Married Single Mom: January 2007

It's rush at work. All of the colleges across the land are heading into second semester and need books. So they call us. We usually bring in a few temps during this time to help with the increased work load. For one reason or another we had problems this time. Finally we got our 5th choice to take the job. She comes in and starts training. Turns out she's dumber than a Box of Rocks.
Boss Man calls me into his office and tells me her thinks Box of Rocks (BoR) is intimidated by her trainer and wants her to sit with me. I eyeball him a moment and then tell him I don't think that's a good idea. I'm not that unintimidating myself, plus I have a low threshold for fools. Boss Man tells me to just do it.
Do, I take BoR over to my desk and get her plugged into my phone. We go through a few phone calls, me explaining everything step by step. After a bit I start quizzing her little. "So, if a customer calls in and wants to check stock, what do you type into the command line?" Blank stare from the Bor. "Right here...what do you type? I'll give a hint, it starts with I" Blank stare...sigh (and for those of you wondering you type II...so the question was pretty damn easy.)

So after awhile we are talking (I've basically given up training at this point and am just letting her sit at my desk) and she tells me about the classes she is taking out at the local community

college. She commented on how overwhelmed she was by the class teaching Windows 2000. My jaw almost hit the desk. Overwhelmed? By Wind owes 2000? Our system is an old clunky A/S 400 based dinosaur. You need to be quick and nimble fingered to do well.

Now I am not heartless. Maybe she needs the money. So I go into Boss Man's office and let him know that she will never ever be able to get on the phone. Maybe she can do something repetitive, like paper orders. No checking stock, no looking up back orders, nice and easy. We also decide she can fax invoices to people, that also very easy.
I was so WRONG!!! She did a total of 12 order yesterday. 12!!! I can do 12 in half an hour while I'm on the phone. She did 12 in 8 hours. I took 81 orders yesterday. 163 phone calls, did my cancelled line report, bargain book reports, handle minor issues like damaged books. We aren't even asking her to do a fraction of this. sigh...
When I saw what she had done yesterday (or not done as the case may be) I went to Boss Man and told him he needed to get rid of her. Her salary comes out of the department budget, which, in the end, works out to whether we get raises at the end of the year. We don't mind this if she was actually contributing enough to pay her salary, but she's not. Boss Man was a little skeptical about bringing some else in at this late date. I told him to just leave the position empty, we are covering everything anyways. Boss Man said he'll think about it. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
On the same note, I told hubby all of this and what I have been saying to Boss Man. Hubby is starting to think he needs to send a sympathy card to Boss Man for having to deal with me.