Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2020-09-18 09:55 pm
edenfalling) wrote2020-09-18 09:55 pm
Entry tags:
wherein Liz works hard (also, spam comments)
Today I once again attempted to be both myself and Mr. Geniality at work, with... mostly decent results? I missed a few phone calls while I was on my lunch break (look, I am sorry, but I am not going to answer the phone with my mouth full of pizza and my hands covered in grease) but I will catch up on any messages tomorrow and at least one of the people in question called back later anyway, so.
I made progress on two leases, which is good, and did some metaphorical handholding for two incoming tenants who were having separate and unrelated payment method woes. In the Collegetown office, our actual policy is to transfer any calls of that nature to Aunt Boss if she's in; she listens, and is sympathetic, and explains options, and puts her foot down when necessary. At the downtown office, absorbing that kind of stress is suddenly part of my job description again, though when Mr. Geniality is here I tend to fob people off on him because he's better at sounding emotionally invested and also is in the same physical office space as Ms. Random Numbers, Ms. Rise-and-Shine, and Lawyer Man so it's easier for him to chuck a problem at them if it needs to be escalated to a manager, as it were.
Anyway, I think I worked out functional plans for both distressed tenants, and I made a lot of sympathetic noises because yeah, it is stressful not knowing what the post office has done with your check, or being unable to make an electronic payment from [country redacted] one day before an international flight and a long bus trip.
I have been emailing people about W9 and W8 forms (required to open the escrow accounts where we hold tenants' security deposits for the duration of their leases) and various changes/updates required by various banks. So far I've gotten a few new forms, a couple people saying "Hey, this doesn't apply to me because [reason]," one email that bounced because the recipient's inbox is full (WTF???), and a whole lot of resounding silence. *sigh*
I've also been creating a spreadsheet that we will eventually use to generate renewal notice emails, which has been taking a lot longer than necessary since A) downtown doesn't use FileMaker so I've had to combine two separate Rent Manager report exports to get as much of information as possible onto a single spreadsheet, B) a bunch of the other information isn't automatically exportable at all (gee thanks, Rent Manager *grumble grumble*) so I've had to enter it manually, and C) the downtown office straight up doesn't collect some of the information Moss Boss wants in the first place. *headdesk* This spreadsheet will have so many holes in it, I swear.
And today Ms. Rise-and-Shine asked me to start creating various procedure write-ups for the downtown office. On the one hand, this is good! This is the sort of thing I was transferred to do! On the other hand... what time am I supposed to do that in??? *flops*
...
Right. I'm going to bed now.
Mr. Geniality returns on Monday. I am looking forward to shifting a bunch of the workload back onto his shoulders.
---------------
In unrelated news, I got a weird string of spam comments last night and this morning. I've deleted them, reported them, and blocked the accounts that posted them, but I have no idea what was going on.
They were more clever than normal spam comments, in that most of them had a sentence or two that actually related to the post content before they started talking about random apps or website and embedding fishy links, but that could probably be done with an AI text generator these days so I don't know that it means much. Even so, while the string of comments made the pattern very clear, the first one gave me pause because the first two sentences really did sound like a legit comment on a story; it wasn't until sentence three that it got overtly spammy.
Has anyone else experienced something like that in recent days?
I made progress on two leases, which is good, and did some metaphorical handholding for two incoming tenants who were having separate and unrelated payment method woes. In the Collegetown office, our actual policy is to transfer any calls of that nature to Aunt Boss if she's in; she listens, and is sympathetic, and explains options, and puts her foot down when necessary. At the downtown office, absorbing that kind of stress is suddenly part of my job description again, though when Mr. Geniality is here I tend to fob people off on him because he's better at sounding emotionally invested and also is in the same physical office space as Ms. Random Numbers, Ms. Rise-and-Shine, and Lawyer Man so it's easier for him to chuck a problem at them if it needs to be escalated to a manager, as it were.
Anyway, I think I worked out functional plans for both distressed tenants, and I made a lot of sympathetic noises because yeah, it is stressful not knowing what the post office has done with your check, or being unable to make an electronic payment from [country redacted] one day before an international flight and a long bus trip.
I have been emailing people about W9 and W8 forms (required to open the escrow accounts where we hold tenants' security deposits for the duration of their leases) and various changes/updates required by various banks. So far I've gotten a few new forms, a couple people saying "Hey, this doesn't apply to me because [reason]," one email that bounced because the recipient's inbox is full (WTF???), and a whole lot of resounding silence. *sigh*
I've also been creating a spreadsheet that we will eventually use to generate renewal notice emails, which has been taking a lot longer than necessary since A) downtown doesn't use FileMaker so I've had to combine two separate Rent Manager report exports to get as much of information as possible onto a single spreadsheet, B) a bunch of the other information isn't automatically exportable at all (gee thanks, Rent Manager *grumble grumble*) so I've had to enter it manually, and C) the downtown office straight up doesn't collect some of the information Moss Boss wants in the first place. *headdesk* This spreadsheet will have so many holes in it, I swear.
And today Ms. Rise-and-Shine asked me to start creating various procedure write-ups for the downtown office. On the one hand, this is good! This is the sort of thing I was transferred to do! On the other hand... what time am I supposed to do that in??? *flops*
...
Right. I'm going to bed now.
Mr. Geniality returns on Monday. I am looking forward to shifting a bunch of the workload back onto his shoulders.
---------------
In unrelated news, I got a weird string of spam comments last night and this morning. I've deleted them, reported them, and blocked the accounts that posted them, but I have no idea what was going on.
They were more clever than normal spam comments, in that most of them had a sentence or two that actually related to the post content before they started talking about random apps or website and embedding fishy links, but that could probably be done with an AI text generator these days so I don't know that it means much. Even so, while the string of comments made the pattern very clear, the first one gave me pause because the first two sentences really did sound like a legit comment on a story; it wasn't until sentence three that it got overtly spammy.
Has anyone else experienced something like that in recent days?
Sounds like a hectic day
2) I love your nicknames/pseudonyms for your coworkers. Still, being responsible for two people’s worth of workload does indeed sound exhausting; I’m glad the guy is returning soon!
3) A... full... email inbox?? Wtf indeed. *side-eyes inbox with >8,000 unread emails that’s still functioning fine*
Re: Sounds like a hectic day
As for the full email inbox... your guess is as good as mine for how that happens!
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Like, the company Gmail account that Miss California and I use at the Collegetown office did once approach 95% full -- but that's a business account and we send A LOT of emails, at least 30% of which have moderately bulky files attached to them. Furthermore, I was able to knock it back down to only about 45% full by taking a few hours and clearing out almost everything that was more than two years old.
I am unsure why some people never seem to do any inbox or outbox pruning at all! (This applies to voicemail, too. The number of people I've called for work only to encounter a "this voicemail hasn't been set up" or "this voicemail is full" message does not bear thinking of. *headdesk*)