Yeah we all say that don’t we .... well here I am. It’s Sunday night and I have reached the end of my week long leave from work. The only problem is I don’t feel like I’ve had much of a break. Not just because a week isn’t long enough – it never is. To be honest I don’t think that a fortnight would have been enough.
What it comes down to is that I’m the key admin person in my department at my place of work. I work in the Quality Assurance department in a ‘retail consortium’ – it’s really just a posh word for wholesaler. There are 3 of us in the admin side of things. one for Consumer Complaints, one Department Co-ordinator (i.e. me) and one ‘floater’ – not a nice description but an appropriate one who covers for both of us and also gets lumbered with the other stuff that other people don’t have time [or think they are too important] to do.
The problem is this. Although our floater, who we shall call Suzie Q (because that’s what I call her!!), has had complete one on one training with our complaints person for a couple of months now, she has yet to have a decent amount of time with me to go through everything I have to do thoroughly so she can cover for me properly when I’m on leave. At the moment things merely tick over until I get back after my leave.
This is the very reason I don’t feel I’ve had a proper break is because I have only had maybe 2 and a half days since Suzie Q started in the department in January of this year (7 months ago as of today’s date) so I have never had the chance to take her through everything I do in the depth I need to for when I'm off. This unsurprisingly means that whenever I am off she ends up having to text or email me to find things out. This means I still have a work head on and don't really relax. Of course on Monday I will have to hit the ground running with no chance to get up to speed on what's happened while I've been off so it'll be hectic. I don't get paid enough ....
I don't blame Suzie Q in the least because I think as far as a lot of the department is concerned my job is only admin and therefore really very easy so it doesn't need a lot of explaining, especially as far as our technical staff are concerned (not that they have any clue what I do most of the time). May be 'easy' on paper but it's complicated if that makes sense and doesn't sound like a contradiction. I didn't design the job so the complications are nothing to do with me and it sounds like I was really lucky, and that the maternity person I was covering for had to really fight to get two months with her before she went on her maternity leave. I know I've only just got the job as a permanent thing but I want out already ....
Going back to work also means I’m one day closer to the return of our maternity leave person. A moment I’m dreading. I have in essence been given her job and I think, although my manager has said I will be taking over from her, she will have a hard time letting go and that certain individuals will have trouble letting her go. She has been doing my [her???] job for 8 years and she would do everything for everybody in the department. I don't do that, mainly because they never asked me, but I just get the feeling that when she is back in QA the techy folks (two of them in particular) and maybe my manager want something to be done then they're going to ask her because she will do it, and they'll eventually gravitate back to getting her to do things and I'll be even less ‘loopy’ than I am now and I'll be sat there twiddling my thumbs and being paid for doing nothing. Sounds good in theory but it's so mind-numbingly BORING when there's naff all to do!!!! I also think she will have trouble not interfering generally (despite what she has reportedly said) and that has been backed up by several members of the department. I’ve been made, by one of my colleagues, to promise to let our manager know if she starts that crap so it can get nipped in the bud quickly .... but it won't. She’s very much the Queen Bee, the darling of the QA department from what I’ve heard and witnessed.
Yep. I’m dreading it. Anyone hiring???
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