The Soapbox

In a darkened room, except for the single spot of light that illuminates a box. The echoing sounds of footsteps, as if coming from all around you. As the sound of footsteps grows louder, a figure slowly emerges from the darkness. The person appears to be walking towards the light with the box in the middle of it. As the once darkened figure steps into the light and onto the box, it is apparent that the person is a male. He clears his throat and begins to speak…


Ok, in my past entries, I have never talked about the specifics of the company that I work for or the people that I worked with or much about my job. However, it is getting to the point that I am getting so frustrated with a particular person at work. Now, to give you a little bit of background on myself, in the past, I am usually a work-a-holic. Now, when I’m at work, I believe that you work; you’re getting paid to perform a certain function or task. I also believe that if there is down time and it’s slow, then doing nothing is ok, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the job or the company. However when it’s busy, then there is certain expectations of what needs to be done. For an example, if your job is to answer phones and try to resolve issues, then that is what a person needs to do and not just avoid answering phones.

Now, there is this person at work, I’ll refer to her as Ms. Wannabe. Ms. Wannabe thinks that she’ll be getting a promotion from her current position and doesn’t think that people notice that she slacks off, especially at the busiest times or makes mistakes. However, what Ms. Wannabe doesn’t realize is that there are people that do take notice. Like today, for example and it was really getting me frustrated and angry because there were calls building up and she was slacking off, trying to look as if she were busy and doing some obscure task that prevented her from being on the phones. It became really apparent that she was “slacking” off when she was socializing and just sticking her nose into business that had nothing to do with her or to what she had made up to keep her busy.

I did a little investigation of my own and found that Ms. Wannabe was off from her phone for a little over 45 minutes, during this time, there were at least 6 calls waiting to be answered and building… Prior to this, while she could’ve taken calls while waiting for another co-worker to return from his break, Ms. Wannabe would wander about the office, after she went on her break, which turned out to be an “extended” break, she would socialize with the vendors to our company in order to kill time till it was the end of her shift.

Now, one of my questions is, “How many people does it take to train a single person at the same time?” Well, apparently, according to Ms. Wannabe, it takes 2 people at the same time to train 1 person. CAN YOU SAY WASTE OF TIME AND RESOURCES?!!!! Ok, so Ms. Wannabe is training in the new employees, but if you train someone the same way that you do the job yourself, making mistakes and in a lazy way, your only going to get a bunch of employees that are ineffective and inefficient, basically making it harder on the others to do their job when their fixing your mistakes.

There are so many examples that I could give, but that would reveal the company that I work for, right now, I can’t do that. It’s just that it’s so frustrating and so maddening that I just had to vent before losing it at work. Other situations at work didn’t make it any easier either... People just don’t read instructions. At my job, the company is switching over employees from one application to another. It’s the same thing, but the way you sign on is slightly different. They send out instructions on how to sign in, instructions that someone with absolutely no computer experience at all can follow, but do they? Nooo…. They call up and say “I need my password reset” or “I think I’m locked out” when it really boils down to that they didn’t read the instructions and just want someone to hold their hand and walk them through the process.

Ok, enough of work, now onto a new issue. Someone in the apartment building keeps disabling the security door, JUST so that their visitors can enter without having to use the call box. This is the 4th time that someone has done this since the rental company fixed the lock. The first 2 times, they pulled the carpet up to prop the door open. The 3rd time, they stuck a quarter in the bolt area (I removed it and scored 25 cents) and tonight, I can’t see what they jammed in there, but the bolt doesn’t extend out of the door. PEOPLE! There is a reason for the security door. First, it prevents those who are not supposed to be in the building from gaining access to the building. Second, it stops solicitors from bothering those who live in the building from bothering those people that want to be left alone. Third, it prevents thefts and burglaries from the apartments and lastly it prevents vandals from destroying property.

Now, granted that I don’t have a lot of valuables and property. However I do have items that certain elements shouldn’t be able to get their hands on, like uniforms and certain equipment. I have seen a lot of criminals and possible criminals hanging around the property, I have seen people selling drugs and if the security door is disabled, then what the heck am I paying the amount of rent for?

Ok, now that I’ve gotten this off my chest, I’ll be seeing the people in the rental office to voice my concerns. I’ll step down from the box now and write more later.

The man steps off the box and starts to walk off into the darkness, the sounds of his footsteps stop, you can hear the sound of a lighter being lighted, from the darkness you can see the faint appearance of his face and hands from the flame of his lighter, a faint orange glow of a cigarette being lit. You can hear him take a drag from the cigarette and see a very faint orange glow, grow slightly brighter as he inhales. The sounds of the footsteps start up again and grow fainter as the man walks away in the darkness.