Notes about work

1. It's weird to me that most of the office is gone before or right after 5pm. Then again, I have a hard time getting there before 9am most mornings.
2. Sometimes I can't tell if the office Dwight is insulting me or commiserating with me. I'm pretty sure it's the former, and if it is I wish he'd keep his unsolicited thoughts to himself. There is a reason technical writers and not engineers are in charge of documents meant for publication.
3. If you're going to claim that editing a PDF is too hard for you and you choose instead to print a 118 page document and edit it by hand, have the courtesy to write legibly.
4. And be more specific than "fix" or "rewrite" or "yuck." (Seriously--those are actual review comments I got this week. What needed to be fixed? What information am I missing? What is so "yuck" about the default administrator's name? Help me help you help our customers!)
5. Whoever put the carnival-style popcorn maker in the break room is a genius.
6. Anything I assign a timeframe to will take 8 times longer than that (1 day=8 days). This is why I should always start early. I almost never do. So it's my own fault when I'm overwhelmed and stressed...well, most of the time it is.
7. My boss is awesome. That is all.
8. I hate it when people try to force their personal pet peeves on me as though they are "correct." I don't like to use "have" in professional writing, but I'm not about to rewrite every sentence that contains that word just because I don't like it (If it's poorly written, that's another matter). This isn't even counting "grammar nazis" who are only aware of 4 or 5 rules they remember from high school but insist on correcting everyone who breaks them. Sometimes it's appropriate to end a sentence with a preposition. Even in business writing.
9. It's nice to know I'm not the only writer who feels lonely sometimes. I miss having peers in the next cubicle.
10. However, I get more done not having another writer in the next cubicle.
11. Plain celery seems to make my tongue fall asleep. (Yes, this is work related.)
12. You may not have seen or read the e-mail, but I did respond to your question. Yesterday.
13. It's frustrating to copyedit the writing of someone who is outsourced from India or China. I can understand them, but the writing is still terrible. English is a tough language to navigate, even when it's the primary language, let alone a secondary one and speaking is a lot different from writing.
14. I know that I mostly like my job when -- even after all this complaining -- I don't mind working through the weekend once in awhile. In fact, I'm annoyed about all the non-work stuff I have to do that keep me from working.
15. #14 Doesn't make me a workaholic. I don't work weekends if I don't have to but it's nice to have the option if I need it.
16. It's nice to be able to stay late because I don't have to rush to rehearsal or a performance.
17. It's nice to know that I'm needed because there is always so much to do :D At least, I hope that's what it means!