Category: business is business

Mother Teresa of the Flu Virus

As one of the many hats I wear in my new gig, I manage a help desk. Ok, I don’t manage it, I have an incredibly good young manager who manages that team. She’s new at the role, but thoughtful and smart.

Today is starting out tough for her because we’re getting a series of folks calling in sick. This also includes my own manager, the Director of us all. *coff, coff, sniffle, sniffle*

Not good.

So I was chatting with my help desk manager today about our situation and how we get through it. While talking, she pulled a box out from under her desk and handed me the following things:

She is now going desk to desk, ministering to the sick and wounded, laying on hands and providing the same kit to each of our call agents.

See, it’s our fiscal year end, and we really need these folks on the phones, doing their jobs.

And with an arsenal of flu fighting products, there shall be no excuses!

I think this new, young manager is one smart cookie. I better keep an eye on her, I think she’ll be running circles around me in no time.

How lucky I am to have good folks on my team!

The Trickster

Oh yes, I am.

The Trickster.

See….soooomehow, in the course of a series of interviews, a fairly well crafted resume and a bunch of conversations, I’ve managed to convince the procurement organization of a well respected Fortune 500 corporation to award me the title of Senior Manager complete with an office (with a window that has a really nice view) and a fairly robust staff of minons to do my bidding.

Me. The goofball from New Mexico. The kid who, once upon a time, had to be taken to the doctor because I got a piñon nut stuck up my nose.

That one.

For some reason they actually think I might be…..good.

Damn. I convinced them. Now what?

I’m pretty sure I’m a fraud.

Day 3, the rubber is, you know, sort of starting to meet the road.

Can I shove another piñon nut up my nose and sidestep this responsibility?

No, probably not. Guess I better just keep showing up and trying to make good on who they seem to think I am.

Abject fear. Whatta rush.

Sigh

Another one bites the dust.

After nearly 40 years, Rolling Stone magazine is whittling down its trademark size. It will now look like every other magazine on the stands.

Ugh.

When I was 15, I had a subscription to Rolling Stone (thanks to the kindness of my mom, thanks mom!). I read it cover to cover every month, drinking in the journalism, the hot, hot interviews and the hip quality of it all.

I stopped subscribing when they went from newspaper print style to glossy pages. It wasn’t the paper, it was the quality of the product. Rotten.

So to be fair I haven’t read Rolling Stone in a good long while. But now, this nail in the coffin.

The magazine that was so subversive, so out there, so of-the-now is, at its heart, just another corporate owned mass-produced media product.

*sigh*

We’ve come a long way since RS 1:

Photo source.

For the birds

This being a grown up thing is really for the birds.

I mean, sure, being an adult has its benefits. Cookies and ice cream and beer for dinner, for example. Yeah.

I don’t have to ask permission to buy a candy in the checkout line.

Disposable income.

I can tie my own shoes.

No homework.

Yeah.

But being a grown up means getting up every morning to go to work.

Trying hard to “get ahead”. Get that better job. Be a better employee. Get paid more. More respect.

Sleepless nights worrying about getting that project done, or the political implications of a decision.

No summer vacation. Of if you get one, it’s just a week long. Ugh.

The reason for my lament today is that we’ve entered the performance review stage at work. Meaning I have to write up and rate my team for the year.

Now, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve done this for many years, but it never gets any easier. To reduce the sum total of another human’s work for the year to a percentage number and a couple paragraphs is an agonizing process for me.

Part of what makes me a good manager is the depth of my compassion. But it’s also one of my biggest limitations.

Our company gives out paltry merit raises, and it’s hard to hand out a tiny raise for a hard year’s work. This year, I have a pretty good boss who is helping me fight the good fight for rate increases. But I still go home a little bit demoralized.

Good thing I can have all those cookies and beer for dinner.

Image via.

My lunch pal

I have a friend at work who, most days, I go to lunch with. Now, when I say “go to lunch” I should probably clarify.

She and I go together to the cafeteria onsite to grab some food that we take back to our respective desks. There at the desks, we eat and work, thus maximizing our time. You’d be surprised how busy noontime can be, seeing as we have main offices two time zones ahead…two o’clock there seems like a nice time for a meeting. Ugh.

My pal has worked here for a while, like me, and she and I are at the same level, reporting to the same manager.

We use the time on our walks to seek advice from each other. We talk over management problems. Or just to complain, because our employer inspires that in most of its employees.

She was raised in Ohio by a Steel Magnolia-of-a-mom straight out of the deep South. So that’s given her a certain, uh, colorfulness that is often amusing.

Lunch Pal is having some problems on her team, which means she gets pulled into last minute meetings and closed-door discussions in the office of our boss.

So I end up *waiting* on her until she finishes.

I tried going off for food without her a couple times.

It didn’t go over well.

No, I’m expected to WAIT on her to finish so we can walk over together. Who cares how hungry I am? It’s all about her.

Let’s face it, my friend is really kind of a pain in the ass.

So why am I wasting both bandwidth and pixels on her?

Because she’s on vacation this week!

HOW DARE she not be here?

She may be a pain in the ass, but she’s my pain in the ass.

Never thought I’d miss her…