Millie – The Frantic Volcano Mess

Once upon a time at a workplace, lived an exhausting mess. The kind of mess that can raise your heartbeat to fat burning mode just watching frantic behavior like a fruit fly. A fruit fly on the last day of living, desperately trying to get their ‘to do list’ accomplished. Millie was that, with volcanic eruptions causing others to deal with the lava flow, because nothing stops a workflow faster than a fire.

Easily made the main character in Clueless look like a top MIT Thinktank wiz, next to Millie. A complete lack of awareness of time, days, dates, and understanding of directives given and job duties required to be completed on time. On the obtuse rating scale, a solid 3. On the sweetness rating scale, a 9. On the frantic rating scale, a 15, that scale is 1 to 5.

Nine years in the workforce. Three years in this workplace; it’s her longest length of employment. Loved. Loved. Loved everyone she worked with – everyone was so nice. A front desk receptionist, beautiful happy smile to walk-ins. Tended to overthink where to transfer calls and if call volumes were high. Assigned easy parts of other workflows for two departments. Responsible for meeting room bookings, restocks, food orders, and more.

Millie personal life was equally frantic; relied on others reminding her of big or small events. No structure. No planning. Nothing to ground her. Revolving live-in relationships. An adorable six-year-old boy. Family and friends support varied; breakdowns happen when they are tired of emergencies. Late in and early outs. Distraction from personal calls and texts. Bill collectors. Days out. Exhausted paid time off. Forgetful. These factors impacted her work.

While Millie wasn’t a mean monster, she was a big problem monster. At the company she worked for, they did 30% government contracts, and those contracts required the data or finding package to be exactly as outlined in the contract or no payment until exactly right. Some of the packages could be three banker boxes worth with separators and specific cover sheets. Highly detailed work, that based on how it was presented to Millie should have been easy – double check everything was in order, create the divider page, and package, call carrier for pick up and note it in the system.

Admins in the building knew to double check meeting rooms and food order. Everyone stopping by the chat with Millie kept it short and never mentioned her work piles. Her managers always got an earful of what went wrong and always ended with ‘but we love how sweet she is, do you think you can work with her again’. Labor budget was tight. Hiring a staffing employee from an agency out of the question.

Either the two departments took back the work that Millie messed up on, or Millie would need to be terminated based on serious work quality problems.

The sequel – Coming Soon to a Workplace Near You.