I’m back!
I’ve been very quiet here because I’ve taken a monumental
leap in my life. I’ve decided to leave the
only employer I’ve had since college and go work for a much larger
manufacturing company. I’ll be doing
pretty much the same thing I’ve done for the past thirteen years, but the pay
is much better, the opportunities are plentiful, and the working environment is
much more to my liking—jeans every day, oh yeah!
Not that I didn’t like my old job. It’s just that when you sit in an extremely
quiet office all day, the silence broken only when someone calls or stops in
for help, and this is a regular occurrence for thirteen years, you tend to go a
little crazy. Plus I had reached a
ceiling, knowing I could really go no further both in my position and in the
company in general. And I hadn’t received
much feedback, positive or negative, in several years. Add to that an uncomfortable tension that has
developed over the years due to a conflict between a favored coworker and
myself (a whole other story for another time), and it became apparent to me
that I needed to move on. Fortunately a
better opportunity presented itself, and I didn’t hesitate.
Obviously you never know how one might interpret the words
you make public, and so I’ve been refraining from posting. I will continue to be very neutral and
moderate with my text, although I’m sure anyone who regularly reads my blog
knows my political, socio-economic, and religious views already. Still, I’d rather not paint my house neon
green, if you know what I mean.
I did want to share one amusing story, however. In college I worked in the computer
department of a mail processing plant. I
was replacing a guy who was leaving to take a better opportunity, and they hired
me prior to summer. I worked full-time
all summer and then was tasked with hiring and training someone else to help
out when I went back to school, knowing I would only work part-time at that
point.
So I hired a person who eventually became a close friend,
and together we ran the computer department for two and a half more years. This was a family owned and operated
business, and most of the family members worked there—husband and wife
co-owners, the wife’s sister working as the office manager, another sister
working as the shop manager, and yet another sister working as the
accountant. None of them, in my opinion,
worked very hard, but I was young and brash at the time, and so perhaps my
viewpoint was a bit skewed. Nonetheless,
my coworker and I were literally tasked to do it all. Not only did we have to set up mailings in
the computer, but I configured and replaced computers and peripherals and set
up the little network, pulled confidential files from their enormous file
storage building (often required to climb rickety ladders and carts 8’ high
with no mention or concern for my safety), answered all the calls, entered
financial information into Quickbooks, operated bursters (huge machines that
trimmed and separated forms), sorted mail, etc.
It was beyond crazy all of the tasks demanded of us.
One fine Saturday morning, my coworker and I were tasked
with going in to complete a job that needed to be printed and mailed first
thing Monday morning. We arrived early—7:30
AM—and noticed that the owner’s husband’s truck was parked suspiciously behind
the one building. In other words, if
someone had driven into the lot, he/she would not have seen it there unless
he/she exited the vehicle and walked down the sidewalk to the office door. My coworker and I went into the break room and punched in, and
the entire place was dark save for the office area that led to the computer
room—which should have been dark as well.
We proceeded through the door, opened the computer room door, and saw
the owner moving quickly toward us in the dim light of a desk lamp. He angrily asked what we were doing there,
and when we informed him that the business manager told us we HAD to come in
that day, he went to her office, shut the door, and we could see on the phones
that he was feverishly making calls. We
could hear him shouting to whomever it was that he'd called, and then he simply left
without speaking to us.
We thought it was all a bit strange, of course, but then
things became--for lack of a better word--disgusting. We had always known that one of the owner’s
pastimes was viewing questionable content on the web. This was back when dial-up was the only way
to connect, and people didn’t really have any clue about temporary internet
folders and clearing their browser history.
And this guy was just sick with some of the stuff he looked up. I won’t get into specifics, but many of his
searches involved the words “teen” and “animals.” Yeah.
Disgusting.
So on this day we settle in after the owner leaves, and the
first thing we notice is that the main production computer was on. My coworker had used it last the day before,
and he knew he had turned it off prior to leaving, so we figured that the owner
must have been doing “research.” So my coworker turns on the monitor, and the
home page on Internet Explorer 4.0 appeared.
He nearly closed it, but then he paused, looked to me for reassurance, and
then moused over the back button. I nodded,
he took a deep breath, clicked it, and sure enough was greeted with extremely
graphic and objectionable material.
But that’s not the end of the story. Oh no.
A few minutes later, after we finished laughing, I heard my coworker
say, “What the heck is this?” I looked
over, and he was kicking something on the ground. He bent down, then sat up with this disgusted
look on his face that was priceless. In
one hand was the owner’s wallet. In the
other hand was the owner’s belt. In
other words, yeah, his belt had been taken off and his pants had been on the
floor where, most likely in a scramble when he heard the door opening, his
wallet had fallen out of his pocket.
My coworker was horrified.
He asked if he should just put them back. I screamed, “Yes!” He then got up, went out to the bathroom,
came back and sprayed Lysol over EVERYTHING.
And I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants.
And then the absolute worst happened. The owner’s truck pulled up outside, and he
came into the office area and straight into the computer room. He still had a ticked-off look on his face,
but he then sheepishly asked if we’d seen his wallet. Can you imagine how awkward that was? My coworker looked like he was going to say
no, but he knew the owner would just come over and look anyway, so he bent down
and retrieved the man’s wallet and belt, stood up, and handed them to him.
The owner looked a bit surprised to see his belt. Like really surprised. Like, “OK, you caught me” surprised. He took his belt and wallet silently and simply
left. And we didn’t see him for the next
two weeks. He was in the building, but
he avoided us like the plague. And it
was so painfully obvious that his wife and the business manager even asked if
something had happened between us. We
just shrugged our shoulders. Really,
what were we going to say to this man’s WIFE??
Luckily I didn’t stay at that job much longer. And my coworker was fired a couple months
after I left because they accused him of screwing up a huge job. I was called to testify at his unemployment
hearing, which of course was a blast (not), and at one point the business
manager stood up and screamed at me that I was a liar. Like she literally stood up, pointed her finger
across the table at me, and screamed! It
was so awful that the referee instructed her to leave the room. The whole situation was so messed up—they had
fabricated dozens of write-ups on my coworker, and these were minor things that
I’d done numerous times over the years without getting into any trouble. When it came to this massive job that my
coworker had apparently screwed up, I discovered that it was actually the other
computer guy they’d hired to replace me who was guilty of the
transgression. Needless to say, my
coworker received unemployment, and the referee spent ten minutes chiding the owner and his crew for the "evidence" he'd presented.
And then, unbelievably, I received a call from the owner a
week later begging me to come in and train the new people. After having just
lost me to new employment and firing my coworker, they had nobody who knew how to do the job. You can’t make this stuff up! Of course I declined. No way was I going back there.
So I’ve had some bad bosses in my career. I’ve only actually worked at five different
places—a lumber yard the summer after high school, a college work-study job
doing computer work, a grocery store in college, that mail processing plant,
and the job I’m leaving now. I won’t
rank my bosses, but I can honestly say that the boss at the job I’m leaving was
by far the best, and of course the owner of the mail processing plant was the
worst.
Everyone has horrible bosses throughout their careers. In the movie of the same name, I’d say all
three bosses portrayed by Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, and Jennifer Aniston combined
were the equivalent of the owner of that mail processing plant. And it wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that
I haven’t spoken to him in thirteen years and probably/hopefully never will
again.
But I’ll miss my boss at the job I’m leaving. He’s a great guy. I’ll miss a lot of people there,
actually. My coworkers, clients,
vendors. When you work somewhere for 13
years, you create lasting bonds with people.
Lots of people. And when they
announced that I was leaving, my inbox was overwhelmed with well wishes. How touching is that?
In the past I’ve talked about how people always think the
grass is always greener. I haven’t
accepted my new position for that reason.
It’s less about the color of the grass and more about the perspective
with which I’m viewing it. Or really
viewing the world. Will the grass be
greener at my new workplace? Possibly,
probably, hopefully. But is it a new place
with a different dynamic with different people in a different industry. Yes.
Sometimes you just need change to grow.
And that’s what I’m looking for now.
Sorry to write a book.
It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to write, so that’s what you
get. I’m hoping this is the start of me
posting again regularly. If not, I think
you’ll understand why.
