Personnel Poobah

The main reason I haven't been posting regular material is that there has just been so much trench fighting of late. It seems like everything in my life is under attack from some angle, sometimes even from multiple sources. Probably one of the most stressful things going on right now is my "other" job, the nonprofit gig. I absolutely love my job. I can't express that well enough. But we're small, and so we haven't had the luxury of extra people until now. With extra people come extra problems. I have never been trained in human resources or personnel management. And yet, here I am, square in the middle of a bunch of personnel poop. The maddening thing is, it's not my job to handle personnel issues. It's somebody else's job in this office. But since she's literally never had to do it before, she seems to be pushing it off on me. I don't have the authority to sit somebody down and read them the riot act, so it's a maddening sit-n-spin circle of hell.

I don't understand for the life of me why some people work so hard at not working. Seriously, if you put half of that effort into doing your damn job, so much would get done! I've spent several weeks feeling like the hard ass in the office because I finally just got fed up and got down to brass tacks. I felt a little guilty afterwards, because I felt like I was really coming down on people. Here's the problem.

The Mooch, of whom you are no doubt sick of hearing about, has been causing half of our problems. She's out of the office more than she is in, sometimes legitimately, other times I can't verify what the hell she's doing. Since I have to sign off on her timesheets, I actually check them over. She was posting 13 hour days in some places. Knowing that couldn't be true, I left her a note on her computer monitor (since she isn't in half the time) to see me about how she was configuring her hours. She dodged me for a few days. I mentioned it to Director/Buddy, who agreed it was a problem, but never asked about it. More dodging.

Finally, I confronted her about it outright first thing in the morning when she finally came in. Turns out she was counting her bus ride to and from work. Her bus ride. You know, because she refuses to get transportation of her own? The bus takes at least 45 minutes to get here one way because of all its stops and idles. She was billing us from the moment she walked out of her home to the moment she walked back into it. Hell, if I did that, I'd spend half of my part time week just on transportation! We spent quite a bit of time going back and forth with why you can't bill for mileage time to work. Once you get here and you have to go to a meeting or out in the county to meet a client, that's billable, yeah. But your due dilligence to get here? I don't fucking think so. She continues to argue this, and we have to take it to her payroll comptroller to get it settled, where the Mooch found out that yes, people who have been in the business world longer than you have do indeed know what the fuck is going on.

But while I was trying to get the hours thing under control with the Mooch's comptroller, I discovered another thing. She's turning in mileage reimbursement forms. She has no fucking car, did I mention that? She was billing for the time that other people were driving her around--and not turning the money over to them, of course. When the comptroller found out she had no transportation of her own, she rejected the Mooch's reimbursement form. I felt a little like a hard ass on that one. I mean, scammed mileage won't exactly wreck the national economy. But it was just so....slimey a thing to do! She never offers gas money. She's been working mighty hard at getting something for nothing.

We're also still having massive hygiene problems out of her. She still stinks. I still Febreeze. The problem is with the way she's representing us to the community. I asked this same comptroller to pull her aside and talk with her. I don't have the authority to sit down and do it with her, and D/B prefers the "hint" system, which has failed miserably up to this point. So I enlisted some aid. I have no idea if the woman talked with her yet or not. She was supposed to by this point. I haven't seen the Mooch in the office to tell the difference. *Eyeroll* Even beyond the basic hygiene is the issue of dress. She has no dress outfits--which may be a matter of budget--but she wears her ratty, old converse high tops with a dress. That's her version of "business dress". And she doesn't shave her legs--which I don't care about personally, but when we're out to get money from people in the business world, we at least have to look competent. That means you wear hose or you wear pants.

Sadly, the shaving and bathing is pretty much a religion thing for her. So, I've been on eggshells about it, because then it gets into issues of "it's my religion!" The director of a very powerful nonprofit broke it down for me though in my meeting with the comptroller. She said that the Mooch had chosen to enter into the business world, and couldn't demand that it change for her. If she didn't like her job requirements, she shouldn't have chosen that job. I'm not sure it works that way, to be honest with you. But I don't think she has the gumption to sue us over her religion. I could probably win a countersuit against her for mental anguish, anyway. So that hasn't resolved itself, and the director I just mentioned actually went on a tear about how dirty she looked and how bad it was for us. Eep.

She still forgets to put the mail box flag up for the postal lady, she doesn't put complete addresses on envelopes, she forgets what we're doing at meetings and leaves important material back at the office, and more or less just fucks things up left and right. I know for a fact that we're not hiring her back. I at least got that cleared. But Jesus Christ, another eight months with her may kill me!

-- Virgil

*Stay tuned for my fucked up bus driver stories.