Category: Opinions

How do you do what you do?

A couple days ago, I mentioned that part of my daily work is to manage a helpdesk team. They are a great, hardworking team of ten.

Sometimes, I’m not sure how they do what they do. Especially since most all of these folks are contract employees. They work that hard and they aren’t even getting all of the benefits of being employed by the company.

This morning, I’m sitting in my office working on mid-year performance reviews for my other six full time (not contract) employees. I’m trying to find a “business” way to write “he’s a great worker when he bothers to show up to work on time.”

I’m fiddling, I’m delaying, I’m reading updates on Twitter instead of actually working.

All the while, I can hear my best contract employee, who has the honor of having her cube located just outside my office door, on the phone with our end users.

In the time it took me to check the current stock market performance (down a skosh this morning), she has answered three calls.

One from an outside supplier wanting to do business with the company. “I’m sorry sir, I’m just a call agent, but I can pass on your message. No, I can’t give you their phone number. Because I’m not authorized, I’m very sorry. Yes, I understand. I will gladly pass on your message and they’ll call you if there is a fit. I understand. I understand. I understand. But that’s unfortunately all I can do. Yes. I understand. Ok, thank you.”

Another call from a supplier wanting to get paid, “I show your invoice was received on Monday. It’s set up to pay Friday. Yes, ok, unh huh. It looks like it was stuck in approvals. Sure, I get that. I can see what I can do to expedite, but I know for sure the check will run Friday. Ok, yes, I’ll see if we can overnight the check.”

And then a call from an inside end user who can’t use our *very* simple online purchasing system. So she walked them through step-by-step, “Do you see the box with the little magnifying glass? Click that, then scroll down to the fifth one down, yes, that’s it, click that, then click ok. See the next box that says ‘description’? Ok, click there, then type in what you want to buy. Well, what is it you need? Ok, so let’s see, type in widget, blue, two and a half inches. Did you do that? Then click ok.”

Meanwhile, between calls, she’s answering email, typing in tickets for the calls she’s just taken, and giving relationship advice to the guy who shares her cube.

This woman is a force of nature.

This is just a small sample of her days, and this is a “quiet” day!

As I listened to her working so hard while I idled the morning hours, I started to feel bad. I realized…I can’t do what she does. Well, I could, I just don’t want to.

I’m pretty glad I get to sit here in my office being managerial and probably overpaid, searching the thesaurus to find new ways to say “efficient” and “process”.

I feel grateful that my parents were able to send me to college, because, really, it’s my MBA that has me sitting in the office with the door and not the open-air cube shared with another employee.

I think about that amazing lady out there, the force of nature, who is age 24 trying to go to school at night and holding down this contract job and taking care of her mom and grieving her recently deceased grandmother and being the leader for the team and training our end users and generally doing it all while looking good and being pretty gall damn calm.

I think about how it’s unfair, how hard she works and how I have to be honest and admit I don’t work as hard as she does every day. I do have days where I work that hard, but not as consistently.

Then I laughed. Because then I remembered a recent conversation I had with this force of nature woman. She was in my office and I was grilling her for information. I was working on a major presentation to our senior leadership team.

I was spending *hours* on a PowerPoint deck of slides, tweaking bullet points, fiddling with fonts, jimmying the graphics.

She looked at my computer monitor, shook her head, sighed, and said, “I’m so glad I don’t have to mess with things like that.”

I think she’s pretty grateful she doesn’t have to do my job, either.

Perhaps the grass isn’t always greener.

Funky Tut*

*With all due homage to the Steve Martin classic. “He gave his life for tourism.”

This past weekend, while my best girlfriend was in town, the three of us (The Good Man, The Friend, and me) went over to San Francisco’s De Young museum to see the King Tut exhibition.

This marked a 30-year anniversary for the De Young, as they also showed King Tut artifacts back in 1979. I remember the hubbub about Tut back in the day (and listened to the Steve Martin song on the album owned by my big brother).

Of course, the Tut traveling show never made it anywhere near New Mexico, so I was pretty psyched to see it this go ’round.

In short, it was amazing. I would love you show you photographs, a drawing, a pencil sketch, my notes or ANYTHING from that visit, but all of that is prohibited. *sigh*

After the exhibit, the three of us headed over to the historic Japanese Tea Garden located next door to the De Young, and while sipping tea in quiet surroundings, we talked about the Tut exhibit and our impressions.

Here’s where my train of thought was headed…..

Ok, so this whole funerary thing…they create these surroundings to make it nice for the person in the afterlife. There are chairs and other furniture, cosmetics, hair care items (gotta look good), and clothing. Favored toys, games, and pets also included.

Basically, all the stuff the deceased liked so they would have a happy, restful afterlife.

And so, with this in mind, I determined my tomb would be, on the inner sanctum, a replica of the red couch, with a fine yet tubby statute of my Feline at my side, or rather, on my legs.

And cheesy poofs. Lots and lots of cheesy poofs (I’m thinking they can use carnelian to properly capture the vibrant orange cheesiness).

My friend pointed out that we had to work out my regal name. As the Egyptian royalty ascended to leadership, their name was changed.

As we learned in the exhibit, the naming convention is something like:

A personal identifier + a word like “life” or “peace” or whatever + name of your preferred god

Thus:

Tut + Ankh (means “life”) + Amun (the diety)

Tutankhamun

And so my name would have to be something like:

Ka + Ankh + Cheesy Poof (cuz I revere the Cheeto)

Kaankhcheesypoof

And yet, we also realized that sometimes, on the cartouche, the name is actually represented in the other direction.

Thus making my name

Poofcheeseyankhka

Ok.

Now we’re cooking.

Also, in the funerary tomb, there are these little figurines placed about. They are called shabti, and their whole gig is to be the servants for the deceased in the afterlife. So, like, if there is manual labor to be done, the shabti have to step up.

Well, I thought on it, and then was all like, “you know, I think my shabti should be all my bad bosses through the years….put those b*stards to work for ME!”

Like opening fresh bags of cheesy poofs and going on beer runs. Stuff like that.

The Good Man and The Friend were *way* in favor of this idea.

However, the more I thought on it, the more I realized I don’t really want all of those bad bosses to hang out with me for all eternity. The good bosses (there have been plenty) are welcome, but why would I want the yuck around? We want a happy afterlife.

So what I need instead is a jar like this one (that we saw at the exhibit).

See, the tiger on top represents Tut…so on mine it would be…uh…a sloth. Anyhow, so there the sloth lays, all smug looking, and then at the bottom would be carved heads of my former oppressors managers (see the photo, heads of Tut’s enemies are found at the foot of the jar).

Instead, my shabti can just be really cool but hardworking people who, like, want to shag glasses of lemonade and make guacamole and are willing to get up a game of softball every now and again.

Ok, so we’ve got a good start on this whole afterlife plan….

Now I need to find someone to begin carving images of me. I need to be depicted throughout the years. I’m thinking all this carving and painting and gilding might take a while.

That’s ok, I can wait. Also, I’d like them not to take my brain out through my nose if we can at all avoid it, mmmkay?

What do you get for the girl…

…who wandered away from home, and might be a little bit lost?

This weekend my best friend arrived, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time.

Lately, I’ve been, yes, a little bit lost. Been thrown off my center of gravity and unable to get myself back right.

The Good Man has been a champ in propping me up, rubbing my shoulders, sending me back out there for the fight.

I keep swinging. And keep getting knocked down.

Then that great gal I described last week, the one who has been in my court for twenty plus years shows up…back up troops, you might say.

And from her roller bag, she pulls out some completely unexpected presents for my belated birthday.

In the presents, she had this (pardon the iPhone photo fuzziness):

That gift was the idea of my two goddaughters (her kids).

“Open it, friend,” she said, “and take a whiff.”

At first I thought it was some sort of unknown-to-me spice. But I was wrong.

I opened. I inhaled.

Inside that little canning jar, hauled on a plane all the way from New Mexico, was a little sprig of creosote.

“Smells like rain,” she said. She was right.

“Smells like home,” I said, and had to blink really fast so I didn’t dissolve into a huge puddle right there on the red couch.