That's An Order

For 2009, I made another “silent vow” to leave work on time. However I've yet to actually follow through with it. My actual work day goes a little something like “When I get here - 7 hours later” to fulfill my work obligation instead of an orderly 9:00 – 5:00. So let’s say I come into work at 10:40 a.m. (when I’m really supposed to be here at 9:30), I’ll leave work at 6:40 p.m. They don’t pay us for lunch, and I satisfy my 7 hours, no problem. Right? Well not necessarily.

My supervisor’s, supervisor’s, supervisor (the director of our division) has ordered that none of her staff works past 6:00 p.m. That cancels out me and 2 of my co-workers who lounge around the office way past regular evening hours, among many others in the building who seemingly have no life and don’t mind staying in a creepy library past dark. And what it also does is set us straight – we are to get here no later than 10:00 a.m. – and that’s final.

There are not too many people that I really like around this establishment. Oh I respect them, their titles and the jobs they do but I really like the director of our division. She appears to genuinely care about her staff, our welfare and well being. Though she’s never said it to me, I know that she is partly responsible for this promotion that I received a couple of years ago. I could have been and almost certainly should have been my own boss. I applied for the position that my supervisor holds and I didn’t get it for whatever reason my old supervisor didn’t choose me for. However when the workload began to overwhelm the newbie, they decided to split her work in half and hire me.

I’m grateful for my director (my supervisor’s, supervisor’s, supervisor). She’s familiar with her staff and makes it her business to acquaint herself with our issues.

I respect her management style. I sometimes feel like I need no correction, no regulation but by her creating order she’s commanding us to buckle up, set our priorities, establish our own personal order, and eliminate the clutter of our everyday. In this time of economic crisis, she’s sending a message – let’s do what we have to do, in the time we have to do it, and save time.

There are going to be some folks around here, pissed, that our director has set a mandate. Oh I’m sure they will defy her word and stay here huddled at their desks surfing the web or actually working well after everyone else has left the building. However, I’m heeding her word. I already know that it makes no sense for me to be here at this desk, instead of lounging at my home or just anywhere else. From this I learn that lesson that “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” -Thomas Merton