Okay, first day back at work after having my forced week off.

While I was making my trek out west to work this morning, I was overcome with a great desire to turn my car around and not come in to the office.  I mean, I REALLY wanted to go back home and tell my bosses that I wasn't going to be in.....ever.  Then I thought about my bills and stuff and decided I should probably continue on my way.

I got to the office early (as usual) and there's an approximately 2-inch thick folder with stuff in it waiting for me.  I sighed and looked at it.  You know, there's nothing like being out of the office and coming back to a ton of work that needs to be sorted through.  Especially stuff I thought was taken care of while I was out.  It's stuff like that that makes me not want to take time off.  At least there weren't a zillion voice-mails, so that's a plus.

While looking through everything I see a note that some papers have gone missing and can I check to see if I have them anywhere.  Now, I KNOW those pages were filed in the appropriate book because I put them there myself.  As I look for another set, I see that 2 sets of other papers are now gone from my desk.  I don't mention this to the gal who told me the others were missing, but WTF???!!!???  I had to spend an hour re-printing and copying pages (some were on letterhead and couldn't be filed as printed, they had to be copies).  We use the 2 sets I discovered missing as the basis for next quarters project, so I needed to re-do them as well.

This really pisses me off.  Each quarter we have a major project and there is a checklist that everyone initials after they have checked to make sure that all the copied sets are there.  That's 3 people who have checked and said "yup, all the copies, including the ones for next quarter are here" and now they're gone?  How?  The thing is, I can't say anything about it because the gal who backs me up is GOLDEN here and I honestly like her a lot and need her around.  It's just weird that things seem to disappear and she's the one who discovers it.  It's happened a couple of times before when she's been here and I arrive late because I had a dentist appointment or something.  I didn't think much of it before, I just sort of figured that I was absent minded and misplaced papers.  This time, no way.

Now I don't know who's doing it and I'm not going to point fingers, but someone is fucking with my papers.  Maybe the gal I replaced or her best friend who used to work here have managed to get into the office and screw with things?  Maybe the woman who backs me up does it so she can "find" things and look good?  I doubt it.  I just don't know.  What I do know is, my papers (that I discovered missing today) were in my desk drawer, in a folder for next quarter's project and they had post-its on them noting what they were and now they're gone.

The shitty thing is, I'm known for keeping everything, paper-wise.  It's a C.Y.A. thing.  With the way my bosses are, I don't want them ever blaming me for doing something they didn't want done that I only did because they told me to and then forgot.  So I keep all my drafts and working copies for an entire quarter before I shred them.  They think it's silly and unnecessary and takes-up too much room (which it does).  The gal who comes in for me thinks I lose things in it as it's not as neat and clean as she would like (she's a neat freak), but I can usually pull out anything I'm looking for pretty quickly.

I'm not going to say anything to anyone about it, but I think I'm going to re-think how I file the papers after we finish October's project.

Maybe I SHOULD have stayed home today after all..........