I believe you have my stapler

When I interviewed for my current job I was told that I had a huge mess to clean up. They weren't kidding. I buy 130 lines of product, and so far I've managed to clean up two. Not a great ratio, and the only reason I've gotten that far is that I've conned someone else into doing it. You could be negative and call this cheating. I choose to be positive and call this delegating.

The coworker in question is this great old Jewish guy that thinks the only thing wrong with me is that I'm not Jewish. What made us friends was when I overheard him asking "you know what WC Fields said, right?" Without missing a beat I piped up with "kid can't hold his liquor." He gave me a funny look so I asked him if he meant the one about parboiling children. Then he gave me a curious look and said that he had forgotten what he was talking about. Since then he's been asking me random trivia questions just to see what I know. I find it fairly entertaining. My dad taught us kids tons of trivia growing up and its coming in really handy. So is the fact that I love old movies and read voraciously. Every time I get something right my coworker shakes his head asks "where did you go wrong?"

Other than that work has been incredibly frustrating. I know it takes about six months to get into the groove of a new job, but I'm impatient. It doesn't help that at my last job I was the "it" girl. Granted I worked there for about four years so I had lots of time to learn a ton of stuff. Yes, at the beginning of that job I was just as frustrated and had to face a learning curve. Yes, at least this time I know something about buying and have become good at it. That doesn't change the fact that I constantly feel overwhelmed in my position as "new girl."

Speakng of, the girl who was supposed to train me was less than effective. She went through everything at break-neck speed so right now I'm having to teach myself a great deal. My other coworkers (the only people around my age in the office) aren't seated near me so I barely interact with them. I keep trying to talk to them, but I don't get much of a response. Today I was grudgingly invited to lunch and I accepted hoping to break the ice a bit more. Not sure if it worked or not but it was worth a shot. I don't know if their reserve is a reaction to my personality, the fact that the pricing manager (who no one likes for good reason) seems buddy buddy with me, my obvious friendship with the old Jewish guy, or the fact that my position has had a lot of turn over.

Just to make matters more interesting I found out that the one guy near my age that I sit next to is the nephew of the owner. Oh, and his dad is a top level executive. While I've dealt with family related to the company owner before this is a very different scenario. To put it bluntly, he sucks as a buyer. Worse, he is in my way. In order to get my monstrosity of a mess cleaned up I have to get him to upload information into our computer system. He wants every idy bity detail in order and set up in a specific way on a spreadsheet. Four years of buying experience tells me that isn't ever going to happen. Due to his connections I can't simply do what I would normally do: bulldoze over him. I have to be politic, sweet talk the Jewish guy into doing the dirty work for now, and learn how to do the idiots job as well as mine. Without showing the nephew up of course. It has been made clear that we must avoid junior loosing face at all costs.

Ug. I really don't like being told I can't simply dismiss idiots from existing in my universe. Growing up simply sucks sometimes.