Shanamadele’s Coffee Break
Pet Peeve #162Archive for work
Movin’ (on up)
Some time ago, I asked my boss how a person becomes a manager here.
He’s delighted in my interest, and I’m happy to say that he’s working with me on a plan to have me become the lead researcher over the next six months.
I feel awkward about it when I think about the other people on the team who have been here longer and have more technical skills than I have. But, as my boss reminds me, he can’t teach them the management, communication and leadership skills that I already have.
About a week ago, our support person left. She had her own cube, while most of the rest of us worked together in a four-cube pod. (Can you guess where I’m going?) We took this change as an opportunity to move me out, in part because the new staffer has some skills my boss wants her to share with the other researchers and in part because he felt it would increase the likelihood that others in the division will start to see me as set apart from my colleagues.
I don’t know that it is true. I do know that I feel set apart and more autonomous somehow.
Mama Researcher
Last night, I shuttled 1000+ surveys from my office to my home so they could be picked up by a contractor for data entry.
On most nights when I arrive home, I change as quickly as I can into my pajamas. Last night, I stayed in my work clothes so I could be prepared to meet the contractor.
On most nights, Butternut is, ahem, very regular. He requests a diaper and, much to Pumpkin’s chagrin, only wants Papa to clean him up.
Last night, however, he only wanted Mama.
Which is how I found myself on the floor of the bathroom in my work clothes while Pumpkin loaded 10 trays of mail into a courier’s van. (Feeling grateful, by the way, that Pumpkin does not hesitate to help me with work nor shirk his fatherly duties.)
What a difference a year makes
A year ago, I was newly unemployed.
Today, with less than two months on my new job, I got handed a $200,000 project.
I feel anxious, excited and happy. I have days when I think my boss was crazy to hire me — what with the almost complete lack of knowledge of the subject matter and some weak technical skills. But, then I look at the team he’s put together and my place in it, and it makes sense. I’m a cat hearder and a data massager. It’s not a package that comes together all that often, near as I can tell.
And, man, have I mentioned how interesting my work is? I get to have fun with statistics, I have adequate tools to crunch data, I have project-planning software (oh, I love that!), I have spent the first two months of my job talking with people about race and ethnicity, and I learn new things every dad-gum day!
still, with the dry spell
I have been trying to write things in my palm pilot as they come up at work to relate to you, my Gentle Reader. However, I’m not getting very far. Here’s the sum total to date:
One thing I love about my new job: my boss is moving offices, and no one is asking me to help. I hardly know it’s happening, in fact.
and
The largest outfit I ever worked for had half as many ppl as the unit I work for now.
and
“He looks like he’s all boy.”
Overheard about a 4-month-old baby. Mom agreed!
I also have this note to myself to post about time management — I think that’s about one particular administrative colleague to whom I e-mailed detailed information about what I wanted and who needed to follow up by coming to my cube and writing a note on a post-it. I think there was some other equally effective forms of follow up on her part.
Oh, and did I mention that I work in a cube farm?
But it’s a nice cube farm, really. Even with budget cuts. About two weeks after I started, they decided, as a cost-cutting measure, to eliminate the office supply closets on each floor and tighten ordering. It’s probably just as well, since there was very little there that anyone really needed. On the other hand, I now get one weekly shot at ordering pens and folders. (Of course, nothing is ever really that tight. Someone always has hoarded enough stuff to share, just for times like this.)
See, the upside of being in a cube farm is colleagues. Not all of them, but there are so many you’re guaranteed to find someone who’s alright. The researchers I work with are pretty good — smart, compassionate, dedicated, sane.
Who wins with Voter Owned Elections?
Let’s face it — public financing for elections (also known as clean money or voter owned elections) fails to tug at the heart strings or invoke passionate response. But how we run our elections affects who can run and what they say and do once in office.
Don’t take it from me — check out how this single mom went from waitress and domestic violence survivor to head of Maine’s judiciary committee.
