Friday, August 31, 2007

The screw turns...

First, let me say that I do love my current gig. It is relatively low stress, I get to work with some very nice doctors, the tools I'm implementing have a direct impact on the quality of life of patients, I get to be downtown and take walks, and I can bus occasionally. I am trusted, I have authority, but things aren't all panicky.

Into this picture a rain cloud has appeared. On Tuesday, I gained an officemate. Now, I have a pretty large office, all told, and there's more than enough room for two. But...

This is a Temp who works for the software vendor: We are paying them to move all of our old data off of the old systems into their system. In return, they're paying this temp to sit at our site and click-and-move these studies one-by-one. It's not particularly hard work, but it does take an organizational mind. They needed a place for this temp to sit, and my office had room....

Alas, this temp is a talker. No matter what I'm doing - writing emails, reading a manual, headphones on... she just starts talking. About her nieces. About her previous jobs. About her desire to move to Dubai to work in "logistics". About her frustrations about not understanding what the dress code is. About seemingly anything, all with a sort of "authoritative" tone of voice, like "I know about these things"... despite the fact that any time she treads into territory I know anything about, she is quite far off base.

This wouldn't be so bad if I had confidence in what she was doing, but as of today, she couldn't even tell me with any degree of certainty exactly how many patient studies she had actually successfully migrated in the 4 days she had worked.

In short, I am sharing a now very small feeling office with a psychopath temp who doesn't actually work for me, and may not actually be doing the job we are indirectly paying her to do. My library of noncommital grunts and shrugs is expanding by the day. I have begun to relay my concerns to the vendor, and we'll see what happens.

This is obviously karmic retribution for my illicit viewing of Spider Man, and will take this lesson (this possibly four long month lesson) to heart. I am a changed man. Really, this time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It happens. I have a feeling that karma is blind - and the number of lonely know-it-alls in the world is increasing. So look at this as proof that you are blessed and this is a rare occurance. I will be spending Labor Day wknd with a bipolar off her meds in a manic stage. I am NOT driving up with her. There are five of us who cram into one small cabin every Labor Day. This is going to get real interesting..... Peace and enjoy!