Listening: Chocolate City

Been working my butt off and still failing to finish my work in any kind of a timely fashion. Running around doing all kinds of things when I'm not at work....

Tomorrow I have no less than four meetings. One of them is a huge department-wide thing. Sadly we're being moved from the Rococo to the Marriot so instead of a pleasant restaurant, we'll be in a hotel conference room, and probably instead of coffee and cookies we'll have ice water. *sigh*

Then I have a feedback session with a lot of salespeople who work with the group of copyeditors I'm in. The meeting was set up apparently because they wanted a chance to explain to us how much they were dissatisfied with our work. *sigh, again*

Then there's a meeting for sections 5&6. (I'm in 6, but we have the same manager so for the time being we have meetings at the same time and in the same room.) It's a weekly meeting and like several of the past weeks we're expected to have an ex-editor show up and give us a lesson refresher on some of the guidelines. For some reason this section of the meeting tends to get rowdy - it's a little like a substitute teacher being chosen from the ranks of students to run the lessons of the day - and I haven't been as tactful as I could be when I've chosen to voice any disagreement. Today my manager talked to me about it and pretty much told me to be nice. As if I'm the only one being mean.... *sighs some more*

Finally after that meeting, my category team will have a meeting with our lead and the same ex-editor as well as an assistant to the editor-in-chief. I pretty much pulled the meeting together when, a week ago, we were so frustrated over our newest audits that we couldn't quit buzzing about it and do any work. So asked everyone to gather 'round the desk of another editor and go over some of the disagreements we had. Some of the rules we don't get and some we flat out disagree with and I wanted to know where everyone stood with the rules. Since we couldn't get a room to ourselves and because a computer would be essential to the review, the desk was the best place. I gave the lead and our manager a head's up and then we met. The lead took up the reins after that and she assembled tomorrow's meeting so we could more fully air our issues in a more orderly manner. And I managed to get a talking today for that(yep, in the same conversation that I was told to be nice to the ex-editor - the same conversation, incidentaly, that was originally supposed to be for the manager to tell me that I have a stellar quality and productivity record). I was very nearly accused of starting some kind of mutinous riot. I tap danced like a motherfucker, but it was all I could do not to look my manager in the eye and tell him none of this would have happened if he would have organized our category like we've been asking to for months. so that's the final meeting. *exasperated sigh*

Finally a spelling bee has been organized for the department, theoretically so we can have some fun. I opted in originally, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to really have fun trying to spell after more than five hours of meetings.

I worked some overtime today, but I wasn't happy with the outcome. Because of the new rules I've been so paranoid about my work that I've slowed wwaayyy down in my processing, where I used to burn through my assigned work. You'd think that I could finish eight hours of work in 11 hours. But you don't work where I do.

Tomorrow I'll probably (maybe) put in another two hours.

The silver lining is actually that on Thursday i'll be on jury duty. The only real downside is that my permanant address is still in OC so I have to report to the Santa Ana courthouse and since I don't have anywhere in OC to sleep anymore it means I have to get up early. The only other downside is that I'll have to dress nicer than I normally do. But if it goes like almost all other duty sessions I've ever been to I'll sit in a big room and read for nearly eight hours straight. There are worse ways to spend a day. At work, for example.

It would be interesting to be put on a case, but on the whole I'd rather just be dismissed early on. But maybe I'll find some paper and hand write some of the things that went on over the past couple weeks. I don't like writing by hand but that stuff is just scratching at me to get out.


Anyway. I gotta get to bed. Y'all be good and I'll talk to you later. G'night.