of course, i’m referring to that famous line from their song, ‘all the small things’. no roses by the stairs for me though. ;)
work started today with my mom asking me for help to get air tickets for one of her workers who had a death in the family and needs to fly back to china NOW NOW NOW – and unfortunately i think my boss saw cathay pacific and then thai airways on my screen while she was walking over to get coffee. boss – 1, ham – 0.
then a project meeting where the boss asked me for updates on this issue she asked me to resolve yesterday that involved getting feedback from the whole project team, and also caught me totally flatfooted because i’ve only sent out the to-do’s, i haven’t bugged anyone to actually do it (and the laws of work dictates that anything nobody is breathing down your neck for is something that can be done “later”) – so i came up with a flippant answer and got shot for it. boss – 2, ham -0.
later on, as we were concluding the project meeting and summarizing what we are up to – in my case, securing the servers.. boss brought up the time when i brought down one of the servers’ functions and had no way to restore the server to its original state. in my defence, a) i was instructed to make backup’s – and i did, in the form of copying text files and making screenshots, but unfortunately, going about it totally wrong. (boss says: i can’t expect her to know what i don’t know and should have said i didn’t know how to make backup’s.) ; b) everybody get the backup procedures wrong and would have erased the disks if i followed it. (boss says: that’s only after i killed the first server, and hence invalid.) ; c) the servers probably weren’t working as it should in the first place but no one realised because no one bothered to check, as seen by the fact that the restored server still didn’t function right. (boss said nothing, because i kept my mouth shut and only thought point c up instead of pointing it out!) still, boss – 3, ham – 0.
all that, before lunch. i dropped a cup of bubble tea on my feet, but that’s basically the least of my troubles. nothing tap water can’t fix. moving on, boss decides to fire me another mail asking me to read two 25+ pages long technical papers and review them. by today. (or rather, yesterday, seeing the time now.) in midst of trying to get stuff settled for tomorrow’s trip to camp, liaising with my whole project (please refer to next paragraph), answering everyone else’s questions about the to-do’s i sent out yesterday and filling in forms for the finance department, i frantically try to absorb everything. boss gives me a smug look and asks if work is challenging enough for me. boss – 4.5? 5?, ham – 0.
as mentioned, liaising with my whole project team. boss sends me an email asking me if i can finish collating two documents by next wednesday. i get everyone’s feedback, and reply saying that the first one is completed, except for this single value that i’m waiting for another project mate to finish up; and that the second one will be sent to me for collation the following monday, 1st Jun. totally didn’t expect it when boss summoned me over to ask me to explain my email – so can i finish everything? i’m like, yea, the first one’s all done, just waiting on another fella, and the second one will be collated next monday. she says that my email is giving her a mistaken impression and i need to be straightforward, AND (unreasonable of me, i know, but this seriously upsets me) that if i can’t tell the difference between “following monday” and “next monday”, my english is not too good, and i should type less. waa? anyway, boss – 6, ham – 0.
ouch. back to reviewing the technical papers. dinner’s planned, and everyone wants to leave at 6pm. i’m the cook who spoils the broth, because typing in all my comments, suggestions, red flags, etc takes me all the way to 6.30pm. i click send and immediately pack up, entertain a colleague who tells me “the whole village is waiting for me!” – and boss miraculously checks her inbox and finishes reading my mail in time to catch me with a “i don’t get what you’re trying to say” (”again” is hanging in the air), and spends 10 minutes getting a verbal summary from me, then agonizing for another 10 minutes (because i explained lousily, i presume) if i should go back to office in the morning instead of going straight to camp so i can explain in-depth. that last part struck me.. *cough she’ll be cough-cough on leave cough*. whatever the case is, boss – 7, ham – 0.
i was pretty much bummed out the whole trip from bukit merah to bugis, so my boss is probably entitled to another couple points. then i was disturbed sufficiently by it to stay away the whole bus journey from bugis to bukit panjang. then i fumed about it while walking home, enough to decide to blog and vent it all out, so that’s another couple points. ya da ya da ya da. (one thought that flitted by my mind is the clear line between managers and friends. i just figured that managers are not friends. people can be managers and friends at the same time to different people, but not be both your manager and your friend. your thoughts?)
but things are never that bad – guess who were the ones cheering me up considerably by the end of the day? my colleagues, with a dinner at hanabi (quick review, sashimi is great, curry is pretty good, fried items are average, handrolls were cold, chicken midjoints are the worst. portions are small, don’t worry and order more.) and dessert at ah chew’s. (not that they knew i was pretty washed out by work; we planned to eat out last week. but hey! i enjoy their company (haha. get it?) no matter if they’re trying to be nice or.. whatever else.) and to be fair to my boss, she came over once to say that i must learn because i’m expected to do project management in the future. i.e., it’s all for my own good.
it’s like school all over again. your classmates are great, but.. teachers? homework? sad thing is, there’s no graduation to look forward to.
