Musical Desks Again

This is being One Of Those Days again. I am working for a department I rather like, but there's a bit of an issue today wherein there is not, in fact, a desk for me to sit at. At least, not in the actual department. No, instead what I have is a desk in a building across the square from the department in which I am supposed to be working. This bemuses the hell out of me because it involves my crossing two roads and a square with an armload of patient notes, only to go back again to collect a new set or three once I'm done. I understand why (they need someone to type out the backlog, the other two ladies are needed to man the phones and work on the rest of the backlog, and there is literally no other available desk with a transcription machine in their department) but surely they could have at least found a free desk in the building. Ah well.

Plus there seems to be something of a situation with where I'm stationed just at the moment. Look, I type. It's what I do. It's what I'm good at. Seriously. Thing is, though, that half of these departments more or less stick me in jobs where I copy/paste badly typed letters outsourced from people who lie about their qualifications. The rest of what I do in those jobs is either office junior gruntwork (for which I am eminently overqualified and they all know it) or trying desperately to have patience with overweaning arseholes who do not understand the concept of "No, you did not talk to me last week; I was not in this department last week. Please stop blaming me for something that an entirely different secretary did and let me help you!" while also trying to learn the department's unofficial policies on certain matters of ... say, clinic overbooking.

Anyway, long story short: one department really needs me. They have a typing backlog that is threatening to eat the office (not entirely their fault; the regular secretary was out with pleurisy for weeks, poor thing, and the 'help' they were offered previously was a very nice chap with moderate-to-severe ADHD who spends three hours talking about Doctor Who when he should be working), and they need someone who can hack through it. However, in another department, someone has retired. Everyone must have known this was coming but they did not hire a replacement because of this 'natural wasteage' policy wherein people are not replaced when they retire so that department is screwed to the wall because their secretaries are expected to serve as receptionists as well, showing patients to clinic as well as answering the phones, copy-pasting outsourced letters, maintaining their own sorry excuse for a filing system and other such things. The place is falling apart and it's chaos, and there's one secretary. And apparently, the fact that someone else needs my particular skill set whereas this department just needs a warm body really pisses other people off. So I get dirty looks about it, for some reason. I get dirty looks because I am getting requested specifically for my skill set? I don't really have a say in it! (Though if I did, I'd have picked the lot that need me for my typing anyway, because the other department makes me distinctly ill.) If they're going to treat me like a tradeable commodity like a baseball card, at least that should absolve me of all responsibility. Baseball cards have no say in or control over who they're traded to or what they're traded for, and neither do I. I may as well be inanimate. Sheesh.

Anyway, at least it's nearly lunchtime and I am going to try to get out of here early again. Getting out of bed this morning was an effort, to say the very least. I am still not entirely over the draggy from last week's nasty case of flu, and yet I'm still here when I should probably be curled up under the duvet. Now that's dedication. Or possibly masochism. I haven't decided yet.

Oh, incidentally? I finished watching True Blood S3. I think all I can say is "HOLY SHIT that beats the hell out of the books." The new season starts in June, right?