Work frustration, but comforted by a sore bottom

It has been a while since I have ranted about work. Unfortunately, the cycle has restarted.

Back in November of last year, we hired two contractors. My manager fired the male contractor a month later, as he was highly unproductive. The female contractor showed promise. She was eager to learn and was hard-working.

She and my manager do not get along. My manager insisted that she start work with the rest of her agile team. She prefers to start work at 07:30. Only one other person is in the office at that hour and that person does not work directly with her. She didn't compromise with my manager. Instead, she still comes in at the same time, but takes more breaks and leaves work half an hour later.

My manager has set up team lunches every Friday, so that we can all bond. No team member is obligated to attend all of them, but these invitations caused stress for the contractor.

Late on Monday, my manager forwarded an e-mail from this contractor, who essentially resigned and said that this week would be her last with the company. Frankly, I don't think that she can give less than a week's notice. It's just not classy.

I had suspected that she would jump ship. Being sick for a week was my tipoff. On Monday, she cited getting her basement attended to in the morning due to flooding. She was adamant that she would be away in the morning, but would resume work from home in the afternoon. I have a feeling that she knew that she no longer wanted to come into work.

So, my manager has yet again asked me to step in and take over a departing writer's tasks. I am frankly sick of bailing people out. One writer goes on vacation and I am the only one who ended up subbing for her. Another writer quit a year ago. I picked up her slack. What about last December when two writers could not get their act together and do their jobs? Another writer and I slaved away to get the job done under tight deadlines.

I need to seriously consider finding another job. I feel, yet again, that my career is stagnant. I do not want to be filling in for folks who quit.

Apparently, we have three positions open. I can only hope that they all get filled so I can do what I enjoy doing these days, which is teaching folks how to write rather than being taken for granted as someone who can save the day when we are short-staffed. However, I still need to see what jobs are out there. Perhaps I can find one that is close to home and that I find challenging.

I will continue regularly scheduled fun posts soon. Yes, my backside is still sore from my recent spanking. It makes me feel loved that my guy would spank me after a long day of travel.

Venting is needed over an incompetent co-worker

There is never a dull moment at work. Never.

Last Wednesday, I was working from home, as I tend to do on Wednesdays. My manager sent me an instant message just after 09:30. He rarely comes in that early, let alone pings me on that application so early in the day.

He told me that a writer has resigned. I had a ton of thoughts flood my mind.

This writer has been with the company for over three years. As much as I am thrilled that she has found employment elsewhere and can only wish her well in her new position, I can't say that I will miss her as a writer on the team.

It sounds harsh. However, for the time that she has spent with the company, she has never successfully installed our product software. Frankly, she doesn't understand how our software applications work. It is a problem, as she needs to clearly write about them.

She has a difficult time expressing herself. Again, it has always been problematic and it shows in her work. She makes mistakes. She gets the information from software developers and basically places it in her documentation without fully understanding what it means.

She isn't a writer. She is more a data entry person who just wants to call it a day when 17:00 hits. The last intern who was here knew more about the product software than this writer did!

It has been clear for over a year that she does not like what she does. Frankly, she should have left the company a lot sooner.

I asked her on Friday whether she has a job lined up. She told me that she does. She also told me that "we'll see" how she does in the new job.

I found her reaction to be odd. If I were about to embark on a new job, I would be excited. I didn't see, hear, or feel any of that enthusiasm from her.

She wasn't a good fit on our team. My manager hired her. I knew within the first week of training her that she is dependent on others to tell her what to do. She isn't an independent thinker. Moreover, she is not a technical person, which is difficult when you are expected to write about technical topics.

This next statement may seem uncharacteristic for me to say. I do not want to pick up her workload. I have been doing that already with the writer who left last November. I clearly cannot do that again with another writer. I am overloaded.

A few weeks ago, I got annoyed at my manager for stating that I do more because I "earn more than the other writers." I do not think that I need to do even more than I do, which is the equivalent of two writers, simply because I make more money that the other writers. I make more money than they do because I have a graduate degree (they don't) and I have more writing experience than they do. In short, I am at my current salary because I have earned it through hard work and experience. 

Anyway, my guy and I have talked about this issue. We have both decided to focus on what I enjoy doing, which is training and working with co-op students, and writing. Someone else on the team needs to pick up the slack, as I have been doing it all the time. I back up writers who go on vacation. When I go on vacation, I do not have a backup.

Life is unfair, which isn't a newsflash. However, I should not be the one who always suffers because we are short-staffed and there is a hiring freeze taking place.

I actually feel a bit of relief that this writer is leaving. She is the one who decided to shun me from having lunch with the rest of the team in the past. I haven't enjoyed talking to her about anything since she treated me that way.

She tried to patch things up when I came back from my last vacation to Seattle. I was actually talking to another writer. She decided to hang out with us and join our conversation. Why now? I didn't even want to share what I did on my vacation with her. She didn't even want me to have lunch with her. I am thankful that I don't. I can't be around that negativity that she possesses.

Anyway, I am done with venting. Thanks for reading along. I will have a more cheerful post soon!

Work changes thanks to a resignation

November has just started and things are shaking up at work. And, it's not in the direction that I had hoped.

The newest writer, who has only been with the company for less than ten months, handed in her resignation last Friday. I am mixed about her departure. I actually had a premonition about it a couple of weeks ago.

This writer is extremely defensive. I have spent more time calming her down than most. Part of me would like that precious time back if it were possible.

She took on one of my original writing roles. It paved the way for my reviewing everybody's work. As a team, we already have more work than we can handle. She just added more to it.

This writer is a diva to a certain extent. She would arrive at the office after 10:00 am and leave at 17:00. Her reason for leaving so soon was to go home and "cook for [her] children." Nope, they didn't want to microwave food made the night before. They demanded fresh food. So, she got the okay to leave at that hour and work from home at night.

The problem is that you cannot keep tabs on her work at night. Her pace when completing tasks was slower than expected. She also was a bad influence on the shy writer on our team. They spent anywhere between half an hour to an hour having coffee breaks. After my manager spoke to them, their extended coffee breaks still took place.

So, it is likely that I will go back to writing regularly and work for the same project manager who is difficult. I am not pleased with that. I can only hope that another writer is hired soon, because I like my role as a reviewer while pitching in to write other types of documents. Of course, it would be best if this project manager were to retire or leave. We will see what happens.

My guy thinks that my boss can't afford to have me write full-time, as he depends on me to keep tabs on the team and ultimately manage their workload, among some of my duties. I hope that he is right.

It was a good move last week when I decided to book next week off. My guy is currently in Cairo. I will be doing a road trip to Ottawa to visit my former professor, who ended up being a good friend over the years. I have not seen him since he moved from Toronto to Ottawa nearly four years ago.

I hope to resume writing posts that are more enjoyable than this one. I just needed to let some steam off. Moments like this one make me want my guy to return home soon, so he can reassure me that things will be okay. We will see each other in less than two weeks.

Tomorrow is another day. Let's hope it's a good one!

Ball and chains -- paddle included

Oh, dear!  Sorry about the huge delay.  I am happy to report that I survived my first week at my new place of employment.  It has been quite the life-changing experience.  I commute by train to get to downtown these days.  I work for a corporation again, coming full-circle after a twelve-year cycle.  I am working with a friend I have known since we were five years of age.  Most importantly, folks in my department are nice, they treat me with respect, and they seem genuinely happy that I am a part of it.

There was lots of drama at my old workplace, including an idiot of a president who decided to tell a number of my co-workers that I was "leaving the company" before I had submitted my letter of resignation -- before actually expressing my intent to quit.  He is such an unclassy guy, to the point where he refused to talk to me during my last few weeks employed there.  Instead, he asked about me through his sons.  It's not that I'm unapproachable.  He is just an idiot who has never truly appreciated the work that I've done for him, including my netting two business awards (a.k.a. fiction awards that are "won" by shelling out some dough) all by myself, as I was forced to write falsehoods during the application process and felt sick to my stomach.

Of course, chatting to one of the human resources folks upstairs about his premature remark did not help.  She basically let this breach of confidentiality slide.  I feel it's wrong -- potentially, this could happen to another employee again.  I just gave up.  This event had occurred on my third-last day with the company.

I went back to my desk downstairs. DJ thought I had left. I knew that he had actually saw me go up the stairs nearly forty minutes earlier. He now wanted to talk to me in private. I had no choice. I had an earbud in my right ear and the left one hooked on my shirt. He took my iPod off my desk and pretended that it was a leash.

"This is like a ball and chain," I said to him.

"This is like a dominatrix scene," he said.

"You're scaring me."

"If this is the case, here, you walk in front of me," he said, pointing out that I'd be the dominant one.

He lightly hugged me. This whole event intrigued me.
For quite some time, I have thought that he is a closet spanko.  The fact that I had hinted a light dominant-submissive scenario and that he went with it was fascinating.  He does have a nice backside.  It's great to fantasize about putting him over my knee, pulling down his pants and briefs, and spanking his bottom until he either cries or until his bottom turns a beautiful shade of pink or red.
Whether or not he feels the same is difficult to tell.  I do know that he was looking at my bottom when I was removing my laser mouse from my work computer.  I could see him doing so from the corner of my eye.  It was flattering.  I don't know if he's interested in spanking insolent bottoms like mine, or if he had something else in mind...
Speaking of my insolent backside, G decided to spank me after I had come out of the shower tonight.  Lying face-down on the bed, with a pillow under my tummy, my panties immediately came down, and light slaps were being administered.  Moments later, the slaps became more intense and sound across each cheek.
G stopped for a bit, and came back with my wooden paddle hairbrush.  I love a good birthday spanking, even when it's not my birthday.  I got the same number of paddled swats on each cheek as my age.  I squirmed towards then end of each count.  My bottom was warmed up and that's really an understatement!  I got an extra six swats for being an extra naughty girl, which got me exceptionally aroused.
I've been typing this entry, lying on my stomach.  My bottom aches -- in a good way.