Arg...

It's interesting how a person can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed all by the same thing. That's a pretty accurate description of my job -- not mentally very stimulating, but I have alot of boring, systematic things to do. I'm actually pretty good at systematic things and creating my own processes to get things done, but that doesn't mean I find it highly interesting.

My desk is over flowing with phones right now and I almost get caught up just before a new shipment of defectives comes in. So I basically can't get completely caught up right now. Plus it's commission week.

See all of our sales reps are independent contractors and once a month their sales from two months ago get commissioned out, which means us of the administrative staff all have something to keep track of to know which sales reps have turned in all their paperwork and which ones haven't, so we know whose checks to hold. I handle what's called Datascape, which is a system for customers to come in and pay their bill with cash. The sales reps turn those into me and then I do a deposit twice a week. This is one of those random tasks I got when i first started because at the time I had more idle time, but when my returns load is heavy like it has been it is very hard to do all of the maintenance stuff for datascape.

Then on top of all of that, we had a recall on a certain phone and have a week to call sales reps to get them shipped back to us, so I can then send them back to the vendor. Now the issue is it's not really my job to organize the collecting of the phones -- it's the Inventory supervisor. Of course he doesn't give me any great detail as far as when I should be expecting them or who's collecting them or even how many I should be expecting. I mean this could be a considerably time consuming project depending on how many there are and I'm the one that's going to have to do the bulk of the work once they get to the office and will only have a couple of days to do it.

So today I went in to talk to my boss, well one of them, and she pulled the list of how many there were that needed to be sent back and over half of them were sitting in the inventory closet in our main office. Why the inventory manager didn't give these to me Monday or Tuesday -- I don't know. He also had ones that were pulled from our local locations and never even mentioned it to anyone.

This is 20 grand worth of phones that if we don't get a request in to send them back by Friday, we loose. It and the phones become completely useless, and the IC manager doesn't even have a clue what he's actually gotten back.

So he brought the phones down to me, after my boss told him to because she doesn't trust him to get the return done, and then the project manager and I pulled the reports to figure out what we should have and what we still need from the other locations. After going through the phones that he had and the list we pulled there were a handful of phones that he assumed he got, but where actually still at their original location. If he had pulled a list and actually kept track of it, he'd know this.

I'm sorry but I'm the type of person I need a list and I need to check to make sure I have everything on that list because otherwise, I guarantee something has fallen through the cracks. I want a list and god dammit, I'm checking it twice. Well, I'll probably check it three or four times, but I'm a little OCD (not Monk OCD, but I do alphabetize my DVDs).

There's just no communication from one end of the hall to the other in my office and it ends up being very frustrating. Since I handle the returns and they handle all of the initial ordering for all the locations our jobs intersect alot and it always grates my nerves when I have to depend on them because they just aren't very organized. They think they are, but they're not. I liked it better when the project manager was the one organizing people to ship non-defective phones back to us -- it's a lot easier to start a good system if there was already a well thought out system in the first part of the process.

But what can I do, it's not her job and she shouldn't have to do it.

Well my laptop battery is running low and it's probably time to end this rant. Here's hoping for a smooth, productive rest of the week and a relaxing weekend.