I haven't really updated about my non-improv life all summer, so here's a brief-ish update.

* At the end of June, one of my coworkers retired and another one went on medical leave for hand surgery, which was supposed to be for about half the summer and it turned out to be ALL summer, leaving me as the only permanent employee left to do all the work.
Thankfully it hasn't been hugely heavy, especially since public service hasn't been that demanding (see below).

* We were allowed to hire summer temps, who have been a great help, especially on doing the long, tedious, piddly crap so I could work on harder things. Oh, how I wish we were allowed to hire more people permanently.

* We had to institute an “Officer of the Day” policy, in which one of the few remaining staff members has to remain “on call” at her desk for 2-3 hours a day for questions, but the more experienced student employees are now manning the desk and are told to ask us if something needs to be typed or is otherwise a weird question. Much to my surprise, this has worked pretty well and I haven’t gotten too many questions. Though this may be because they are bugging my coworker who is in charge of the student employees instead.

* Immediately the morning after the other two left, I had to change desks within my office at work to rotate in new people. I was at that desk for about a month-ish, which was a little ridiculous. It started giving ME hand pain while using it, for whatever reason, which disappeared upon moving offices entirely at the beginning of August.

* I can also say that sharing an office with the lady who runs the students is very entertaining, albeit rather loud. Her family is having various dramas going on right now, plus she has a tendency to blast the country music (like the retiree, though she has better taste in country and doesn’t make me listen to KNCI, which sucks) and/or have loud chats on FaceTime.

* I switched offices entirely to join my new work group after a month and change. This wasn’t supposed to be happening until I was able to go full time in the new group, but between coworker absences and covering for people, and ah...apparently the person trading offices with me being Very Prim and Proper and not dealing well with jokes and colloquialisms being used by everyone else, they asked me to move earlier. I don’t have a window any more, but the hand pain went away, I have a nice corner office, and I get along with all of those people very nicely, so huzzah! Also, they are totally fine with me decorating :) Time to bust out the decorations I didn’t get rid of in the move!

* Considering that the third person who moved into The Desk Of Hand Pain already is having hand issues...I think the office is really gonna have to do something about that desk.

* I went to a class on bullying with a coworker. It sounds like certain offices on campus (like the ombudsman--we have another one and another in training and ombuds from three other campuses were there today) are very concerned with the issue. They did point out that it may look like they aren't doing anything but due to confidentiality issues they may not be able to tell victims that they're say, sending angry letters--it'll look like nothing ever changed if the person ignores them. Hm.

They were also trying to encourage people to report, but I pointed out people aren't always in a safe place to do that. One person then said she was a bystander to an incident and reported it and still things didn't go well and she didn't even do anything wrong. Sheeesh.

* As of the end of August, my coworker from my old group is returning--albeit only able to type for parts of the day--and they are officially taking me off of the public service entirely from there on in. HUZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! It seems unreal and I keep kind of expecting they will pull me back in. I’ll still be doing 2 jobs because she’s limited on her typing at the moment, but they’re putting her on full time public service if she can’t type too much. She won’t like that, but hopefully it won’t be too bad since she is doing it during one of the quietest times of the year.

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