Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Thought for the Day

Have you ever noticed that placating fools gives you a exhilarating sense of intellectual and moral superiority?
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After taking two weeks off work to evaluate whether or not I wanted to continue working there, I came to the realization that I wasn’t being paid nearly enough to put up with that much “stuff”. I’ve long believed that there is a correlation between the payoff (both monetary and personal satisfaction) I receive from a job and the amount of stress I should be expected to contend with on my employers’ behalf. This job was never about financial reward. I was bored and found a opening at a small non-profit organization whose mission I believed in and the communications work was fun and challenging. The work environment and management structure (or lack thereof) is the worst I’ve ever encountered – bar none. I’ve put up with it for 12 months but I have reached my limit.


Here’s the best way I can explain what it’s like to work there is in a hypothetical example- A good day at that place is like having the CEO come into my office and announcing I would need to drop whatever I was working on and get busy taping Jello to the tree. Asking why results a very long convoluted story that boils down to “because I’m the CEO and I said so”. With no timeline or budget provided, I get busy with a project that doesn’t seem to have a purpose. The manager to whom I report comes along and asks me what I’m working on and that asks me why the CEO didn’t consult with her on this project. After sending her off to discuss her concerns with the CEO, I start taping again only to have the Finance Director comes by and demands to know why I’m using red jello. I explain that I like the color red and no one had specified what color of jello should be adhered to the trees, and I refuse to argue with her on the color of jello to be used in this completely pointless project. She heads straight on the CEO’s office for a long closed door meeting. The CEO then send’s my line manager an email saying that this project can’t continue with the use of red jello because an article in the National Enquirer stated that red jello is bad for the environment. The only way this project can possibly precede is with green jello. During this entire episode, I’m trying not to scream – “you people are bloody insane”. I take a break and go to the only office in the place inhabited by sane people. The sane lady makes a proper cup of tea, so we sip our tea and chat about why anyone would want jello taped to a tree. I finish the tea, thank the maker and return to my pointless project. During the afternoon two more people not involved in the project come by and tell me how they think it should be done; then just before closing time the CEO comes by and says they’ve decide that they don’t really want jello taped to the tree after all and wants to know why I work so many hours.

This is an example of a good day – Pointless but amusing on a warped sadistic level. Bad days in that place are like being caught by the undertow in a toxic cesspool. Hence, I have packed up my toys and returned to my life as a lady of leisure.

So far, I’ve amused myself by making beads, processing some of the hundreds of photos taken in the past 6 months with which I’ve done nothing and did some serious house cleaning. Dave and I just spent a long weekend with both of use suffering from a cold. Fortunately for our marriage, neither of us wants to be fussed over when we’re sick. We spent 3 days napping and reading in separate rooms. We went through a large box of cold tablets, 2 boxes of Kleenex, 2 bottles of cranberry juice and one large pot of soup. I even skipped the camel race on Saturday!

Now that I’m on the road to recovery, I’ll be blogging and posting photos from the past few months. There will be lunch’s girls, matinee movies and rounds of golf with the girls and mid-morning trips to the gym on my schedule for the rest of the month.

The only other notable item in my life is an update on our Russian import program. The moronic women from Tennessee that returned a child to Russia, has caused a great deal of difficulty for us and a whole lot of other people trying to adopt. We’ve had to switch to a different region and complete a WHOLE lot of additional paper work. We’re now on the waiting list for a little person/s from the Perm region of Russia. There’s no way to know how long the wait will be. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

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