Category Archives: work

Business, Family, Food, home, pets, Uncategorized, work

Home Office Woes

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BBC.com is one of the news sites that I look at through the week and yesterday I saw an article about decentralizing the workforce and increasing the ability to work remotely. Clark Valberg, CEO of a software design company says “A decentralized workforce now allows employers to access “passionate talent anywhere in the world irrespective of any geographic boundary.”  This is not good news to me.

My company instituted a Work at Home policy three years ago; each associate is allowed to work from home one day a week. I think I am about the only one in the company who does not take advantage of this. I prefer going into the office, I don’t want to be dragging my work laptop home all the time and I didn’t think I would be good at it.

Mother Nature finally forced me to test my theory that I wouldn’t be good at working from home. We had two snow days in February this year and I just had too much on my plate to take the days off.  I had warning so I had brought my work laptop home and gotten a lesson from a co-worker on how to get onto the network.

I don’t know if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy but I really hated working at home. I got work done; I was efficient enough but every minute I was thinking of what else I could be doing.  I could bake some cornbread, I could work on my solstice project, I could throw in a load of laundry, I could pay bills.  I could brush the dogs, do my nails…. aarrgggh.  The fact that my life was surrounding me while I tapped away at the computer drove me crazy.  I knew if I left my desk, I might never return.

So luckily the weather is turning nicer and I probably don’t have to worry about having to work from home any more this year. And I certainly hope that my workplace doesn’t get decentralized before I’m ready to retire!

What distracts you from what you need to get done?

Seasons, Uncategorized, work

Funny Clothes

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It was always interesting to people watch in Winnipeg in early Spring, since people dressed so oddly.   We would see folks strolling in downtown Winnipeg wearing winter parkas, toques,  and shorts. It wasn’t quite winter, nor yet spring,  so they dressed for any eventuality.

I had the same experience the other day at work. I rode the elevator to the first floor to pick up a client from the waiting room.  I saw one man wearing a parka and a knitted, gaily colored Scandinavian stocking hat with ties and ear flaps. Next to him was a fellow with a top hat festooned with a feather. Standing by the receptionist desk was someone wearing a yarmulke.  I guess it was the day for special hats. We seldom have  such a variety of head gear. Caps and cowboy hats are the norm.

My wardrobe consists mainly of corduroy pants and sweaters.  I don’t wear hats since I think I look weird in them. I think it has something to do with the shape of my head.  I don’t like to draw attention to myself with my clothes. I wish I was brave enough to  wear a top hat to work, or maybe one of those Dutch lace caps with wings. I suppose, though, that people would say I dress “funny”.

Were you ever a flamboyant dresser? What do you wear that draws attention?  Did your mother used to dress you funny?

Business, Fantasy, Nature, Stories, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Waitlisted for Llamas

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I do some funny things for my job. I have a program in Vail this June and one of the activities is Wilderness Hiking with Llamas.  I’ve never offered a llama activity before, although I have offered camel safaris more than once.

Turns out the llama activity is very popular and we filled up our available spots quickly, forcing me to contact the supplier to see if we could offer the llama hike on a second day or get more llamas. She was able to confirm more llamas, which meant that I had to contact the two couples who had wanted to do the hike after it sold out.  Who knew?

When explaining this all to the client yesterday I used the phrase “waitlisted for llamas”. Sounds a little like a grunge band, doesn’t it?  Waitlisted for Llamas.

What’s the name of your favorite band (or fantasy band…)?

books, Business, home, Uncategorized, work

Sparking Joy?

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Marie Kondo and her book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” has come up in conversation several times the last month for me; her method of de-cluttering your life is all the rage right now.  So it wasn’t a complete surprise to see an email from my “Word of the Day” website, mentioning the phrase “sparking joy” and leading to a fairly long online article about what “joy” translated into in Japanese and why the phrase “sparking joy” was chosen when the initial translation of her book was done.

Although I’m not completely onboard the Kondo train, I do recognize that her de-cluttering method comes from a place of finding gratitude. While a corkscrew may not give me a physical thrill of joy, the memory of good times with friends around a good bottle of wine, or the hope that there will be more of those good times does.  I’m grateful, not so much for the corkscrew itself, but for what it represents in my life.

Some of you know that I have been on a mini-Kondo mission the last year or so. It’s a slow process and I’m actually trying to think of my departing items (to Goodwill or trash bin) with gratitude, instead of just the items I’m keeping.  Even if I don’t need them any longer, I’d like to think those items had a good place in my life at some point.  Doesn’t mean I need to keep them, just to recognize that my stuff was my stuff for a reason.

Anything bringing you joy/gratitude this weekend?

 

Technology, Uncategorized, work

Change

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I am sorry to inflict yet another tale of my work place on the Baboons, but this is something big. Tomorrow marks the end of an era where I work. We are transitioning from the computerized medical records system we have used since 1999 to a completely new one. The new one is complex, completely different, and incompatible with the old one, and is still being tweaked and altered as we speak. We go online at midnight tonight.  We were supposed to go online a year ago, but they decided it wasn’t ready. Well, it still isn’t really ready, but it is starting anyway. It will be used by all the human service centers and the State Hospital. It will be the system by which we document all our all our progress notes, evaluations, assessments, billing information–all the records of client services at our agencies.

All our old electronic records are to be transferred to the new system by midnight. It is interesting that none of the private pay insurance information transferred, so the business office folks have had to manually enter all the insurance information for all the open clients.  I wonder what else didn’t transfer. They had a trial run of the system a couple of weeks ago, and the whole system crashed when the hundreds of employees  tried to log on to it.

In 1999, many employees retired so they wouldn’t have to start using an electronic record system. We haven’t had mass retirements, but the anxiety this change is causing is palpable.

Oh, change in the work place can be hard. We are prepared for a wild ride.

What major changes have occurred in the workplace for you in the last 20 years. How do you deal with workplace change? What changes do you worry about for the future?

Business, Medicine, Uncategorized, work

Do It Myself!

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I have always been a “Do it myself!” sort of person. When I was 2, I got mad if my mom dressed me, so I would take off the clothes she put on me and put them on again by myself. I know. I have control issues.

I am currently the only full time psychologist at my agency. One person does psychological evaluations twice a month at our agency  via telehealth from her office in Florida.  Another guy comes to my agency from the Human Service Center in Bismarck once a month to do sex offender evaluations.

Once every other week, the Human Service Center in Bismarck sends a young woman psychometrist to our agency to administer and score the tests for the other two psychologists. I administer and score my own tests. My agency has lost positions due to budget cuts. With only me full time, we can’t justify a psychometrist just for our agency.  My supervisor, who works at the Bismarck agency, is always encouraging me to have the Bismarck psychometrist score my tests on the days she is here to prevent me from burning out. Sometimes that works. Usually, I prefer to do it myself, because I can do it when I need them scored and I don’t have to wait for her to come and do them.  Last week I agreed to have her take some tests to Bismarck with her to score. That was a big mistake.

The psychometrist is a bright, bubbly, and bouncy young woman who drives me crazy with her bumptous, blundering ways.  She doesn’t think before she speaks or acts, doesn’t read situations well, and often barges into my office when she is here, asking me in a very breathless fashion to do rather inconvenient things to help her and the other two psychologists out without checking what my schedule might be for the day.  “Could you do a IQ test right now on Dr. X’s patient!?  We don’t want to inconvenience him to come back to have it done another day.”  (All hands-on testing like IQ tests have to be done by me, since the telehealth psychologist can’t reach through the screen to administer tests like that).  Of course I couldn’t. I was booked solid the whole day.  It takes an hour and a half, on average, to administer an IQ test.

Last week she took some tests to Bismarck to score, and then put the scored tests in the office inbox of the psychiatrist who works at the Bismarck Human Service Center and who also comes out to our agency.  She asked the psychiatrist to transport my scored tests to me the next time she came out to Dickinson. We often have Bismarck folks transport things back and forth between our agencies. She didn’t check with psychiatrist in person. She just left her a note.

Today I phoned  the psychometrist to ask where my testing was.  She told me about her brilliant plan involving the psychiatrist. I informed her that the psychiatrist wasn’t coming to our center for another 3 weeks, and that I needed the testing immediately and that the psychiatrist  came here only once a month, not weekly, as she assumed. She then went on a wild scramble to find the psychiatrist and the tests. She called me back in a panic and asked me if I miraculously knew where the psychiatrist might be, since she wasn’t at their agency but was supposed to be seeing clients from our agency.  I told her I had no idea where the psychiatrist was. She finally tracked the doctor to her home in Bismarck where she sees clients at our agency in Dickinson via telehealth, and then got the testing from her and scanned and faxed the tests to me.

I think I will score my own test from now on. I don’t need this aggravation. I know. I have control issues.

Tell about your most annoying coworker. Tell about your best coworker. How do you cope with annoying coworkers?

 

home, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Snow Non-removal

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I must warn you all that I am really crabby! We haven’t had a terrible amount of snow this winter, probably only about a foot, but our streets look as though we live in southern Minnesota after a big blizzard.  Our town has a very sad history of snow removal, and after 30 years of living here, I still can’t get used to it. I slide through intersections and almost get stuck on the side streets on my way home.  There are vehicles and trailers parked on the streets around where we live that haven’t been moved in months, and you can tell because there are piles of snow where the city plows have had to work around them.

We are friends with a guy who works for the city and who runs one of the snow plows. He  tells us that if it snows and if it seems like it might warm up and the snow might melt, they won’t plow.  They try to let the warming temps melt the snow. If it turns to ice, so be it.  At least they save the city money.  When they do plow, they scrape everything in front of the driveway so we have to shovel to be able to get the vehicles out. It is maddening!

One April about 25 years ago we had a terrible snow storm that dumped about a foot of snow. Because it was predicted to get warm, they didn’t plow, and we almost destroyed the undercarriage of our vehicle driving over ice ruts in the street because it didn’t warm up, and all the snow just compacted and made every trip in the car a jostling nightmare.  Now I hear that another Arctic air mass will hit us on Sunday.  Enough, already!!

What do you do to cheer up?  How is snow removal handled where you live?

 

Uncategorized, work

Code What?

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Since I moved to North Dakota I have worked at two places: A hospital and a community mental health center.   Both had Code announcements over the loudspeaker system that let you know that there was trouble or alerted you to an issue. Code Blue, at the hospital, meant that someone was in cardiac arrest. Code Brown at both facilities meant that there is a tornado coming and you should take shelter. Code Black means there is a bomb threat.

My current agency is redoing its Codes to align with those of other State agencies. One of my coworkers suggested that we should have a Code S (sleep), which would mean that we should all take 20 minute naps. I suggested that we should have Code Orange, which means that 45 is coming for a photo op and that we should all hide.

Please come up with some creative Codes to alert people to things they should know about.

 

Business, Family, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Rez Cars Explained

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Last week was a very trying one for us, as Husband’s truck froze in the extreme cold up on the Indian reservation and wouldn’t start. It was -36  with -45 windchill Thursday  night.  He planned to come home Friday morning, but there was no way that truck would start in such cold.

Husband  works in the main town on the reservation, where Tribal headquarters and the biggest school and the  medical services are. There are two much larger towns, Minot and Williston, about 70 and 80 miles away respectively, which  are not on the reservation and offer all necessary services. Minot even has a  university.  There are also smaller,  non-reservation towns within 30-50 miles that also have a wide variety of services.

After unsuccessfully trying to get the truck started, and even putting in a new battery with the help of a friend who works in Tribal maintenance and who has a degree in car mechanics, Husband phoned the number for road side service affiliated with our car insurance.  The nice insurance person in Tennessee regretfully informed him that after phoning every tow service in the region, none would take the job.  No one wanted to drive to the reservation. There is no tow service in the reservation town.  There is no auto repair shop, either.

Our friend helped Husband get an electric magnetic heater, like a heating pad but really hot, to place under the hood.  They plugged it into an outside outlet where  Husband stays.  Husband got some nasty frostbite on his pointer fingers while getting it all set up. The heater sat on the engine block all day. I drove up to the reservation later in the afternoon on Friday. It was after I arrived that Husband and friend  discovered that the outlet on the outside of Husband’s place didn’t work, so the heater hadn’t heated up at all.  Once they switched it to another outlet it started working.

Since we weren’t sure that the heater would work and unfreeze the engine, and since it was evening, Husband and I drove the 90 miles back home through oil field traffic.   A few hours later our friend and his wife phoned to say the truck started. They drove it to their place and got up at intervals in the night to start it and their vehicles as well.  We drove back to the reservation on Saturday morning and retrieved the truck and drove home again, this time through snow.

I always wondered why the Native Americans  we know have so many vehicles in various states of disrepair.  Now I know. When you have no auto repair shop, you have to fix them yourself, and when you find one that works and is easy to fix, you keep driving it, no matter how junky it looks.  You also rely on friends and family to help with rides or loan you a vehicle that works. If you can’t fix your vehicles you leave them where they are since no one will come and tow them away.  We are eternally grateful to our maintenance friends, and offered to till their garden in the Spring with our big tiller.  They accepted the offer. It is all a part of helping each other out.

What have you learned about lately? What are some mysteries you would like solved?

Stories, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Lost & Found

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On Wednesday I ran three errands over my lunch hour. When I got back to my desk, my cell phone was not in the pocket of my purse where I normally keep it.  My very first thought was that I had left it at one of the errand locations.  But then I thought about it and remembered that I hadn’t taken it out of my purse at any of those places.

Maybe it had fallen out of my purse in the car or on the way from my desk to the car. I went out, searched all through the car, including moving the seats forward and back to check underneath.  Then I looked again.  I emptied out my purse twice.

Then I decided to re-trace all my steps and drove back to all three of the places I had been over lunch. Weirdly, in all three places, the same spot I had parked in earlier was open when I arrived.  I looked in the spots, looked under the cars on either side, went into each establishment and asked if anyone had turned a phone in.  Nope.

Sadly I returned to my cube and over the next half hour discovered that my phone did not have any tracking capability turned on and then further discovered that for my particular phone there didn’t even seem to BE any tracking capability. I took a deep breath and suspended service and then called the phone company to see if perhaps they could track it from there end.  All the while the cost of getting a new phone was running through my head and I was starting to make a mental list of all the information stored in the phone and how I was going to have to re-assemble it somehow.

While I was on the phone I thought I’d empty out the purse one last time. As I set the empty purse down on the desk, it “thunked”.  I felt around and could feel the outline of the phone at the bottom.  It was between the purse and the lining!  The pocket that I normally put it in had a phone-sized hole and the phone had fallen through.  The gal on the phone with me was really nice to me, reactivated my service and wished me a good rest of the day.   I was so relieved, I could feel the weight falling away from shoulders – I almost shed a tear.

I got duct tape from the maintenance department and taped up the hole before I left the office.

What was the last thing you lost? Or found?