Frying Pans, Fires, Overdramatic Metaphorical Cliches

One of my complaints about my job at the law firm was that in effect I really had two jobs, and I greatly preferred one of them; I was a sorta free agent assistant for the litigation and (especially) labor attorneys doing whatever projects came up as I was free to take them. Some of these came by assignment, sort of like a blind date, but over two years I developed working relationships with some of the attorneys, who would routinely come to me if they needed something done, and I usually tried to accommodate them. My other job was to maintain the filing for the bankruptcy group, a job which I hated intensely (no reflection on the actual people working in the bankruptcy group). There were secondary consequences to the problem, but in essence there you go.

And now I once again have, basically, two jobs; one is doing the monthly reporting to our Government Agency overlords, and one is doing the day to day work of being a compliance analyst (although we still haven't done much that's truly compliance, because of shit I might talk about obliquely some other time). I thought when I took the job that I'd really enjoy the writing and reporting aspects and that the compliance stuff would be kind of a drag. In practice, though, I've come to dread the reporting and if I don't love the compliance work it's more interesting and less...something.

For one thing, the reporting winds up being kind of isolating. I'm fond of my little compliance group, and when I'm working on the reporting I become detached from them because they have nothing to do with my reports. I interact with them much less and worry about my own shit and nag other people to give me information in a timely manner. I sort of like the communal teamwork aspect of what we do; even if we aren't literally working on the same thing, it's all interlocking pieces of a puzzle, and we can commiserate and make jokes about the weird stories we discover and say things like "Wait, who are you working? Jane Johnson? That sounds familiar. Let me...yeah, no wonder she's not returning your calls, she's on my deceased report." You know, good times, teamwork.

For another thing, the reporting's cyclical nature means that my mood, at least as it pertains to work, can be tracked on a predictable monthly swing and since my productivity is directly related to my happiness (at least in a work-focused sense), I'm most productive at the antipode of my reports' due date. Lately I start worrying about the reports even at the antipode, though; the specter of having to start collecting information and synthesizing it into bite-sized information packets so it can fit into the stupid predetermined template I was handed by the powers upon high once again tarnishes the enjoyment of not actually having to do it for two weeks.

There's also a sense of treading water, because if I skim the report for August and compare it to the one for December I don't feel like we substantively covered any new ground, made progress, improved our performance and solidified our position. The concerns feel as repetitive and cyclical as the writing process.

I just wanted to complain for a moment.

On the compliance side, I've been having to call sister Government Agencies in other cities to work out some of our issues, and let me tell you, there are some weird Interactive Voice Response systems out there; there's one that hangs up on me if I don't make my menu selection within five seconds, which is problematic because none of the selections remotely correspond to my needs. You'd think there would be like a special secret phone line that the agencies could use to talk to each other, but there isn't, and "If you're calling from another government agency, please press 8" has not yet manifested as an option. I spend a lot of time on hold and getting transferred by people who don't know who I need to talk to, but are pretty sure it's not them. (And on a pure professionalism standpoint, one of the published numbers for a particular agency in downstate Illinois, a number listed as the appropriate contact information on the website of the federal agency to which we all ultimately answer, goes to a voicemail for "Greg [Lastname]". I hung up assuming I had the wrong number, because "Greg [Lastname]" didn't bother to specify that yes, I'd reached the [Illinois city government agency]. Greg turned out to be a nice guy and I suspect that he might actually have been the boss, though we didn't clear that up.