Grinding the Grind...

So, today, long about 12:30, I ended my work week.  I am blessed - and by that, I mean that honestly.

A little under a year ago, my employer told me I was losing my job.  This week I had several people reach out to me and thank me for sticking around.  Like it was my choice.  But truly, it was.

So yes, I punched out with over 60 hours on my timecard this week.  Now, if one of my former supervisors at my previous employer were to see that, I'm pretty sure they'd...  well, plotz is probably a good enough description for what retail management do when they find out they've gone into overtime.

Mind you, I'm not playing on my cell phone to accrue all of this time.  I'm working my hind end off, and spending most of my day sharing my ... well, now valuable experience with the people who spent the last two years working in our legacy systems while I and a team of others ... touched the future.  

There's one last group of folks to come over into our world, and when they do, well, we'll see the overtime fountain dry up.  But let's step to the side and take a look at it.  I am, now, valuable to my employer because I'm one of six people from a team that used to be more than twenty who has two years of experience doing an incredibly complex job in a new, completely different system.  It's a significant upgrade over our previous tools.  Let's say it's like going from a Tonka truck in a sandbox to a Ferrari on a freeway.  Yeah, like that.  And I'm not exaggerating.  I can do so much for myself, without having to bother others for help or documents, and it makes me far more productive.

Of course, on Friday late afternoon, I did get the chance to once again see the IT folks in the world through that ... well, I'd really rather be on the operator end of a club.  My computer was force-pushed a BIOS upgrade that absolutely had to happen.  I was working to get a form submitted for a patient's services under the wire, so we could insure the payer would consider covering the thousands of dollars of therapy we provided on Friday.  My computer forced a reboot when I was about 80% done filling in a complex form, and hadn't had the chance to save all the data.  Boom.  In less than a second, it was gone, I had to wait over twenty minutes while the computer finished putting all the pieces back where they belonged.  So instead of punching out like I planned at 5:30, or 6:20 when I wanted to after the last person I was mentoring logged off, I stuck around until after 8 - when I'd started at 7 am - to finish and fax the form to the insurance company.

So yeah I did my job.  And I did it so that the patient, the hospital, and my employer weren't going to get nasty surprises.  Because that's part of what they pay me for.  

Today I was scheduled to cover 7-12, but at 10:45 I got an urgent message that one of our locations was going to need an authorization submitted.  I knew the payer well, I knew that we were probably not going to need authorization (certainty in excess of 99%), but I couldn't enter that into the system until they did their part, then another team did theirs.  And the other team failed miserably, I had had enough, and I had to go to the bathroom, so I went.  I didn't need another 90 minutes of hurry up and wait, I needed to be done.  

So that was how my Saturday went.  Tomorrow, on my day off this week, I have to run to the lumberyard and pick up a couple of items to get ready for Memorial Day weekend, when I move my desk from the basement corner where it's been for just about 2 1/2 years into the vacant upstairs bedroom which began as my daughter's, became my son's, and recently vacated.  Now it's my "top floor office".  With windows.  Behind me.