snazzykat: Bridging The Generation Gap (or "Why do old people suck?")

---

I have for many years been of the opinion that senior citizens are little more than toddlers with vast amounts of money, the ability to talk, and copious free time. I know this is a broad generalization to make, but I have based this conclusion on many years of experience catering to the "senior" generation. To clarify, I am mostly referring to my own family, but there are many other examples I could point to where the toddler theory rings true. For the most part, I feel senior citizens have earned the right to be cranky little children if they damn well please. If I reach 80 years old I intend to be downright cantankerous, and enjoy every minute of it.

I do not, however, hope to act this way at the ripe old age of 45.

We have a real life TV Drama in our office. I know that most people will be able to identify with this situation. There are a total of 7 people who I work very closely with on a daily basis, ranging in age from the youngest at 31 to the oldest at about 55. There are many other players who come in and out of the sitcom from time to time from our regional office, like "Lillith" from Cheers or something. It has become very easy to bury our heads in the sand of the company, and I think it is this illusion that the world revolves around our little daily chaos that adds to the attitude issues of some of our "senior" staff members, who seem to REALLY BELIEVE that the world revolves around them.

We have been going through some major changes since November of last year. To make a long story short, Corporate decided we needed a new manager in our office, so we got one hand-picked for us. No one was too thrilled about it, but as time has gone one I have really come to like our new manager. My opinion is not shared by the "senior" staff members, who are probably close to 20 years older, 50 pounds heavier and have 45% more wrinkles than she does.

Miss Manager came into our homely little office and almost immediately began a remodel. Personally, I have a slight problem with the spending on so much money on paint and furniture when we are still editing on a Mac g4 in one of our editing bays, but that is an eternal struggle between the techies and the straights that will never end anytime soon. But, I digress.

For those who don't already know, I work in Advertsing. Local Cable Advertising to be exact. Our organization is divided into 3 core areas; Sales, Traffic and Production. I am a Producer. In my office we have 2 Sales staff, one for :30 Ads and one for PhotoAds. Both can be difficult to work with, but today's story is about "MiMi"

I call her "MiMi" because it is the easiest way to describe this person. If you have ever watched an episode of Drew Carey, then you know MiMi. Trust me, you'd crap your pants with laughter at my sheer accuracy in this description.

MiMi sells photo advertising, starting at $15 a pop for a week and going up and she makes a killing at it. She has been at it for 7 years, and she knows just enough about computers to be dangerous. She has had the same photo system for most of the time she has worked for the company. This system runs on a Windows 95 machine in a DOS prompt window. The system loses files...I mean just "loses" them. My coworker JBX and I know just enough about DOS to find some of them, or to restore from backups. We have been band-aiding the system for the entire time I have worked for the company, its time for a new system.

But, here is the kicker. Corporate bought a new system for us 2 years ago, and we are still not using it. You get one guess why.

MiMi would try to tell you its because it "won't do what we need it to". The truth of the matter is we aren't using it because its new. That's the real honest to God reason. MiMi cannot handle change.

Miss Manager has spun and bent the world around to try to please MiMi. We have given up hours and hours of work time in a vain attempt to make MiMi happy. We had done everything slight of setting up the new system and running it for her. Production moved out of our large editing room to make accomodations for the new PhotoAds room. There has been new paint, carpet and furniture for her, and yet today I actually witnessed her crying in her shiny new office because she didn't want the printer on her "credenza".

It was at this point I decided I needed to leave the building before I went completely insane. Good thing it was after 5 so I could leave. Just as I was going out the door Miss Manager looked at me with a glint of "pissed off" in her eye and said "I'm sick of the freaking crying". I nodded my agreement and walked out the door, got in my car and lifted up a prayer to heaven that I would never be so set in my ways that I would make everyone I come into contact with completely miserable, and I truly meant it.

Sadly, this story is not nearly over. We haven't even gotten to the part where we actually USE the new system. It's a race to see who quits first: The old crapped out system, MiMi, or the rest of the staff out of our sheer desire to be free of the BS.


Mood: Frustrated

2-HeadedGiraffe - (*(..)*)

---

snazzykat - (digs scrawny pale guys.)

---

darklord - ()

---

Your account has been disabled.