I am not difficult to get along with, especially when left to my own devices. Too bad the new supervisor cannot understand or appreciate that concept.
The company is driven by statistics, but none of the numbers are straight forward. For instance, lines edited/typed per hour are based on how much work is done, except things like difficult doctors and faulty equipment are not figured into the equation. Especially by my supervisor. Quality is measured weekly, but the number that shows up on the paycheck is from 2 weeks before the current weeks being paid. If those 2 weeks were full of badly dictated reports and faults in the technology so that a report that should have been 50 to 80 lines long and ended up being 10-12 lines long and the rest full of blanks, then you're pretty much screwed. Nothing about technological breakdown is figured into the numbers and bad statistics will mean a bad paycheck. This is the case because the company gives you time to challenge errors marked (usually stupid or nit picky errors that do not have anything to do with quality or grammar rules) and the 2 weeks before have already gone through the reversal process. What a lovely way to run a business and screw an individual.
Now we come to this week. My new supervisor is hounding me about time on the system and time spent actually typing/editing reports. It seems that taking the time to research and make sure everything is correct in reports dictated by doctors who choose not to waste the time dictating -- or learn the way to speak English so it is understandable -- is counted as time not actually typing -- or working -- and therefore is questionable. After all, quality is derived not so much from accuracy, but from getting reports done as quickly as possible with as few as possible sent through quality control (QC) without the fingers leaving the keyboard or stopping for breaks (bathroom, food, breathing) or research. One must keep typing/editing at all costs and leave the brain work to the supervisor who is busy micromanaging every moment of the worker's day/night/whenever.
It seems I also signed off as out of work (OOW) when there were still dictations to be edited/typed, except they didn't show up on my screen after several reboots. Now I am to email the point of contact (POC), who is usually not working at 3 a.m., and get an answer as to whether or not there is work before signing out as OOW -- while continuing to type nothing and rack up those all important actually typing/editing moments while accomplishing nothing, but waiting. That will put yet another crimp in my statistics and put me back on the supervisor's radar as not performing my job.
She actually questioned why I had so much downtime (time not typing/editing) and told me that I must close the gap between working and out of work while waiting for an answer as to whether or not there is work and still working with nothing to do. Goddess, how I do love bureaucracies.
Of course, signing in and out to minimize the time not actually spent typing/editing would make my time card look like a patchwork of indecision and insanity and sitting there checking every 10-15 minutes to find out if there is work while waiting for the POC to tell me there is work to be done (even when it doesn't show up on my screen where I can actually do something about it) is verboten. It messes up the time actually spent working versus the time I'm just sitting on my backside flitting around on the Internet while not getting paid because I don't get paid if there is no actual work done. Researching is also a waste of time even though it improves my knowledge and helps to decrypt the racing, stumbling language that does make it through on the faulty technology should be done on my own time -- when I am off the clock --- and when I can't actually use the report as a guide. I guess that means I must have an eidetic memory whether I do or not.
Things were not this difficult when I worked for the old supervisor, who was kicked up the ladder. The new supervisor is in a supervisory position for the first time in her working life and believes that micromanaging is the way to go to make herself look good. And that is always helpful.
At any rate, it's Friday night and I have only 2 more nights to work, and I have my cross stitching to help me regain some sanity in the interim when I'm not sleeping or working with my plants now that the snows have stopped and the frost has been absent for the past 3 mornings. I can finally put out my planters and plant some seeds and seedlings that might actually grow before the snow flies again, which should be in about mid-August.
I'm working my way through the boring, but necessary back stitching on my tree skirt. It's so mindless that I need a break and have started a snow leopard in the breaks between mindlessness and waking.
I found that the room I had originally designated my office is actually sunnier than my bedroom, or indeed the living room, and have set up shop on the love seat in the sun streaming through the window. I also have a great view of the driveway so I can see when delivery trucks or visitors arrive. I don't spend much time looking out the window as I am busy stitching and listening to a biography of Napoleon or music to stitch/study/read by. I much prefer it that way. It is relaxing as my mind slips to that zen place while my fingers stitch and the insanity recedes. It's a good place, and I am once again rethinking the office idea again. After all, I do need a place to go to work and be frustrated and it's not in the bedroom where I need to be able to sleep, although stitching and listening to music and/or books would not divorce me entirely from the hell my working life has become now that the micromanaging vulture that is my supervisor is watching me -- even as she sleeps.
Oh, for a bit of peace and surcease in this technologically imperfect world.
That is all. Disperse.
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