Corner of Bourbon & Division

So I picked up the phone today, and it was my mother on the other end, sounding breathless and agitated.

Mim: "Daphné, Daphné, help! S.O.S.!"

Me: "What's going on?" (I can tell by her tone that it's not life or death, luckily)

Mim: "My new stove is electronic and I can't make it work and it's SPEAKING to me in THREE LANGUAGES!"

Me: *dies laughing*

Mim: "It's not funny!"

Me: "Are you kidding me? That's hilarious! Didn't it come with a friendly manual?"

Mim: "Yes, but I can't understand it. Besides, they shipped the wrong parts so I can't even cook with it yet."

Me: "Ah. So what's the trouble? Apart from that?"

Mim: "The oven locks automatically and won't let me open it. It's telling me the temperature outside, and I DON'T CARE. I just want to know the time!"

Me: "You can't set the clock?"

Mim: "No. It gives me the choice between twelve hours and twenty-four hours, and I can't change it to twelve hours. It also keeps saying SABBATH at me in blinking lights. Sabbath-Sabbath-Sabbath."

Me: *dies some more* "Maybe your stove is possessed!"

Mim: "It's NOT funny! Daddy refuses to touch it, and you know how he is with electronics anyway."

Me: "God, yes. Don't let him near it! I'll come by this afternoon."

Mim: "THANK YOU. I bought these lovely tournedos yesterday, and now they're sitting forlornly in the frigidaire because I can't cook them."

Me: "All right. I'll be there in the afternoon."

This happened on Tuesday, but I forgot to mention it then.


Dentist: *showing me my x-rays* "This is what happens when particles of food get caught between your teeth, and aren't removed within a reasonable amount of time."

Me: "Mm-hmm."

Dentist: "It's 100% preventable, so long as you were to somehow get between your teeth in order to remove said particles."

Me: *giggle*

Dentist: "This is best accomplished by using, say, a long, filament-like object..."

Me: *laughing* "Okay, okay, I get it! I need to floss more!"

Dentist: "Attagirl!"

So very glad I won't be working graveyard more than this one week. It is seriously ruining my life. Turns out I'm only working four days this week, but in ten-hour shifts. Add a little over two hours' worth of commute to that, and that means more half my day is spent preparing for, going to, being at and coming home from work.

Also, the stores around here don't open until 9am. I haven't done my groceries yet this week, which means I'll have to cut short at least one "night" of sleep down to about six hours if I want to have food.

The first day of work is a bit of a mystery for me, concerning how it went. My first instinct is to call it a dog's breakfast, because a whole bunch of things went wrong. I got the wrong logon information for the system, so I was locked out all night and couldn't do anything. Eleven hours of boredom (I was instructed to come in an hour early my first day) is nothing to sneeze at.

The girl meant to be training me didn't appear to have received the memo about that. The sole other girl on shift that night made a token effort at training me, and I did learn at least one thing, though I didn't get much chance to put the learning to use. The main problem seems to me that neither of them really know how to train someone.

The other girl (the one who tried to train me a little bit) kept asking me if I had any questions, and no matter how I phrased it she couldn't seem to wrap her mind around the fact that, if I had no knowledge to begin with, I couldn't really ask the right questions. Much of the night went something like this.

Girl # 2: *works feverishly without talking to me for about an hour*

Me: *watches both girls work and tries to figure out what they're doing*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: "Well, no, not really. I mean if you described the standard procedures to me, tell me what's expected of me, and maybe show me a little bit of what I have to do, I might have questions."

Girl #2: "Okay." *continues to work feverishly*

Me: *tries to ask a few questions, and is completely bypassed, as two crises occur at the same time*

Girl #1 & Girl #2: *work feverishly for an hour to resolve crises*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: "Well, not since the last time you asked. I don't really know what's going on. Maybe you could tell me what you're doing right now?"

Girl #2: "Yeah. You don't really need to know that yet."

Me: *sighs* "Okay. Maybe you could tell me what the procedure is when calling the police?"

Girl #2: "Oh, you want the black book?" *hands me a binder with police phone numbers*

Me: "Not exactly..."

Girl #1 & Girl #2: *work feverishly for an hour*

Girl #2: "So, do you have any questions so far?"

Me: *grinds teeth*

Girl #2: "Hey, do you want to take some client calls?"

Me: *goggles* "If you tell me what to ask them and how to deal with it, sure!"

Girl #2: "Oh, well, I don't really have time to tell you that right now."

Me: *grinds teeth more*


Etc. It was singularly frustrating. I'm hoping tonight will go better. At least I'll have my new logon information, and at the very least I'll be able to poke around the system and learn how some of it works for myself.

If I make it in this job, I'm going to make it my personal mission in life to write a training manual for the company, and basically use that to make sure no one ever has to go through this again. It will also give me an edge if I'm literally the person who "wrote the book" on dispatching for my company. I might eventually be able to secure myself a better position by becoming the default "trainer-of-people" for them, and maybe get some sort of nominal promotion out of it. That would be nice.

Right now, though, I have to wade through this dog's breakfast of a training period and hope to come out of it intact. At least I'm a quick study, and it can't be worse than Dial-A-Husband. *crosses fingers*