BloggeRhythms 5/24/2010

The past few blogs have been personal vignettes, several from my business past. I've written them because something or other got me thinking about them and, there's practically nothing of interest in the news.

As far as the news goes, I still haven't heard much worth mentioning except for poll results I saw this morning saying that 74% of the public doesn't think congress is capable of solving the current financial crisis. I just wonder who the 26% are that think congress can solve anything other than taking good care of themselves. Then, of course, there's still the BP oil spill in the Gulf. The administration should send whoever was employed to sabotage that rig to Afghanistan because the saboteurs seem good enough to win that war by themselves.

Since there's nothing much else to discuss, I'll go on with reminiscing. Some time ago a young lady was my administrative assistant. Now, over the years I was never the sort who delegated a lot of chores to anyone else. First of all because I've always been pretty much a do-it-yourselfer and also because my job wasn't the kind that produced a lot of paper.

In fact, almost the only things needing typing were proposals to customers and contracts. And, as far as contracts went, most of those were done by folks in legal, not sales. So, let's just say that I doubt anyone ever burned out because of work overloads from myself.

Now naturally , most employers desired regular reporting from me about closed business and my favorite: projections. As far as sales went, ordinarily this was merely a list of transactions that had closed. In that regard, especially after automation was installed, that kind of information was available from various sources and didn't really need my input at all. Projections though, were another matter.

Projecting called for exactly what the word means -stating today what was expected to be produced in the future. That was more than a two-edged sword. Because, if one projected results seeming to be too low by management, they'd likely be deemed unacceptable and require re-doing. Yet, if they were too high, how in the world would the projectee (me) possibly accomplish the sales goal?

Now, of course, managements would say things like "Don't worry, Michael. We know your projections are only a guess, so we won't hold it to you if you fall short. We merely need the information to prepare for what lies ahead." Well, I don't know about you, but the moment anyone tells me not to worry about anything, that's the moment I start.

Consequently, as my productivity increased and I improved at my occupation, my attitude was, my sales speak for themselves. So, if management felt they could replace me with someone with a less abrasive attitude, so be it. Both of us knew where the door was. In that regard, then, I rarely cared very much about projections and in most cases ignored them completely. And, actually, if I'd really known what was going to happen tomorrow, I'd have quit my job and started going to the racetrack. In fact, I even went so far as to tell management that.

Yet, the most interesting thing to me was that I naturally did mental projections for myself, just never put them on paper. And, except for very rare cases I always expected much more of myself than anyone I ever worked for. Beyond that, I rarely, if ever, fell short of my own goals.

Considering the forgoing, it didn't take long for administrators to figure out that "working" for me wasn't very much of a chore. In fact, the most threatening job caused malady was likely terminal boredom. Naturally, if something needed doing, I expected it to be done, but that wasn't too often.

As far as the person I began writing this entry about, she very quickly figured out I wasn't too concerned about her "sick days," and that I'd work around her absence without complaint. And, as you might be aware, sometimes, in cases like this people can be become "spoiled", and take advantage, no matter how dedicated they are. Because, if there's nothing for them to do, what's the point of time-filling, useless busywork? No one was ever going to get that kind of brain-numbing pap from me.

With that in mind, one day she called in to say she wasn't feeling quite up to par, and asked if I'd mind if she stayed out. Well, I don't know remember why, but in this case I replied, "Hold on. Let me check the record." When I inquired internally about her attendance, even I was quite surprised.

I got back on the phone with her and said, "I've checked your attendance chart and have found that you have no sick days left, only dead days."

That's it for today folks.

Adios