HOW I LOST 45 MINUTES OF MY LIFE AT WORK.
This is based on a true-life experience.
The account depicted is very much biased.
To show that there are people who are unfairly using oxygen in this life.
And there are not using it too well either.
I wish I could file for worker’s compensation for the forty-five minutes I lost.
Before I start this I wanted you to put in your mind, an image. An image of what twenty-five pounds looks like. How big is it? Picture it. What does it look like in your mind? Do you have that image in your head? No? Take a breathe of oxygen. Let your brain use it. Now do you have the picture in your head? Good. I was afraid you maybe one of those type of people too. Don’t scare me like that.
Now I want you to picture what an office
desktop looks like. What types of things do you see on it? Is there a computer
on it? What about office supplies? Like pens, papers, folders. Stuff like that.
Is it a neat desk? Or is it a lot of clutter? Take a moment to visualize it in
your mind. Breathe in. Good! You have an image in your mind.
Now on to my story.
I am currently working for a big corporation. I will not say the name. I am trying to protect the image of it. Also I am pretty sure they will not see the wisdom of this at all. I am not willing at the moment to risk it. I am just trying to stay on the safe side for now at least.
Let me explain more about my job at the moment.
At night, I have recently decided to go to
work as a struggling artist/writer/whatever.
My daytime alter ego allows this to happen. I
work in a warehouse for the unnamed big company. This company has hundreds of
offices spread out over. In roughly, ten different states. The warehouse I work
supplies the offices with the forms they need to fill out to do their job. This
is what I do on a daily basis. These offices send in requests for those forms
everyday. I make a list for inventory purposes of what they want. I go through
the warehouse with the list and pull the items requested. I then put the items
into a box along with an invoice and sent it to office that requested it. Then a
couple of days later some of those offices call and complain about what is in
the box. Most of the times they are requesting things that are not from this
warehouse. They insist they are in the warehouse because they came from the
warehouse in the past. They do not get the idea that everything you get in life
does in fact come from a warehouse. It just a matter of matching up the right
item to the right warehouse. So this is my job in a nutshell. For lack of a
better term. I call it those prestigious job one could have this side of a deep
fryer. Why would I want a job like this? Remember my nighttime identity. If I
were doing what I was capable of doing then I would have to drop the struggling
part from my job title. And then I would have to get all of my business cards
changed. And that is not cheap.
Besides the nighttime job does not provide health insurance and a 401K
plan like the day job.
So now here’s the story.
In December, my company has Christmas cards that all of these offices can order to send to customer to say, “Happy Holidays.” This is a big order that needs to be processed and sent out as quickly as possible. These cards are not cheap either. So the offices have a big expense of time and money to get these out.
We use a nationally known delivery service to send out our orders to the various offices. The company provides us with a computer system to place the correct shipping information for our packages that they deliver. The computer system also allows us to trace everything we ship out with them. So I have to put the invoice number in to find out where the 25-pound package went. It takes a few minutes for the computer system to tell me where it went. The package went to Dimplesberg (another name change) and was indeed signed for by a person with name of A. Smith in that office. Great. Right package. Wrong office. At least I thought. So I call that office. That office has neither an A. Smith there who would have signed for the package. They did not have the package either. But they would check again for either one.
I then call back the right office to inform the person (Her) that the package was somewhere else. She rustles through her desktop for additional information she has that may help find that 25-pound package. I then inform her I will have to do further investigation on my end about the 25-pound package.
I now have to call the delivery company and inquire on what the package was sent somewhere else. So I have to go through their phone service. You know phone menus a lot of options that just mean the more time it takes to talk to a live human being. I had to hit a lot of numbers in order to get the operator. With the tones for all the numbers I hit on the phone to get through, I think was playing “Stairway to Heaven”. It took as about as long as the song to get through. I knew I had get comfortable and sit down for this was going to take a while. I wish I had some coffee to go with all of this time. Finally, a voice came through. I explain to her the problem of my 25-pound package. She was sympathetic about it. I am not sure why for it was only a 25-pound package. She went through her files and it shows more of why and where the 25-pound package went. She found it. It did go the right office. You see the fact is Joyousville and Dimplesberg are right next to each other and the guy who delivers it sometimes put the wrong names in their computer systems when they deliver them. It is no big deal because they know where they are going.
They assured me it went to the right place. They would call the office and find A. Smith since he signed for it there. So I hang up. Stretch after being on the phone for a half hour. The delivery company calls right back and said that they found A. Smith and he was trying to find the package too. He was in the right office for where the package was to go and he remembered it too. All 25 pounds of it. That was great. After 45 minutes of tracing and phones it was looking like the crisis over the 25-pound package was coming to an end. This whole process was 45 minutes in the making.
So I decide to call the woman who put me on this forty-five minute quest for the 25-pound package back. I was going to share the good news that her 25-pound package was somewhere in her building. She would soon be united with it. So I dialed her to share the news. She recognized my voice. She starts to laugh. I am not sure how she got my reputation because I have never talked to her before 45 minutes ago.
She asks if I want a good laugh. Before I could respond this is what she said.
“I did not get my order yesterday when I left
the office. So I put on my to do list was to call the warehouse first thing when
I arrived in the office to find out where it is. So I did that. Then about five
minutes ago I found the order. It’s been on my desk all morning. Hee.
Hee. They must have left it in on my desk overnight. So thanks and have a nice
day.” CLICK.
It was on her desk the whole time. She had to move around it. 25 pounds of it. To find the paperwork in order to inquire on where it was.
That’s right I wasted 45 minutes looking for a
25-pound package that was being used as a paperweight on top of a desk that was
right in front of her the whole time
45 minutes gone.
Breathe in.