June 24, 2008
That wasn’t the best display I’ve ever made. The coworkers were all chattering, and I with them, about twenty minutes ago as I had a snack, and all was fine.
I went back to grab something as I’d delved deep into my work, and needed something from the other room, and found them deep into yet another animated conversation. This after the secretary couldn’t be bothered to get off her personal call to answer the dang phone that was also another personal call for her. They were still laughing and talking, despite knowing they had tasks that were due immediately.
They greeted me excitedly, “Revanche! Look!” as they went to show me something on the computer and my stress of being on deadline for three major projects, simultaneously, snapped. I started to ask, “what?” but found myself going straight into “Is NO ONE else on deadline? Is it JUST ME??” Then walked out.
Geebus.
June 11, 2008
LB interviewed a high schooler for an internship today. But his dad not only brought him here, he’s sitting in on the interview.
Huh?
I remember a handful of interviews from high school, and a parent may have driven me to each one, but they certainly never accompanied me to the door, walked me in, or interviewed with me. Then again, I was a latchkey kid, and pretty independent early on.
Is it just me, or is that weird?
May 28, 2008
A colleague of mine has been jonesing for a home since her parents started pushing her to become a homeowner. I guess she got used to the idea, and decided to get serious about it. Her new declaration is that eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday will save her $250 a month on lunch.
Call me skeptical, or an insufferably curious pf blogger, but I do wonder if that’s the extent of her plan. It’s simple enough to save money by bringing lunch, but I feel like a few more contingencies should be considered to make sure that she’s really saving money. If I were to consult with her on the overall plan, some major points I’d make would be …..
Tracking expenses: I’d suggest that she check her spending habits as a whole. Is there going to be an area in which she increases spending because she feels deprived or restricted by eating PB&J all year? Is there really going to be an increase in savings from changing her lunch diet? She used to buy lunch half the week, and brought dinner leftovers the other half. Perhaps that was equally cost effective.
Health: Is she compensating for the rather limited nutrition in her lunches by adding fruits and veggies to her other meals? Is she doing this in a cost effective way so as not to negate her savings from lunch?
Appearances: Is she doing the PB&J lunch because it looks and feels like she’s doing something proactive about saving for a house? Are there alternatives that might save more for less effort or for the same amount of effort but be more worthwhile? I love my food, so I’d have to be sure that changing my diet solely to save money was really the best way to go.
Actionable: How is she ensuring that the money she “saves” really goes toward the house and doesn’t melt away into her general spending? Does she have a plan to pay an allowance to her house fund out of her grocery allowance?
Are there other issues you might bring up? Of course, I’m not going to have this talk with her because I don’t want to pry into her finances, we’re not that close, and I don’t want to reveal my preoccupation with PF, and accidentally out myself. 🙂
May 16, 2008
There’s a day I was going to be out on sick leave. I’d finally managed to coordinate three important appointments in a single day because dealing with piecemeal appointments is aggravating and being out of the office for personal business has become taboo due to disintegrating relationships. What happens? Naturally, BB wants his birthday celebration scheduled the very same day.
Of course.
He’s completely unaware of my appointments, as is his wont, but there’s no profit in pointing that out.
In the spirit of learning how to think about all the possible political ramifications of this conflict, I’m weighing the pros and cons of rescheduling all my appointments or refusing to accommodate BB’s whims.
Stand my ground because:
I don’t have to struggle to coordinate three departments’ schedules.
I win personally. Professionally, no win. They don’t care if I have to go through a lot of trouble or not.
I don’t look like a pushover.
I win personally. Professionally, possibly negative. They want me to be cooperative with them. I can stand my ground with other people, just not them.
My presence isn’t that important.
It’s not, but I don’t gain anything by proving it. However, my absence may be remarked upon and I would have no control over the commentary that might ensue.
Change the appointments because:
As above, it’s not my presence that’s as important as my absence would be.
Yes, other colleagues have been absent for other staff members’ birthdays, but this is the Big Boss. It’s different.
It’s not impossible and doesn’t cost me financially to reschedule.
Unless it was a prohibitively expensive trip or appointment, the trade-off would be an intangible benefit to a tangible cost.
LB is all about sacrifice.
And is demonstrably bitter about the appointments of various kinds and trips that he’s chosen to give up. Obviously, they were all choices on his part, but he’s definitely bitter about it, so it doesn’t matter that it was his choice to do so. As long as it looks like sacrifice to him …..
Ultimately, it seems that I have nothing to gain, but potentially could lose a chance to rebuild frayed relationships if I choose to retain my current appointments instead of taking the time to reschedule for a later date. Even if the effort turns out to be futile, ie: they change the date of the celebration, the effort to accommodate them was made. While it could be construed as overly accommodating, or even syncophantic behavior which I’m not noted for, it’s also a concession. And if I concede this battle, knowing what and why I’m conceding, I’ll be more prepared for other battles that may be more important to fight. (ie: Con. I’m not giving that up.)
Rusty though they are, I feel like I’m working out my political chops a bit.
May 14, 2008
I even had a note on my planner that the book would arrive on Friday the 16th, in case it was late, so I was uber-excited to find a fat package in my mailbox three days early.
I’ve already started reading it, and am 100 pages in. I stopped, though, because there’s a lot of good material in there, and I want to absorb and practice some of the thinking that Reardon talks about, in chunks, before moving on to the next chapters. I’ll post about it as I go along.
*excited*
May 8, 2008
A couple of our student workers got their jobs here because their parents know the boss’s wife. One kid gets away with blatant insubordination, as described by a coworker:
1) When I asked him to write down instructions, he straight out told me no, and
2) When I asked him to look into a hard copy reviewer, he told me to “Chill.”
This coworker was put in charge of the insubordinate one, and wanted to know what punishment she could dole out if the kid was rude or refused to comply again. LB: Nothing. At most, a talk.
Nuh-uh! No wonder the kid doesn’t feel the need to do squat! His buddy was trained by me, and in MY day? If you didn’t want to do what I asked of you, you could go home. Forget authority, I just about kicked him out one day for talking back, and he never defied me again. I was younger, and rasher, then, so I know that maybe it wasn’t the best way to deal with things, but I’ll tell you what. It worked. He’s not contradicted me, and has been working diligently ever since. If he slacks off, it’s only a little bit and certainly not blatantly surfing the ‘net in front of me.
Another student, BB’s favored family friend, was finally fired after her list of responsibilities that she could handle correctly had dwindled from twelve to fifteen tasks to ONE. She also had the freedom to set her own schedule, but never showed up on time, if she showed up at all. I believe we were at a 1:3 show:no show ratio. The firing didn’t take, as BB undermined LB by telling her to come back anyway. Then she up and quit because she was bored here; privately, she told me it was probably best for the office so we could get a better coworker.
Guess what? She’s out of work again, a year and some later, and BB has decided to create a job for her, instead of looking at what help we really need on staff. Our already strained resources will now have to extend to putting a useless employee on the payroll so that BB feels good about himself, and the rest of us are just a little more screwed.
Daaaang, reeee-diculous. It’s all about nepotism and cronyism.
The funny thing is I can’t get het up about it anymore. It is what it is.
Back in the day, I was relatively decent at office politics. I knew who the enemies likely were, after a while, after a few hard knocks, and learned when to keep my mouth shut and when to talk, mostly. I did ok for myself. But over the last several months, I’ve lost my groove. Somewhere along the path of chaos and upheaval, I just plain lost my way.
Well, no more. I may not be long for this job, but I need to learn from this mess and get my political sea legs back under me. Determination alone, though, hasn’t been enough, so I’ve ordered this book for a refresher and perhaps new insights that I haven’t learned through observation:
In Ms. Miniducky style, I didn’t just order it from Amazon and add another $15 worth of filler order to get my free shipping, though I was tempted. I ordered through ebates for a 4% rebate (less than the 5% from Fatwallet) but that triggered my first purchase bonus of $10. Yay! Here’s hoping this has good information.
