Indispensable-R-Us

Realised that I haven't been updating in here for a while. Been really busy with work for the past week. Everyone at work is stressed up and anxious about the upcoming anniversary celebration. Our most cheerful Sam-suke (formerly known affectionately as Sam-ruto), was much quieter and "subdued" these days. And Ama-sexyback-lina was also not laughing as much as before.

It's already stressful enough with our own jobs incomplete, with the boss "chasing" after us, and with the boss' boss demanding this and that, instead of the that and this agreed on initially. Even though we are working in a school environment, and that we are the non-teaching staff, we still have our own jobs to do. But somehow, some people do not seem to understand that. Maybe they think that we are sitting there in the office, dwiddling our thumbs, shaking our legs, waiting for jobs to come in. I guess they think that, since we are not teachers, our workload should not be as heavy as theirs. And they do not think anywhere beyond that.

I'm not sure if problems I encounter at my workplace applies to anyone of you. People here somehow do not seem to understand what my job scope is. Or maybe they don't even bother to try to know what I'm supposed to be doing, and what I'm not supposed to do. Or they think that once the job title has "ICT" (Information Communication Technology), everything related to IT, my colleagues and I can, or rather should do it.

Honestly, I don't mind helping out a little if there are problems encountered once in a while, be it through hardware or software. I'll try my best to solve the problem if I can. But other than all these, I still have my own work to do, to meet up with my stated job scope.

Just to complain and show some of the ridiculous things I, or my fellow ICT colleagues have to do :

- take photographs and/or videos (for everything and anything. sometimes we have to stop whatever we are doing becoz someone needs someone to take photographs urgently... and somehow, we are the only ones in the whole school who know how to use a digital camera or a video camera.)

- do colour-printing (becoz it seems that our office have the only working colour printer. I do not know what happened to those other colour printers issued to the other staff. maybe the colours come out nicer when they are being printed out by IT "professionals")

- to re-create cards or pamphlets for students (one of the teachers came to me, not once, but twice, to want me to do up an exact replica for her students. it's not even in a normal retangular or square, but a round thing, with another smaller round spinner in the centre.)

- help to adjust Word documents to proper alignment, change the font type and size to make sure everything is standardised... "becoz I don't know why the words keep moving like that..." (hmmm... maybe you should brush up on your IT skills?)

- to copy camp photos into DVDs for students, to make sure they have a fond memory of the fun times they had at the camp. Oh, and make sure that each DVD is printed with the class photo of that particular class. (let me see, hmmm... 5 classes, which means, I have to make 100 over copies! Wow! And it takes about 15-20 mins, for a DVD to complete copying. Hmmm... maybe we have 40 hours a day, instead of the normal 24 hours that everyone has. Do we?)

- relief classes becoz everyone else is busy (and that "we are all working together, so we should help one another." So, er... can you help us to take photographs, adjust Word documents, copy DVDs, becoz the 4 of us are busy doing work for the 60 of you?)

- to re-create an exact form that is already printed out (Come on, if you have the printed version, surely you should have the softcopy? So, why should I waste my time doing another for you? Oh wait... maybe becoz I have 40 hours a day, while you have only 24 hours?)

- to baby-sit in computer labs, in case computers fail while students are doing work (I didn't know our "presence" can affect the working conditions of the computers)

These are only some of the major "jobs". I haven't even started on the minor cases...