Month: March 2011
Why So Picky?
Each day I drive to my job, located on the main campus of my very large employer. There are a lot of us folks who all gotta make our way into the many buildings that constitute HQ.
To that end, there is a huge parking garage out front for all us minions to pack our chosen vehicle into an allotted space. On any given day, that garage fills to capacity with our minion-mobiles.
Within that garage resides what I’ll call the Awkward Space.
Awkward Space is on the first floor, adjacent to the entry to the garage, right by the exit door. Meaning the location of Awkward Space is pretty good.
Despite the choice location, Awkward Space is also placed just around the first curve in the garage and by a wall. What this means is you gotta make a VERY tight right turn to get into Awkward Space.
The other thing is, Awkward Space is actually a pretty roomy spot. Once in, I have no trouble opening doors on either side of the car.
I guess people either can’t navigate the geometry or their car won’t turn that way, because no one parks there. My ancient Jeep has a smoking hot turning radius, so getting my black beauty into the spot requires hardly any effort. But I’ve also driven The Good Man’s sedan to work and had no trouble navigating the less than stellar turning radius easily into the spot.
If I come in by 8:00, I can usually park in a less awkward and even more well situated spot. But I always keep an eye on Awkward Space. On the days I come in later, I can almost always count on Awkward Space waiting for me with yellow painted arms, ready to embrace my Jeep.
What perplexes me is that people will pass up Awkward Space to drive up to the eighth floor to park rather than try to navigate the turn. It’s really not that hard. But everyone seems to turns up their Mercedes-driving nose at Awkward Space, which makes me love it that much more.
The upside about Awkward Space is that getting into it is much harder than getting back out. For some reason, the geometry works really well in reverse, and that makes Awkward Space a pretty gosh darn Good Space, in my opinion.
I almost feel like I should paint the wall at Awkward Space.
“Parking Reserved for Cars with Decent Turning Radius Only. Bad Drivers not allowed.”
This week’s Theme Thursday is space.
Alls Well That Ends Well
Update on the sitch with the cranky pants coworker, since so many have asked:
Once more proving the old adage that the best way to stop a bully is to stand up to them…
Yesterday evening I picked up the phone and called my tormentor directly.
He ran down his list of grievances. I listened to his tale of woe. I umm’d and ahh’d at his drama, and made appropriate sympathetic clucking sounds.
This listening thing seemed to work.
We ended up having a rather lovely conversation and by the time we were done, he was speaking platitudes about how much he was looking forward to working with me.
So I think we’re done with the animosity, for now at least.
Thanks to all who volunteered to help back me up, I won’t soon forget. It’s always good to know who will throw down for you.
The list includes a supportive email from my big brother who will have to wait another day to beat down some random dude in his office building.
Sorry bruddah. We’ll get ’em next time.
Did You Ever Have The Kind Of Day Where….
Did you ever have the kind of day where you are going ninety miles an hour at your work desk, cranking out the emails, spreadsheets and taking phone calls left and right, all while balancing the Greyhound bus stop that is the chair in front of your desk….
And despite all the chaos and kerfuffle, just in the nick of time, you manage to whip out your one page, beautifully wrought, easy-to-read table that contains the cheat sheet you’ll need to answer every question that will be machine gun fired at you at your 3:00 meeting.
So you send that sumnabitch to the printer and grab your notebook, hike up your pants, run to the copier, and grab that thing off the machine so you can make it to your meeting at something less than five minutes late.
Then you squeal around the corner into the copy room and you are heartened to hear that the machine isn’t working. It’s done. It’s printed your copy.
Only it hasn’t.
The screen reads “out of paper, load tray three.”
Inside your head, you say, “I can deal with this.”
So it’s one of those big industrial machines and to fill the paper tray takes not one, not two, but three reams of ecologically friendly 50% post-consumer lily white paper.
Being a good office citizen, you could throw half a ream in there and call it good, but you don’t. You fill it up to the top, slam the drawer and the machine fires up.
Sweet sound of the Gods!
And the machine begins spitting out page after page after page…..
After page.
After page.
And you realize the guy in front of you must be printing like a hundred copies of his forty page slide deck and it’s HIS FAULT that the machine was parched for paper when you arrived.
Nothing you can do now but watch that machine like a bird dog after a duck, all the while not-my-copy, not-my-copy, not-my-copy shoots out of the machine, perfectly stapled and collated and tidy as you please.
“Ok,” you say to yourself. “I can deal with this.”
Then the machine stops again. The engine winds down.
“Thank god!” you think.
But wait, your copy isn’t there.
“WHAT THE [EXPLETIVE DELETED]!!!” You may or may not shout.
The LCD screen on that machine says “Replace Toner” and provides helpful animated arrows to guide you through the process.
“Ok,” you think to yourself, “I can deal with this. It can’t be that hard.”
So you find a box with a new toner tube and you follow the bouncing arrow on the screen and the old toner comes out and the new toner slides in and now you may or may not have black toner dust peppering your arms.
But you slam closed the toner door and the machine begins to make a noise.
“Warming up,” it tells you.
And you wait for what must be an [expletive deleted] eternity while the machine “cleans the wires” and “recalibrates” itself at the pace of an anemic snail.
Then holy mother of Xerox, the machine starts spitting out copies anew and more and more of not-my-copy of someone’s presentation comes out.
Then, most miraculous! The single sheet that you desperately needed finally exits the machine!
Victory!
So to be helpful you pull the other copies off the machine to lay them aside in a nice, neat stack.
And because you are nosy by nature, you look to see exactly what is the document that held up your progress and made you irretrievably late for a very important meeting, and you come to realize that it is…..
Handouts for someone’s upcoming Cub Scout meeting.
You ever have a day like that?
No way, right? Because that story just *has* to be made up. Unless truth really is stranger than fiction.
Photo by Alex Furr and used royalty free from stock.xchng
And Yo Mama Too!
Last week I was presented with a large amount of challenges in my young and budding career with The New Employer.
Things have gone pretty well so far, and I’ve been able to tuck a few successes under my belt. My boss seems reasonably happy with my work. I’ve even gotten a few kudos from other teams.
I’d say I’ve been doing a decent job, still learning, still growing. All in all, I’d give my performance over the past eight months a solid B. Maybe even as much as a B+
Enter the events of last week. I’ll spare you the details, but I came up against a very volatile and angry person at one of our offices in an undisclosed Asian country. I’ll be a bit dodgy about details as that seems to make best sense in this public forum.
I have to admit, honestly, I have now encountered one of the biggest bullies I’ve ever run across in my little life.
And by “biggest” I don’t mean in physical stature.
I can remember only once during my schooldays where I was bullied. A girl who was my friend in elementary school fell in with a bad crowd in mid-school. She started making threatening calls to the house. She promised to beat me up if I didn’t stop looking at her funny. (has she met me? I always look funny! I was born that way, waka-waka…thanks folks I’ll be here all week…tip your waitress…)
On one of these awful calls with me crying and my former friend acting hateful, my mom pulled the phone out of my hand and had a good solid conversation with the girl. As soon as my mom interceded, the bullying ceased.
Honestly, that’s about the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. Until now.
Who could imagine that my worst bully would arise when I’m in my forties? I sure didn’t. I thought I was past all of that B.S. once I hit adulthood.
Nope.
This gent is an angry, unreasonable man. I try to be open and work with him, and he says really awful things in return. Long hateful emails in which he calls into question me, my management abilities, the capabilities of my team, and perhaps whether I’m best suited for the role in which my employer hired me.
And every time he sends a vitriol filled note, he copies a higher level of my management team in on the action. By way of the dreaded cc field, he’s making a case to those who control my destiny that I’m a complete idiot.
Karen bashing! Yay!……. /sarcasm
Today I was looking in the company directory to get this guy’s contact information. I agreed with my boss earlier today that I’m going to call him directly to try to sort this out. The best way to deal with a bully is to face them head on, and I’m gonna do so.
I happened to notice that not only does this fine fellow live in the same country as my hardworking ex-pat big brother, he even works in the same large office towers.
So here’s the question: Am I too old to ask my big brother go beat someone up?
C’mon, how great was that movie “My Bodyguard“? Loved that movie. Just noticed on IMDB that it came out in 1980. Damn I’m old. In case you were wondering, my boss is awesome and has been very supportive through all of this. I know that the real bodyguard lies within my boss and my amazing management team. I’ve watched my VP smack someone down before. It was brutal and final, so I’m certain she won’t let this mess go on much further.