Two weeks ago, my remaining sane teammate left the team. Granted we were all more or less dissatisfied with our jobs, and sure, we’d have our usual therapy/griping-sessions, but neither of us really actively sought out new employment. Then about three months ago, she got into a pretty heated argument with the boss wherein he said if she was dissatisfied with his treatment of her, she could go find another job. I know he said it in anger but that’s the sort of thing that he does which bristles people. It’s unkind. At about the same time, a lady on another team (who knew of our predicament because she had worked with our boss before) sent my colleague a job opening in her team. Lo and behold, at the suggestion of my boss and the timing of the new opportunity, she applied for that position in the other office.  What had been a team of 7, is now down to 4. Happy for her, totally bummed for me.

I need a new job.  It’s been 2 years and I’ve proven my point.  What was my point?  Oh right.  That I’m not completely flighty.  I am able to stay at a job for more than 8 to 10 months at a time.  Pat on the back.  Ok, time to go.  So I started writing those blasted job applications again.  What a terrible time I’m having!  After taking a two year hiatus on it, I am rusty.  I’ve spent a good two days writing one application.  My brain is so juiced out from all the writing.  Here’s where sense kicks in and I write on my blog to take a break from writing.  I’m chock full of good ideas like that.  And I have three short papers to write for school by tomorrow.  I am so screwed.  Oh well, nothing a good happy hour can’t cure tonight.       

John Christensen, one of the authors of FISH!, gave his FISH! Philosophy presentation today at work. The philosophy can be summed up as four practices, or actions, to use in your life: 1. Be there 2. Play 3. Make their day 4. Choose your attitude

He started off by citing a 2007 Gallup Poll, which showed that 59% of Americans say they are disengaged from their work. Of those, 14% say they even go so far as to sabotage their work. These statistics show a big problem because we spend so much of our time at work that it takes up most of our lives. So we try to separate work from life and in reality, you can’t. Work is a big chunk of our lives and whether we are at work or not, we’re still making choices which shape our life.

Elaborating on the four practices:

1. Be there: Be present in the moment. Listen for what’s being said. Take a breath before responding.

2. Play: Having fun engages people and sparks energy. You have to define the playing field depending on your coworkers, but what it boils down to is building trust. When you can laugh and joke and not be afraid to speak up or admit mistakes, that’s a good place to be.

3. Make their day: Serve the people (customers). Make people happy. Let others in on your fun.

4. Choose your attitude: Choose to choose. You have the choice in everything you do. It’s how we react and the choices we make that makes up our life.

One memorable anecdote he shared was Southwest Airlines implementing this philosophy. He showed a clip of this lady who recounted her job interview. She pretty much had no work experience, limited computer skills, and no knowledge of the industry. They hired her anyway and now she’s in charge of a multi-million dollar account. The point they were making was to “hire for attitude.” This lady had a positive attitude and it showed. All those other skills, teachable.

Everyone in the auditorium was drawn into his presentation. He’s a very engaging speaker and the simplicity of the ideas makes it very inspiring for people to want to adopt this. For sure, I think these are all things to be mindful of daily. I mean we all get frazzled, grumpy, or preoccupied sometimes with everything that goes on around us so this definitely takes a bit of conscientiousness. I asked him during the presentation which practice he felt was the toughest to do and he said he felt the hardest, but also key step, is “Be there.” It’s easy to be doing one thing and thinking of something else. I personally think #4 is the most important, and for me, the most inspiring. You make of it what you want. The message is empowering and I like that.

The point to all this is, when you encourage these practices at work, morale increases, so productivity increases. And that’s the bottom line.

He signed books for everybody afterwards.

When I first signed up to be a uh… public servant, I had the intention of, at the bare minimum, staying for three years.  The thought of it (to my ADD-addled mind) was daunting - three whole years!  Then, as I went from one sketchy place to another, it seemed like the longer I was here, the further away that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel seemed to be.  Of course, time passes so quickly in hindsight and now that I’ve made it, all of my memories have somehow turned a tinge of rosy pink.  Here’s how distorted my memories are: Abusive Drunk Boss is now the funniest experience for me during these past three years.  So much so, I’ve caught myself wanting to go back and work there!  I won’t.  But it’s crossed my mind.   

I’ve learned so much, made some friends, had time to keep up with friends, and had time for myself.  This was the right decision (thanks MeanFace! - aka my career counselor).  Today marks the end of the third year and I plan on staying (for now).  But it feels good to be a free woman.          

Rarely do I ever get excited about work.  I know, it’s sad, and a little bad, but it’s hard to be enthused by regulations and accountability reports.  To sort of keep things interesting for me, I started volunteering in a committee to plan seminars for our organization.  Basically, we get speakers to present topics that are of interest to our audience and helpful to their jobs.  For example, one of the seminars was about the multi-generational workplace.  Understanding the differences among veterans, boomers, gen-x, and y helps us to overcome possible conflicts and maybe even use those differences to our benefit.  These seminars are usually zero budget with an audience of about 150 people and a crowd of webcast watchers.  I’m trying to push for our audience to webcast more because it saves gas!  But there are obstacles to that, remember the generational-divide issue I mentioned earlier?       

So the reason why I’m all excited now is because of next month’s seminar.  One lady, who normally isn’t in our committee, somehow was able to get John Christensen, the author of Fish! to present for us!!  He’s a bit of a celebrity author and I’m so excited, I’m bringing his books to the presentation so he can sign them.  I’ll keep you posted if there’s a webcast.  Did I mention I am EXCITED?!?!  I hope I catch a fish. :)  

Now don’t get me wrong, I like breaks and vacations and stuff. Time off to do whatever I want is a good thing.  Still, I’m pretty relieved to go back to work today. I’ve had days to putz around and that has been plenty enough time for me.  I think in about a month or so, I’m going to be missing those putzing around days.  Anyway, this hardly means my life revolves around work.  My life is all knitting all the time.  But here’s something that I realized recently: I don’t hate my job. (Initially typed: “I enjoy my job.” Thought better of it. That’s too strong a sentiment.) It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that and at least for the time being, I mostly look forward to going each day. The first time I realized this was on my way to work one morning (last month). In traffic! I was belting out tune after tune and otherwise enjoying the drive. WTF was wrong with me!? Possible explanations: 1) I had one too many cups of joe 2) That latest music cd I’ve been listening to r0×0rs 3) My hormones were in perfect balance and harmony. Whatever it was, I was actually looking forward to seeing the same crazy people I’d been seeing day in and day out. This post does not negate the rants. The work is still crappy, the people are still crazy, but I think they’re mostly good people.

Today was one of those days. Just had a ticker list of things running through my head. Car stuff, work stuff, holiday stuff, me stuff, household stuff, stuff stuff. Last night, I innocuously started a to-do list for the coming week and it kept piling on. Blah. Planning is for pansies. Anyway, this morning, I was feeling better and coughed up last night’s blah to just me being tired. Well then I got to work and Boss was in a bad mood, had a cow on my teammate, which we fixed but blah about the freakout. Why does he have to be rude, y’know? There’s no need for condescension. Gotta credit him for getting me to be better about not joining in with his drama and just listening to him rant. Ok, coming back to my whining, maybe it’s the dreary rainy cold weather and the time of year. I just feel like crawling into bed. I’m sure that’s what my horoscope said today. “Don’t bother getting out of bed. Stay put until manana.”

We don’t get business cards at my job. Someone asked me for a business card yesterday and I didn’t have any. This left me thinking, “Hmm, maybe I need to get some business cards.” Now for the people who know me and the mind numbingly torturous sector I work in, you understand that my jobs have been sort of short-term. I mean, to have reached the one-year mark this August was, for me, a pretty big milestone. Because of that, I always figured, why bother with business cards when they’re obsolete in a few months anyway? That’s tantamount to lying. Here’s my email and phone, haha, kidding.

Anyway, now that things have sort of gotten a bit more semi-permanent (relatively speaking) with this job (translation of “semi-permanent relatively speaking”: up to 3 years) I decided to print out 12 business cards. Ghetto superstar: I made up business cards with the organization’s logo, took binder dividers, trimmed off the tab, printed on these dividers and used a paper cutter to cut out 12 cards. Hence only 12 cards and hence the 3 years max. Yes, I know about Kinko’s but no, I don’t want to pay for it or mess with that and I only wanted 12 cards. Looking at ‘em now, I’m thinking, probably should’ve put an expiration date on these things.

Every morning, on my way to work, if I drive by the neighborhood bus stop and there’s a crowd of kids there already, I know I’m late and going to get stuck in traffic. Just by experience, if I see the bus stop kids, I automatically sink comfortably into my seat and make sure I have a cd of music that fits my mood of the morning. I’m in for a long ride. Last Friday, I did just that. Only as I was driving up to them, I saw two boys fighting pretty hard. I looked at them and as I passed them they immediately stopped. I kept staring and they both turned towards me smiling coolly as if nothing was going on. Guilt written on their foreheads of course. Anyway, I thought it was pretty neat I had that sort of au-thor-i-tay! Ha!! Here I am driving by and my “look,” whatever it is, gets them to behave. Only I think my Friday morning “look” is more disheveled than stern but whatever, same result. Really, I think it was that I’m an old grownup which makes me feel… well, old. Great.

Yesterday, I was talking to a lady at the gym who handles research grants. She said that because of the recent flatlined budgets, many grants have had to be reduced or cut. Understandably, because of that, some research programs have had to reduce staff, cut equipment funding, and slow down or sometimes even halt their research projects. She also mentioned that sometimes some offices she worked in ran short of paper and basic supplies before the year ended while other offices were giving everyone a color printer at the end of the year. There’s something wrong with the system when funds can’t be diverted where they need to go. I know the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service was dinged earlier this year for giving their SES’s generous bonuses while crying for operational money. I believe they ended up defending themselves by saying that the money appropriated for salaries (including bonuses) could not be spent elsewhere. Ok, so then I ask, why did you request that amount for salaries instead of where you were short on dough? Why didn’t you ask for more overhead money and less pad-your-wallet money?