I Was Supposed To Do Data Entry, But I Didn't!

I'll be honest: These days I don't look forward to the days I have to work in The Main Department.  It's kind of ironic since I initially interviewed just for that position.  But I now work in three other departments, and the autonomy and the relative lack of structure over there are factors that have become much more important to me.  Meanwhile, I have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to this particular skill set in time because I am working pretty closely with other people (so they'll notice when I'm not there in time).

Yesterday/Thursday, my only day of the week in The Main Department, I was hit with another curveball: Go into the lab and help cut open packages so we can all process the samples that come in ASAP.  People in The Main Department rotate doing that job, but I have to tell you that it's been more than a year since I have been in the lab.  I pretty much forgot what to do.  Add that it's no fun picking up samples of piss that have leaked, and I spent the first half of my workday on my butt, putting labels on plastic bags (technically I didn't open a single package at work yesterday/Thursday), hoping to God piss didn't seep through my latex gloves and get on my hands, and holding my nose so I don't have to smell said leaky piss.

On top of that, for the second half of the day I was assigned (and I knew this on Wednesday) scanning duties.  These scanners, which have been workhorses scanning tens of thousands of forms I'm sure, now break down with regularity.  If a form gets jammed in there, I have to take it out and smooth it over.  If it jams again, I have to make a copy of it.  I did that several times; add to it that the shipment of packages I was sent into the lab to open was late, and, well, we were all late.

But in another irony, what I did not do was the very thing I was initially brought to this company to do, the skill set I thought I was going to deploy when I got this job: Data entry.  I really thought I was going to be banging away on my keyboard entering data into our database.  I didn't do that at all.  I was busy in the lab putting labels on packages in the morning and scanning forms (from the packages that were being opened in front of me) in the afternoon.  I just was not able to sit down and key.  For some reason, I find that to be very, very funny.