Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up
Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life
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Archive of "work life" Category
You were a jerk. Let’s fix it.
So maybe after reading last week’s post, you have realized that you are, in fact, the office asshole. Maybe you had no clue before. Maybe you didn’t care before. But now you know and now, you want to do something to fix it.
As I said last time, I’m not sure you can fix it. I wish it was that simple. But every office has at least one person (or more) with the memory of an elephant. Some people will want to forgive and forget and move on with their workday. Other people will remember and be wary. And either way is okay. Much like they could not change the fact that you are/were the office jerk, you can not change how they chose to deal with it.
Step 1: Stop talking about yourself. Adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with your personal life. If they don’t ask, you don’t tell. It really is that simple. You are not as interesting to your cube mate as you are to yourself.
Step 2: Start talking (or at least asking) about other people. Please don’t interpret that as start gossiping though. You’ve spent enough time talking about yourself, now its time to hear about someone else. Ask about what someone’s plans are for the weekend. And then, here’s the hard part, wait until they ask about your plans. If they don’t ask, then refer to Step 1. Mostly likely, the person who is most interesting to the person you are talking to is them self.
Step 3: Take an interest. Sometimes, you have to look out for yourself first. For some of us, that’s next to impossible to learn. But other times, you have to look out for your time first. And for the rest of us, that’s next to impossible to learn. If you have been the office jerk, chances are, you were only looking out for Number 1. So now, you learn how to listen to what projects are on the horizon for your team. And if your team is stuck or struggling, take an interest and offer to help. Don’t offer to help to be the hero and save the day. You are offering to help by saving your team from the tedious. You are showing your team/department/office that you realize you need them.
Step 4: Remember those interns. Maybe you weren’t so nice to those interns before. Now, you have to be. I’ll be honest, I secretly judge most of my coworkers based on how they treat the interns. So take an intern under your wing. Teach that intern something they may not have learned elsewhere. Maybe even pull an intern onto a choice assignment. It will never hurt you to help the low man on the totem pole.
Step 5: Do something nice. Maybe that looks like bringing cupcakes to the office or picking up breakfast for the team. Maybe being nice looks like remembering that someone loves jazz and then letting them know about a music festival they might enjoy. Maybe it is treating someone to lunch. I’m not suggesting you try to buy love (and if you are a jerk, this will only make things worse) but people love to feel like they have been remembered.
Step 6: Apologize. Maybe this is a step reserved for the truly heinous of office assholes but if you are making no progress in improving your office relationships, you may need to acknowledge your previous behavior. It doesn’t need to be anything over the top but it does need to be sincere and to the point. An example: “I realize that for a long time I did not treat the team properly and I need to correct that. What do you think I can do to make the situation better?”
Step 7: Dust off your resume. You may have done too much damage at your place of current employment to correct it. But don’t just hop to a new job and hope everything will be better. You will need to be making an active effort not to repeat the mistakes you made previously. Figure out why you were such a jerk before and then avoid those situations/triggers/whatever that set you off.
What do your coworkers really think of you?
One of the men in my office is a real asshole. He seems to think he’s an authority on everything, even though he complains constantly that he doesn’t know how things work. I’m fairly certain he’s not doing any of the work he’s being paid to complete himself (I keep catching other people’s interns completing his work), but he will always tell you why you are doing your job incorrectly. He’s demeaning to women and treads very closely to the sexual harassment line. Wait a minute, he’s demeaning to everyone. I just have no respect for him.
At first, I tried to chalk it up to the fact that he’s a baby boomer and I’m a millennial and we just don’t see eye to eye and it must be a communication problem and so on. But then I hit me: He really is just an asshole.
And the rest of the Boomers in the office think he’s an asshole too. And since I really respect and trust those coworkers, I’m okay with writing the guy off all together.
The worst part of it: he doesn’t seem to know that he’s an asshole. Like many other aspects of his work life, he just has no clue. But he can’t be the only one in that boat.
In case you were curious if your co-workers think you’re an asshole, here are a few clues.
You enter conversations that don’t pertain to you. If I’m discussing a situation in a department meeting, and you walk by the room and enter uninvited to tell me your opinion, there’s something wrong. People will ask for your opinion if they think you have some insights or ideas that could help the situation. And if no one asks, you can find a better venue to share your ideas than bursting into a meeting.
You frequently find yourself eating alone. If you are taking lunch at noon and no one else is in the break room with you, there is a problem. Especially if noon used to be the peak lunch hour. Let’s face it: your lunch break is valuable time because it is your time. And when your coworkers start showing that you aren’t wanted during their time, its time to make a change in your behavior.
You tell your coworkers all about you – but you rarely ask your coworkers about them. I work at a small company with a family atmosphere. As a result, I hear a lot about my coworkers personal lives, which is great. It helps me to work more efficiently with my coworkers because I have a greater understanding of where people are coming from. For example, the girl next to me ran a 5k last night and she didn’t do as well as she would have liked. But after telling me about the 5k experience, she asked me about how my night class went last night. Relationships are give and take – no one wants to just hear about how great you are, they want you to ask as well. People will start to avoid you if they think you are only interested in yourself.
You bully the interns. Interns are here to be treated like a second class citizen. Interns are here to learn, to gain work experience and hopefully, make some money. And really, when you treat my intern with a lack of respect, I lose even more respect for you. Why? I don’t want to be around you if you make yourself feel good by treating others poorly and certainly do not want my team to be around you either. And let’s not even get into the fact that I would not want you anywhere near my clients.
Is there anyway to bounce back from this behavior? I’m still not sure. Part of me thinks it just isn’t possible.
At this point, is it worth it?
My friend Erica is a lawyer. More specifically, she works in patent law for a firm in NYC. She has two secretaries, she’ll make partner in eight years and she makes at least three times as much money as I do. She has a fabulous boyfriend and she’s thinking about buying a condo in the city.
She also works at least 65 hours a week. And that’s a conservative estimate on my part. She tells me its only sixty hours a week but I lived with this girl in college and I know Erica has no sense of time when she’s working. I also know that her secretaries think she is working too much as well.
When you think about all of the things you need to do during the week, just as basic aspects of life, how is it possible to consistently work 65 hours a week? And when a case gets hectic, is it possible to have any hope of a home life available to you?
At what point is the money just not enough?
I’ve read that statistic about 40k being the magic number, but Erica brought up a really good point that I tend to forget about: the difference between making forty thousand dollars annually in, let’s say, Fairport Harbor, Ohio and New York City is monumental. Even the difference between Levittown, PA (where I live) and NYC is monumental. But so what?
What makes the money worth it?
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
On one hand, I kind of like the idea of working as hard as you can until you are ready/want to reproduce and then cut back. But realistically, that’s not going to happen. You’ll either put off kids because the time is just “not right” or you’ll pay a fortune for childcare because you won’t want to give up your career and you can’t get more than six weeks maternity leave without losing your job.
On the other hand, I know myself. If I don’t work hard at finding balance, I never will. If I don’t set clear boundaries for myself, I’ll neglect my own basic needs. And while that could benefit me in my career (depending on where I was working), it would not benefit me in ensuring my husband would be in my bed when I came home at night.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the money she makes doesn’t tempt me. And when I hear her tell me that I could easily do the work she does, it makes it even more tempting. But since I know I can’t really have it all and still have my sanity, what are the pieces that I really care about?
Staff Surveys: Is it really worth the time?
Staff standard hours at the place that gives me a paycheck have become a sore spot for all parties involved. The millennials want flextime. Gen Xers can’t figure out why the millennials think they can have flextime. The boomers can’t figure out why everyone doesn’t just shut up and work 8 to 5 like they are supposed to. The mom’s don’t care because parents are the only ones who get flextime. And executive staff is just praying this HR nightmare goes away.
Sadly for executive staff, it won’t go away. Staff standard hours are 8 to 5 with an hour lunch. And no one likes those hours, except for maybe the executive staff. As a result, countless hours are wasted where everyone tries to come to some sort of agreement that could benefit the company as a whole but no headway is being made.
As an attempt to buy some time (before a revolt could be organized), a survey was circulated to the staff. It proposed that the standard hours be changed to 7:30 to 4:30. It also suggested the adoption of summer hours where staff would work four 10 hour days and have either Monday or Friday off each week (beginning at the Fourth of July and ending on Labor Day). Staff was asked to rank statements about how they felt on the proposed changes and then write about how it would impact their lives.
The moment the survey ended up in my hands, I went to Human Resources. Was this survey merely a waste of our time to fill out or would our feedback be seriously considered? Was there really hope that there could be flexible hours?
The answer? “It will be taken under consideration”. A coworker who overheard this exchange then wanted to know why bother if the majority didn’t matter. If executive staff would do as they pleased regardless, filling out the survey wasn’t going to make staff feel as if their opinions had been heard.
There is no perfect answer to this situation. Not everyone is going to be happy. At this point, the survey was not the way to go. By circulating this survey, executive staff is setting the stage for frustration on the team. How could this situation be better handled? Some suggestions:
Department Meetings – Instead of random surveys being dropped on staff desks, what if each department manager met with their team to update? Since we are a small company, the largest department consists of six people. The meetings could be manageable with a set agenda and give every employee an opportunity to ask questions. Asking staff to fill out the survey at the conclusion of the meeting makes sure everyone is on the same page as they consider the ideas.
Skip the survey – What happened when the survey was passed out? Rumors flew through the office. Some staff was terrified at the changes proposed. Some staff set their hopes high for changes to occur. Time was spent speculating. Chances are most of the changes suggested won’t ever come to fruition. A survey does not replace the need for face to face conversations with the staff.
Create Flex Time for All – At the end of the day, most of the suggestions proposed in the survey is an attempt to avoid formally offering flextime. But more importantly, staff continues to ask for flextime and threatens to leave without it. If flextime is the direction the company will head towards in a year or two anyway, is there really a benefit to putting it off? The solutions proposed sound like a nightmare for Human Resource to handle. Putting a band-aid on the problem won’t make it go away. And it probably won’t silence the requests for more than a month anyway.
Coping with Disabilities: How I can be ADD in the office
I have a love/hate relationship with my Attention Deficit Disorder. Since I was diagnosed at 13, dealing with ADD has been a confusing but rewarding battle of me versus me. In school, ADD meant more time for assignments, tutors if I wanted one and a steady diet of Ritalin. In the working world, ADD means creating a system of coping mechanisms that make me look quirky and neurotic.
It’s taken me a long time to get to the love portion of the ADD relationship. Prior to my diagnosis, I knew that I operated differently from my peers, I just didn’t understand why. In middle school and high school, Ritalin helped me focus but I hated the side effects. I had no desire to eat, my creativity was stifled and I was unable to sleep for more than three hours a night starting when I was 14. By the time I got to college, I knew something had to give.
I decided sophomore year in college that I had enough of the medication. I got to this point where the ability to focus just wasn’t worth the side effects. And then I struggled. I decided I didn’t want to have extra help that the college could provide me because no one would offer me extra help when I got into the real world just because I had ADD. And without the medication, I had no idea how to learn.
The plus side of a med free life was worth it for a time. My creativity flooded back to me. Suddenly, I had a desire to eat again (sadly, while there was no “freshman fifteen” my new found love of food led to a sophomore twenty five!). Without medication, I was brazen. Walking into a room where I knew no one was okay and actually enjoyable. And I discovered that it wasn’t that I had a problem focusing – I just couldn’t select what I would focus on.
Oh, and I finally was able to sleep for more than three hours at a time. Who knew feeling well rested would feel so good!
Then my grades went down. Ultimately, it took me five years to finish undergrad. Not being able to choose to focus on classes made writing papers and reading assignments brutal. But the ability to hyper focus enabled me to read all of Ayn Rand’s work my junior year (don’t ask me why that was able to capture my attention). Getting up each day to do work was a battle but getting up each day to discover new things was thrilling.
Post college life was interesting. Realizing that I couldn’t keep struggling, my doctor and I decided it was time for me to try new medication, this time in the form of Stratera. It seemed like a great idea at first but I soon discovered that the side effects were hellish. The world, which had been so vibrant for my four med-free years, was suddenly flat. Because strattera is a mild antidepressant, there were no emotional lows but that also meant there were no emotional highs. When I broke up with my five year on again off again boyfriend for the last time, I knew I should be sad but I just didn’t care. There was also absolutely no desire for sex and a desire to sleep for twelve hours a day. But I could focus.
Once again, this was not an option that would last very long.
I’ve been med-free for a little over two years now. The breakup with my ex was what finally led me to give up the idea that medicine would “fix” me. If I was unable to feel, what good was I as a person? I’ve been in pursuit of holistic, natural care ever since.
Surprisingly, the med free life has made my ADD more manageable than it ever was before. Here’s how I am able to do this now:
Holistic/Natural Medical treatment – I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for two years and three months. When I first went to Gorman Optimal Health Solutions, I thought the guy was nuts for telling me that he could treat ADD through adjustments and supplements. And then I discovered he was right. Before I start having back pain, I’ll notice I am out of alignment because I am more easily distracted.
Supplements – I take 5-HTP at meal times. It is believed to help children and adults with over focused ADD. Ravers take it to offset some of the fun after effects of ecstasy. There are plenty of supplement options that are suggested for ADD but after much trial and error (with the guidance of my doctor) this is what we discovered worked best for me.
Exercise – If I don’t get at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise in a day, I’m done. My best days for focusing mean that I spent about 90 minutes in the gym in the morning. Exercise quiets my mind and it quiets my body. While I never had the stereotypical hyperactivity, I am constantly fidgeting with my hair, things in my pockets and items on my desk. Besides, exercise is just good for you.
Diet – As tempting as dessert can be, I can’t focus after eating sugary foods. Its okay to have a treat at home once in a while but if I hit the office candy dish, I can forget about focusing on the job they pay me to do. I do best when I stay away from carbs during the day and wait until I get home at night to enjoy them.
Color Coding – I have a ridiculous system of color coding in my FranklinCovey planner but it extends to other areas of my life. Work life items are blue. Yellow is for medical. Pink is for me. Orange is for home. Purple is for church. The list goes on and on. Certain times I focus on certain colors.
Limit Multitasking – It always seems like multitasking is a great idea but it fails me more times than it helps me. Instead, I focus on short bursts. I break most of my daily tasks into twenty to thirty minute blocks of time. Anything more than that I get distracted. In between those blocks, I give myself a mini break – I get a glass of water, I stretch, I check out a post of Brazen Careerist or I find a reason to talk to a coworker.
Talk about it – HR knows about my ADD. My direct supervisor knows about it. And a few of the moms that work in my office know about it as well. I do not broadcast it – there is no reason to show up at work with a flashing neon sign that reads “Dorie has Attention Deficit Disorder” but trying to hide it does not work either. HR and my direct supervisor need to know. But it isn’t enough to walk into their offices, say “Hi, I have ADD” and then leave. By having conversations about what my strengths and weaknesses are, they are able to work with me. And really, that is good advice for anyone regardless of whether or not there is a disability.
But why do I talk to office moms about it? Some of them are learning how to deal with parenting an ADD child. I believe its important for them to see how coping with ADD as a child translates into coping with ADD as an adult. If they can benefit from my experiences, it was worth it to share.
GenPink
Have you been to GenPink today? Its written by Elysa Rice and it talks about finding the balance in the twenty something female life. I’ve been hooked on her blog since she wrote her ABC’s of Gen Y. Elysa is also a member of the Brazen Careerist network.
Elysa was kind enough to share a post I wrote about Internal Interviews. Please check it out!
My day without talking
My day is feeling like a giant twitter. In fact, I might be more effective if that was the only way I communicated. This morning when I woke up, I discovered that my mouth was full of ulcers. Besides being really gross, it is also annoying because it hurts to talk and eat. I also couldn’t kiss my husband goodbye when he left for work this morning which just makes me sad.
When I got to work this morning, my very hungry self had to try to communicate this with HR. Seeing as I can’t really talk, this consisted of me writing notes to HR and the HR manager looking confused. Since my little meeting this morning, an email has been circulated to the staff that I can’t talk and I have a sign on my desk explaining the situation to anyone who opted out of reading the email.
Strangely enough, I’m having a really good day.
My day of silence is really freeing me up to get things done.
Its forcing me to really think about the words I choose. When someone comes over to my desk to ask a question, I have to write a response. Since most people don’t really want to stand around while I write them a book, I’m trying to keep my responses around the size of a tweet. Any response that would require more than that gets shown my post-it that says “Send me an email”.
I have pre-made responses. Next to me are four post-it notes. One says yes. One says no. One says send me an email. And another says “Thanks”. Guess which post-it I’m using the most – Thanks! And since everyone loves hearing “thanks”, most people are leaving my desk happy when they read it.
Email is my best friend today. Email allows me to give each person a thoughtful response. Not talking means there is a little more time allowed to think.
By changing the way I communicate within my workplace, I change the way I work. For at least today, I am freed my perceived need to multitask. Focusing on one task at a time really lets me clear those nagging items off of my to do list and produce a higher quality of work.
This certainly isn’t something I would want to do everyday but once in a while, it’s important to be silent to focus on what your priorities are.
Interviews: What not to say
Over the past week, I’ve been involved in the interview process for my replacement. Its a tough process - on one hand, I want my replacement to have different things to offer to my organization than I do. On the other hand, I want my replacement to be my mini-me.
I am very conflicted.
I’ve tried to keep my interviews interesting. Our interview process is fairly extensive and I don’t want to be remembered as the boring person. I want to have interesting questions and an enjoyable conversation.
My favorite interview question to ask is “If money was not an issue, what would you do with your life?”.
For me, this is the easiest question to answer. And a great opportunity to showcase my passions.
For my potential replacement, I was hoping to hear excitment and passion. I expected to hear about their hobbies or their dream job.
Instead, I heard confusion.
I heard an individual tell me that they only knew what they would want to do for about a week.
Another individual told me that they would travel. They knew the first two countries that they would go to but wasn’t sure after that.
Another individual told me they had no idea.
I know what I would do.
I would start a contracting business with my husband where I could make people’s lives better one house at a time. I would spend time recording all of my grandparents stories so I could share them with my children. And my children’s children. I would build a studio in my house and create beautiful things. And when I was too tired to do anything else, I would find a beautiful beach and an amazing book and I would be still.
Know what you would do in an ideal world. And be excited about it. If you would want to be a stay at home mom or dad, say so! But tell me why you would want to do that. Tell me about your excitement for your family, your fascination with small children, your desire to make the world a better place. If you would want to work at Disney as an actor, tell me. Tell me why you always dreamed of working in an amusement park or your secret love of a Disney cartoon. If you always dreamed of being a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher, speak up.
Have a passion. I don’t care if that passion has anything to do with the industry or the job or your past experience. I just want to see that you can be excited, that there is a spark in your life.
So let me throw the question out to you: If money was not an issue, what would you do with your life? And is that what you are doing now?
Workaholic: Is that me?
I’ve had workaholic tendencies for my entire life. The idea of a three year old workaholic may seem a bit absurd but in my case, it is a little more accurate than you might imagine. As a child, I could go ridiculous amounts of time without food as long as I felt compelled to keep working. I also remember refusing to go to the bathroom in kindergarten. I was working on a project and I convinced myself that I didn’t need to go to the bathroom until it was finished. I also remember deciding that day that I didn’t want to ever feel shame again.
And for someone with workaholic tendencies not feeling shame is a good thing. It makes it easier to be a workaholic. You can do some pretty god awful things to yourself if you don’t feel shame when your body betrays you.
When I was puttering around some blogs last night, and promising my husband that I would only read one more post, I read something about alcoholism. Of course that got my wheels churning and I googled “workaholic” to make sure I was spelling it correctly before I posted a comment.
What I really found was a twenty question quiz to determine if I was a workaholic. Three or more “yes” answers meant you needed to get help. I had twelve.
I was floored. I may joke about workaholic tendencies but really, I just think of myself as driven and motivated. I blame my ADD. And if anyone asks, my elaborate organizational systems are really just a coping mechanism for hiding said ADD.
I told Brian. Who was not floored. Who responded with “I didn’t need you to take a quiz for me to know that”.
Then he tells me “You know I have to call your office to make sure you are coming home at night”.
And it’s true. Because he does have to call to get me to come home sometimes. And I’m usually very confused if I only have worked 40 hours in a given week. And if it was up to me, every lunch would be a working lunch.
But instead of all of this urging me to think about getting help, it really leaves me questioning why Workaholics Anonymous implies this is a bad thing. Because almost every question where I answered yes, I really truly believe that only a lazy person would answer no. Call me a workaholic but I think I’d rather refer to it as a “Strong Protestant Work Ethic”.
At what point does motivation and a desire to succeed become a bad thing? And why are we so committed to a forty hour work week as healthy and a sixty hour work week as a sign that there is no work life balance? Is this a sign of an entrepreneurial spirit?
My advisor in college was a recovering alcoholic who was always concerned about me. He thought I was crazy for working full time, going to school full time and being overly involved in my sorority. He used to say that it was only a matter of time until my tendencies gave way to alcoholism. At the time, I used to tell myself that he was just overly paranoid.
Last night I started wondering if he was wiser than I gave him credit for being.
Interviews: What do you ask your potential replacement?
I’ve been puttering at work for the last week or so. There are plenty of projects I could be doing but for now I’m letting them fall to the wayside. Why? Well, on Monday I found out that I’ll be taking the new position that I recently interviewed for. I have a month before I start the job.
My current supervisor has decided that I shouldn’t take on any new projects and I should spend the next month “procedurilizing” (yes, she made up that word) my job and training my replacement. We still haven’t hired my replacement so that has to happen first.
In the meantime, I am a procedure writing machine. But since I’m not taking on new projects, I putter. Because writing a procedure doesn’t take any where near as long as everyone seems to think it does. I’ve been turning it into a game for myself.
Downside is I’ve been spending a little too much time with online shopping. FranklinCovey is like crack for me (fortunately for me, my company is filled with FranklinCovey enthusiasts so no one is really questioning the time I’m spending on their website).
Since I also have to interview my replacement, I’ve been searching the web for really unusual interview questions. The poor soul that replaces me is going to have to sit through six hours of interviews. The least I can do is make my hour mildly entertaining.
Questions I think I want to ask include:
- Tell me about a time where you needed to manage up. How did you accomplish this?
- How do you plan to become the office miracle worker?
- If I ran into your current boss, what would be the one sentence you would want to be said about you?
- How do you feel about working with scientists?
I’m still looking for more questions. What are some of the best (and worst) questions you’ve been asked in an interview?
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