Reception relief
I was going to preface this particular diatribe by saying that, generally, I am a relatively easy going person. Then I leaned back (in the receptionist’s chair) and contemplated if the term “easy going” is, in fact, applicable to my personality. Much like people report seeing their lives flash before their eyes when death looms certain before them, I too had a vivid sequence of memories flood my synapses. It was, to quote the musical score in Team America, a montage: Duder fingering a Hummer; Duder punching her brother in the face; Duder fiercely debating a CTV executive; Duder writing angry letters to no less than the president and vice president of the United States, a Republican senator from Kansas, and Scotiabank; Duder yelling at her shyster mechanic; Duder wearing a sandwich board (only) reading “It’s not easy being green” while ranting “the end is nigh, repent sinners!”. Okay, maybe the last one is just a fantasy of mine.
So we’ve established that I am not an easy going person. In fact, I’m more likely to punch than hug you… ask my family and friends. I’ve taken them to emergency numerous times, whispering feverishly “I’m so sorry, it will never happen again! Please don’t leave me; I love you”. Suckers always buy it. Therefore, it was with something other than graciousness that I accepted the punishment meted out to me solely for having breasts: to perform reception relief in the absence of our office administrator.
I have a long and illustrious history of reception relief (which I view as something akin to paid sexual discrimination). My first foray into the exciting world of answering phones and typing was when I landed my first job for a construction company. Though I was hired to do mostly data entry and assist the controller, the office manager deigned herself unable to answer more than one phone line at a time. This resulted in yours truly being situated in the office next to the manager so that, halfway through a lengthy tape I would have to stop, hearing the insistent beep of a second, incoming call. This continued until my boss executed a coup d’etat, forever rescuing me from the clutches of the facsimile and memo.
The next occurrence of administrative angst occurred at my subsequent job, where everyone in the office took turns manning the phones while the administrative person was on lunch and breaks. The call volume was high, and when flustered I resorted to simply hanging up on the unfortunate soul that choose the switch board over an individual’s extension. It was at the job that I met my lovah, Michael. He was, if possible, worse at reception relief than I, and I would often catch him swigging vodka from a flask in his back pocket while muttering “the phones, they never stop. How much organic produce do these people need???”. We both quit.
My last stint, before the circus that is today, was similar: rotating reception relief to cover breaks and lunches. This one had the added twist of having to a) check the bags and packs of inbound warehouse workers while b) having them attack me with such witticisms as “hey, you new here? I haven’t seen you around before”. I resorted to paying other employees with less hatred (you might say they were more “easy going”) towards the process than I, five dollars to cover my days. Management got wind of this and promptly put an end to it. Yea, the director of the company could return from lunch drunk, we could perform warehousing functions for Wal-Mart, known for routinely violating its workers rights, and we could ship arms to Iraq for the US government, but it was a no no for me to pay other people to do reception relief. As management was not subject to this horror, I became a supervisor. And then quit.
Which brings me today. I must say that since I first wet my toes in the tepid pool of pleasant greetings and abject seething, things have changed somewhat. One of my male coworkers saw me flailing at my front desk duties and came to confide that he too noticed only those breasted individuals seemed to end up in this precarious position. He expressed contempt that we would not see a particular young male in my hot seat; ironically, this young man and I engaged in some banter earlier about how he was unfit to hold my post because his hair wasn’t “blonde” enough.
I suppose the best part was when a visiting venture capitalist wanted to plug his thumb drive into my computer (no, I’m not being figurative) so that he could print out a document. After crawling on the floor in front of him on my hands and knees I couldn’t find the port thingy (I’m an accountant, not a tekkie). Convinced I was stupid, he volunteered to crawl around under the desk to undoubtedly find what I had missed. As he waggled his rump in the air and his face became flushed and florid he realized I was right. And then I said “if you like, I can take this to my office and print it out”. Sheepish, he agreed to watch the door in my absence. It was a nice “relief”.
So we’ve established that I am not an easy going person. In fact, I’m more likely to punch than hug you… ask my family and friends. I’ve taken them to emergency numerous times, whispering feverishly “I’m so sorry, it will never happen again! Please don’t leave me; I love you”. Suckers always buy it. Therefore, it was with something other than graciousness that I accepted the punishment meted out to me solely for having breasts: to perform reception relief in the absence of our office administrator.
I have a long and illustrious history of reception relief (which I view as something akin to paid sexual discrimination). My first foray into the exciting world of answering phones and typing was when I landed my first job for a construction company. Though I was hired to do mostly data entry and assist the controller, the office manager deigned herself unable to answer more than one phone line at a time. This resulted in yours truly being situated in the office next to the manager so that, halfway through a lengthy tape I would have to stop, hearing the insistent beep of a second, incoming call. This continued until my boss executed a coup d’etat, forever rescuing me from the clutches of the facsimile and memo.
The next occurrence of administrative angst occurred at my subsequent job, where everyone in the office took turns manning the phones while the administrative person was on lunch and breaks. The call volume was high, and when flustered I resorted to simply hanging up on the unfortunate soul that choose the switch board over an individual’s extension. It was at the job that I met my lovah, Michael. He was, if possible, worse at reception relief than I, and I would often catch him swigging vodka from a flask in his back pocket while muttering “the phones, they never stop. How much organic produce do these people need???”. We both quit.
My last stint, before the circus that is today, was similar: rotating reception relief to cover breaks and lunches. This one had the added twist of having to a) check the bags and packs of inbound warehouse workers while b) having them attack me with such witticisms as “hey, you new here? I haven’t seen you around before”. I resorted to paying other employees with less hatred (you might say they were more “easy going”) towards the process than I, five dollars to cover my days. Management got wind of this and promptly put an end to it. Yea, the director of the company could return from lunch drunk, we could perform warehousing functions for Wal-Mart, known for routinely violating its workers rights, and we could ship arms to Iraq for the US government, but it was a no no for me to pay other people to do reception relief. As management was not subject to this horror, I became a supervisor. And then quit.
Which brings me today. I must say that since I first wet my toes in the tepid pool of pleasant greetings and abject seething, things have changed somewhat. One of my male coworkers saw me flailing at my front desk duties and came to confide that he too noticed only those breasted individuals seemed to end up in this precarious position. He expressed contempt that we would not see a particular young male in my hot seat; ironically, this young man and I engaged in some banter earlier about how he was unfit to hold my post because his hair wasn’t “blonde” enough.
I suppose the best part was when a visiting venture capitalist wanted to plug his thumb drive into my computer (no, I’m not being figurative) so that he could print out a document. After crawling on the floor in front of him on my hands and knees I couldn’t find the port thingy (I’m an accountant, not a tekkie). Convinced I was stupid, he volunteered to crawl around under the desk to undoubtedly find what I had missed. As he waggled his rump in the air and his face became flushed and florid he realized I was right. And then I said “if you like, I can take this to my office and print it out”. Sheepish, he agreed to watch the door in my absence. It was a nice “relief”.
posted by Duder at 2:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home