Multiply 365 Day 178 - Non-ignorance is non-bliss

 

I often joke at work that some things for me are on a need to know basis, and frankly I don't need to know. If ever there were evidence of that, today would have been that very day.

A while back Ed had me write an email for him. Not that it had anything to do with me, but because Ed has no ability on a computer whatsoever, so anything computer related on his desk usually gets shuffled in my direction. The email was a contact with Verizon about changes to the service plans for all of our stores. Because we have computer access, office phones, credit card lines, etc., etc. and so on and so on, there are multiple phone lines going into all of our locations. In an effort to save money, Ed had contacted someone with Verizon, trying to find why our phone bills were so high. As it turns out, we had phone lines we weren't even using, other phone lines that would have features like caller id, or unlimited long distance when in fact they were dedicated to the credit card machines and needed little more than local calling. The amount of money being thrown away on bells and whistles we didn't need was substantial, we are talking hundreds of dollars a month. I know, there are some people out there that don't do math like I do math, so they look and hundreds and say it is nothing for the amount of business you do. I look at hundreds and say, that is a part time employee we don't hire.

Anyway, Ed has his conversation and takes fairly copious (there will be a vocabulary quiz later) notes on the proceedings and what he needs to do to make the necessary changes to the phone lines for all three stores. This is where I enter the picture because they give him an email address to contact Verizon to make the changes and because Ed doesn't do email, it now becomes my job. Now I would argue this is stuff beyond my pay grade, it is one thing to be responsible for keeping product in the store, quite another to be involved in the utilities and what not that allow the store to function. Tell me that I am in charge of the Pepsi ordering, fine, I'll make sure you don't run out of Pepsi. Tell me to breakdown how much we are spending on a kilowatt hour of electricity, that's a different ballgame in my estimation. But since I had Ed's notes on the changes, my job basically was to put them into legible email form so that the people at Verizon would know all of the changes that needed to be made.

I create said email, and as an out of sorts, I forward a copy of the email to John and let Verizon know that future communications should go either to John's email address, or directly through Ed, and I provided them with his cell phone number as well. So in my mind I had gotten in and out, done the job and ended my responsibility with the issue. Except Verizon kept me in the loop, so to speak. Future updates on how the changes were coming along and when we would see the changes in our billing were being sent to both John and myself via email. Not too much of a problem, I just printed out the emails (though I did save a copy in my inbox) and gave them to Ed. Still I think I am in the relative clear here.

As we all know I left this weekend for a family outing. And it was good. Lots of rest, relaxation and quality family time. No complaints from me. Well, okay maybe a couple, but I felt better for having made the journey. Before I left I gave Ed the phone number for my parent's place, just in case anything came up. It is the whole “I have keys”, responsibility thing kicking in (and one of the reasons I never wanted keys to begin with). Not content that Ed wouldn't lose the phone number, I went ahead and sent Dee a message on Facebook also giving her the number, that way no one could lose it, unless both Ed lost his copy and Dee deleted the message on Facebook. But by and large I think I covered my ass pretty damn well there.

Well, Dee was in the office this weekend, trying to get caught up on paperwork since John is on vacation this week. A chance to jump a little ahead so that the week didn't get to be too overwhelming. Makes sense to me. One of the projects she wanted to work on was to get a new credit card machine installed on our cash register in the deli. So she contacted the necessary people and had someone come out to install it. But they couldn't get the machine to work. Everything was plugged in properly, but the machine wouldn't send any information. That would be a problem.

So I am now enjoying (unless I am not) my new found job duties at work today, breaking down some invoices that had piled up on what may or may not be my desk (I haven't taken ownership of it yet, but it has only been one day) and the issue of the non working credit card machine came up. My first thought was a simple one, “Was that a line we disconnected when we made the phone line changes?” I then go and crack open my email, reprint the email with all of the changes that were made by Verizon and hand it to Dee and sure enough the line they had the machine hooked up to is one that we had turned off because it wasn't being used at the time.

Then it begins, Dee starts complaining about all of the time she wasted on this project this weekend. And I am just biting my tongue, because it is something I really didn't want to have anything to do with originally, but having done my part, a simple phone call to me might have solved this problem much sooner, or at least pointed everyone in the right direction. Instead I am listening to this thinking “I came back for this?” and “Is Lynn Cullen still looking for a show producer?” I am struggling to get a handle on the stuff that is piled up on my potential future desk, and the one thing I could have helped with is the one thing nobody bothered to contact me about.

It was one day where I am glad I had my bike at work to ride home, it would have been very easy to go drinking in a terrible frame of mind after work, but drinking and biking don't mix, so instead I just decided to hop on the bike and pedal out my frustrations on the way home.

So, how was your day?