I know my long time fans have been thinking, "Rose celebrates her 100th blog and disappears from the face of the earth! I wonder what she's up to now!" for the past several weeks. Well the answer isn't pretty.
First, there's work. Let me state at the beginning that there is nothing that I do as a part of my job that I don't like doing… with the slight exception of calling people. I just don't like calling people. I don't mind talking to people who call me (which is odd because one would assume that the aspect about not knowing WHO is calling or WHAT they want might be something I wouldn't like), but I HATE calling people. If I have only one work-related flaw (and I'm not saying I ONLY have one, I said IF there were only one), it would be that phone calls that I need to make tend to be put off. I'm very bad about that. Non-work-related case in point: I'd love to talk to my old college roommate, Janna. I have her phone number. I have a cell phone and a cell plan with free long distance. There is NO reason not to call Janna. I just hate calling people so I don't. But you know, if she called me, I could talk to her for hours. I'm weird, I know.
Where was I?? Sigh… Work. Steve (Boss #1) is the partner in charge of the collection department at the firm. He does a lot of administrative stuff regarding the department and, consequently, has me running all sorts of reports and working up spreadsheets, etc for him. Oh, that reminds me. When I was last looking for a job, back in August 2000 (not a pretty time in the history of Rose, BTW), I had an interview with a company for a job that I probably would have really enjoyed. But they needed someone who had a strong working knowledge of Excel and who could jump into the job with both feet and run with the Excel stuff. At that time, Rose didn't know Excel and although we had a nice time talking, I had to tell the interviewer that I just wasn't the girl for him. Fast forward to now, or even 5 years ago, and Rose is very proficient in Excel. Mostly self-taught, although there have been plenty of urgent phone calls to first my friend Kathy, then later Dad, before he retired, and now Haley with Excel questions. I know there's tons that I don't know about Excel, but on my last review I requested advanced training in Excel. Of course I specified training from someplace other than our illustrious IT department, but that's a whole other blog!
I really am wandering today aren't I? WORK. Back in June we got a placement of 3,600+ new collection accounts from a local business that in a big month normally only sends about 250-300 accounts. So decisions had to be made. Do we hire new people? If so, how many? Steve has had me running all sorts of fun reports and whipping up all sorts of fun spreadsheets. Very exciting, but all on top of my normal duties. So Rose has been very busy in that regard.
And then, about two, (three?) weeks ago, two of the new hires started and guess who got the job of training them on entering all these new accounts. Yup, Rose. I know the girls in collections are busy, and none of them are busier than the supervising paralegal, so I'm really not bitching that it was ME instead of THEM doing the training. I realize that it is a comment regarding my abilities and Steve's faith in me that he gives me these things. Occasionally, though, I could do with a little less faith in me! I don't like strangers (although I am better with the aid of my precious pink pills than I used to be – again, not a pretty time in the history of Rose) and having to sit in there one on one, or two as the case may be/is, with them was probably more stressful for me than them! And although the two of them have really caught on like a house a fire, Steve still is having me review their work until they have the FDCPA training. Did I mention that my life was good until I met the FDCPA? And did I mention that I didn't really meet the FDCPA until I started here, despite doing collections/subro at the other firm? J hahaha! Reviewing their work turned out to be quite an undertaking, and boring, since they were doing well enough that I wasn't finding many mistakes. So generally it was after Noon before I was done with their previous day's work and I could start on my work. Fortunately, they did their FDCPA training today so I'm free!! Fun fact! The third (and hopefully final) new girl starts on Monday, so the whole training thing starts again! (yeah.)
Meanwhile on the other work front: (and here, I'll sketch in some background since I don't' recall if I previously wrote about this,) last October the sh&! hit the fan in our subrogation department and the woman who was responsible for the work, well let's just say that she's no longer working here. I had worked in … well, really, me and my secretary Becky WERE the subrogation department at my old law firm, but I'd managed to live a subro-free life for the bulk of 8 years. Unfortunately the partner in charge of the subro department worked with me at the old firm (BTW, he adores me) and he knew that I am a Subro Diva and he asked me to help out until things could get back under control. Now, a year later, I'm still helping out because they didn't hire a replacement for her. In fact, we've split the job up and we have one person opening all of the new subro files and a variety of other duties, one person (me) filing suit on all of the files when the time comes and handling settlements, and a third person handling the litigation aspect of those files that I hated having to do, such as discovery, trial prep, etc. And the files just keep pouring in. I worked a big bunch of OT from last October until this past April at which point I just couldn't take it any longer. Of course, then Dad started getting worse and I spent more of my time out with the 'Rents, so work wasn't my main priority. Although I must say, the OT fundage was very nice. Things on my end started piling up again, especially since the collection aspect had increased considerably (see above), so the OT has slowly weedled its claws back into me, and the fundage is still nice, especially after my recent review/raise.
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