Beech Tree News Network

Someone recently asked me how many notebooks it would fill if I wrote down everything I know about my job.  I gave him the same answer you would if asked the same question.  It depends.  Would you want me to write down simply the process of how the job is supposed to work?  One notebook would do the job.  Now, if you want me to include a section on what to do if things go awry, that would require two extra notebooks.  A large part of any job is problem solving, because things and people have a tendency to break down.

               Stephen Hawking said, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”  In view of that perspective, I was an idiot when I first began my current job.  I think I had a meltdown at least twice a week.  When I look at where I am now, I believe I may have acquired a little intelligence, because I have learned not only to adapt to change, but actually to expect it.  When I arrive at work each morning, I really don’t expect things to go my way.  I walk in, look around, and see if there’s been a power surge that might have knocked out the computer or check to see if all the guys showed up for work or look to make sure whoever is in charge of set-up money that day actually remembered to set it up.  My job has made me a pretty skeptical person.

               I have an office job, and I’m the only person at our business that does my job.  The guys know how to run the register, and that really helps me out, but they don’t have a clue when it comes to things like accounts payable or accounts receivable or how to print out a stock status report, etc.  Those kinds of things are my responsibility.  (To be fair, I have no idea how to fix the automatic wash or the vacuum cleaners or change machine when it goes down, like the guys do.)

               I could fill one notebook with the process it takes to run the office, but it would take two for all the trouble shooting it takes when something or someone throws a monkey wrench into that process.  I could easily explain how to set up a charge account for a customer.  I could even explain how to call for approval numbers from the State Highway Department in Frankfort when one of their trucks comes in for an oil change.  I can recite the phone numbers and fax numbers for that department and for Enterprise Fleet and WEX Fleet, and I can explain how to go online in order to submit charges to Element Fleet.

 It would be difficult, however, to explain how to negotiate the mine field that occurs when one fleet is saying that it is another fleet’s responsibility to foot the bill.  I tap danced through that scenario last Thursday for a good hour and thirty-five minutes.  I was on the phone being transferred from one office to another.  I was faxing invoices and submitting invoices online, and I still don’t know who is going to pay me.  Someone is, though.  I will make sure of it.  My husband, Garey, calls me The Mosquito—my superpower is buzzing around, annoying the daylights out of people until I get what I am owed.  It would be difficult to explain how to do that—how to be just annoying enough.

Something else that would be included in the trouble shooting section is how to get around problems with the credit card machine and the computer.  If you are an office person, you know how computers only understand exact code.  Each item has its own name and must be entered that way.  For instance, Valvoline Synthetic 5W20 motor oil is VS5/20 in computer speak.  It has to be entered precisely or the computer won’t recognize it.  Thankfully, the people who developed our Lube Soft system included this little code called MISW.  It stands for miscellaneous wild card.  When you type in those four glorious letters, you can put whatever you like in the blank beside it, as long as you know what price to charge.  That code has saved me many a time.  The credit card machine is also a persnickety little thing.  By trial and error, I have learned how to get around a chip malfunction and a defective magnetic strip, and it is not to throw it out into the parking lot and blast it to smithereens with a twelve-gauge, like my husband, Garey, suggests I do. 

In the book, HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, the author suggests it was done by Irish monks who wrote everything down, so it could be passed down to the next generation.  I probably do need to write down how to do my job, just in case something happens to me and the guys are left to fend for themselves.  I wouldn’t want all my hard work to end up in the parking lot, blasted to smithereens.