Sit Back and Relax

I know I just wrote yesterday, but I need to tell you all about my work situation. It’s quite comical. I think I have written about how slow things move here, but you really can’t understand until you visit and see it for yourself. The word "efficient" does not exist here. (Ask my parents about exchanging money at the bank.)

Before I get into the details, I need to explain my job. I am working for the Trust Department at a Canadian Bank. I work with two other temps that work for the same company I work for. The bank hired us for a 3-4 month project to collect information from their paper files and enter it into a new database. Basically we are pulling files from a file room and searching through them. We have a list of documents that the Trust Officers want to be in every file. So we look through and check it off in the system if the document is in the file. I realize a monkey could do this, but for what I am getting paid, it’s worth it.

So last week we switched to files that are located in the file room on the 3rd floor (we are on the 4th). Because it is so unorganized, we were instructed to email a guy named Randy with a list of the files we wanted. We were instructed to send him 10-12 file requests at a time. When they have located the files, they either call or email us and we go pick them up. I say “they” because 4 full time employees work in the file room.

So we all sent out our initial requests at about 9am. They phoned us at 11:15 to tell us they were ready. Now please realize that they are walking into the file room, going to the shelf that has a letter on it that corresponds to the first letter of the person’s last name. In other words, the files are in alphabetical order on the shelves. They have to reach on the shelf and pull out the file. Then move to the next file on our list.

To explain how slow they are moving…...

One afternoon I needed to take a quick look into 40 files. So instead of having them pull them, I went into the file room and did it myself. It took about 15-20 minutes to pull 40 files. It took 4 of them 2 hours and 15 minutes to pull less than 30. While they are pulling them, we don’t have any work so we just sit. We can email them ahead of time, but if they have more than one list, they get confused.

The next day, we received and email from Randy that we needed to send all future request lists to Yolanda. I think he was just too overloaded. Hours later, I went to check on my request (that was sent before Randy’s email) and they didn’t have it printed. I told them I emailed it to Randy (whose desk is next to Yolanda and in the same room). They said that I needed to email it to Yolanda. I asked why Randy didn’t print it or forward it because I had already been waiting 2 hours. Their response was, “We decided Yolanda should be in charge of the emails, and the rest of us will pull the files.” So I went back to my desk, sent the email to Yolanda and waited another 2 hours for my files. Keep reading, this gets better.

Yesterday, I went down to check on my files. I sent them an email at 8am, it's was 10:07 when they told me they weren’t ready. Why, you ask? Her response was, "We don’t have them ready yet. Yolanda is covering the reception desk this morning, so she didn't print your email yet. That is why we haven't pulled them." So I said, "Would you like me to print it and bring it down to you? or could I email it directly to you?" She said, "No, all emails should go to Yolanda then she will print it whenever she gets back and we will call you when they are ready, maybe around noon." Isn't that crazy? I had no work to do until I got those files.

Today I sent a list at 9am. We hadn’t heard anything at 11am so we went down to check. This is good….. Yolanda is on vacation today. Did they bother to tell us? No. And even funnier, they still want us to email Yolanda, but also print what we email her and hand deliver it to them. It’s like I am working in a Saturday Night Live skit.

My boss just says that is the way it works around here. So I decided to take the next couple hours to email my friends, update the blog, and do the USA today crossword. Unbelievable, huh? They are wasting so much money having us sit around. But just like Travis’s job, they account for that when they budget projects. They know it will take 2-3 times longer to get anything done. They have to have a certain percentage of locals working for them to comply with government regulations. So they just budget more to account for the lack of speed and efficiency.

With all this free time I will probably be blogging more often!!!!!