Thursday and it’s a gray day and I’m blue. Don’t know why really. Last night came home, spoke with Elaine my sister in law and she was stressed and depressed. I too am, stressed and depressed. The job is slowly driving me crazy. Today President Naomi and Wally both had some proof reading for me to do. That’s fine, it’s something I do well. But it was crunch time. I’ve been proofreading the website for about a month now, and sometimes I proof what I’ve proofed already. Today was more of the same but also somewhat different. Today they joined forces.

They both had a section that they wanted proofed with their ideas implemented. Fine. If I had some quiet time to do it it would be not much of a problem, but no, it wasn’t to be that way. I had ringing phones, Naomi had unannounced guests, and of course there were applicants. No make that candidates, to fill out papers while they waited for their counselor to interview them. So proofreading took longer than it should have because each time I was distracted I would lose my place and get more frustrated. And my frustration showed on my face.

It was afternoon when I thought I had everything figured out. I combined both of Naomi and Wally’s suggestions and printed them out, italicizing and highlighting additions and edits. They are also terrible with grammar and spelling and overly fond of the dreaded semicolon. Not like me. In 596 entries for this blog (and that count is from the ‘official’ johnozed website itself) I have never used a semicolon. That’s because the night I met Lewis Lapham, Kurt Vonnegut who spoke before Lewis made a comment about how the semicolon is overused. I made a mental note that I still consult to this day.

I sent both Naomi and Wally emails with the work I proofread attached and also printed out hard copies. Wally had no problem understanding what I had done but Naomi couldn’t grasp it. I had to print out my notes and rough drafts of the documents. Then I had to walk her through it. Apparently it wasn’t that good of an idea to merge both of their suggestions into one document. Too complicated. Well I had too many distractions and there were a couple of pages out of order. It’s been like this with Naomi a lot lately.

She would ask me to scan something and ‘advise’ which is office talk for ‘tell me when it’s ready’. She would send me various invoices for scanning & some were duplicates but I would scan everything and label them in an online folder in the company’s database. I’d put the date, the name of the invoice on the folder and she could never find it, and she gets grumpy especially when she would insist I didn’t do as she asked and I would insist that I did what was asked. From what I heard that’s a no no. I’m supposed to stand there and let her make me feel like an idiot because she can’t see what is in front of her.

I sent her all the notes and rough drafts and showed her what she wanted to see and that shut her up though I’m sure it’s going to go on my review. I’m starting to see why quite a few people just up and left this job.

Being stuck on the bus for an hour this morning didn’t help matters either.