Tag Archives: management

Coming around again

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Egret in flight

My central career story makes no sense any more. In the early 2000s, I was essentially fired for blogging. There was a time, back in the days before the Twitter president, when writing on the internet was novel and new and unknown and confusing. I jumped into the fray.

The short version is that I had been writing quietly. Journaling. Typing out the odd piece. Tucking it in a pile in my room and wondering if I would ever share.

I took an adult ed class on standup comedy to try to get out of my head and tackle my inner shyness. Ultimately, I took two standup comedy classes, because even though I did OK after the first one, public speaking still made me sick. Sharing my own words filled me with dread (and nausea and a little bit of a thrill, or I wouldn’t have tried again and again).

I actually had a boyfriend who after going to a comedy show said to me, “you’re funny, but you’d never have the guts to do what they do.”

Years later, I did it. I did it a lot. I went on stage. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed, mostly I got better. I definitely made some lifelong friends. I did, mostly, get over my intense fear of public speaking.

Blogging was something I heard about, and comedy friends had started writing in the brave new wilderness of the worldwide internets. I joined the nascent movement and wrote comedy vignettes and what I thought were amusing observations.

I ranted and opined and wrote a couple of funny things to an audience of like 20 friends.

Meanwhile, I was also a “career gal.” I had what seemed at the time a fantastic 9 to 5 gig (actually more like 7:30 to 7:30+). I managed grants and budgets at a research center and helped manage office space at a building that was slated for destruction. I had people reporting to me. I trained people. I signed off on things. I had a salary. My director encouraged me.

Let me back up, though. Before this job, I had had another one. I was at the quintessential in-between job (which I didn’t realize was bookended by two gloriously epic firings from ostensibly great jobs).

I was managing all of the research budgets and research and grant activities for a craptastically mismanaged collaboration of teaching hospitals. I think the CFO may have been cooking the books. The lead scientist seemed unengaged, at best. The worst was one crazy scientist who wouldn’t follow any guidelines for safe handling of tissue, tumors, animals, needles, pretty much anything that required safe handling.

Ain’t nothing like a call from building maintenance asking if those were your mice in the dumpster.

I persevered, but I knew this wasn’t my permanent solution.

Enter C. We’ll call her C., because it doesn’t match her real name and no reason to implicate her with my rambling.

C. worked at one of the nearby hospitals that collaborated with the center where I worked. She told me about an opening for a grants manager at her hospital. I applied, I got it, and C. and I became co-workers.

C. is younger than me. At the time, it was a ginormous age gap, as she was in her 20s and I, like Methuselah, was in my 30s, wizened and wise. We talked a lot, and she credits me with teaching her everything she knows about grants. She also credits me with dropping work philosophy gems, like “Don’t thank your employer for paying you or giving you a raise. That’s what they are supposed to do.”

Then, one day, my blog got me a visit to HR.

As the HR rep read through printouts of my comedy writing–pages and pages of printouts–she focused on a particular story where a disgruntled office administrator “shivved” a coworker over office supplies. AKA, high comedy.

I had been reported to HR as a risk for workplace violence. The notion was that these writings were my diary, and I was a burgeoning unabomber.

Sparing all of the details, what happened next involved my passing a psych exam, an informational chat with a counselor (who wanted mostly to talk about radical comedy and Lenny Bruce), lawyers, paperwork, anguished phone calls (off the record) with the director, who said I was ruining my life, faxes, more calls and finally a mutual agreement with my now former employer.

What I left behind was a messy office and a lot of work, but also processes and documentation. My colleague, C., who helped me find the job, picked up where I left off. Ultimately, she not just took over my stuff, but she became the center manager that I would have likely been had I not imploded. (There’s a whole backstory there with a wealthy donor and planned construction, which I would have helped implement.)

The person who reported me, as it turns out, actually was gunning for me. Or, in line with the story that sunk me, had intentionally shivved me in the back. He looked for flaws in my work, and failing that found my personal, comedy life. I believe, if I understood the ironic twist correctly, he had forgotten how much I had done for him at work, and he lost his job without my input.

Ultimately, I moved west and put the chapter behind me.

I didn’t know about my backstabber or C.’s career until she also moved west. We had a coffee and chat here in California and caught up on a decade or more of seeing how the story ended. Not only did she pick up my work, her career blossomed, and she developed a deep relationship with the director who once supported me. She honestly deserved/deserves it all.

One thing we’ve both shared in our careers is a reluctance to lead. Since moving to California, I’ve mostly managed to avoid managing. I was incredibly happy to take a job in which I would not have to manage people and had less responsibility and was really a 40-hour week not a 50, 60, 70-hour week.

C. came out here and ostensibly tried to also limit her management, but she’s failed at not succeeding. Despite what she claims is her best efforts to lay low, much like the work she inherited from me long ago, she keeps getting promoted.

Now here we both are about 20 years later. We are not the young career gals we once were. I’ve mostly steadily worked and mostly steadily avoided management. C. is a director at a major Silicon Valley place that funds research.

As of today, I am back working in the world of scientific research grants. As of today, I report to C.

It’s a story of redemption. Or it’s a story of relationships. Or it’s a story of burning bridges with organizations but not people. Or it’s a story of moving west like the Joad family, weathering twists and turns and ending up somewhere in California.

It feels like a wheel. And, maybe this time I’m spinning above the motion not under it.

No one is a god; I am not a buddha

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In my life, particularly the shit part that takes up 40 hours a week and allows me to pay the bills, I've been working toward Nirvana. Nirvana would be the buddhist path of taking it for what it is, no more, no less, no drama, no bullshit.

I do my work. I do it well enough to not have my warped, over-performing brain, tell me I am inadequate. And, well enough for the folks who care, you know, to not care. Then, they pay me. Simple. All folks involved seem to think Nirvana is possible.

My simple, buddhist path, my simple buddhist sensibilities, my simple buddhist yearnings, (does the Buddha ever yearn?), these things are waylaid. Waylaid by my inability to let go of the non-buddhist ways of others. Buddhas are not petty. I am petty. I am not Buddha.

One type of homo sapiens that has always tripped me up in every job everywhere is also a source of fascination. Fascinating in a rubbernecking car wreck way. Fascinating in the how the fuck do people buy into voting against their own interests kind of way.

To whit and behold: The Legendary Co-worker. (Note: this is an archetype, not a real person. No one will ever read this tripe, but liability and disclosure-wise, if you see yourself, that's on you.)

The Legend is that person who always is firing on all cylinders, running at full speed, burning up. The Legend cannot take a lunch hour. No, there is work to be done, and alone the Legend must not dally. We, the great unwashed, the peons, the lazy, slackers, failures and mere mortals, we eat at a leisurely pace, we chew our food as though tomorrow will come and the project will get done. The Legend, she knows better, 10 minutes of sustenance crammed down her throat and she's off to produce.

At every meeting, the Legend, she must be late. Time is a luxury, and it cannot be wasted Better to have others wait, stacked up, airplanes circling her tarmac of attention. She will land all safely, the Legend knows, and we all await her attention from the tower.

So, in more prosaic terms, these self-important asses blaze into any meeting late, rushing in, gurgling how unbelievably busy they are, how much they are doing, but yet here they are ready to hand you a few minutes. The key is unbelievably busy, because, I don't believe you, jackass. And, your being late, well that just fucked the clocks of everyone else in the room.

Even with time at a premium, the Legend does have more than sufficient time to extoll her virtues, to explain how she is occupied better, faster, harder, smarter, sweeter, bigger, more awesomely than you.

That's all the narcissistic annoying part of the Legend, nothing much then mild workplace friction. That's not why I am fascinated. I'm fascinated by how these same folks are always able to build up a fan base. They are goddamned beloved in some circles.

I worked with a guy who for many years lived off of the work of his subordinates. His main occupation in any business day was selling himself as the go to guy for any circumstance. He always presented as overworked yet eager to take on new projects for the good of the company.

What his staff knew, and apparently management didn't, he never actually did any of the extra work. He masterfully delegated, spreading everything out to many hand, many weaker hands without the forum to advertise themselves or speak up at all really.

He took not doing his own work to creative levels. Even confidential hiring forms that were his responsibility were farmed out to be completed by an underling, because she had nicer handwriting.

He sat in his office. In the ample free time he had after outsourcing every scrap of work he had, he created his own cottage industry of filling out online coupons and rebate forms and reselling the crap he earned. He literally made money on the web, using company resources from paper to the guys in shipping and receiving. Perhaps noteworthy, he did this moneymaking while ensconced in a non-profit organization.

He may not have been beloved by the toiling hordes who did his work, but a fairly good chunk thought he was a nice guy. They were grateful for the opportunities to try new things, not realizing that life doesn't actually reward on extra credit projects, and he was schmoozing on their sweat equity. Like Tom Sawyer painting a fence, they were happy to help.

He sealed the relationships with generous gifts of worthless tchotchkes he received for free and couldn't sell through the web. His fans gushed at his kindness, even as they threw away the scented candles that stunk.

Management thought he was great. They loved his can-do spirit, ready smile, pleasing demeanor and other bullshit displays. Any complaints against him were read as bitter, sour grapes. Work was getting done and his face was there, always there. Moreover, he rose (or sank) sycophancy to new, brown-nosed levels, and the weak-willed caved at his flattery.

No one ever suspected any of his scams, which included approving computer equipment to be delivered to his own house “for testing,” and being sure all catered events were overordered where he waited with Tupperware. (Ho ho ho, the holiday cheer, the night I went to his private house party, where I was treated to the identical hors d'ouevres menu from our departmental party.)

Another Legend I've met created such an intricate net of important details that she alone knew, I'm actually impressed. It's impossible to know if she deliberately didn't write anything down to create a feedback loop for her alone to act and be the super hero or saviour, or if she was just an idiot.

I'm voting idiot with a sidedish of self-importance. Her fans, they vote her omnipotent, omniscient, truly a god who graced us with her work. Now if only I could find a copy of that project that she alone had the skill to complete, because I want to read her brilliance and who doesn't love vaporware?

Me, I lack finesse.

Legend, I am not. Buddha, I am not.

I mewl and whine, despairingly. I know my work is that of a frail human. I know my skills are replicated a billion times over and alone I can accomplish very little. I ask questions. I admit mistakes. I let others take a turn. Some days I don't work hard at all.

I'm loved, hated, tolerated, regarded neutrally and with amusement at work at approximately the same levels I have in the rest of the world. I have friends and detractors both, but the vast bulk of humanity doesn't know I draw air and doesn't care one way or the other.

Perhaps my buddhist path is simply remembering that as long as I know my limitations and respect the contributions of others, karma is on my side. The Legends, they will always be. It is not my path.