Poker Face (backlog 3/10)

The last company I worked for was not well known for their attention to employee needs, or their guardianship of employee morale. Walking through the hall at my last place of employment, shortly before I quit, I overheard the following conversation:

Person 1: We're still running behind schedule.
Person 2: We just haven't been able to get people to put in the time over the weekends.
Person 1: Yeah, we only have about half the team working weekends now.
Person 2: What can we tell them to get them all in here?
Person 1: We'll figure something out to get them in here. Maybe some incentive.
Person 2: Or just make it mandatory.

I didn't hear much past that. I didn't need to. I was out the door within the next 2 months.

I've gotta admit, my new workplace is much different. It was quite an adjustment to work at a place where personal satisfaction was as important as meeting deadlines. A recent exchange I had reminded me of that.

Let me preface this by saying, I know I'm under alot of stress right now. Not "Ed's gonna crack and go mop floors in a high school" type stress, but stress nonetheless. I could get into the stress on this blog and, frankly, as my on-line diary, that's what I should be doing here. Unfortunately, most of my stress involves non-work-related interactions with other people which makes this blog a pretty lousy place to vent. Suffice it to say, I'm trying to dissipate this stress in non-hurtful ways.

One way to dissipate such stress? Apparently it is to walk around work scowling alot!

The other day, my boss's boss's boss walked into my office and sat down. She wanted to know what was the matter. The past few times she had passed me in the hallway I had looked "very stressed out". Was I angry at her? Did I not like something about my latest job assignment? Was I not happy at work? Was there something she could do?

And I found myself in a state of shock. Indeed, I'd had a frown on my face at work for the past few weeks. But, I don't talk or meet with anyone on a regular basis and it had never occured to me that others would notice, much less my boss's boss's boss. And it had certainly never occured to me that this person would feel that I was angry at them, angry at my job, or (horror of horrors) would be entertaining thoughts of looking for greener work pastures.

I had to laugh for a moment and relate that the attempt to build a robot and throw it at the planet Pluto was infinitely less stressful that any other job I've had and that whatever grumpiness I had at work was spillage of stress from outside work. She did not need to bother, I was neither angry at her nor at my work assignments. I was not entertaining a departure from this Space Department. She seemed quite relieved.

It's a rare thing to have your office be the least stressful thing in your life. It's rarer still to find a workplace that is so "in tune" with the satisfaction of its individual employees.

That night, I asked Linda to screen all phone calls and not let anyone through. I went upstairs and laid in bed to watch television around 7pm. Apparently, I fell asleep around 7:30pm and woke up the next morning at 9:30am, late for work.

It's amazing how relaxing catching up on sleep can be. I look forward to doing it again on Saturday. If anyone reads this blog and calls me before 1pm on Saturday, I will shoot you. 8)

-Ed