Jack Of All Trades, Boss Of None

Everyone has a day at work where they feel like the only intelligent person in the entire building. I had that day a couple of weeks ago. Basically, a piece of mail came in that was sent to our customer's lockbox address, which is our building, because the lockbox was peeking out of the top of the envelope window. But if one looked down at the lower half of the window, a totally different address in Florida was showing. You had to work to find our customer's lockbox address because it wasn't clearly showing; someone actually peeled part of the envelope up to more clearly see the lockbox, ignoring the Florida address that was clear and easy to read. The return address was to our customer's lockbox. To me, this was obviously a case of mistaken mailing. The post office sent the piece of mail to the lockbox even though it was intended for the Florida address. But absolutely no one saw it my way. My team lead, my supervisor, a learning coach...all of them advised me to process the contents of the envelope to the lockbox instead of returning it to the post office as a missort. This was a two-day argument. One piece of mail came in and I refused to process it, and the next day, a second mistaken envelope with the exact same problem came in. My supervisor had to kindly ask me to process both to our lockbox before I finally gave up and did what I was told. It frustrated me because the company in Florida that should have received that mail will be sitting there for who knows how long waiting for two invoices that won't get there because we were so eager to process any mail that may have our client's lockbox number anywhere on it that we effectively intercepted the invoices and mailed them back to our client. It doesn't affect me personally, but I just hated doing something that was clearly the wrong option. But that's what I had to do in the end, because I'm just a worker bee and I have no real power. The funny thing is, my team lead had taken to calling me "Boss" as a nickname because I'm so adamant and forceful in stating my point, in this situation or any other, that I guess I act like I run the place according to her. I'm not trying to run the place, I'm just trying not to do stupid things like open mail obviously intended for another address. I know, I know, how silly of me.

The prospect of moving to Memphis with my fiancee and leaving this company isn't looking good right now either. I have two networking angles that I'm working, but I'm not optimistic that either will work out. One of them told me straight up that the bank job market in Memphis is the worst he's seen it in 30 years, and this is bad because he's the executive vice president of one of the larger banks in Memphis. As a courtesy, he asked me to e-mail my resume to him anyway. The other angle is the executive director at Chase who claims to have a nephew coincidentally employed at a bank in Memphis. About three months ago, I e-mailed my resume to my executive director for forwarding to his nephew, but he took forever to actually send it off. He kept walking past me every day saying "I haven't forgot about you" and "I'm gonna have something for you soon." It was just this past week that he finally informed me that he was planning to send my resume, but you could call it a bad sign that he then asked me if I had ever sent him my resume previously. Yeah, about a million years ago, buddy. So I'm not counting on that working out either. I'm sitting in limbo right now, searching Memphis job sites and finding not much, while my fiancee waits for me to move down with her in advance of our October wedding next year. I'm trying not to move down until I secure employment, but I may have to just make the move if I don't see anything worth applying for. The move and the wedding are potentially stressful life changes off in the distance. Facing me down right now are my continued financial woes and another cold winter looming, and the winter brings more financial trouble with the heating bill and physical trouble with the way my knees and ankles and toes seem to severely swell and flare up in a freezing climate. Yes, I'm looking for part-time work to ease the cash flow pain, and I may even work overtime on Thanksgiving. However, as much as it seems like I'm depressed and bitching and moaning, I'm sure that better days are ahead. I'll be married to a wonderful woman this time next year, I'll be in warmer temperatures, and I'll be sharing household expenses. I just gotta stay strong and fight through these tough times, and eventually, my patience will be rewarded. So long as I don't snap and go postal on my workplace for telling me I'm wrong when I know damn well that I'm right.