Winter tires and appraisal

When I filed my insurance claim on Saturday, I decided to give uploading photos of my car's damage to an appraiser a try. I was supposed to get a link to upload them within 24 hour. I never got it.

I got my insurance advisor's name and sent him an e-mail. He was kind to not only write to me, but also call me.

He let me know that there are problems with this link. He first offered to get an appraiser to come to my home to inspect my car's damage. He then asked where I wanted to get my car fixed. I had a shop that I worked with in the past. He let me know that it does both appraisals and the actual work.

He arranged to get my claim information to them and I could simply drop by. After getting my winter tires installed, I drove over there.

The man helping me was nice, but not all there. He couldn't find my claim number after we verified it three times. He finally found it in his system.

He then couldn't get the printer to work. His counterpart wasn't wearing a mask when the sign on the door clearly stated that everyone needed a mask. Hmm...

He then asked whether I knew what my deductible was. I said that it was waived because I had reported the incident to the police. He asked me to check with my insurance. I said no. I got that fact from my insurance advisor this morning.

Sure enough, this guy saw the note that my insurance advisor had made on waiving the deductible. Yes, I don't need to do any checking.

Weird. I had a better experience my first time at this shop. Maybe he needed some caffeine.

Thoughts about how a newbie learns

It has been nearly two weeks that my students and I have been training the new employee. It has been a challenge for all of us.

I am still trying to figure out how this new employee learns. It's difficult to narrow down, but here are my notes:

• She is an extremely slow learner. She requires tons of repetition doing the same task before she begins to understand it.
• She is not good at recognizing patterns. If there is a clear example on the page, she does not know how to apply that example to solve her current problem.
• She does not read well. It doesn't matter whether she has a checklist or a procedure on how to do a task, she does not read details carefully. She also does not read e-mails well.
• Her comprehension is dismal. She constantly relies on my PowerPoint slides and treats them as the gospel. When she has a checklist to go through, she is still dependent on her slides and doesn't realize that the checklist takes precedence. When I quiz her on how to do something, she goes to her printed slide notes and doesn't get it. So, it's another explanation, but from a different angle. 
• She says thanks too often. Sure, we are all Canadian. However, saying thanks after every other sentence that we say does not register knowledge that we have passed on to her. It is also overkill.
• She is afraid to try anything on her own. When she had a question on how to edit a page the other day, I asked her to give it a try. She gave me a firm, "No!" Um, okay. Odd.

She does have a cartoon character voice. It's squeaky. One of my colleagues called it cute. I find it annoying the more she talks, which is pretty often.

My manager was impressed by how much information and research she did for her second interview. I didn't feel the same way. I realize now that it was all memorization. The comprehension is nonexistent. 

The red flag that I had during her second interview was that she admitted that she was a slow learner. I pointed that out to my boss. He said that the extra work that she does after hours will get her learning faster. I didn't think that it was the case then. I certainly don't see it now.

It is still frustrating dealing with someone who does not get what she is doing. I have even seen my students get frustrated.

Here's hoping that things get better, although things look bleak right now.

Playfully confusing my guy

It's fun being playful. My guy and I were cuddling in bed when we had this conversation.

"I'm a good girl, right?" I asked him.
"No, you are a bad girl," I said.
"That's not right. I'm a good girl," I said.
"No. It's one reason why I spank you," he admitted.
"So, I'm a bad girl and you spank me because I'm not good," I said, working it out.
"Yes," he confirmed.
"I'm good at not being a bad girl," I said.
"Yes," he said.

Silence. I smiled.

"I mean no," he corrected himself.
"I'm good," I said happily.
"You are good at confusing me," he said, hugging me tightly.
"I'm a good girl," I confirmed.

It's easy not to be sharp after both of us are in a dopey state of mind.

Weather fluctuations causes wardrobe confusion

These temperature swings are maddening! Last Saturday, it was 7°C as a high with rain. On Wednesday, I went out for a break during the day, as I work from home. The temperature reached a high of 27°C.

I am confused as to how I should dress. On the weekend, I had a light winter puffy jacket, a winter hat, mitts, and Sherpa-lined shoes. On Wednesday, i went outside in a short-sleeved t-shirt, lightweight jeans, no socks, and sneakers.

It's almost like we skipped spring. Weird!

Stressful Friday and a reflective, relaxing Saturday

On Friday, there was drama with the new writer on my team. She isn't working out.

I gave her a task to update a crucial page in our documentation. The details were outlined in a PowerPoint presentation. Our manager also got involved.

Before our meeting on Friday, we had had three previous meetings. Each time, we had changes that needed to be made.

Just before our meeting, my manager asked me whether I had reviewed her work. I indicated that I hadn't seen the link to it. Instead, we did a bit of an analysis.

In the meeting, it started out okay, except that her attention started focusing on something else. Figures. Her attention span is all over the place.

The meeting got worse when my manager and she confronted each another. What rubbed me the wrong way was that she found out through another writer on our team that my manager and I had reviewed her work beforehand. She claimed that it was still work in progress, which was the whole point of the meeting.

I didn't feel great about being accused of prematurely looking at her work at first. However, when you do go into a review meeting, it makes sense to review what is currently there. Is that crazy?

The changes are pretty straightforward. She ends up doing her own thing while not paying attention to important details. This page details what versions of various application can work with our software product. It's important. You can't make stuff up as you go.

She has a ton of issues. Whenever she gets a task, she has the need to meet the person and hold meetings. The rest of our team does not understand why she makes things more complex than they should be. You are giving a document. Just do the work. Why do you need to meet that person immediately?

She isn't the right fit for us.

It is unfortunate that we cannot fire her, which my manager has hinted. We have yet another hiring freeze and he cannot afford to throw me back into development work.

I feel much better today. It helps to have a decent night's sleep to unwind.