Geek Wannabe – BerthaBlog

The Drama Continues

Geek Wannabe Comments Off

Mar 142014

Speaking of drama with Queenie (she is often the source of drama in the office), part of the reason she is so touchy with Freda is that Freda really does know more about accounting, and when Queenie makes mistakes Freda will tell her.

It’s not that Freda picks on Queenie particularly; she tells everyone if she sees them making mistakes. I personally love that—I certainly made mistakes when I first started, being a newbie with little practical experience, and I welcomed feedback that helped me improve. But Queenie seems to feel threatened by it.

Last week Freda gave me a bank statement to reconcile. Five minutes later I brought it back. “The beginning balance is wrong,” I said apologetically. “I think Queenie’s deleted something.”

It’s been a problem for years. We simply cannot seem to get Queenie to understand that she must not delete transactions that have been reconciled. It’s not like you can do this accidentally; if you try to change or delete a reconciled transaction, Quickbooks will pop up a warning saying “That’s a really bad idea, ARE YOU SURE?” But she continues to do it, because she makes mistakes and doesn’t know how else to fix them. Then Freda and I have to go back and re-do whatever she fucked up, so she’s making more work for us as well as herself.

So Freda tried (again) to explain to Queenie that she shouldn’t delete reconciled checks. I don’t know what all was said, but for a little while Queenie was definitely raising her voice—to the extent that the Boss came out to ask what she was yelling about—and afterwards was muttering in Spanish for some time. She really doesn’t like it that Freda knows more about accounting than she does, it undermines her status.

More IT Stuff

Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Nov 062013

Recently the Boss bought yet another company.

The first I heard about it was when he started copying me on mail from the previous owner with a little flyer they had made to send out to the company’s customers, announcing the change. Boss needed me to print it to his new color printer.

Next Boss wanted to see if I could set up e-mail addresses using the new company’s domain—admin at newcompany.com, sales at newcompany.com, that sort of thing. The company already has its domain name, but they don’t have e-mail for it, just a website.

The easiest way I know to do what Boss wants, since we don’t have our own SMTP server, is to sign them up for Google Apps. That’s how SecondCo is set up, so it has the advantage of being familiar to the boss.

I contacted the prior owner and introduced myself, and said I’d need her login information with whatever registrar she used for the domain. We’ll also want to transfer ownership of the domain to the boss.

She sent me the login info for their website. Which is great, we’re going to need that as well, but it won’t help with the e-mail setup the boss wants.

Another gentle inquiry made it clear she had no idea what I was talking about. So I did a quick whois lookup, found out who she’s registered with, and e-mailed THEM asking what SHE needs to do to start the transfer process. Hopefully they won’t think I’m some kind of registrar scammer trying to steal their domain name.

I am more and more confident that I should be getting paid a lot more.

I Really Am Their IT Department

Accounting Stuff, Geek Wannabe, General Comments Off

Oct 302013

My LinkedIn profile title includes “accountant” and “IT support.”

I’m not even joking, I really am IT support at my company. I’ve been there long enough for my co-workers to realize that a) I can often fix their computer problems, and b) even when I can’t, I often know enough to quickly diagnose their computer problems and help them find a solution. So now when someone has computer problems, they come ask me about it. If I can’t fix it, then we call the tech support company.

Monday my office mate booted her computer and was greeted by a virus. You know the sort, the fake “Your computer is infected, click on this totally legitimate link to download our totally legitimate antivirus program” virus that won’t let you do anything else until you download their malware.

There are differing theories as to how it got there. Freda thinks the cleaning lady may have let her kids play on the computer over the weekend. I think the virus is on the server, and keeps re-infecting all the desktops. Alpha Geek thinks our IT guy never properly cleaned the virus the first time it showed up, and it’s been hibernating and re-appearing as a result. My money is on Alpha Geek.

Rather than call our IT guy, and pay him $150-200 to come out and remove the damn thing, they waited for me to return to return to work today and asked me to give it a shot. I did exactly the same thing the IT guy does: I Googled the virus and followed the directions for removal. Presto, her computer worked again.

Last week I also asked the boss if I could splurge and spend $30 on some RAM for my computer. It was on my desk this morning, so I popped it in. I’ve doubled my computer’s RAM; the improvement in its performance is noticeable.

The boss also asked me to see if I could install a check scanner for another computer in the office. (Easy enough, download drivers and run them.)

…and asked if I could set up some e-mail addresses for another company he just acquired.

I shit you not, I spent most of my day doing IT support, and maybe two hours doing the job for which I was originally hired.

Alpha Geek points out that people doing the kind of work I’ve been doing get paid a lot more than I’m getting paid. Well, yeah—I am looking for a new job. He thinks I should ask for a raise, that even if the boss says it’s not feasible, I’ll be putting the idea into his head that I should be getting more money. Alpha Geek feels that the boss could swing a higher wage for me if he thought he needed to.

Alpha Geek is probably right (he usually is), but I don’t think I have the political wherewithal to swing it. I know the boss has fired people with no warning in the past, and we can’t afford to lose my income right now. So I’m still working on the “find a new job” angle, because I don’t have a lot of faith in my ability to do the “convince boss to give me a raise” angle.

Personally I’d like to get into one of the bigger accounting packages, like Dynamics GP or SAP. Which would also require getting into a larger company that can afford such things, and would also be able to afford a nice luxy salary for me and some health benefits and a 401k.

Older Entries