Oh, yes. Now I remember...

With the current audit going on, and Anarchist Prime down with food poisoning (and threatening to come up for the audit now that he's out of hospital - we still don't know if he's joking or not), and my old superior, Darth Chaos back in action again to cover for him, I'm starting to remember why it was that Darth Chaos used to drive me up the wall.

She is, in her own special way, just as autocratic as Anarchist Prime. The big difference is that Anarchist Prime's patience is very limited and it doesn't take much for him to start giving orders. Darth Chaos, on the other hand, argues over things. She argues about the way she wants things done, instead of just ordering.

With a blunt order, I know where I stand. I know that it's a battle that isn't worth fighting. Therefore, if I still disagree with things, I'll switch to guerilla tactics (if I'm desperate) or just give up and go with the flow.

Darth Chaos' approach, however, leaves me five times as angry and frustrated, because it takes me five times as long to get through the whole mess of a conversation.

What's worse is that the conversation that prompted this post was over something that really should be sorted out by Mistress Mouth and I, in the post-audit sessions. It shouldn't be being done by Darth Chaos, whilst the audit is still going on. And, it is, in my opinion, a pretty trivial matter to boot.

It's why I grew to hate her so much whilst she was still a permanent employee here - she makes me so utterly angry and frustrated over matters that are completely trivial and nothing to do with her into the bargain!

A shameless gloat

I had an interesting conversation with Mistress Mouth this morning, regarding what the auditor had said about our Quality Management system.

Especially regarding the new layout, something which Anarchist Prime had basically steamrolled into place.

Basically, the auditor thought that the old layout was much, much better than the new one. The only thing that the new layout had which was an improvement on the old was that the new layout included a revision history, instead of just the revisions made to create the current document.

So there's one in the eye for Anarchist Prime! LOL!!!

Audit build up

We're in the grip of an audit right now. We've been building up to it for weeks now, and the Big Day has finally arrived. Thank god. The stress levels have been ridiculously high, and the battle between Production and Quality over where exactly everybody's attention should be focussed (Quality folk keep saying 'audit is everything!' Production have been patiently reminding them, every time somebody comes out with it, that we still have to manufacture. As the Document Control person, I've been quietly siding with Production on that issue. Not that I'd ever admit as much to Mistress Mouth, the Leprechaun, or Anarchist Prime (not that he has been an offender - he's been away and has managed to come down with a bad case of food poisoning, just in time for the audit. To be honest, I'm rather pleased about that.).

It's been interesting to see everybody's reactions when they are under stress. Mistress Mouth becomes uncharacteristically quiet and ever so slightly tragic. The Leprechaun starts fussing over things. The Grand Visier, who is currently heavily pregnant, is, at least on the surface, surprisingly relaxed. Although it may simply be that her pregnancy has sapped so much of her energy that she can't really summon up the strength to have a really good stress attack over anything. Anarchist Prime, of course, turns into an autocratic bastard.

Me? I get loud, cranky, and uncooperative. Since I'm also expected to be nice to people, I've been relaxing as much as possible.

The Leprechaun has been the greatest irritation. He's been running around trying to get the place tidied up (a somewhat futile task, to be honest), organising working bees and overtime and trying to get everybody (including me) to come in on the weekend to help tidy up because Production can't do it all. Personally, I chose to come down with a stress attack (yes, it was a conscious decision, although if I'm being more diplomatic about it I'd say that I was looking after my own physical and mental health, which is actually true) and got loud, cranky and uncooperative at him. (I don't suffer stress in silence.)

But this brings me to my main point - tidying up. I'm a naturally messy person, especially when I've got more stuff than places to put things. As such, my mess tolerance level is set pretty high. I tend to think that real friends will ignore mess, too.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help when preparing for an audit. I've learned to keep quiet about other peoples' messes in work-related situations. A tidy workplace makes a much better impression with auditors than a messy workplace.

It's a good idea, therefore, to get the person with the lowest mess tolerance level to walk through the place and point out the messy parts when you're preparing to make a good impression on somebody. And then, of course, tidy away anything that person points out. If it had been left to me, I would have missed most of the mess.

Prioritising

Yesterday was a very, very busy day. Especially in the afternoon. Come 4pm, when I'm usually winding down for the evening, things were heating up. Specifically in the arena of environmental monitoring. You see, they are manufacturing today. Everybody agrees that it's too early to be doing so. I don't think anybody really believes that we're ready for it. However, it's all taken on steam-train levels of momentum, and all we can do is to scramble around getting the bare minimum ready.

Yesterday afternoon involved getting the documentation (and forms) ready for environmental monitoring. I got the main SOP just before afternoon tea, with the faithful promise that I'd have the forms ready for authorisation by the end of the day. I didn't seriously believe it would happen, to be honest, but it did. Mainly because they prioritised the important ones.

Anyway. On to today. The complication yesterday is that QA are doing an internal audit in preparation for a TGA audit at the end of the month, and they are under the mistaken belief that my top priority should not be making documents available for Production to use in the next couple of days. They think I should be dropping all of that to run after them for the audit at the end of the month.

Darth Chaos, who has gone from permanent employee to contractor, is heavily involved in this, and she's the one I just told off for giving me problematic priorities. I told her to go and argue with Production over priorities if she really thinks it's that important. Somehow, I don't think she will.

I will be very, very glad when we get to Christmas. Because then I'll get three weeks' break, and afterwards, we will start to resume normal operations.