I wasn’t supposed to work today. I covered for somebody’s evening shift and said person had to open this morning, but they were still ill and getting worse. So, I came in, and it was probably the most insane Saturday I can remember.

We started out with some major computer glitches that were on the corporate end and wouldn’t allow credit cards to go through. Well, one apparently did and we’re gonna have to get corporate to bounce back the money…except nobody’s going to be there to do it til Monday.

But there’s a new lady we’ve been training and she had to deal with this person coming back in, and I said she’d have to make a phone call and try to get somebody on the line (sorry, I’m being vague for privacy reasons). Long, story short–I’d already pulled up a cheat sheet I’d made for a similar scenario and told her to just read the cheat sheet and do what she could, and if she couldn’t get it going, we’d work with it on Monday.

Oh, how atrocious Monday will be, I just know it.

I printed out the cheat sheet as a reminder before I left today when I noticed something. I had it all condensed down to one page when I made it, but somehow it was longer. Then I saw a line saying that somebody had results calling department blah-blah-blah and gave the phone number, that it would make things go faster.

It was basically put smack in the middle of the page.

As far as I know, nothing else got deleted, but I got to wondering, who wrote that and put it in my cheat sheet.

And now it’s been an hour since work and I’m trying to not let it bug me.

I’m just wondering because I didn’t see a note saying who wrote it and when (which would’ve been helpful) and now I’m wondering if they actually tried that step and it worked, or if somebody in customer service told them to do that and it would work (and the person-in-question didn’t test it out).

I just really wonder because last time I called department blah-blah-blah, it really was blah-blah-blah. I’d been referred to them by the customer service line and got a 40 minute lecture from a representative of blah-blah-blah department saying that they dealt with a whole different financial issue than what I was talking about and it wasn’t their problem.

It’s not the first time customer service tried to send me that way, hence the reason I made the damned cheat sheet. Because the corporate line (the one we little peons at this end have to go through) is the only way we can contact anybody.

The department we require won’t take calls or anything from us–we have to get customer service to send them an e-mail with the relevant info regarding the problem (which I kinda understand, since they’d want to make sure they had a record and had it right in case of typos). But that does take a while.

The trouble is, I’ve had to deal with this mixed up financial scenario at least a dozen times, and more than half the time I’ve had to tell customer service what needed to be done, because they’d try to tell me it’s a tech issue, or they can’t do anything about it (no shit, hence the reason I’m calling them to give the info to the right people!).

I wrote the cheat sheet because different customer service will try to pawn you off to different departments or managers, or something. I wanted to streamline the process and it’s worked relatively well in helping shut down the naysayers who don’t know what’s going on.

And now this un-dated, un-initialed addition into my cheat sheet’s annoying me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the “queen of the cheat sheet–and it is law!” or anything like that. It’s there to be used–but either corporate changed policy for which department actually deals with this annoying financial issue that crops up, or this closer-to-home co-worker just typed in there what customer service has tried to tell me over and over to get me off the line.

I just want to know so I can make a correction if needed or verify the circumstances, to make sure it would work. Anything that prevents a 2 hour phone call with lots of customers getting annoyed and glaring at the back of my skull is a good thing!

And to think I wasn’t supposed to be working today.

And to think I know I will let this issue bug the crap out of me all day if I don’t try to do something else.

So, before I left (knowing it was gonna bug the hell out of me) I took the printed page and wrote a question mark around the section asking “since when?” and “how’d you find out?,” in case that person comes by. I really have no clue who put that in there, of course, it’s an open file on the desktop, so it’s not some crazy spygame (the whole point was to let people access it who haven’t made the phone call a dozen times).

Maybe that’ll bring some enlightenment. At least, I can’t do anything about it til Monday, and if there’s a just and loving deity in the universe, maybe I won’t have to deal with it ever again.

I tend to get into my own niche and make things go a certain way in any job I am in–I carve out my spot and take on certain responsibilities, and I feel it might make me sound like a lecturing know-it-all that can’t let go. I just want things to be a touch easier for others who might come in after me and not know what’s going on.

That’s why I stick around til I can leave post-it notes for the next shift, or see where somebody’s made a complaint and pass it on…I just don’t want people caught off guard.

And if somebody changes something, please let me know!

I suppose I am an overthinking worrywart and control freak in some respects. I just want to give credit where it’s due and make a change if something’s wrong, too.

In the meantime, my heartburn’s giving me more annoyance than the work-thought that I’ve put on the page already. I put a question mark and invitation to clarify–nothing else can be done for now.

I just gotta make sure to breathe deep, get some heartburn stuff, read some good books and play catch up on chores, and get that bit of annoyance out of my head.

Working on it…maybe researching my possible heartburn triggers will take the edge off (hee hee).