Category: Boss Man

A Reprise: The Best of 2011

While I’m moving house today and somewhere in between old-with-an-internet-connection and new-with-god-knows-what-is-going-to-be-installed, I decided to bring forward my Best Post of 2011.

And by best, I mean the one that got the most hits, by far.

Enjoy. It’s a doozy. Reading it puts me right back in that place, March 3, 2011. Oh what a day that was….

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I Fought The Law, and the Law Won

So it’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m awake and working. At my job. At 4:30 in the morning. It’s dark outside and inside and all hell is breaking loose, business wise, in several of the major Asian countries I’m working with.

The problem isn’t entirely my fault, but it’s my team, and I manage them, so I take the fall because that’s what a manager should do.

The time zones are right, mostly, for talking to my folks already working through the end of what is their day Thursday, pesky time zones being what they are. It’s really right timing for talking to my boss. Four thirty means noon-thirty in London and the meaty part of his day.

He asks me why in the hell I’m up so early. Well, for one thing, I can’t sleep. For two things, there are emails scorching the inside of my email inbox. Someone’s gotta do something about it, and that’s someone’s gotta be me.

So we’re talking. My voice is still creaky from lack of sleep as I make my case. “I’m in over my head here,” I tell him, and he agrees to help.

I’m keyed up on adrenaline and buzzing like a pot of coffee and two five hour energy drinks dancing a polka across a vat of 1970’s diet pills.

The boss and I are puzzling through the problems. We’re working on solutions. I’m trying to answer as best as I can and agree to find out answers to the questions I don’t know.

So the boss is talking, going on a long riff as he’s wont to do. It’s good stuff and I’m listening hard. While I listen, I lean my chair back on two legs, perched there for a moment.

I say “two legs” but perhaps I should say “two wheels” because that’s really the case. I’m nestled into my worn but comfy home office chair. I do this all the time, go up on two wheels, while I’m thinking or listening or just because.

I’m listening. I’m “um hmming” and I’m very into the conversation when I guess the gods that rule gravity decide that it’s time they had a say in this situation.

With nary a wobble or early warning, I go from being semi-upright, let’s say a nice 10 degree angle, to staring at the ceiling, knees in the air, I’m-an-astronaut-strapped-onto-a-solid-rocket-booster-and-ready-to-light-this-candle position.

This descent of Karenkind does not occur without some noise. And by noise I mean a bone-jarring rattle that travels in waves through my seventy year old domicile. I can hear the plumbing pipes rattling below the floor.

The boys who follow earthquakes over in their center in Palo Alto might have noticed a barely imperceptible blip on the screen while taking another sip of stale government coffee. Meanwhile, seismic waves are going off in my home.

The curious cat, a moment ago fast asleep, comes galloping down the hall to find out what’s the deal. The Good Man turns on the bedside light. I see the yellow glow at the other end of the house.

Over there in London, either my boss hasn’t heard or doesn’t care. He keeps talking. I lay there, knees up, and listen. And reply. I continue the conversation, because the last thing I want to hear right now is “what was that?” because I have no good answer. “I just fell over in my chair” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in my capacity as either employee or human.

I half expect The Good Man to come check in on me, and am glad he doesn’t. I assume he hears me still talking and believes me to be all right.

Slowly, making the least amount of noise possible, over a period of several minutes, I slide out of the chair and slither into an Indian-style sitting position on the floor.

I finish my call. I hang up. I put my chair back upright and I pat its fake leather back as if to say, “we’re all right, big fella.”

I walk down the hall to go back to bed. The Good Man is snoozing with the light on. I place my iPhone on my bedside table, and as I do, I knock a stack of hardcover library books onto the floor. They make a sizable crash.

Apparently gravity and me are gonna tussle today. Being as how he has the law on his side, I think gravity is going to win.

I plan to give it a good fight.





Image found from Alex Huges Cartoons and Caricatures, a really fun site. I recommend a visit.



…And you can too

Oh what a Monday morning. Woke with a migraine. Today’s headache is not as severe as the one I had Thursday.

You know…just five days ago?

And here we go again.

Hooray.

I came into work while it was still dark outside to have an early morning call with an important Director in Ireland. He’s taking ownership of my team and while it was a good call, at two hours, with a migraine, trying to understand his brogue, and answering questions in rapid fire succession, I was a little…done.

When I hung up the phone, I sighed.

Wanting a little break, I went to my personal email box. There I found a rejection note from a literary magazine. This is to be expected, of course, when going through rounds of submissions. Generally not a problem. But at that moment, not what I needed.

Then I went to Google to look up something work related, and my broken brain forgot what I needed to look up.

I sighed.

Then, in the grand tradition of many people who use Google as a divination tool, I typed the words “can you make your own lucky star?” into the search field.

Hell, I could use a little luck today.

Turns out I can make my own lucky star.

And you can too.

Star light. Star bright. First star I see tonight. I wish I may. I wish I might.

Have this wish, I wish tonight.


A little office paper. A few folds. A little homemade luck.


“To hell with luck. I’ll bring the luck with me.” ― from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway



Something to Aspire To

Let’s stay on our theme of managers and management, shall we?

My story from yesterday had me thinking about the kind of manager I’d like to be one day.

Which reminded me of a post I did a few years ago.

Presented for your review, a (rather effective) management style that you won’t find in any college textbooks.


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Management…hamburger style

Currently, at the building across the way, there are some gentlemen hard at work putting a new roof on the two-story structure.

Roofing has got to be some grueling, backbreaking work, and they’ve been toiling at this for a few days now.

About an hour ago, all work went quiet over there. I thought maybe they were on a break. They weren’t on a break.

It appears they were having a little conference. Seems there was a problem and they were having what they’d call in the corporate world, a “root cause analysis” discussion.

I suspect they discovered what, or rather, whom was at the center of the mistake, because I could then hear the supervisor of this project having a one-on-one mentoring conversation, loudly, with his employee.

Let’s keep this a family friendly post…for all the instances of the eff word, I will substitute a more appropriate word.

Oh let’s have fun with it, let’s use the word “hamburger.”

Here we go, a faithful recounting of this clearly very hands on and empathetic manager as he guides his employee through a big error.

Remember: hamburger = eff word

“You hamburgered up. You hamburgered this whole thing up. I didn’t hamburger up. All the rest of these hamburgering guys didn’t hamburger this thing up. What in the hamburgering hell were you thinking? You weren’t thinking and you hamburgered this hamburgering thing all to hell. What the hamburger, man?! What the hamburger happened?”

: sound of employee mumbling, trying to explain his reason for hamburgering everything up :

“You what? You what? Who the hamburger told you to do that? I sure as hell didn’t hamburgering tell you to do that! Now this whole hamburgering project is running behind and that costs hamburgering money? Do you get that? Do get that you’ve cost every hamburgering one of us some hamburgering time and some hamburgering money?”

: more mumbling :

“Aw man, what the hamburger. Get back to work!”

And with that, all the machines started up, the smell of tar once again filled the air, and the team of folks got back to roofing.

There you have it. Management by hamburgering around.






Management 101

In November, I got to thinking about the end of the calendar year and how hard my own work team has been pulling to keep our program going, supporting end users, and picking up the slack when others have left the group.

They are a resilient little team (I mean little in numbers) and I’m proud of them.

I asked the Boss of my Boss if we had some sort of recognition program. He said, “oh yes, we do spot bonuses. Talk to so-in-so and they can provide you with some gift cards to hand your employees.”

I was pretty stoked. I figured these gift cards might be $100. Or maybe, you know, $50. Not much, but enough to make a difference.

So I contacted so-in-so and wrote up my justification and was handed some gift cards.

They are $25 each.

Ugh.

Ok, I know $25 is still better than a kick in the shins, but I worried that handing out $25 would be less of a thank you and more of a “why bother”? Given how hard this crew has been working and the success they saw last year, would a $25 gift card be an insult?

Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be all I could do for my employees under “official” program at of my very cheap frugal cost-conscious company.

This week, with everyone back in the office after the holiday break, I decided to hand out the gift cards along with a hearty thank you.

I went to each person on my team and I talked to them about how hard they worked and said “I’d like to give you this. I’m sorry it’s not very much, but it’s the best I can do under the official auspices.”

Every member of my team was incredibly grateful and dare I say excited to get an “official” bit of recognition for a job well done.

As one woman leapt from her chair to hug me and thank me over and over, I was stunned.

How could she be so thrilled over a puny $25 gift card?

I puzzled over it and thought about it and pondered.

Today, on my afternoon walk around the lake, I figured it out.

These wonderful, hardworking, amazing people are simply happy to be recognized.

This is the power of saying (and meaning) the words Thank You.

I knew this mattered, I really did. I try very hard as a manager to remember to say thank you and mean it. But even I forget.

My very humble team gave me a good lesson. They took me back to Management 101, and for that I’m filled with gratitude.

(Should I remind my own manager that I also tend to work harder with a few “thank yous” along the way?)







Image via Abstruse Goose.



Family Traditions

With the insanity of a more-than-full-time job, and the crush of the holidays, I’m a little sad that I wasn’t able to make a batch of my Blue Ribbon biscochitos this year. (Long time reader Ephraim has agreed to eat extra of his wife’s batch of biscochitos in order to bring balance back to the universe)

I also didn’t get a chance to make sugar cookies.

I didn’t manage to get to that chocolate covered peanut butter ball recipe I wanted to try.

And toffee. This year I was going to make toffee.

I didn’t get any of that done.

Thankfully, one family tradition did manage to squeeze through my kitchen as we near the holiday.

When I was growing up, my mom used to make these fabulous cream cheese mints. I always considered them to be so elegant and classy. Posh, as the Brits would say.

I remember my mom wrapped up a beautiful box of mints and gave them to my kindergarten teacher (who I idolized). She sent my mom a gushing thank you note. For some reason that stuck with me.

Through the magic of the internet, I was able to find myself a set of candy molds that approximated my mom’s collection, and Thursday night I put all else aside and whipped up a batch.

Tasty treats. Family lore.

Happy Christmas Eve to us all!!




This tin was supposed to make its way to work to share. It didn’t make it to work. More for me!



So pretty!!




Photos Copyright 2011, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons on the right column of this page. Photos taken with an iPhone4s and the Hipstamatic app.