Tell Me to Keep My Mouth Shut

Turkey got a new personal assistant a couple of months ago. Now somebody new slices his salami. Let's say the new personal assistant's name is Nicki. I like Nicki as a person. She's fun to talk with, and it'd be fun to hang out with her. For maybe two hours, three hours tops. She's got a frenetic energy to her that, mixed with Red Bull, I find a little exhausting. She's 28, and acts like it. The office manager is 11 years older than I am, and even with that big of an age-gap, we both feel like Nicki's distinctly in a different generation than we are.

Nicki confuses aggressive with assertive. Nicki thinks she is the best thing since organic, whole-wheat, locally sliced bread. She does not know how to pull her own weight. She thinks she is smarter than everyone around her. Now, to be perfectly honest, I think with a little bit of training, I could do a better job than Turkey at what he does. But Nicki has never worked in an office together, and based on how she gets along with all of us, she clearly failed kindergarten.

Nicki works remotely sometimes. She is supposed to be able to access our Outlook system via her iPhone. Yet she is forever calling me from afar and saying, "Hey, can you give me Julie Ducket's phone number?" Here's the wild and crazy thing: she does this when she's in the office too. Forever claiming she can't find someone within the Contacts. I've told her more than once that she needs to have access to Turkey's calendar and contacts, and if she doesn't, to call IT and make them make it happen. I guess it's easier for her to just ask me.

All work emails sent to Nicki are supposed to both go to her work email address, and automatically forward to her gmail. She has a habit of not doing tasks Turkey gives her, and then claiming she didn't receive the email telling her to do said task. Last week she claimed she only gets emails forwarded to gmail if the Outlook program is open on her work computer. I don't believe that, but fine, so the second Turkey relayed Nicki was telling him this, I got out of my seat, went to her computer, and opened Outlook.

Three hours later when she still hadn't done the task, she told Turkey I had only turned on her computer. That I hadn't understood her Outlook program also needed to be open. Bullshit. She just didn't want to do what she'd been told.

The very first task Nicki was given two months ago, was not done. Office Manager and I were supposed to do it last week since Nicki didn't do it, but we were both busy doing our regular work and didn't get around to it. Tomorrow, Nicki leaves for Germany for three weeks (don't ask) and her substitute started today. I decided to punt, and gave him this file cabinet project from hell.

When I told Nicki that, she was happy, and I gently said I'd gotten the impression she simply was never going to do it. She nodded in agreement, and told me, "That ... stuff, isn't my forte." Yeah, no shit. Seems like a lot of things fall into that category. Problem is, when Nicki doesn't do things, someone else has to do them. It is not acceptable (to me) when that person is me!