Getting PJ's birth certificate

So I finally quit procrastinating and picked up PJ's birth certificate today so I could enroll him in school. I should've ordered it online and saved the trip but that takes up to 6 weeks to process and I need to get him in school before that!

My plan was to go right when they opened to minimize the wait time. I did manage to get lost downtown during morning rush hour and all the one way streets only added to my fun - but on the second try I found the Vital Statistics office. Luckily there were free parking spaces open (which was fortunate in that I didn't have any change on hand for the meters).

I was the only person wanting a copy of a birth certificate. Silly me, I assumed that with no line there wouldn't be a wait - the posted waiting time was 20 minutes and they managed to take exactly 20 minutes to process my request. The office was quite grim - dirty, stained brown carpeting, fifteen stained red chairs, and one sad clock. No magazines, no water fountain, the only entertainment was listening to the guard chatter on his cellphone about how sick he was (with graphic descriptions!) and how he couldn't afford the $15 copay to see his dr. until payday. You know, for all the talk of how much money the government wastes, apparently none of it is filtered to Vital Statistics! I would've appreciated some 5 year old Readers Digests and some free weak coffee... sigh.

Anyhow, $16.50 later, I was in possession of my son's official birth certificate and now I can enroll him for kindergarten!

Feeling like a tattle tale :-(

Ugh, I had a stressful day at work today and now I'm feeling very guilty. What do you think about this situation? One person in my 5 person department is relatively new (7 months). What we do isn't really hard - it's basically data entry, we work in the admissions department of a large charter school. We do work with the guidance department too, we work to make sure students are placed in the correct grade, that they have their papers all in order, etc. There are lots of exceptions, pages of State rules, etc. that we have to follow to admit a student. For example - certain things usually must be sent with the application as proof of Ohio residency - but there are always exceptions - such as for homeless students or victims of natural disasters (like Katrina). I think the lack of black and white guidelines keeps the job interesting - you can't just sit at your desk and listen to music and type away for 8 straight hours, we are always talking to the families, to the counselors, the previous schools, even probation officers or social workers, etc. (we have a very large at risk population, many of whom have been out of school for awhile and are now getting their lives back on track).

Anyhow, the new hire is struggling. She keeps making the same mistakes repeatedly and it's affecting the rest of us - her new thing is just marking every single application that crosses her desk "pended" and handing it off to another person - (it only takes minutes to pend it, it takes longer to accept one. One of things they look for at our review is how many applications we process per day). This makes more work for the rest of us. Also, some of the mistakes she is making can affect the state funding we receive - we absolutely must make sure certain things are in perfect order in case of a state audit. After talking to her many times (she just smiles but doesn't change) I finally went to our supervisor today. Unhappily, he called in his boss too and made it a closed door meeting - NOT what I anticipated. I approached it as "I'm concerned ... I'm afraid she is unclear... maybe we can send some more reminder emails..." and I volunteered to sit with her, but the two supervisors said no, they knew there was an issue, then they wanted me to address everything she's messing up... my boss even wrote on his notebook "PENDS applications for NO reason" and underlined it. I felt so uncomfortable but they said I did the right thing and they appreciated it. I told Patrick (my husband, he works there too) afterwards and he said "Congrats. You got her fired. Happy now?" Ugh! What do you think? Was I a big tattle tale rat? I feel guilty. :-(