Unoccupied

You may recall my having written a few weeks ago about how I would be doing part-time from-home work. The thing I am doing has a deadline of early July, at which time I am going to Europe anyway so it needs to be done in the next few weeks. It is is getting closer and closer and I am starting to get freaked out about it as I haven’t done any work at all. None.

Through no fault of mine, mind you. No, it seems that the IT people where I work (or at any rate plan to work) are actively protesting my employment or something.

* First it took them weeks to decide they would/could not give me a type of account that would make it so I can use the work servers remotely through my own laptop. Part of the hold-up was that an important lady there was on vacation leaving the staff frozen with indecision.
* Then it took them a while to ship me a laptop.
* Then they did not give me the password I needed to operate the laptop so I had to wait on that.
* Then they did not give me the cable I needed to run the laptop so I had to dig one up myself (which I opted to do rather than wait for them to ship me one.) They also didn’t install all the necessary drivers on the computer making the touchpad not work right. Call me picky, but I sometimes like to use a laptop on my lap rather than have to rely on an external mouse.
* Then they didn’t give me access to the server I needed so I had to wait on that. Somehow they didn’t think that, like the password, I might need to have that when the computer arrived (which, kind of hilariously, they had shipped overnight).
* Then it turns out that the files I need to access are too large for the type of connection they gave me. They have no practical solution for that; instead I have to do obnoxious, tricky, and time-consuming work-arounds.
* Then it turns out they didn’t install the software I need to do my work anyway so I had to go hunt it down, along with the other things that need to be downloaded to make it work.
* Then it turns out they didn’t give me appropriate rights on this new computer so I can’t install that software I need and spent so much time downloading.
* Then they decide to give me some kind of “remote access” (isn’t that what I needed back in the beginning?) to access that software instead of letting me download it. Except that the connection doesn’t work.

I do not have high hopes of this being resolved by the weekend.

GRRR. I already only have a few hours a day to do this since I can’t work when Baby is awake, which they knew when they asked me to do this (still, they have me slotted as working 20-29 hours a week, which is impossible). I really don’t know if I’ll be able to get this work done in time, but as things are now there’s clearly nothing I can do about it so I’m trying not to stress out. The VP who asked me to do this work knows about these problems and is “disgusted” though that hardly helps me get my job done.