Six Flags Day

Our company paid for everyone to go to Six Flags, New England yesterday. It went off without a hitch, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, so I consider it a success! It was the very first event that I've ever planned - I'm so glad that it went well. I took a few photos, but since bags aren't allowed in most ride lines I didn't have my camera on me as often as I had thought I would.

As soon as we stepped inside the gates, we made a beeline for this ride, aptly named "Scream".


I definitely screamed. Like a little girl. It raises you up in the air, all at once and unexpectedly. And then it raises you to the very top, and drops you without warning. So two scares in one ride. Perfect! You can see we had lovely weather. ^_^ Here's a nice pic of our COO (to the left), a random child, and our Patient Advocate (to the right).


My team consisted of one of our java programmers, myself, and our HR Director (my boss - who is awesome, BTW. No joke.) Scooby and Scrappy were unfortunately not part of our team.


Another team got an awesome photo with Wonder Woman and Robin, the Boy Wonder!


Since it wasn't too hot out, there were lots of characters out and about all day. Here's a nice shot of Bugs Bunny's bum. Also some other folks you might recognize! Daffy and Pepe!






This guy, from the commercials, is much more creepy in person than you might think. Very weird.


One of the things I was most impressed with were the flowers throughout the park. Their gardeners/landscapers did a fabulous job. Check these out!

















I wish I could create hanging baskets like those! The mixture of flowers and different colored and textured leaves makes for a fabulous palette...

T Minus 22 Hours

Tomorrow is D-Day for the company’s trip to Six Flags, New England. Let’s get you excited about it too. Here are some fun photos. The Superman Ride of Steel....


And from the top...


The Mind-Eraser...


This whole she-bang has been planned by yours truly, so I’m a wee bit nervous. Charter bus is paid for and confirmed. Tickets, meal vouchers, park maps, and photo scavenger hunt instructions are printed out and divided into personalized welcome packets for each employee. Prizes are approved and ready to go. We’ve arranged a bus challenge, which will be the first team building exercise of the day.

Each person has submitted a fun fact about themselves that not many people know. Mine is “I once had a piece of artwork featured in a state art show.” No one here knows that I’m artistic, but if they use their imaginations they should be able to figure it out. When we run out of these questions, we’re moving to Trivial Pursuit. We’ll do a bunch of those until people get rowdy, bored, or physically combative. Whichever happens first. The prize for the winning team is a Flash Pass, which allows the group to greatly lessen (oxymoron, whoa) the amount of time waiting in line. Highly coveted. By me especially.


The photo scavenger hunt is going to be awesome. I made this one up myself! I got help with a few of the items, but the coup de grace is for employees to find look-alikes of the upper management team (CEO, VP, COO, etc) and to ask the random park guest to take a photo with the group for extra points. Ought to be interesting!

I promise to post pictures from our trip. And hopefully some funny ones from the scavenger hunt.

Office Love

I work in one of the coolest offices in Providence. I know it. The management has approved an Associate Recognition Day on June 26th. My committee struggled to come up with ideas for where we could go, but I suggested Six Flags New England, in Springfield Massachusetts, which is less than 2 hours from our office. We didn't think for a minute that it would be approved, since we also included a Greyhound charter bus and meal vouchers for a total cost of about $3200. And that figure doesn't even include the day's wages for 43 employees who would all have the day off. It was APPROVED!

I can't even believe it. My idea! On top of it all, I've been put in charge of contracting the bus, ordering park tickets and meal vouchers, communicating the news and the details to all of the employees, and organizing a fun team building exercise for the day. I've never had a project this enormous or this important. People are thrilled. As they should be. Hopefully this will help them realize that we work for a fabulous company. For real!

And to put our awesomeness into perspective, I'm including pictures from the office. I walked around today and took photos of all of the things that I love about the decor, the atmosphere, and the philosophy. Let's start with my desk. We're allowed to decorate our work spaces as we see fit. Within reason, of course.


Love that multi-color, beaded pen holder! I've had it since junior high, so that's about half my life. It never fails to add color and character to my desk, wherever I've worked. And you see my lovely little cast iron teapot. Obsessed! And yes, that IS a Star Wars pen that you see in the black holder. The picture was taken about a half hour after Scott proposed on Block Island. We're standing on the porch of the Manisses Hotel, where we stayed that weekend.


Here's my computer (and the spreadsheet I worked on all day today for the Finance department - eck). You'll see that I have my teas, my Isabel pic, and my orange from the kitchen. They order fruit from Peapod every week so that we have healthy snack options while we're at work. Crazy awesome, right?


Here are my books, which I literally just keep there to make me happy. And my Office daily calendar which makes me laugh every morning when I change the date.


My desk drawer. I keep my lip gloss, eye drops, and hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works in here. The essentials. And an old award from two years ago that reads "Mamy Thanks". It's become a department joke because spelling/grammar mistakes are ridiculous when they're on company awards. =)


My teacup from home, my purple pen, and my me and Scott's iPod. Yep - they don't mind if we listen to music all day, as long as our work gets done. Badass.


The office is right off of the highway. I-95, to be exact. Lovely view. Not really - but it's good to be able to see when traffic is getting heavy. So we know whether to leave soon or to wait it out.


Our owner/president/CEO's collection of signed posters. Mamma Mia came to the Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC). This is signed by the cast. Also the cast of Brotherhood signed this other poster. Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter movies) is one of the main characters. When they're in Prov filming, Isaacs trains across the street at our gym. Oh yeah, we have a gym. =) Aaaaan yep - that last one is signed by the six cast members of Friends. Super-badassness.


The buffet where many impromptu management meetings take place. That's because it's right in front of our cappuchino machine, which is stocked with coffee beans from Italy. Ooooh yeah.


Modern wall sculpture accentuating our love of all things coffee.


There she is in all of her automated glory. Ain't she gorgeous?


Our entryway is wide open, with natual lighting from the skylight overhead. The decor is very industrial-looking, and the walls are covered with past company advertisements. Frankly, Scarlet, *company name* does give a damn...


Some fun sculptures atop our filing cabinets. And a nice view of the unfinished ceiling, painted sky blue. This looks lovely, but really gets noisy when it rains. So loud, in fact, that we need to ask people on the phone to speak up. Kinda annoying. But cool-looking! =) Also note the lack of fluorescent lighting, which we all appreciate.


Now we'll take a peek at the seating area in the CEO's office. Love the colors in here. And the artwork. And the jerseys. I didn't take too many pics in here, since I'm pretty sure he had only stepped out to get a cappuchino in the kitchen. So I had to be quick! =)


I did take the time to snap a shot of his amazing, salt water aquarium. Isn't it gorgeous? Filled, of course, with similar fishies that are in Pixar's Finding Nemo.


I love the small details that you can find everywhere in here. These flowers are on a cute little table in one of our conference rooms. This room is used most often for our HR department meetings, since it's the smallest (and nicest!) one.


We all know I love a bookcase. And this computer screen is enormous. They use it for company-wide webinar meetings, since we have locations from Calais, Maine to Salt Lake City, Utah.


And I love this bar, these hanging lights, and this crystal bowl (which is actually an engraved award).

Thanks for taking the tour! The office was decorated by the CEO's mother. She has a great creative eye. You should see his house! It's right on the water in Jamestown RI, with an insane view of the Newport Bridge. But no photos of that one! If I ever get any, I'll be sure to post 'em if I can get permission. =)

I'm still working on my frames - getting them taped and papered off for spray painting. Also, I'm trying to paint some more of my planters for Kimba's Garden Party coming soon! =)

Hump Day. Not as fun as it sounds.

Oh God someone pull the fire alarm. This week, work has been kind of slow. The weather is gorgeous, and the sun is peeking through the office windows, begging me to step outside. I should be working through my pile of filing, but I can’t seem to muster the energy. Nay, I cannot summon the motivation. I have plenty of energy, but I’m sitting here wishing I could be at home, tackling the projects that I’ve been dreaming up over the past few days. Perhaps I’ll request Friday as a vacation day. Note to self.

Despite my frequent complaining about not having a job that satisfies my literary urges, I truly have an excellent job. I don’t work in an office with depressing fluorescent lighting, and I don’t have to speak with customers. I work with people who call me because they know that I can help them. They don’t phone with the assumption that they’ll have to come in swinging, ready to fight for what they want. They know that it’s my job to help them, and that I will most likely be able to do that. That’s a plus. And I really can’t stress enough how glad I am to work in an office like this. It’s gorgeous, it’s hip. The décor is so very right now. So there’s that.

Who's Supporting Whom??

When you’re on the phone with Payroll Tech Support (and I know all of you often are) J, they may require a quick Excel 101 lesson in the middle of your session.

Today should have been liberating. Today should have been my chance to really cut the cord here in the ‘ole HR department. Clearly this was not meant to be. Clearly the payroll gods don’t think I’m ready for the responsibility. Put me in, coach! I swear I can do it. I swear it’s the computer’s fault and I didn’t mess up payroll. Even the Payroll Tech Support guy said that it wasn’t me... *sigh* Of course the payroll files had to go all screwy TODAY. Today, I was processing payroll all by my sweet little lonesome. I know how to do it. I’ve been watching. Learning. I’ve had my hand held every Tuesday since August. I knew I could do it. What I didn’t know was that payroll hates me and wants to laugh in my confused face as I wait on hold for someone from support to help me.

Now, no matter what I say, everyone’s going to think that my technical difficulties were due to some bizarre mistake I’m not admitting to rather than the TRUTH – our software screwed up and even the support dudes couldn’t seem to figure out what was going wrong. In fact, they never did figure it out. After deleting batches and reloading files several times, they finally loaded correctly on the last try, much to the surprise of Fabian (what a name) who admitted that he had never seen the program do this before.

The best part? I waited on the phone for close to 45 minutes while Fabian (his name warrants stressed, italicized letters so that you know to say it with eyes rolled and a heavy British accent) apparently couldn’t figure out where the mouse was on his computer. Remotely connected to my work computer through the internet connection, I could watch in agony as he clicked around aimlessly. For the first 10 minutes, I watched as he tried to figure out how to use the AutoSum function on Microsoft Excel. After several minutes of confused noises floating through my phone from his end, I decided to throw him a bone and explain it to him.

Which made me wonder... Who the hell is supporting whom?!?!?!? Today’s lesson (other than the Excel 101 already provided to FAAAAABIAN) is:

Technical support ought to implement the following employment requirements before hiring:

• Know how to use a computer.
• Know how to use a mouse.
• Know how to use basic Microsoft Office software.
• Know your ABCs, how to count to 10, and your basic shapes and colors.

  

You can't write meeting minutes in iambic pentameter...

Well - you can, but no one notices and it takes a bit longer.

It’s hard enough making the transition from “I’m writing my thesis on... ” to “I’m in the real world now and no one cares what I think unless it involves their paycheck or medical coverage” without knowing that I probably won’t ever get to have an intellectual conversation about Macbeth between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

I used to be a literature major in college. That was almost two years ago. Now I take care of payroll and benefits for a whole lot of people who don’t care that I have a degree unless it was in Accounting or Business Administration.

“English Literature, huh?” – (Man in a suit who looks like Falstaff but will never know)

“Yes, sir.” – (Me)

“Whatcha planning on doing with that?” – (Falstaff)

Oooooh sweet Jeeeesus here we go again. I dunno – I thought I might get a job someday with a company that values superb communication skills. Too much to ask, huh? I guessed as much.

So what does one do with an English literature degree in the modern corporate office? J