Wrapping My Brain Around it All

Is that the idiom I'm looking for?
There are days when those three or so years of not knowing any English start catching up to me.

A work update.
Anything to avoid kitchnering, I guess, cuz that's all that's needed (aside from dreaded end-weaving-in stuff) to finish up my mom's socks, FINALLY. Slowly but surely, broken wrist and all...okay, strained muscle, ripped tendon, and all, little by little, I finally got 'em done. Almost. But you won't believe me until the picture is posted...so instead I'll update you on the "haps" at the big-time property leasing accounting thing I'm doing.

Cuz I am doing that now, not just assisting assistants or data-entry monkey business. I got a promotion. With little to no accounting experience (there was that bit of Accounts Receivable-A/R for Bookshop Santa Cruz back about a million years ago), I've been promoted to taking care of the invoice paying for a group of buildings. We're seeing about the wage increase bit, cuz right now I seem to be a rather underpaid accounting-type person. Until I'm paid more than the lady they just took on...more about her in a bit...I'll not be too happy a camper, you know?

Right, so I'm trying really hard to do that whole "benefit of the doubt" thing at work. Maybe I catch on faster than others in certain areas. Yes, that's it, because I can easily see where I am super slow to catch on in the more "social" aspects at work.

See, I'm not the "cool" person on the job. I'm not a former "anything exciting" like the other temps. Former school teacher? Former library page? Yep, life in the fast lane for me. I don't watch a zillion hours of TV that I can chit-chat about. I don't live in a cool neighborhood. I'm not in the midst of adopting a kid...so yeah, I'm not in that circle of 'peeps' at the office. I grow on people...you know, like a mold :). Hey, 7th graders thought I was the coolest...I'm not too sure that helps my reputation here...

But I am a very quick learner. So quick that in less than 4 weeks they moved me up from assistant paper pusher to Paper Pusher with Capital Letters... And they brought in a new person to do the filing and data entry and stuff. She is from the same agency as the others, who are from an accounting-based agency. They get paid accounting-type wages, because they supposedly already know what they're doing.

So she must be playing dumb. Really. Please? Because after this week one of the more competent people is going off to play dad and she's staying. It hurts. She failed a "monkey test" the other day. It's what the guy who trained me to do A/R called the more tedious but necessary parts of the job, like putting together a banker's box to store the older files in. She couldn't do just that. The instructions are ON the box...all the edges are LABELED...and yet, right. I had to stop what I was doing and show her how to do it, three times...and then gave up and made up four as she was still working on the first...and doing it backward. I am trying to let it all go, really, but it's hard. A list is accumulating that I'm hoping will iron itself out as she gets used to what she's doing.

We all have learning curves, right? Some are just more or less slopey than others? Yes? Please? Aaaauuuuummmmm....

I really should actually thank her. Maybe. I can't be too sure until they release the details. Thanks to taking time to help her out, I was late leaving work. I missed my bus. When I finally got one going my way, we were stuck in horrible traffic. There was an accident, involving a bus and a vehicle. They'd turned off the LED bus numbers, but it looked suspiciously like the one I took to get home yesterday (it had the same ads on the side I saw). It might just be a coincidence, but nonetheless it made me feel a bit weirded out, to say the least.