Either that or I’m in danger of becoming homicidal.

Why, you may ask?

It all comes down to working with men and how little they THINK about things before they promise them.

I’m not sure if this is all men, or just the particular group… but its been a pattern with all men in my life so far — they make promises that they expect the WOMEN in their lives to fulfill without EVER considering what it is that they are asking or expecting.

My job makes me want to scream most days.

So far this week has been hell…

Why?

Because my manager sets unrealistic expectations for my performance and makes promises that I have to fulfill, without letting me KNOW about them.

For example:

Part of my job is to make sure that when workers come from other branches to do work on our sites that I book accomodations for them.

Great.

But there are only a finite number of hotel and motel rooms IN the city. And sometimes there are events that have the city completely booked up.

Add to that the fact that my manager doesn’t TELL me that people are coming up or HAVE come up before they call to ask where they are staying for the night (never mind that I didn’t KNOW they were there, how many are up here, when they are leaving or WHAT DAMNED job they are working on!!!) and then these guys (CONSTRUCTION WORKERS) get PISSY at me because I have nothing for them ready!!

Yesterday was no exception.

On friday I had heard that 2 guys were coming up for a training session and a job, so I proactively called around and got 2 rooms for them for Monday night. I asked around for Tuesday as well, but was told that the city was booked up.

I told this to my manager on friday. I had rooms for 2 guys for Monday but the rest of the week I couldn’t get them booked in the city, but I had appointments on friday afternoon and I had to go early.

Monday morning I was told that we had 3 guys up from the other provincial branch. Note that I had booked TWO guys — Guy1 and Guy2 — but had no forewarning for Guy3.

Manager says that Guy2 is going home after the training session because it is too cold out to work (our machinery breaks when pushed at -30, it was colder than that).

I changed the hotel booking so that I had booked Guy1 and replaced the booking for Guy2 with Guy3.

Later in the day Guy2 comes sauntering in from the training session he was on… and Manager tells him that he can stay up here and work for the duration of the week and that I will “look after him” for the week.

So… I scramble around trying to find a place for Guy2 to stay after having given his room to Guy3 at the request of Manager.

I start phoning around the city only to find that there is a huge concert event AND 2 conferences going on and there isn’t a room to be found IN the city.

But now Manager wants to keep Guy1 and Guy2 up here to work, given that if they go home they won’t have any work to do and we don’t have enough guys for the work we have. Nothing is said about Guy3, whom I asked Manager about a few times.

CoWorker and I started phoning all the hotels, motels and bed and breakfast accomodations in all the small downs surrounding the city looking for TWO SEPARATE rooms for TWO men (because under their union agreement they have the RIGHT to request separate accomodations any time they have to be put up in hotels). I asked Manager if Guy3 was staying and if I needed three rooms rather than 2 rooms, but I was told TWO rooms over and over.

At 10 to 5pm CoWorker manages to find a place that has 2 rooms available Tuesday night through Friday morning and we book the rooms.

Cut to tuesday morning….

I am 5 minutes late for work, I have a throbbing sinus headache and my chest is constricted with asthma related issues, and I’m not in a good mood. I come in to say hello to Manager and I am asked what the accomodations are for the three guys.

Um. You said TWO rooms. CoWorker and I booked TWO rooms. I reminded him that I had asked if he needed THREE rooms, and if Guy3 was staying the week with the other 2… but Manager got angry and told me to get out of his office he was ‘having a mad’.

So was I, by this point.

So Manager says “well, we’ll send them all home then” and tells me to cancel the rooms that we do have booked.

I’m not stupid enough to DO that (thank the gods) because I know full well that he’s still intending to send Guy1, Guy2 and Guy3 to work.

And sure enough, they all come in to ask about accomodations. With Manager, CoWorker, Guy 2, and Guy 3 standing there with Foreman and DD I explain that I have booked rooms in SmallTown for Guy1 and Guy2, but that I was not aware that Guy3 was staying this week. Guy3 looks at me and tells me that he was there last night, and I explain, again, that I had asked if he was staying and I was told no, but I will do my best to get him a room somewhere so he can stay too…

And Guy1 starts bitching at me because the NICE room that he stayed in the night before had been booked as a NON-SMOKING room and that he NEEDED a smoking room and that “next time you book things for me book only smoking room”…

(((breathe)))

So all morning I phone around the small towns looking for any place within reasonable distance to the city that might have room for Guy3.

And I don’t find anything.

At 2pm I get a call from Foreman. He asks where Guy3 is staying, because they are shutting down the job and coming back and he wants to know where to drop Guy3 off. And I tell him, that I haven’t found anything for him yet and I am still trying to find ANYWHERE for him to go because I haven’t been given enough time to get things in order.

And I get attitude, because obviously phoning half the hotels and motels in the province trying to get a SMOKING, single room when there is are 1) Huge concert events going on in the city, 2) there are trades conferences going on in the city, and 3) none of the hotel contacts I have can find spare rooms in their networks is so freaking easy that I must be an idiot because I can’t do it.

I hung up on them.

I don’t have to deal with verbal abuse, actually.

And I keep calling around and looking online, hoping that if I change nights or somethign I can find a place to book for at least PART of the week for this guy. And I’m in the process of trying to find partial accomodations for Guy3 when the men return.

Only to be told that Guy2 and Guy3 went out to the booked accomodations and now it is Guy1 that I have to book a room for.

GAH!!!!!

And to make matters worse now I have a bunch of guys all trying to figure out what the hell is going on… and I’m TRYING to explain to CoWorker and Manager that all is not all “well”, that we’re still needing to find one room for one guy…. now its just that Guy3 decided (after being told POINT FREAKING BLANK that HE (not Guy1) needed to return to the shop because I was STILL working on getting him a room) to scoop the room on me and cause more trouble.

And they are ALL talking over me, as usual. Making freaking demands and specific requests…

They’re lucky I haven’t taken off my boot and smacked one of them by now. I am ready to make Manager go to Canadian Tire to buy an air mattress and sleeping bag for Guy1 and he can freaking just SLEEP on the floor in the shop!!!

And Manager manages to convince Guy1 that either he shares a room with Guy3 or he goes home (and home=no work, which =NO MONEY) because there are no more rooms in the city or surrounding areas….

((((SCREAM))))

OTHER Work issues???

Policies have changed on me again from the SCM department. So all the chasing and nagging and work that I have done to get things set up so that our subcontractors can be considered contract direct service providers????

Didn’t need to do it.

3 months of chasing people to get this done because the SCM department made it a requirement or they won’t get paid for their work????

No longer necessary.

While I was out on vacation 2 weeks ago Manager lost my mailbox key.

This weekend he lost the OTHER 2 copies of the mailbox key.

Now we need to have our mailbox lock replaced and new keys made up.

Only Manger never bothered to change the name on the mailbox account from the original company (that my company bought out) and so when I went to do this change the CanadaPost Employee just gave me the look of utter confusion.

Seems I am not authorized to get the mail, either…

I just want to go home. My head hurts, my chest hurts, I want to cry and drink copious amounts of really strong coffee and veg out in front of the tv or talking to a friend.

I want to be warm and snuggled up to someone (I’ll have to settle for the cats) and not worry about work or furniture or what is going to happen tomorrow.

But that’s not my life, after all.

So I will order my satellite system and try to catch S online and have a really long hot shower and hope that the incoming warm front (apparently in a few days it will be in the positive degree range) will STOP causing my sinuses to bang loudly against my skull….

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day???