2002-03-21 - 12:06 a.m.

I work for a small company, with (not counting the numerous interviewers) maybe 15 senior staff members, counting me. Half of them are in some way my "boss."

Except for my department, there hasn't been much for anyone to do at the Big Company for quite some time, and there's that lawsuit that I haven't heard anything else about, and the Big Boss has been kinda (even more) edgy of late. They've been cracking down on me pretty hard lately, and unfairly, if I might add. It's just one of those cycles. Basically, I do a really kickass job all the time, and people will leave me alone. But sometimes I do a kickass job, but then the record will abruptly stop, and I can�t scramble to a chair in time. And I�m already the weak kid, so there�s no fear of retribution, and that just makes the punishment all the more severe.

My cornucopia of bosses weren�t happy with the rates lately. So I became the enforcer and the briber at the same time, and got �em up a little bit.

You gotta friggin� make more calls! Your productivity sucks! Here�s a free cookie! I really care about you! Even though you aren�t making enough calls!

So the rates at the Big Company have been really good, and they were great last night, and as I was walking to work, I stupidly thought to myself Oh, Gee Whiz, I don't gotta worry 'bout getting yelled at today!

It was a nice walk, and on my way in to Dunkie's to get my medium iced coffee with cream and no sugar, I saw the Big Boss' wife (she works there), who greeted me with some minute work chat, which was nice 'cause I don't really talk to her that much.

Rode the elevator up, no dirty looks from anyone, passed by the Irish Boss (who I really like), who didn't have any comments about how Aach! Tings were good, but they could of been bettah!, sat down at my desk and checked my work e-mail, cracked my knuckles, and set myself up for a nice peaceful day.

Hecate, who has been coming down on me lately, came snarling up.

Let me see the tracking sheets you've been using for Project X!

I wasn't tracking soft quotas on Project X. Lazy? No. That's her job. She's the project manager.

I should have known. So stupid! I forgot that when the rates are good, people find other things to complain about.

I told her that I'd bring these tracking sheets to her, and proceeded to the Irish Boss' office to see if he was tracking soft quotas on Project X. If he hadn't, I was going to go to her office to 'fess up.

Hecate set me up!

She was in the Irish Boss' office too--she knew I'd go to him first.

Well, I got reamed out in the Irish Boss' office, right in front of someone who has nothing to do with the project, and my face turned bright red, and I told her that I'd set up an Excel file to track her quotas for her, and that I'd save it on the network and update it daily so that she could track the quotas too.

I also stuttered out that soft quotas were best left unchecked 'till they were met, and that it was unproductive to turn away potential respondents when they still qualified.

She walked away in disgust.

I apologized to the Irish Boss for inadvertently getting him involved, and went back to work on my new Excel project.

It's my job to mind the real quotas�the ones that the client cares about. In this case, the client wants nobody who makes under $50,000, and who has never worked for a bank or a market research firm, and who is the primary decision maker in the household, and so many respondents can live in this area, and so many in that, etc...

Soft quotas aren't necessarily important to the clients, but are kinda important in reference to obtaining a representative proportion of the population. For instance, we wouldn't want 95% of our data to be collected from white males over the age of 65. (Not that that would ever happen, of course.) This is something internal that sometimes get sprung on me, and the more alert clients sometimes ask about 'em too.

The soft quotas that she was supposed to be watching were running amok. I was a little surprised that they were, too, because usually soft quotas kinda fall into place on their own.

Also having to field callbacks and manage the interviewers, and worrying about the extra work eating into my schedule, I set up her Excel file, and e-mailed it to the Irish Boss for quick review.

He came back. Dude came through for me. He talked to Hecate, and as it turned out, her quotas were off because the sample she had purchased was all messed up. The soft quotas were homeownership, age, and income, and (wouldn�tcha know) she had purchased her sample based on high income.

So, she purchased sample based on people who make lots and lots and lots of money (explaining our high refusal rate, which she was blaming my lack of supervision), and then was surprised that we weren't getting enough people who don't own their own homes, and people who were over the age of 65.

I don't know many people who�s annual income exceeds $100,000 a year, but I would imagine that they don't rent apartments (to live in), and I would also imagine that they're above the retirement age.

Well. She fucked up!

Still shaking, I went to the Irish Boss' office, and looked over at Hecate's. She was talking to another one of my boss', laughing and laughing.

Oops! She fucked up! Isn't that funny?

Pain + distance = comedy, I guess.

And here's the kicker. After the massive stink she made over the whole thing, when I asked her if we should start screening out people under the age of 65 and who don't own their own homes, she looked up at me as if I were the biggest idiot in the world, and calmly said

Didn't the Irish Boss tell you? We're not going to worry about those quotas anymore. Just take anyone.

Nice.

Classy.

I later asked the Irish Boss about this. Of course, she hadn't told him that.

So after all this belittlement, and all the time I wasted over the whole thing, she had decided that it wasn't an issue at all.

And if she did decide to make it into an issue, the holy rate on the project would have dropped by 90%, and she'd be in the Big Boss' office trying to cover up her fuckup.

Hey, not my company.

And you know what? I did drop the ball when I didn�t check Hecate�s friggin� quotas. Everybody knows that Hecate doesn�t know how to do anything besides maybe keep people honest by inspiring fear by harping on the most unlikely of issues. The Irish Boss had actually got into an argument with her before this project started about how she shouldn�t be managing projects. I should have known to be more �proactive� because she was the project manager.

And I should have been tracking those quotas. That�s the new rule now, and even though it�s new, I�m in violation of it, and that�s one more thing I did wrong, and it will never be forgotten.

And you know what? That�s good businesses, from what I�ve learned. And I do feel bad.

But you know what?

Here I am, fuming and also feeling guilty, getting yelled at by Hecate for not having caught Hecate's mistake.

And here I am, having to come in late everyday 'cause all of my bosses are concerned about "overtime issues," but not all that concerned that I've had to work every Saturday this month, and it's 3:00, and I have to prepare three different projects for 30 interviewers that are coming in at 5:00.

And C. (from work) isn't coming in 'till that time.

And I have to take my lunch break at some time, and I'm really hungry.

And the phone is ringing off the hook.

And I know that if the rates drop even a tiny bit tonight, I'm in deep, deep shit tomorrow.

And I have a training session scheduled for tonight, which bleed the life out of me more than anything else, and which will also drag me off the floor for three hours when I really should be supervising.

And I'm half nervous and half pissed, and full of coffee, and wishing that I could go out and buy more coffee.

And... Live from New York, it's Saturday Night Live? No. Nothing is coming to save me.

And even though I've been doing a really good job and still getting yelled at� now if something, anything, goes wrong, I'm really going to get yelled at, which makes me question why I still try so hard when all I'm gonna do is get yelled at. Oh yeah, 'cause I'm me.

And all I want to do is own a successful coffee shop in Allston and get all stressed because there's eight people in line, all happily waiting to give me money.