FAT Tuesday!

It's Fat Tuesday. Day of the Packzi, mysteriously pronounced poonch-key. A glorious day at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but a mere excuse to eat fruit-filled, fattening sugary treats here in the Midwest. I had already consumed 6 blueberry and powdered sugar packzis my mother bought me last week; and I was left wondering exactly which Tuesday it was that I was supposed to be celebrating with these seasonal fancy doughnuts... last Thursday. I couldn't remember which day was officially "fat," but I sure felt fat every day that I ate one of these delicious pastries.

I had a comical day on the job. I dressed to impress; wearing my new pants, shoes, and cardigan, only to find that half the staff, including the director I am assisting, were out of the office. An hour into the work day, a co-worker, who was in the middle of a big print job for the director, got a call from her son's school to pick him up because he was running a fever. She brought her urgent project to my desk, and asked me to complete it for her. I was fairly excited to be her "pinch hitter," considering she is the least outgoing in the office. I'm assuming this is because she's busy pinch-hitting for everyone else. My task was to customize and print about 50 award certificates for an educational program the director is conducting in the local schools. Easy enough.

Or not.

I had never in my life worked with this type of printer, and somehow I managed to immediately find the paper tray to load the card stock I needed to use. I was feeling pretty confident. I marched back to my desk, hit the print button, and gleefully awaited the emergence of my first completed color certificate from the printer. But, suddenly, there were very strange noises travelling across the office...

Paper jam.

The only other co-worker in the office was very busy. She handles a monumentous amount of work daily, but she also had payroll to complete today. I did not want to bother her... but I could not let the ball drop simply because I was too shy and embarrassed to ask for help. I was praying that my running joke with the maintenance man, "Everything is broken. EVERYTHING," hadn't become my reality today. I opened every openable compartment. Pulled out a piece of mangled card stock, and quietly returned to my desk to resume printing.

Paper jam (still).

Are you flippin' kidding me?

I was forced to ask Danielle to assist me. And after we wrassled paper, pushed every button, open and closed trays, powered down, and powered up the printer... and tried to print two more times; she concluded that the weight of the paper made it necessary to load in another tray. She was actually quite kind about the situation, and declared her own detest for the printer, which I forgot to mention sits upon a tall filing cabinet, making it necessary for me to stand on my tip-toes just to read the display. After the printer problem was solved, finishing the project, my first pinch hit, was an out of the park home run. Done. Yes. Thank you.

Next task: rewriting my public appointment calendar. This is my first time working with Microsoft Outlook, the program we use to track our working calendars... a critical need, considering my in and out of office hours vary according to which project I am working on, and I'm part-time. I thought I completed this task Friday. In fact, I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to not only schedule my regular hours and appointments, but also recurring appointments. I was feeling s-m-a-r-t. Too bad I clicked the wrong button. I made a schedule alright, but it was only for my own eyes to see, on my own computer. Not feeling so smart now.

The next thing on my growing longer by the minute to do list, was sending a fax to a local high school principal. Fair enough. I can do this. Danielle was working feverishly, while speaking with the CEO, as the fax machine started screaming, "You MUST dial a one when calling this number," over and over. WHERE IS THE CANCEL BUTTON!!!! My eyes were racing across the machine front, couldn't I please find this damn cancel button before I have to DIE from embarrassment?!

"Do you need some help over there, Mona?" Danielle asked in a sympathetic tone.

"No. (Laughing) I finally found the cancel button." I replied. There is a certain area code in this state that some jackass decided would randomly require dialing a "1." Everytime I have tried to guess "to dial, or not to dial," I have been wrong. My previous job required a lot of dialing to this particular area code, so I grew to expect the frustration... I just don't particularly enjoy it.

Carol had also asked me to contact a publishing company again to write up another quote for a potential pamphlet order. This is very time sensitive because the pricing deal ends on Friday, and the project runs full-force in March. Carol was out of the office today. It's imperative that I complete any and all projects thrown my way if I'm going to successfully negotiate a permanent position in April, when my temporary assignment ends. This is why I'm feeling so much pressure! Not only is this the first job I've managed to land in 10 months, the pay, and the people are great, and it's a non-profit organization. My dream job. If I'm going to make this dream come true... I've got to shine, not make the printer jam and the fax machine scream! Unfortunately, the representative we have been working with did not respond to my email or voice mail while I was in the office.

A few other snafus I forgot to mention... sending out a mass email in Outlook, only to discover it uses semi-colons, not commas to seperate email addresses. Also, I incorrectly transferred a call to the CEO. It rang her desk, then went on hold. Danielle had to help me with that too. I also spent the majority of my day with my own phone set to forward calls to voice mail. Luckily, I only had one in office call, so I was only embarrassed by this one time.

In my defense, there has beenabsolutely no training provided, and the staff, including the CEO, make sincere light of this fact and have shared their own stories of office equipment bloopers. In fact, the two directors both confess to being unable to properly transfer calls, so I shouldn't feel that intellectually incompetent. But as I said, the pressure is immense for me, because not only do I want to keep this job, I NEED to keep this job. I literally can't afford to go another ten months without work. I'm not feeling this heat from anyone at work. It's my own private hell. The one I've resided in alone these past ten months. I've decided to put my faith into this position becoming permanent, and scale back my job search until my end of assignment April assessment with the organization. I don't expect to be offered full-time, but if I could convince them to allow me even 20 hours a week, I could survive until a permanent full-time opportunity with them arose. Considering the permanent part-time worker is not returning from her leave, there should be a legitimate opportunity for a permanent position.

My day concluded with an over-the-phone interview for an upcoming community project. The woman I was interviewing was "having one of those days too," so we shared a laugh about it. Completing an interview gave me a true feeling of success. One of my tasks is to help them reach their 100 interviews goal. They had 40 when I started, and today's interview was my second, so there are 58 more to go. I'd love to be able to finish all 58... again, to prove my worth, but I'm not so sure that is a real possibility, considering a new task gets brought to my desk a couple times a day.

So... to celebrate making it out of the office without a fatal paper cut, critical missed call, or destroying an expensive printer, I decided to pick up more packzis when I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. This time, cherry-filled and glazed. I was obligated to celebrate "Fat Tuesday," wasn't I? Okay... so maybe I was just seeking comfort from some tasty doughnuts. But, I enjoyed my "celebration," twice. Before, and after, a very satisfying nap.