Work Related

Well, if I was on the news- I missed it. Between our four DVRs (two TiVos and two Comcast DVRs) I recorded all of showings of all of the news channels for two days. Nary a word was mentioned about our company, but I suspect it was because of a multiple homicide that happened the same day as our move. I can see where a multiple homicide would be a more important news event than our piddly move to a new building.

I was, however, in our company video. Thankfully, they cut out the ENTIRE interview- so nobody (except the people who read my blog) knows what a suck-up I am. Remember the part where they asked me to pose? That's what ended up on the video.

Just.Super.

I can't put the video here (for many reasons) but I took a couple of screen shots for you.

Here I am trying to wipe the "you've got to be kidding me" look, before I turned toward the camera when they asked me to wave:



And now, I present my "happy corporate worker pretending to talk on the phone whilst waving" face:



I received SEVERAL email messages and phone calls from folks in the company who saw me in the video. Thankfully, nobody teased me too much.

I'm hoping that there won't be more video clips on our Intranet as the days go by. I'd like to think that my "cool" status will remain intact.

At least at work....

I think I'd better break this day up into two posts, because they're very much unrelated. In fact, I'll set one to post tomorrow a.m....

(dontcha just love it when I think 'out loud'?)

Tomorrow's post will be an AMAZING turn of events about Hospice.

Today's post will be how I, RisibleGirl, was discovered and became a SUPERstar.

My company is consolidating everyone in downtown area from something like 12 buildings into one. They even built a shiny new 42 story building for us, isn't that nice? My division was the first to move in, and that was today.

To celebrate, our CEO popped in to greet folks as they came into work. I am usually at work at 6:45 a.m., so I was pretty sure I'd miss the meet and greet.

I was finished unpacking my desk by the time everyone else showed up, and was working away on my computer when someone came up behind me and said, "How's the move going?". I was in the middle of something, so was finishing that up while I answered, "Everything is fine, thanks".

Then I turned toward the voice, and wouldn't you know it.. it was the CEO plus a news crew and huge-ass news camera. This is a company of approx 60,000 employees- so that's a pretty big deal. Still, I wasn't rattled. Visibly surprised, yes. Rattled, no. I then followed up that brilliant moment by grabbing my CEO bobble-head doll, and said, "I've even unpacked my [CEO's name] bobble-head doll" and shook it a bit so the head wobbled.

That made him (and the news crew) laugh, and he started shaking his own head, imitating his bobble-head likeness.

I later told 50 of my closest friends (kidding- it was really only about five), thinking that'd be the last of it. Surely, they're not going to show a dorky moment like that on the evening news, right? I mean, last time I was interviewed by a news crew- my piece was cut out. Meh.

About a half hour later- someone in the CEO's entourage came to my desk and said that the "bobble-head thing was BRILLIANT" and I was going to be on the news tonight. GREAT. Now all the people who think I'm cool at work will think I'm the biggest suck-up that walked the planet.

Oh- but it doesn't end there.

About an hour later, someone else comes to my desk with a microphone and camera and LIGHTS. Sam was the interviewer and he was making a video for the company. For the WHOLE company to see. Yeah- remember that 60,000 employee bit? Ahem....

He asked me if he can interview me, so being the ever-cocky, ever-risible girl, I said "You bet. Give me a second to turn off the porn on my computer. I wouldn't want to make a bad impression". Of course I was joking. I was actually working, if you can believe it.

The interview went something like this:

Sam: So, tell me your name and what you do for [name of company]
Me: I'm [My name] and I create web-based compliance training materials
Sam: Do you like the new building and the way it's set up?
Me: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I've been in this kind of set up before. I was in a pilot group.
Sam: How has the move gone for you?
Me: Really smooth. Maybe it's because I'm getting used to moving with this company. I've moved like 10 times in my career here.
Sam: What are some of the things you're excited about with this move?
Me: (thinking- sheesh, I don't know... I've barely had time to unpack). Uh, I like the fact that every floor will have catering between 11 and 2. That's really convenient. I also like the new phone system- it's pretty cool.
Sam: You mean the way it looks?
Me: Well, it looks OK, but I like the fact that I can personalize my ring tone so I know it's my phone ringing when I'm around the corner.
Sam: Let me guess, your ring tone is "Sponge-Bob Square Pants" (Obviously not realizing that I once had a nightmare about this very character....)
Me: No, it's Power Puff girls
Sam: Really?
Me: (looking at him like, "you've GOT to be kidding me")

I think there was more, but frankly I can't be bothered with remembering all of the details of my celebrity interviews.

I thought it went really well and I sounded witty until....

Sam: Want to give a shout out to your homies?
Me:
Me: Ummmm.... [nervous laugh]

After that, the microphone was turned off and they made me do all kinds of nerdy things for the camera.

Cameraman: OK, pretend you're working
Me: That won't be hard
Cameraman: Pick up the phone and then start typing on your keyboard
Me: [does as I'm told]
Cameraman: OK, now turn back toward me and wave to the camera
Me: [thinking I'm going to get SO teased about this] :wave:

If you need me, I'll be signing autographs between 10 and 2 tomorrow.

If you'll recall, I had a task of making 850+ managers attest that their employees took my training.

Apparently I have mad skillz when it comes to getting people to do my will, because as of yesterday I whittled that list of 157 stragglers down to just ONE. The lone manager from New York.

I continued calling AND emailing each person until they finally buckled and took the 1.5 minutes to take care of business. When I got down to 20 or so, I started copying their managers. I hate resorting to that, but had to.

So, the lone manager from New York was my final quest. He started getting TWO emails a day and one phone call. Always nice, of course, but letting him know that he was the only one out of 850+ people who is keeping me from getting my report to the regulators.

Finally, I got a call from him yesterday afternoon.

NY (thick New York accent): Hey, doll, you can quit hunting me down.
Me: Huh? Who is this? (thinking it was someone playing a joke on me)
NY: This is [says his name]
Me: OHHHHHHHHH! The straggler!
NY: Is that what you're calling me?
Me: Yup. In fact I was just talking about you five minutes ago, saying that I was going to have to break some knee caps.
NY: (Hearty laugh)
NY: You can call off the mobsters, doll, I'm going to take care of this right now.
Me: That's fabulous, now I can get my report off to the regulators. You were the only one left.
NY: You mean, every other manager did this? I thought you were making that up in the email to get me off my keester.
Me: Nope. I'm in compliance- I don't lie (ha ha- yeah, right)
NY: Well, doll, I'm sorry I was the hang-up.
Me: So, do you think I could make it as a collector? I mean, I really did hound you.
NY: I'm afraid you are too sweet sounding. You'll have to rough up your voice and quit being so nice. But you have potential.

The rest of the conversation was joking about what a loser he was in holding up my report to the regulators, but he was awfully fun to talk to. I had quite a picture in my head of what he looked like.

It's been a while since I've been called "doll" in the business world- but for some reason I didn't mind it. It was a perfect ending to this project.

Funny thing is, I start it all over again next week with a new set of annual regulatory training. I like to come up with themes for my training, and I think my NY friend gave me an idea.... stay tuned.

Well, maybe not.. but that's what I've felt like for the past three days.

I create web-based regulatory compliance training (and it's damned entertaining, if I do say so myself). My training goes out to anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 people depending on the division.

Our regulators require that we prove we've trained all of those people EVERY year on EVERY regulation. Some are new hires and some are taking refresher training.

In addition to the training, I've created a system whereby the managers of these people can attest that all of their employees have taken the training.

I've made this VERY easy. They click three radio buttons (i.e. yes, I understand what classes my employees should take- yes, my employees have taken the required classes, and then they enter their employee ID.) Seems simple, yes?

They've had two months to do this. I guess it's just too much work for 157 people (out of 850+). Our regulators wanted 100% compliance and I've made that VERY clear in bi-weekly communications since the beginning of February.

We're down to the wire (actually PAST the wire.. the deadline was last Monday) so now I have to play "Guido". For the last three days, I've made phone calls to each of the 157 people PLUS followed it up with an email giving them a link to the attestation.

As I rattle off my 'spiel', I feel like a friggin' telemarketer. I can rattle it off so fast now that I'm barely audible. Hey batter batter, SWING!

I'm now down to 89 people who have yet to attest. If they don't do it, I'll have to resort to breaking kneecaps.

I mean it! heh.

I got the bulk of my project(s) done yesterday, but that was due to working 13-14 hour days. I'll probably be MIA again next week, but then should be back on my regular daily posting and reading schedule. I get to take the weekend off because I'm waiting for other folks to get their reviews done before I can finalize. The project consists of creating 13 web-based regulatory compliance training modules, five of which will be tweaks of the first set of five that I just published so that'll be easy. Fascinating, eh?

I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished, and my manager is very happy too. I've always felt that it's my job to make my manager look good, and the product I'm putting out will certainly do that. I've truly created a niche for myself and think that I will be able to go far with this after I retire, so I don't mind the hard work I'm putting in now. I'm using my current job to bone up on graphics and learn how to create animated gifs and flash movies, and should have it down to a science by the time I retire. My manager encourages this because it makes my training materials really fun (and funny!) for the end user. It's a win-win.

This week wasn't all fun and games though. Normally I love my job, but the technology I have to work with was giving me fits. My work laptop isn't cut out for having all of the programs I need to have open at the same time, so it was crashing constantly. Yesterday was game day and I had to have five modules out to the training server by end of day. It looked like that'd be easy based on where I'd left off Thursday night, but whenever I'd try to upload files, my VPN connection would time out. I needed VPN to get onto the network because it is a secured network. I spent four hours of my day yesterday trying to upload five 5mb files and was never successful.

By 4pm, after a good cry (thank goodness I telecommute!) and lots of swearing, I decided to zip it all up and FTP it to one of my own domains and asked the training admins to pick it up from there. I believe it was successful, but never heard back from them.

Because I was up against a deadline, I'd been working solid since 5:30 a.m. and hadn't exercised, eaten, or showered by the end of the day. I was completely mentally exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was exercise. I just wanted to veg in front of the TV and forget about the world.

But I've been working very hard at a healthier lifestyle since September, which included completely cutting sugar out of my life, portion control and exercising daily. The devil on one shoulder was telling me, "Oh- you don't need to exercise today. You've had a hard day so relax and have a glass of wine!" The angel on the other shoulder told me, "Don't do this. If you use this as an excuse to get out of exercising, it'll be that much easier to excuse yourself the next time."

The angel won.

I changed into my workout gear and got on the elliptical machine for 45 minutes, and then I did 100 sit-ups. I felt so.much.better after I was done working out. I was calm and also happy that I chose to honor the commitment I'd made to myself.

I know that if the devil would have won, I'd of not only had the stress of the day on my mind, but I'd of also felt guilty for not exercising.

I just finished exercising for today, so now I'll go visit my favorite blogs. See ya in a few!