My Office

I work for a non-profit and generally, that's a good thing. It's sort of like built-in tool repellent. No one's in it just for the money. Which is good, since there's not too much to get. So I like the people, but the administrative and organizational hurdles are *killing* me. I present to you the reason I can't get my work done this week.

We use an online system to compile our student data and different programs are stored under different usernames and passwords. My computer crashed recently (another bonus of non-profit work--crappy technology) and I lost all of my old email, including the password for a new program group I had created. No matter, right? I'll just ask the online support people to resend the password. Someone else in my office is the "account coordinator" so the password can only be sent to her for "security reasons." (if only terrorists wanted to steal the password and enter data for me). Fine, except her e-mail inbox is full, meaning she can't see any of her new mail and though she usually means well, she's totally incapable of thinking of anyone except herself. In conclusion, she "hasn't gotten around" to cleaning it out and without that five minutes of busywork from her, I can't do my damn job.

One nice thing about having no power and basically doing what you're told all the time is that I can just sic my boss on the account coordinator and cool my heels. Outside of watching The Office a couple of times, I wouldn't really know, but I bet this kind of thing doesn't happen at a for-profit. Time is money, after all.

I'm starting to understand why people like construction work so much. See pile of materials--create building.