Bit of Ivory

Don’t get me wrong. I like my job. I don’t love it, but I like it. Most of the time the people I deal with outside of the company are polite. My coworkers are all nice. And how much, really, can you complain about a job that lets you play around on the internet ALL DAY LONG if you want, or if you don’t, will let you knit or read or do whatever, as long as you can answer the phone? Not much.

But there are a few little irritations, the biggest of which is the lack of communication. Seriously, no one tells each other anything, and if there *is* a need-to-know list, I’m on the bottom of it. Understandable when it comes to stuff like programming and patient info and things like that, but usually? These are things I need to know. Oh, you’re expecting 3 people for a meeting come 3:00? Please tell me in advance instead of when they start arriving, because then I’ll know where to send them. Oh, you’re changing the stuff that gets sent out in our info packets? Well, since I’m the one who MAKES said packets AND sends them out, I should probably be informed that you’re taking out those two pages of staff info, instead of letting me send out the original packets for two weeks (and even then, I only found out about it because I had to print more and asked them if they wanted to update them).

Today was really irritating, though. First our maintenance guy asks if he got any faxes, and I say no, because, well, he hasn’t. So he gets on the phone with the person he expects the fax from, and she says that the fax line is getting intercepted by voicemail. Weird. So I tell the maintenance guy to call the IT guy, ’cause I certainly don’t know anything about any changes to the fax lines, and couldn’t do anything about it if I did. And then, about 5 minutes later, I get a call from someone saying that he’s having a hard time getting through– that it’s either asking for a mailbox extension or just hanging up on him. Okay, something must be up with the phone lines. Of course, the IT guy isn’t even here today. And then another call comes in, and it has caller ID info. I’ve never gotten caller ID before. Just “Caller ID Unknown.”

And then I get a call from a telecomm company, who needs to check the lines because they just switched our telecomm service over 10 minutes ago.

Gee, people. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the RECEPTIONIST, to whom ALL CALLS COME during business hours, should know that we’re switching telecomm companies, and there might be an interruption of service?

NAH.

But hey, I have caller ID now, so maybe I’ll be able to tell if it’s an employee calling and can skip my spiel.