I have mastered many things in my cube world. I can make collated copies, even with staples. However, at the county, there are office managers who like to do that for me, so I don't get to play with the big copier very often. I can even make things that were on two pages come out onto one page. I actually acquired that skill working as a tech, before I became an RN. I kind of had a knack for sweet talking the sassy copier that was always giving the office problems. So, when I came on I would hear someone say, "Ask Tulip, she's good with that thing..." So, I have been sad that I can't put that skill to more use. But I don't want to make the secretaries feel useless either.
In fact, one secretary has been complaining that she doesn't have enough to do and she is bored. So, my two teams have been trying to come up with odd jobs for her to do. They keep coming to me and asking me if I have anything I would like to delegate to her. I really can't. What would I do with my down time? Plus, some of it would require a lot of training and explanation, so it is more hassle than helpful.
Today, I had a lot of office time. I made out my daily "To Do" list of phone calls, follow-up items, and medication orders to update. I have put those off because they are boring and kind of putzy. But I need to do them so I started pulling client charts out and making sure the medication orders are updated and correct. Then I have to make fax cover sheets for the doctors. Those are word documents.
One friend I made in technology is learning how to make forms in Word. I'm proud of myself for that one. I figured it out on my own. Pretty soon, I made everything into a form and saved all the forms in folders on my desktop.
Today, I made each client a fax cover sheet for their doctor. Then when I had the 5 different doctors faxes ready to go, I strolled over to the fax to make another friend. I have gotten to know the fax machine quite well. Most of the time, I just have to fax one set of documents to one place. It's fairly simple. I'm a quick learner. I caught on in a 5 minute demo on my first day. Today, I faxed 5 documents to 5 doctors at 5 locations one after the other in less than 3 minutes. It was almost flawless. And the fax machine did not spit any sheets back at me saying "transmission error". Woooo Hooooo.
The other technology friend I made today was not nearly such a graceful start. It was my phone. I have mastered the features such as accessing my voicemail, changing my greeting. I have not successfully transferred messages to other people and I have yet to transfer a live call to another phone without losing the caller some where in space. Thankfully, I don't encounter that need very often and I work around it. (I use a pen and paper and call them back!)
Today, my phone was not working right. I was sitting at my desk all morning and it never rang. It isn't unusual for that to happen. Not too many people call the nurse. But I would be working at my computer and then look at my phone and notice that my message light was blinking. Sometimes that happens when other people transfer messages or just leave messages in voicemail. No big deal. Except when I would listen to the messages, the time stamp was a time when I was sitting right there. Odd.
It happened several more times. Finally at lunch, I asked a co-worker who I should talk to about this problem with my phone. She told me. So, after lunch, I went to her office but she wasn't there. So I fired off an email and asked her if it would be possible to get it looked at today because I had a client who may think I am blowing her off by not taking her calls.
So, this staff person breezes over to my cube, smiles graciously and looks at my phone, then smiles at me again but in a very "knowing" way and pushes a button and says, "This button here sends all your calls to voice mail. You probably bumped it. It happens to everyone."
If the floor could have opened and swallowed me up right there, I would have been happy. I have been at this job for a YEAR and did not know my phone had an "All Forward" feature or what that feature did.
My phone and I are back on good terms.
No comments:
Post a Comment