You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

There are some things about work I am learning as time creeps on. For instance, employee of the month is a drawing. Yup, everyone's name goes into a hat, and the person drawn out is employee of the month. Hmmm... not based on performance. Chance.

Retreats at work? Yeah, apparently the lead staff enjoy a retreat annually. However, this year the retreat was held in Conference Room B. At work. Not off site, at work. Budget cuts; you do what you have to do. This struck me as funny because the words "retreat" and "work" do not go together, no matter how hard you try. A couple of us have thought about reserving a conference room for lunch one day. Just to say we've "retreated" at work. :)

White Elephant gift exchanges are not meant to go well. Ever. But when you give someone a gift it's impolite to take your gift back from someone. Even during White Elephant. Sure, you are given the option to steal someone else's gift from them in exchange for your own, BUT you do NOT take the gift you brought in exchange for something you don't want. This is, of course, my humble opinion.

We were asked where we wanted to go to lunch for a Christmas celebration and end-of-year appreciation. Given two options, all of us involved agreed on one location. It's only logical then that the boss chose the other option, AND we all had to pay for ourselves. Not to mention this location adds an 18% gratuity for mediocre service, AND they add an additional tip line on the final copy of the receipt. As if to suggest they ought to be tipped twice for service lacking in so many ways. Sure.

Caregivers are required to take continuing education classes every calendar year. Two of them. That's it. 10 hours total, which is no big deal, right? Right?! So there were hundreds of providers at the end of 2010 who had not taken their classes. When this happens their contract is terminated and they then have to go through many steps to reinstate their contracts to get back to work. Caregivers were coming in constantly, and still are, to fix their error. They were stressed. Agitated. Vowing to never wait until the last minute again. So explain to me why the first two classes of 2011 have had to be cancelled due to nobody signing up for them!

And finally, putting the carriage before the horse never works out. Never. It only makes for some frustrated employees at the end of it all.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my job. I'm grateful to have one, especially in today's economy. The people I work with in our office building are amazing. We laugh together, appreciate sarcasm, talk about religion and politics freely and without animosity.... we just work great together. Thankfully, we can laugh about all of this stuff that has happened, and the things that will inevitably happen again.

And the bottom line is that we do a great service for the elderly in our community. No amount of ridiculous events will change that. And the best thing we can do is laugh about it all, poke fun at it, and move forward. :)