Square in Round Hole

In every office environment I have worked in, I have came across an employee’s manual. My job has the equivalent biblical proportion of employee training guide that makes the Phoenix phone book weep with gratitude that its not the heaviest book I own.  Sad thing is, the phone book makes more sense then the training manual does.

I think, my unconscious goal at my job is, to find every possible answer that can not be found, in the employee manual.  What I despise worse is hearing  “Have you checked the manual?”  After I tell them yes, they still insist, “Well, did you look here?” Yes.  Then I hear this audible pause, and three minutes pass.  My resource has to consult their resources because I’ve found the impossible of the impossible.  After they find the answer, I then I ask those magic words, “So, where did you find that?” and to only find out, that it’s not in the employee manual.

I love proving to believers of the mighty manual, that not everything is in there.  What I find, disruptive, is that, if we find something wrong in the manual, to bring it up to the powers that be, to fix the issue.  I’m not kidding.  So, its upon us, common folk, to eradicate the mistakes that the upper management have approved to be put in there.  So, you taught me, and I’m going to teach you, what you have in there is outdated.  That makes about as much sense as telling a paper training dog to fold up the paper and put it on the coffee table after when he’s done using it.  I hope Fido wipes his paws, thoroughly.

I have a strong inclination that the person who wrote the manual, is left handed.  Not that I have anything against left handed people, but the whole training process, was kind of left handed.  Not backwards, just a different way of thinking.  “Lets not show you what we are going to talk about first, lets talk about it, then show you.”  I’m the kind of person who, you must show me, then walk me through the steps, not the other way around.  We had a month of this.  Its amazing I passed.  I am very ambidextrous after this whole adventure.

What I find, fun, and also frustrating, is the way of thinking, in the on-line employee guide.  I was looking for extensions, one day, when I first started, and believe it or not, they have it listed under the tag “transfer” as in “extension to transfer the call to.”  There’s a few other weird ways to find other things.  Someone, must have skipped a thought process.  It makes me feel like I’m intruding in on someone’s conversation with themselves.  Like the beloved little man that followed four short men with really large hairy feet on an adventure with a wizard that rhymes with Randalf. 

“Mike wants coffee…..yes, me wants Coffee……….Mike likes Coffee……yes…..Mike likes coffee very much…….me likes coffee………precious……lets tag that under “Bean” to see if anyone gets it’s for Coffee, as in Coffee Bean…….yes……lets shall, me wants too………my precious…….” 

“One manual to rule them all.”

Yeah right.

Makes me want to fling the whole darn thing in a volcano of Doom and call it an adventure.