So last week, last Monday, I come in and who do I see? One of the guys who started the temp job with me in early September! He was gone three weeks, and I thought he was done. I mean, I was able once to take two weeks off from another temp job to help Father tend to The Store because Mother and my sister were going to Europe. But, well, to be frank, I didn't suck at my job the way this guy does.
I mean, don't get me wrong. He's a really nice guy, and he probably was able to take a leave of absence because he is dealing with family issues. But honestly, I thought what I was able to do all those years ago was something completely forbidden now. It would make total sense for my employer to just find another person, as they have time after time after time to fill all the slots they need to for this project. And, just like most of those guys, I thought he lost his job because he has not done a good job.
It was readily apparent that he continues to struggle with steps, and it seems as if he has let a lot of information that is wrong through down the line, to where we and a few others of us are in charge of cleaning up the claims before we take the important step of billing insurance companies, just because he didn't care. I have seen this firsthand; I have had to go back and change around insurance policies, redo insurance numbers, and even deleting stuff he punched in in their entirety. There was one huge mistake, which is too complicated to get into, that my supervisor has explicitly said was the #1 thing not to do, and he, through lack of focus or indifference, did it, causing my boss to spend the better part of a day changing it back. Don't worry -- his, uh, substandard performance is something he's aware of, and something I and the other billers have told him on occasion. He understands, and I think we all love him anyway.
The other thing about him is that he has this tendency to be, um, very expressive while sitting in front of his computer. He is constantly furrowing his brow, sighing loudly, and cursing under his breath. He still takes the time to ask questions of the two people he's sitting next to, one of them being me, but after a while I got a little sick of the distraction and immediately put my headphones on to shut him out. He got the point, and so the questions he asks me are at a minimum. Nevertheless, all the foot-stomping, finger-tapping and gesturing he does after he presumably screws something up always gets my attention. Honestly, I was totally OK with not seeing that, and I had gotten very used to not seeing his fidgeting to my left. In fact, seeing him back last week disappointed a part of me, won't lie.
Now to the good parts. He's genuinely a good guy. I can talk about sports with him. We can shoot the bull about a lot of stuff, and we can rip on each other about stuff. Plus -- and again, to be totally honest -- he has sucked less badly than before his leave. Finally, and this may be a backhanded compliment, but once again, I think he can see this viewpoint, the fact that he was able to come back to work from a long leave when his work has been so poor proves that, once you reach this magical mark of claims a day, you cannot get fired before the project is over, even if you make a whale of a mistake. That makes feel really good. So, welcome back, friend.
Unfortunately, he took back the spot of a guy who began work here two weeks ago, the last week this other guy wasn't here. He seemed to get the work and, unlike this one girl who quit after just one day without telling us nor indicating she wasn't liking this position, appeared to like it. I was used to having that spot next to me completely empty. It allowed me to spread my work to his area, and I need my space, especially with this job. But beyond asking a couple questions (which I understood because he was just starting) he was completely quiet -- no noises or gestures, just straight-ahead working. I liked this guy. But that Monday, my old friend appeared and this guy was gone.
So where did he go? Did he find another job? Did he quit and not let on? Or, and this is what I think happened, was he told he was being rejected, partly because my old friend said he was coming back? He may not have reached production, but he only had three days. I didn't reach production until my sixth or seventh day, and he only got, what, three? If that were the case, sorry, but that is totally unfair.
And no, this doesn't have to be an either-or situation. There is (or was, until yet another person came to start work today, and, cross your fingers, he'll be back tomorrow) a desk open. It totally was possible for him to stay and for him to come back, and we'd be up to our full complement of flu people. I'm pretty sure this new guy would've gotten it by now, and we'd be one well-oiled machine, laughing with each other along the way. But, uh, no, not quite.
Still, hey, nice to see him back.
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