Tales from the Workplace 12/05/06 Edition

My department has a big Staff Conference going on in another town this week. It started yesterday and ends tomorrow. I, like everyone else in my little office, decided not to go. I haven't been to one of these conferences in the 3 (almost 4) years that I've worked here. I really haven't seen the point in going, other than not having to do any work (and it's not like I do a whole lot lately anyways because this is the time of the year when my workload slows down), so I always skip it. Sure, it would be nice to meet some of these people from the other offices across the state that I only know through phone calls and emails but that's not enough incentive for me to sit through boring speakers that talk about things that don't pertain to me and my job.

So, since I decided to skip it again this year I got stuck with switchboard relief duty today. No biggie really. I only had to sit up there for 15 minutes this morning and 15 minutes this afternoon so that the person that's covering it for the regular receptionist, who did go to the conference, can pee and whatnot. Sounds like a piece of cake right? I mean it normally is. You sit up there, answer the phone, transfer the caller to the person they need to speak with and voila! Yeah, well I wasn't quite prepared for GhettoFest 2006 this morning so my normal piece of cake switchboard duty turned into a case of "What the hell is she thinking?!"

I got up there this morning and the chick was playing a local rap station through the computer. See, we're not allowed to listen to streaming music on our work computers because it slows down the department's servers. We're not allowed to watch video either. Even if it is important news videos. Like the coverage of Susy Q winning Miss Hole in the Wall 2006 (yes folks, that is important news around here). So, not only was she listening to rap music at the switchboard, which to me is very unprofessional and tacky, she was listening to it through the website. You can only imagine how irritated I was when the song would pause to buffer and then start playing again only to buffer for 30 more seconds.

Then...when I went back up there this afternoon she was on a personal call on the switchboard phone. Not a "Hey...your child is sick, come get them" kind of call either. Again, very unprofessional if you ask me. What if some bigwig came walking in and heard her talking about sister girl's baby daddy's cousin who shot the drug dealer because he really needed that crack rock so that he could sell it to pay his child support?! Yeah...not very good.

Okay...let me add this...I have nothing against this chick. I really don't know her. I had only talked to her one time before today and that was to tell her where to sign for her card key to the building. So..this is not a personal attack against her or anything like that. And I'm sure that phone call was not about sister girl's baby daddy's cousin who shot the drug dealer.