The Marci Rating System

One of the challenges of working in an office-type environment is making sure you look “busy enough” to appease anyone who might be watching. This is a fool’s game, but workplaces are weird. Anyway, it means I read fic at work by downloading pdfs from AO3 and emailing them to myself.

[This does not in ANY way prevent my work from recovering these files or seeing what I’m doing. I mostly figure they have other things to worry about that are more important than slapping my wrist for reading on the clock.]

Currently I’m working through the ‘time travel fix-it AU’ tag. Which I highly recommend! These fics are:

1. Long — it’s nice to come back to the same fic again and again throughout the day, or over the course of several days.

2. Plotty — but often based on plot I’m already familiar with, which is helpful when I’m reading it only a little bit at a time.

3. Satisfying — it’s the fix-it tag! Things are fixed! Yay! Confetti! It’s a parade!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I have now been OFFICIALLY TRAINED in how to lead meetings. Except don’t call it leading, because the “lead” doesn’t do that part. That’s the facilitator’s job!

The common thread of the training was using words that already exist to mean something else. Like, apparently we address “tensions” now? But don’t think that means something causing tension; it’s really more like a suggestion or a proposal. (Here’s a thought — why not just call it that?)

I was genuinely confused by the end of the training — at what point of the meeting are we supposed to actually go over the agenda? There was a step for adding things to the agenda, but no step for actually talking about it.

(Oh yes, and meetings have 10 steps, now. Unless there are no tensions, and then there’s only 5. WHAT.)

My prediction is that this “new system” will go the way of the last brilliant meeting innovation (each day of the week was dedicated to a specific type of meeting) — it will stick around for a few months until everyone agrees that no one is actually following it, and then disappear forever, never to be spoken of again.

(I also predict that when it IS enforced, people will play along in the conference room, and then go have the real meeting in the hallway or at their desks afterwards. Which is, somewhat humorously, exactly what the system is meant to eliminate.)

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In this case, it’s going to be the landlord. Not quite as exciting as the ghostbusters, but on the other hand, I’m not really ready for the excitement of a ghost mouse in my wall.

(Honestly, not ready for the excitement of a regular mouse either. But I didn’t get a readiness survey before it moved in, so it may not know that.)

Yes, a mouse has returned. (I hope it’s only one.) I’m not really sure what the landlord can *do* about it, since I don’t think the mouse is entering the wall in my apartment. (I’m on the middle floor, so it could have access above or below my apartment.) And it’s not actually *in* the apartment proper, so it’s not like I can put out a trap or something.

But I can’t sleep with it rustling around in the wall *right next to my bed* (ugh), so I am hoping Something Can Be Done. (I’ve already dragged the mattress into the other room, so I did manage to sleep last night.)

Oh, nature.

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I have So Many Feelings about commission-based pay for salespeople. None of which are politically expedient to share at work. So I’m summarizing the rant here so I can stop thinking about it.

Unpopular opinion time! (Note: these are based on how things are set up in my current work situation. I understand that commissions and commission-based pay can be set up in a variety of ways, and that it may work better in some situations than others. I’m not saying I could never be convinced, but I certainly haven’t been yet.)

1. Commission-based pay puts self-interest at odds with the the best interests of employees as a group. Arguably worse, it puts self-interest at odds with the best interests of the customer.

2. CBP creates unnecessary divisions between those who receive it and those who do not in an organization, reducing cooperation and workplace morale. The rallying cry of “we’re all in this together” can’t hold up against the reality of commissions proving it to be a lie.

3. CBP falsely treats salespeople as acting independent of the support system of the rest of the organization.

4. If executives think commissions motivate employee performance, what is it that they think is motivating their non-commissioned employees?

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Training a temp this week, and it’s sort of awful. (Not the temp themselves! They are great!) But we’ve never really had a temp doing this before, and everyone is in that weird situation of being all, ‘Welcome! We’re so glad to have you here! Temporarily!’

It seems immensely wrong that this person is being asked to do everything the rest of the team does, but with no benefits, no overtime, virtually no training, and — oh yeah, as soon as we hire the “real” new person, the temp will be finished, but no guarantee of how many weeks that will be.

Someone from “upstairs” (aka the fancy salaried employees) told me, ‘Well, they’re looking for work through a temp agency, that’s what they get.’

I’m pretty sure only the fact that I wavered for a second between bursting into tears and saying something laced with obscenities — and therefore had that second to take a breath and tell myself to walk away — saved me from a meeting with HR.

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TEAM BUILDING UPDATE! (How glad am I that I’m not in charge of planning our team building events? 1000000% glad!)

This just in: we will NOT be attending a movie this Friday, of either the ‘post-apocalyptic desert car chase’ or ‘rawr dinosaurs’ variety. A couple people had scheduling issues, and then one person pointed out that watching a movie together isn’t necessarily team-building material, so the plan has been revamped. Again.

New plan: well, it’s been pushed to mid-July, so who knows, really, but it sounds like mini-golf is the new plan. I am ambidextrous at mini-golf, in that I am equally bad whether I play lefty or righty. (Which is actually kind of good in this sort of situation? Nobody likes a ringer, is what I’m saying.)

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1. I can’t believe I broke my November streak of posting every day!

2. Working from home update: as one of my coworkers so aptly described it, “This working from home thing is not all I dreamed it would be.”

3. I was supposed to be working until 8:30 pm Wednesday night. I lost power at 7:43 and didn’t get it back until sometime last night. So that didn’t quite work out as planned.

4. Thanksgiving? Well, we gave thanks for being together, and it was actually a really nice evening. Turns out electricity is sort of an important component for some aspects of the holiday, though. We will persevere and have Thanks-again-a-giving when power is restored at the homestead!

5. I STILL cannot believe I broke my November streak of posting every day!

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I spent wasted got paid for 35 minutes of time at work today that I spent watching a webinar. It was a webinar produced by the company I work for, so it’s not like I was trying to be devious, or anything. I just thought it would be good to know what the end consumers are hearing.

Wow, though.

Here’s what the webinar was about: If you want people to be healthy, you need to consider their entire lifestyle, not just symptom relief.

WELL, ALERT THE PRESSES! WHO KNEW?!?!

Here’s what I wanted the webinar to be about:

1. Let’s talk about legislation to make more “foundational health” services eligible for coverage under existing insurance, and how to get the most out of what’s already covered.

2. Let’s talk about reasonable ways to make “foundational health” less expensive and more accessible.

3. Let’s talk about how to promote “foundational health” in workplace environments and how to advocate for your own health in effective ways.

4. Let’s MOVE ON from trying to convince people that health is more than just a pill and a chart of numbers, because we GET IT, but hearing another exhortation to buy locally grown foods and reduce our stress isn’t actually helpful.

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1. I have thrown myself on the mercy of my parents’ health insurance broker. It feels a lot like I have failed some test of adulthood. He advice so far: be patient.

2. I have paid money. I am relatively confident (95%?) that I have correctly paid the premium for the plan I applied for over the phone.

3. The good news: I paid online, so that negated the need to call Anthem again. Great rejoicing was had at this news!

4. The bad news: My online profile is still trapped in “identify verification” hell. I have no idea what this means. No one else seems to either, but there is a general sentiment that it is probably bad.

5. [As far as I can tell, the government is happy to sign you up and take your money regardless of whether or not you've actually completed all the verification steps. I'm just concerned hugely freaked out that if I ever try to use this insurance, the verification saga will come crashing back down like the Sword of Damocles.]

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I spent about two hours on Saturday signing up for health insurance through THE MARKETPLACE. (I think it deserves an all-caps name, myself.) And since it was kind of a hassle, I thought I’d share a few suggestions for anyone who is planning to sign up before March 31st and has, like me, procrastinated until now.

1. JUST CALL. Seriously, I thought it would be easier to do it online, because I’m super visual and terrible at listening, but I managed to mess up the online identity verification step somehow on Friday afternoon, and by the time I’d spent nearly half an hour on the phone (most of it on hold) on Saturday morning being told that I would need to *snail mail* a copy of my social security card and driver’s license to the US government to prove that I’m a real person, I finally thought to say, “I feel like I’ve been diverted into some sort of disaster scenario. Is there any way I can just start over?” Astoundingly, the answer was yes.

2. If you do use the online sign-up, DO NOT BELIEVE THEM when they say entering your SSN is optional. It is not optional.

3. Pick your plan online first, before you start anything else. By the time I’d gone through the whole song and dance of yes/no/I agree a million times, the last thing I felt capable of was making an informed choice about which plan I wanted. Picking one from the “Learn” pages the day before saved me from a complete breakdown.

4. I made liberal use of these phrases: “I don’t understand what that means” and “Can you stay on the line with me while I try to do that?” My emotions followed this general track: confident, polite, confused, frustrated, angry, weeping, hopeless, slightly encouraged, bored, confused, hopeful, tentatively optimistic. Luckily, the weeping and hopeless part was pathetic enough that my call assistant took pity on me and forgave me for the angry part.

5. Bring entertainment. Hold music is boring. A fanfic tab on standby is always a good choice.

6. The line is open 10 am to 8 pm on Saturdays. (And weekdays, different hours. Maybe 9 to 5? I wasn’t listening to that part.)

7. Write down ALL THE NUMBERS.

8. One thing I was not expecting: they wanted to know if the income from my 2012 (not 2013) tax return was approximately the same as my projected income for 2014. I gambled yes, but I honestly have no idea.

9. You can change stuff later. This was sort of unclear, actually. But yes? If it’s something that would affect your tax credit amount, or if you moved to another state, I think.

10. Have snacks on hand. And a beverage. And lip balm. (That last one may just be me.)

GOOD LUCK. MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR.

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