Category Archives: work

100 Words, Family, History, Theatre, Uncategorized, work

Happy Birthday!

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Daughter’s birthday was last week, and she reports that it was the best birthday ever. She finished her last graduate school class and  she was given an award at her agency for her good work. Both our children become unusually disorganized around the times of their birthdays. Too much anticipation, I guess, although we never made their birthdays into productions. I was glad daughter kept it together and had a great day.

Today is William Shakespeare’s  purported birthday.  April 23rd is also the same day he died 52 years later. It is certainly not the way I should choose to spend my birthday.

What is your favorite Shakespeare play or scene. Which is your least favorite? What was your best birthday? What was your worst?

 

Music, Uncategorized, Words, work

Saying “No”

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I have a hard time saying “no, I can’t do that”.  I tell the intake people at my work that my schedule is too full to take on new clients, and then I get a phone call from our county social services that they have five children who need therapy, and I am the only one in the area who sees children as young as the ones they are referring, and guess what? I have five new appointments for next week. People at work just laugh at me when I tell them I am going to put my foot down and not take any new clients. I have no one to blame but myself.

Is it hard for you say “no”?  How do you manage to do it if you are able?  What is hard for you to communicate to others?  What is your favorite scene or song from Rogers and Hammerstein?

 

Business, Family, Uncategorized, work

Seymour’s Desk

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Anyone who looks at my desk at work or at home would be correct in thinking that I don’t like to file and organize my papers.   I only do so under duress, or when I want to make a good impression on a new client or house guest. I am proud to say that no matter how messy my desks look, I know where everything is.  I lose things when I tidy up. Husband tries to keep his things filed and organized, and invariably can’t find things when he looks for them.

The other day I  looked at the pile of papers on my home office desk and realized that it resembled the piles of papers I saw on the desk of one of my favorite graduate school professors.  Seymour was a prodigious pack rat, and threw piles of papers on his desk until he couldn’t see over them.  (He was an incredibly short man, so the pile didn’t have to be too high to obscure his vision.)  I was always amazed when I went to his office and asked for a paper I had written for one of his classes the previous semester, and how he knew exactly what layer the paper was at, and that he could retrieve it from the pile without knocking all the other papers over.

Seymour was a wonderful psychologist and a very funny man.  He spoke in a thick Bronx accent and a slight lisp.   Once he got flustered in court and referred to a Canadian judge of Queen’s Bench  as “Your Majesty” when giving expert testimony.   I believe he is still alive, in his late 80’s or 90’s.  I wonder how high the paper pile  on his is desk now?

What is your organizational style?  

Business, Technology, Uncategorized, Words, work

I Can Spell That Word in 3 Letters

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“A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.”
Baltasar Gracian

Baltasar Gracian was a Spanish Jesuit, writer and philosopher who lived in the first half of the 1600s. There are many wonderful quotes by him but when I stumbled across this one yesterday, it made me laugh.

I type A LOT for my job – letters, agendas, rosters, briefing notes, website information – in addition to the day by day routine of emails to suppliers, clients and internal teams.   Over the years I’ve had  trouble typing various words correctly.  Some of these problems with words resolve themselves after a few years but a few of them have been with me for as long as I’ve been doing this:

Deposit
Worldwide
Rolls
Accommodations
Hors d’oeuvres

Unfortunately there aren’t good synonyms for some of my words, at least not that are accepted throughout my industry. Hors d’oeuvres is a good example.  I can’t use “canapes” because that actually means something specific .  “Appetizers” is more work to type and I can’t really go with “morsel”, “tidbit”, “finger food” as these would throw my hotels and supplier for a loop.

That means I have to have work-arounds. For “hors d’oeuvres” I have an auto-fill set up – when I type “hors” and a space, then the computer fills in the rest, spelled correctly every time.  Typing in “accom” will get me to “accommodations”.  I also have an auto-correct so that any time I type “rools”, the computer changes it to “rolls”.  “Deposit” and “Worldwide” I just have to struggle with as they are too similar to other words, so the shortcuts are just as long as slowing down and typing more carefully.

Any words defy spelling for you?

 

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?