The Other Shoe

I went into work yesterday feeling good. I had accomplished some pretty good things and I was part of the forward motion of a company that had been stagnate for nearly a decade. And then I said good morning to the CEO.

Something happened, literally over night and he became a fire-eating dragon. Now, to be fair, whenever he starts off on one of these rants he always begins with, "This isn't about you." He then will proceed on his tirade, grilling me about other people in the office, calling them morons, demanding to know why they don't talk to him about their concerns -- completely not connecting that last comment to his habit of referring to them as morons. Today he sulked in his office all day long and his tantrum permeated the office like the smell of dirty socks. I finally told my boss that I didn't know how much longer I could deal with these tirades.

Then I had the meeting with the administrative assistants. The fact of the matter is that our administrative assistants are little princesses, all of whom believe they are overworked when the reality is that half of them should be thankful they have jobs. For years they've gotten away with the this-is-my-job and this-is-all-I-do and I'm-overworked atttitude. Well, I've been asked to find a way to create a back up network so that administrative work flows more smoothly through the office. You'd have thought that I asked them to serve coffee. The question that irked me the most was, "Well does this mean that anyone can come up to me and tell me to type something?" Does anyone do that to anyone else now? Then why would they start? I just want to rip their overly processed hair right out of their heads. This is the memo I'm sending two of them...

E & L

After work late last night, A gave me a ride home and shared some of your concerns and questions about our meeting yesterday. I am looking forward to meeting with each of you to address your concerns directly, but because Mondays are difficult days to catch me I wanted to jot a few things down in an e-mail to clarify some of my thoughts.

1) This model is still in development. If you have some ideas on how to improve it, I'm looking forward to hearing them.

2) The idea behind this model is not to dump more and more work on you. In fact, it's just the opposite. This should give you some tools to reach out to other members the staff when you might be swamped.

3) I made my rather arbitrary divisions of work based on the feedback I've gotten on your performance, and tried to align you with projects that a) will give you opportunities to shine within the office and b) possibly create opportunities for advancement -- based upon your expressed interests and performance strengths.

So, in addition to making a list of your questions and concerns, I'd also like to ask each of you to pick some time -- maybe a four-hour block of time in the coming week -- in which I can sit with you at your desk and get a better sense of the type of work you are doing and a better handle on the volume. L, in your case I may need to spend an entire day with you because I'd like you to actually train me on your equipment processes. I think this will help me have a better understanding of how this new model will affect your work day.

Let me know when will work for you. For now, after Monday my schedule is wide open.

S.

That ought to shut them up.