Ayn's Multiple World

Sr. Florine stratedgy and issue reconsiderations

Good morning … It’s me! Wanted to say we’ve been up for an hour and it’s only 4 am now. It’s the silly kitties – especially Chief. His tummy is nuisance. And now? He went back to bed … Hmpf! And, do you think we’re able to adjust so easily? I’m thinking that I should be feeding them before I go to sleep, but then if they let me sleep in I don’t know when I would write. So, I keep things pretty much the same and try not to complain too much. But, a little is ok, right?

We were writing a letter earlier and it has me thinking about Thom again. I’m not sure where we left off with our last Thom story … wait a sec … better go back just a tad. Aha I found it. We last left off that he was shooting grenades at garbage cans. Yup-yup that’s what my son does. Seems reasonable enough? Ok, we’ve already established that we’re a bit whiney this morning … Need to break that. Yesterday we communicated with Thom just through the text message. He said about MCT, “kiss that hellhole goodbye!”

Ok, maybe his memories are not going to be real fond. But, it’s hard to get into a place where you’re only spending a month. No time to develop a taste for whatever’s cookin. His messages were short and the long of it is that I think he was leaving whichever airport he was at for a 12:30 am flight. I think that’s what O30 means.

Maybe it made him a little cranky? Hopefully, wherever he was he found a good charge for the phone and SOMEone he could talk to. Either that or he had some good food and was taking a long-deserved NAP! Yup, yup … that’s what I’m going to be thinking.

We’re trying not to worry. We’re pretty sure the Marines are going to want Thom to his next destination as much as we’re concerned that he gets their safely. I really think that he’s going to be with other Marines. Pensacola is where they do their flight and aviation mechanic schools. We’re happy they can travel together. Good to have them practicing watching each other’s back!

Other than that our day was pretty so-so. I carried my cell phone because I wasn’t sure where or when Thom would try to contact me. I only knew that he might. The general over-riding sketch of what we did yesterday was to get to work, then go up to the front to cover a couple groups, then we started working on someone’s goals when we got back to the office. It required that I make the safety sign cards that you’ll see on the next page. Then we tested out the cards during goal group, went back to the office and did something, then went back up to the front to help Sister with her work. We had last about 20 minutes back at the office, but I can assure you by then nothing was getting accomplished.

Hmm, Sweeties alarm just went off … It’s 4:15 am. We went in and smooched him up for a few moments, but he said without opening his eyes … 5 more minutes. Yeah, right … we see him cheatin the clock! Poor guy. AHA! It looks like the game last night – the All-stars extended into a 15 inning win for the American League. That’s who we wanted to win! We’re more White Sox fans than Cubby fans. BUT, ya know if they are going to win this season that’s ok too. That’s the last memory I had of the night. We had hmm, played mischief with the boss, then fell asleep in back of him rubbing his back. We had been watching the game. Then he put me to bed and said he’d sit next to me for a bit. BUT, I guess someone drifted off after her fudgicle, because the next thing I know I was told to put on the CPap machine so both of us could get some sleep.

AHA! He’s up and made it to the washroom. How someone bounces … well truth be told he’s more stumbly than bouncy, but – get’s himself to the shower so fast … Well, I just don’t know. I know that he’ll be out the door in about 40 minutes too. I just don’t see how that gets done. Do you know he’s been going into work even without opening his computer. Man … how does anyone do that? He amazes me everyday!

Did we cover the evening? I think so pretty much … one other thing was that he had dinner after we’d gotten home. We had the lefter stuffed pepper from the Bohemian restaurant the night before and hen when he got home he made himself some steak and corn. We had about 3 small pieces of meat, but we figured that was enough. Hate to spoil space in our tummy for fudgicles! We also made him a lemonade Margarita that we shared. Oh I tell ya the guy lives the high life!

Hmm, ok … that’s about it there … we’re going to go back to the day at work now … because there was this part that we want to get to that really set the pace – and I’m not sure that was a good idea.

I think to be fair … we started out in an ok place. EXCEPT while up front watching the group, we had to answer the phone too … and, Sue naturally called – because the boss was at church and she didn’t want to deal with her obviously, because ALL staff know when she steps out for 45 minutes. The message Sue wanted me to complete was that I tell Sister that she was going to be off for the rest of the week and she should probably be in next week, but she’s said this twice before without coming in. So, after we told Sr., then Sister talked to us about a BIG favor in that she wanted the two groups to be separated and so basically, she wanted me to take the mornings with the Leadership group, and then Holly would take the afternoons for at least Thursday and Friday, and possibly next Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday everyone goes to work so there’s nothing special to be doing for that group. Most likely though like today I will be doing the first hour, goals, and paperwork/cleaning up the workshop.

AND THEN, a couple of hours later, Sr. called back to say that Holly had three days of conferences at her church on THURSDAY, FRIDAY and MONDAY! YIKES! I could see that writing on the wall … it means that I have to do the group full days on each of those days, but AT LEAST I wasn’t going to have to do staff training and Thinking Group. That’s my biggest compromise. Sr. knew I think it would make me feel better. I guess I’m a little confused because Margarita and Imelda are both supposed to be subbing. I know that Sr. thinks the Q’s can do a better job and we can, but it also seems then that our business which is for the moment preparing annuals is not getting done. I’m afraid it means that I’m going to need taking work home, but then when I get home over the weekend – I’m really certain we can find something better to do. It’s the truth. Just gotta get past those annuals and SOME HOW catch up to the write-up work we haven’t completed yet.

So, that’s all the complaining you get there. Otherwise … it’s really not a hard thing to do a group, though sometimes it can be mentally challenging, because you gotta be dealing with everyone’s attitudes. That’s not always fun. We’ll work on it though. Sometimes after you get into it … It’s actually sort of fun.

Hmm, I wonder if sweetie … Yup, yup there he is shower stopped. I think I’m going to need being right back. Someone swiped his T-shirt and will most likely be asked to share it back … HMPF!

*Sigh* Well … we didn’t make it … by that I mean going in to see Rich and getting out of his bed later. I remember watching him get dressed and then it was like … well I’m just going to rest here for 5 minutes. The fatal movement was pulling the covers over us. That makes it near impossible we’re moving anywhere. I was very groggy and already snoozing when he came back 5 minutes later. He set the alarm clock for an hour, took my glasses and turned off the light. Hmm, I wonder if he gets any satisfaction from tucking me in twice in one day? He’s such a sneak!

We’ve only got now a half an hour before going into work. I’m going to need speeding things up a little.

I’m still having problems with the one girl who comes in so excited every morning.

I’m thinking that this morning it’s going to be worse because their big presentation is today. We worked it out with Sister that we were going to do the presentation of food board this morning with them. There’s actually two boards so we’ll do with that the best we can. I had already collected about 10 pictures of food that we could put on the board. They are doing the presentation on the Philippines. I kind ran into it a bit with the Sister yesterday.

Sister Florine was suggesting that after I finish on something else that she had a poster in mind for me to do. Automatically, my defenses went up. Somewhere in the course of the week it’s turned into her giving me directions instead of me giving her directions. I know she’s been in positions of authority before so this might be expected, but I’m not going to tolerate it with hands tied behind my back. When she left the room for a bit … I finally told Margarita that I was going back to the office, because I didn’t want to do Sr. Florine’s work. I tried to explain that I was willing to train her, and assist her with the workshop as she’s building speed, but I didn’t want to work on her extra projects she was still trying to get to at the end of the day. That seemed like her work. And, I was a little sore about her making me sit around and wait while I had real work to be getting done, because she’d left for so long.

After a while, she got back and then called me. I explained my position somewhat … basically, I stopped at the point that this work that she wanted me to do in putting together the poster was actually something the clients should be doing. I took pity in that she was running herself out of time, so I said I would work with them so THEY could put together the poster during their work time this morning. But, I wouldn’t do the poster myself. I did give her a choice of Titles after she asked for a banner for the top of the poster. I think she didn’t like that I’d said that, but at that point I’d really felt taken advantage of. She said that she’d gotten stuck because Sr. was telling her something about cooking. I think she nearly burned something. But, I was tired.

There was another part in that … actually two parts. The first was that during the morning, I’d gone back into the workshop to get some papers from a book I knew was there. In the meantime, Sister got a call … she spent a long time on the call. I had looked around and noticed three clients stopped waiting for her to inspect their work. And, I’d noticed that most of the clients had double or triple the amount of work at their stations then they should have had. It was obvious she hadn’t checked their work for quite some time. So, while she continued her phone conversation, I went around and cleared all the clients from their gathering work. After she got off the phone, she seemed to show no remorse that she’d disappeared from her client duties for so long. There was no thank you either for the work I’d done for her.

Then, at the end of the day … I worked in the workshop doing all the closing work of the day with counting beads, cutting strings, and setting up the new day’s work.

All the time she spent an exorbitant amount of time doing her sheets. She’s supposed to do them fast enough so she can do both parts. But, she was slowed down because she was talking so much. Margarita was in the background and we responded to most of her conversation by a few Uh huhs. But, I didn’t want to encourage her loose chatter. Sometimes she was talking to herself. The last part of that … is that she seemed to be complaining quite a bit. She thinks that she’s got too much work, even though she’s not finishing all of her tasks. I talked to Margarita and she was asking why I was doing the bead work. But, Margarita had complained that she was doing sister’s work with counting beads at the end of the day and bagging them. So, I tried to help Margarita by picking up some of the slack. But, sister seems to think that’s not her work, because she needs so much time getting through the rest of what she is doing.

I also continue to talk to her about over exaggerating her work load. She keeps saying things like, “Oh my God,” or other statements like that. She keeps building on how hard or difficult it is rather than biting the bullet. I don’t know what to say about her exaggeration of how hard things are. Maybe she didn’t do as much work before, but my thinking is that if we don’t nip this in the bud, she’s going to be spending too much time wishing she wasn’t here doing this kind of work. Sister needs someone to handle it. And, the more time I spend with her the more I get behind in my real work. I think I’m a trainer, but I don’t want to just be doing her work, if she isn’t learning to handle more of her responsibilities.

Ok, that’s pretty much it. I have to decide whether or not I should be talking to Sr. Theresa about what is happening. I don’t want to “snitch” on the sister or lose the confidence she’s got with me, but there is a certain frustration point that’s cluing me into something has got to change. I need to appreciate that to some extent I owe Sr. Theresa a report on the situation, but I just don’t want to lose my opportunity to fix the problems myself in how to deal with the sister.

*Sigh*

Ok, that all being said … I’ve got only a few more minutes before we need to go to work. I’m afraid that I’m getting further and further behind, and it’s not going to help that I’ve got several staffings coming up and I’m behind on getting reports.

That plus taking off more time to be covering Sue’s position with the leadership group – I’m feeling a bit up to my ears. That’s not to say I’m not ready to go into it today with full confidence that I can make something better. The plan is to work with Group 1, and then finish some goals for one of my clients that should have been completed in June. Then we’ll see if we can finish an annual and maybe start on another person’s goals that we are behind. We need to finish the goals for 2-3 clients before we can do the annuals for them - and we need to prepare for the next annual – that will be on Monday. I think we have an additional one on Wednesday and Friday, plus one more backed up the following Monday. Just not sure when this is all going to get done.

Ok, ok … think we’ve cleared pretty much of our mind as to what’s gone on the past day. And, we’ve led you into the work ahead of us today. Let’s keep strong in our resolve to handle the situation constructively, right? We can talk and discuss the situation, but we don’t want to just complain about it without doing it constructively. I feel like I’ve got my game face ready … so let’s get on with the next day and see how it turns out.

posted by Ann Marie @ 7/16/2008 06:49:00 AM Comments: 1