedtime - Wednesday is one of my catch up days and I need to get enough sleep so that I can take full advantage of that!

Day from hell

I hate Mondays.

Today when I got to work, I had a voicemail from my supervisor. She'd hurt her ankle and was taking the day off so she could go to the hospital and see if it was broken. Normally she would receive all of our shipments into our system/inventory, but since she was out Jen and I had to go back to doing them for the day.

This shouldn't have been a big deal. Mondays are hell for drop ships, but at the same time I don't have to place regular orders for my stores, so it kind of balances out. I got everything received, and got my morning drop ships caught up. I was foolish enough to think that maybe I would have the time to catch up on a few other things I needed to do.

Then I looked in Jen's task box. She'd been thrown onto another project at the end of last week, so she had to get tracking info for all of the drop ships she had from last Wednesday on. This on top of the well over 100 drop ships she was supposed to do for today. And where my drop ships can be attached to emails and sent en masse to each vendor, most of hers need to be entered on websites. One by one...on shitty websites that usually take ages to load anything and process orders.

Needless to say, we both spent the entire day frantically trying to get all of her stuff done. Somehow, and I honestly don't know how, we managed to get all of the drop ships for every store done, as well as all of the tracking info from last week as well. So in the end it worked out, but it was very stressful and by the end of the day I was exhausted.

Then I get home and have a letter about my student loan. I just worked out a new payment plan with them...paying a bit more a month and trying to get it paid off sooner. They told me they were sending me some paperwork I had to sign and return to make the changes. That arrived today...however, it says I'm agreeing to payments of $200 a month, which is over twice what I'd agreed to commit to. Hell, that's nearly what I pay for my car. I'm nearly positive it's just a typo on their part, but now I have to call them tomorrow on my lunch break and try to deal with it. It's just one more thing I really didn't need today.

Finally, my grandmother is having her second surgery in the morning. Again, I'm sure it will go fine, but I can't help but get worried and worked up over it. I'm sure I'll be checking my cell phone every five minutes tomorrow to see if my mom has called or messaged me. Mom's going to spend the night again tomorrow too, I think, and hopefully this time my gran won't decide it's a good idea to wander around the neighborhood drugged up the day after surgery.

I'll be glad in a few days when it's done with and she's mostly back to normal. Except for the neverending supply of eye drops that I have to do for her four times a day, lol.

At any rate I need to clean up a bit so my mother has somewhere to sleep tomorrow, and then it's bedtime for me. I'll post a surgery update and probably a regular update sometime later in the week. I actually do have a few things I want to talk about, aside from ranting about my shitty day....

Off to a great start

I was going to either write a review of 2008 (yeah I stole that idea from Jade >.>), or get started on my goals for 2009. But too much has happened the last couple of days so I felt the need to vent instead.

First off, the first was okay. I didn't feel that great and I spent the majority of the day lazing around, but overall it wasn't a bad day. The second....that's when everything started to go to shit.

I'd woken up in the middle of the night coughing and needed a drink. I noticed that my laptop had the blue screen of death. I glanced at it, but just shut the computer down. Anyone who uses XP knows that sometimes those just happen. Usually you restart and the computer is fine, so I went back to bed.

When I woke up in the morning I tried to start up my computer, and got the BSOD yet again. I tried a few things but had no luck. Turns out my hard drive had died. Just died. As if that wasn't bad enough, I didn't have everything backed up. I have a lot of it on my external hard drive, but not all of my documents. I only have parts of my latest novel saved, and none of my music is backed up. The killer? I was going to back everything up that day so that I could reformat while I was off work. I wanted to get my computer cleaned up before classes started this week. But could my hard drive wait 10 measly hours to die? Of course not.

I talked to Dell, and they're going to send a new hard drive, so that's not an issue. My warranty isn't up for another few months. Also, my mom has a friend who is going to try and see what he can salvage, if anything, from my dead hard drive. I'm hoping he's able to help me out, and that it isn't too expensive. Oh, and that he can do it quickly as my classes start on the 8th. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'd been up at 9am, but by the time I sorted all of this out it was mid-afternoon. My doorbell rings, and I open it to find a package on my doorstep. It turned out to be Christian's Christmas present. I'd mailed it on December 6th and was wondering why it hadn't been delivered yet. Apparently some asshole had taken the package, stolen most of what was inside, sealed it up again and scratched off the address. And so it was returned to me as "undeliverable." At least not everything was stolen. I guess.

That's enough complaining from me. Everything should work out eventually. January always stinks for me, it seems. At least so far this year it's only been stuff instead of my health. Things are always replaceable, though I am really hoping that if nothing else, my mom's friend can save the rest of my novel.