Rough couple of weeks....

So I had an absolute blast in Colorado with my family, and was completely heartbroken that I had to return to Oregon. I miss the smiles and giggles so much when I'm away. It's always comforting to know they are just a phone call away.

Rough couple of weeks....

Back to work, and jumped into the fire. Our Quarterly Business Review was 12/09, and we needed to prep for it. Naturally, my co-manager whines and whines and whines. So to shut him up, I volunteered to do it ALL. It shut him up alright. He thanked me, and went about his business.... I made it VERY obvious to my boss, and all those involved, that I did ALL the work. While I felt better initially, I was really searching for someone to blame the mess on later.

Several very long days getting my stuff pulled together. I am so glad I keep such good records of everything. They wanted 7 months of data instead of 3, and I was still done before everyone else. So my boss rented me out. Helped the phone group a little. Offering some additional support to the moderation group, and we're done, right? Of course not.

After reviewing the final product for the tech team(my team), which by the way, was the ONLY one done on time(*grin*), it was determined, that even though this was the information that was requested(and then some extra stuff I threw in, because I knew it would be asked for, or was desperately needed), that it wasn't good enough. Not only were they blunt, they were specific. This I can expect, considering I work at a place that conducts real business, and not "Would you like fries with that?"

Anyway, new stuff was asked to be included, that had never been included before. Not even referenced. Out-of-the-box thinking, I suppose.... *shrug* So, now I needed to do a ton of research to locate the information requested before midnight. *sigh* Another day in paradise.

So after a couple of hours, I sent off a sample of the data to our glorious business director(*grumble*) for review, and NEVER got a response. This is normal for her.... She never responds to any of us lowly managers. So I had to make the assumption that I was on the right track, and spent 5 hours digging up everything else she needed. Thank goodness for return receipts, because now I know it took her 3 days to even open the blasted e-mail. Why did she give me a deadline again? Huh, what? Uh, yea....

Even after my boss, the site director, and two business directors shipped off to California to meet with the client, we were flooded with e-mail requests, phone calls, and text messages.

Our glorious business director knows nothing about our contract, because she spends all day coloring her dog's fur(last month it was green), so all the data we'd provided was in shambles, and she did not understand a bit of it. I had compiled the data so cleanly for her, she simply needed to drop the excel doc into PowerPoint, and point the thing to look at it. Apparently this was too difficult. In my generosity, I also provided a layout that was so simple. It even included details such as:

• This is slide #.
• This is the title.
• This is the data, and type of graph you need.
• These are the supporting details/comments.

Is that really that hard to understand?! Next time she should just let me do it, like I had asked initially. I'll give her a legitimate excuse to be lazy and have no clue.

Rant done....

Well I was told today, that it went okay. Just okay. That's better than "blood-bath", I suppose. We'll be having a meeting about it sometime tomorrow or early next week to go over how the mess went.

I do know though, that this will be a monthly event from here on out, instead of quarterly or bi-annually like this one turned out to be. This actually excites me! I'll be better prepared. Have better monthly notes. When the whole presentation comes up in 3 months, I'll already be DONE!

Small victories!