a little of this, a little of that in shiny things

I am trying to get back in the habit of writing more often (hahahaha!! Yeah, look at me, not even pretending to make an effort at NoJoMo) and although I am gravely behind on England Entries, and am leaving everyone hanging as to what the !!DISASTER!!! was that befell us, I'm not in the mood for doing it today. (I will say that no one died. And no limbs were lost. Sorry, Search Results! There was no blood. Except perhaps in my mind.) However, I am in the mood for random pointless jibberjabber.

I am at work, and I am bored. I was bored a few weeks ago, to my astonishment... then we got overwhelmed again. Now I'm bored again. This is weird. You know what is pretty funny, though? Aggravation Receptionist is NOT bored. Aggravation Receptionist is surrounded by vast piles of paperwork, and keeps having to answer the phone, and students keep pouring in that she has to take care of. I am vastly amused by this, because, as I mentioned in a previous entry, AR has been really annoying me by doing exactly nothing. For the last six years. As the rest of us figuratively work our asses off. (Well, I've mentioned how crazy AR is making me by her languishing and sigh-heaving and web-surfing and family-drama-attending-to and complete lack of doing anything remotely work related in pretty much every rare entry that I make that isn't about our England Trip)

But I also mentioned in a previous entry that when New Boss started not so long ago, he asked us all to give him a report of our duties and tell him what jobs we were doing that we thought other people could perhaps take on and vice versa... and I mentioned in my report that I thought AR needed more to do. For the above reasons, although I wasn't that blunt about it. And he replied that we all perceive being busy differently and he was okay with balancing personal life with work life and blah blah blah and I privately decided well fuck that then, I'm certainly going to do some better balancing of my personal life and my work life from now on....

WELL, he did a little rearranging of everyone's duties and apparently now AR has plenty to do. He really didn't give her many extra duties at all, but several things HAVE been funneled to her that Mr. Organized and Miss Artsy and I used to split up among ourselves, so apparently that made a bigger difference than I would have thought. Apparently they are things that, when split between the three of us, didn't amount to much work, but funneled to one person it's quite a bit. So I am very pleased now with New Boss, and am thinking he's a pretty clever guy. I admit I was a little miffed at his response to me, but now it looks like he had a plan and just wanted to implement it very quietly, without causing dissension.

New Girl is great too, thus far, and I have no reason to suspect she won't continue to be. She's actually helped AR a couple of times with huge stacks of paperwork, but she's asked me and Mr. Organized if we need help first, so that's okay. Even though I would prefer to see AR flattened beneath the massive stacks of paper all over her desk (YES, I know, that is VERY unkind ... but she's done massive amounts of nothing at all while we've been not only buried under our own stacks of work, but have been doing things she should have been doing like answering phones and helping students because she's too busy doing, oh, nothing. And I am a grudge holder extraordinaire.) And AR really was legitimately in need of help. For maybe the first time ever.

I also get the impression that New Girl is not a "helper" like Miss Artsy was. Miss Artsy would do all of her own work and then do most of ARs, because she is one of those people who cannot function unless they are helping someone else. And then she'd be mad because she knew perfectly well AR was taking advantage of her. And then she'd just keep right on doing AR's work for her. And be mad. Etc etc. I think New Girl is more like me and Mr. Organized. Who are of the view that if AR can't get her work done, then she needs to stop playing online and messaging her DramaFamily and languishing all day.

Wow, I have written a ridiculously long entry about... work. Obviously I need to write more often. I must get back to the work that I don't have. But first, a picture. Because I want to test out this nifty new editor: