Friday, April 8, 2011

Essential? You be the judge.

Last shutdown I was, by some horrible mistake, deemed essential and worked the 28 days only to have my sitting-at-home-on-their-butts brethren get paid also.  I didn't begrudge them the pay, I knew they had bills and it certainly wasn't their fault.  I did begrudge them the sitting on their butts thing though.  Let me tell you what I do so you can decide if I am essential.

Absolutely nothing.

And to make it worse, I require an army of people to help me do even that.  I work from home which requires a lot of technology; a blackberry, a laptop, a secure token to generate a password, an aircard, etc.  On any given day, I am lucky if I have one of the those things available.  The technology doesn't fail.  I do.  I lose things, I break things, I drop things in toilets, I forget things.  Go in any airport bathroom after I have been there and you will find a treasure trove of my things; my badge, my credentials, my purse, my coat.   I have broken records for password resets. 

My office has written SOPs to deal with such incidents.  When I left my token and government issued blackberry last week they were ready.  One was assigned token duty each day, carrying their phone and my token everywhere so I could call and get my password, several times each day. Another picked the phone and token up at the office and rode the train home.  I met him at the station in a trenchcoat with a briefcase full of cash.  I am back in business and just in time.

I am essential again.

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