It's another funfunfun day at the office today. My co-worker, who sits on the desk accross from me (desk to desk), seems to be in a really foul mood today. I have only a few co-workers (the ambassador, the first secretary, ambassador's assistant, the driver and the other lady in the consular section where I am). She was here only a few months before me, but she's close to her fifties I think, she travelled around a lot with her husband who gets placed in different countries. She's German, so I shall refer to her as the German lady.
I don't know if it's a German thing, or if being snappy and annoyed one day and perfectly pleasant the next is just her personality but it is really confusing!! How can you form an opinion of someone if one day she's all talkative and friendly, at the other she doesn't say a word and gets annoyed when I point out something.
Now I must admit, she has a lot more to do than me apparantly. There's a lot more people coming in for passports than for visa's and this week it's been insanely quiet visawise, so I probably don't look very busy here on my computer (she can't see my screen luckily, as I tend to browse the internet all day when I have no tasks) She also gets a lot of annoying mails from headquarters in Dublin, nagging about whatever is wrong with someone's passport applications. I notice because every now and then I hear a very annoyed sigh or a "ah no" exclamation, or more loud sighs whenever the phone rings again.
Wise as I am, I tend not to enter into conversation with her when I notice she's aggravated about something, because she tends to get snappy. Take just ten minutes ago as an example. Here I was just sitting innocently at desk when the phone rang, she picks up, it's someone inquiring about their visa. She tries to transfer the call to me, but it doesn't go through. I say "hmm that's strange, happens to me sometimes.". Irritated mumbling in response as she tries again. I suggest in a very normal just casually asking tone:"Did you press transfer before putting down the receiver?" And then she totally shocks me by saying in an extremely rude and snappy voice:"Of course I pressed tranfer, I've been working here for six months, I know how to transfer a call!" I was totally dumbstruck! It was just a friendly question, would it be that impossible to forget to press that one button?
Bloody hell!
There goes my initial impression that I has nothing but nice co-workers. So another downside to this job! Stuck with a really strange German lady, who mostly doesn't say a word and seems to really dislike her job. Not my fault that I'm not busy today, and she's overloaded. She never lets me deal with passport customers at the front desk, if I do, she says I should call her over. I'd be more than willing to help her is she's swamped, would give me something to do!
Another annoying factor about German lady is that she speaks at the top of her voice on the phone and to people behind the window at the front desk. It's almost like yelling. If I have a customer too, I can't understand what they're saying because she talks so loud, and the same goes for the phone. That's really annoying, and she doesn't seem to have a clue she does it. Even the First Secretary joked about it once to me. Maybe I should start doing it too, bet she'd end up saying snappy about it.
Anyway sorry for the little rant, but I was utterly shocked!
I wish we had a radio here. All my temp jobs had a radio, it's common to have a bit of radio playing in the background in Belgian offices, which is really nice I think. No radio here, and because it's mostly just the two of us here, it's so silent sometimes, very tedious.
Sigh, maybe not ideal job after all.
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