I went in to work this morning, and somehow ended up in the middle of a inter-office bickerfest. It's never good when you open your e-mail first thing in the morning and see about 12 e-mails bouncing around your e-mail from a bunch of managers.
I honestly made a mistake, I'll admit. Unfortunately it was a mistake over something that one of the regional directors of the company tends to get his panties in a bunch over. This company has a lot of hot-tempered, knee-jerk-reaction-type folk, and a lot seem to be people who feel a need to justify their worth. Add to that, the fact that our company fosters an environment of suspicion, hostility and between-office bickering, and you get a nice little e-mail storm, which I got caught in the middle of. Being lowly peon that I am, I just had to be quiet and suck it up, as actually yelling “You people are INSANE!” wouldn’t have gone over well. One of those days where you get so frustrated, you want to yell or punch something, but can’t, and you just end up feeling like you’re going to explode. I was seriously in tears, because I was so frustrated that I wanted to put my fist through a wall, and (obviously) couldn't at work. (On a completely unrelated note, I need to find a dojo in CA to start training again....)
So, since I was so mad I couldn't see straight, I helped Tom (another one of my unfortunate coworkers) clean out our equipment room. Good cathartic chucking-of-stuff. Expiration date past? Throw it out! Don't know what it is? Throw it out! And we actually saw progress being made! Our department equipment room was a very scary place. Thankfully, most of my stuff doesn't need to be kept in there, because that room would seriously creep you out, it was so filthy. However, as our department grows and the equipment we invest in becomes nicer, the decision was made to clean out our equipment room and get it in order. Worked out for me today, since I was so mad I would have thrown my monitor across the room if I'd had to sit at my computer today and type.
The cleaning did help. After lunch (good comfort food and venting with Amy) I was feeling almost myself again. And the equipment room is pretty much usable! One of the technicians is going to make us shelves to hold a lot of the bulkier equipment, but all of our smaller stuff is tucked away into the cabinets (which are now clean!). Tom even swept and mopped the floor! He couldn't get all the stains off - the red clay 'round here, as well as some of the chemicals we handle do leave their marks. On the other hand, there was a nice clean area around our equipment room doorway, where you could see the division between our equipment area and the area of the field technicians (their floor was still filthy!) Way to go, Tom!
The whole thing with the e-mails this morning, though, was that it was over a ridiculous little thing. It's something that shouldn't be as big of an issue as it is, but since this company is structured oddly, it makes the issue more than it should be. The company is structured almost in a franchise set-up. The individual offices operate very independently of each other for the most part. All the admin and stuff is together, and there are lots of corportate meetings and such, but basically, the different branch offices are set up to be competitors. Weird set up - as Amy says, "we aren't friends with the other offices." I prefer to think of it as a company policy of "Does Not Play Well With Others." Leads to a lot of bickering and stupid infighting between the offices. Some people get along great with each other (mostly project level-types, like me, or managers in very small offices), but some get very weird about things (mostly managers and regional-level staff and up). Ridiculous waste of time and effort, getting all heated up about such trivial things - can't we all just get along? 'Course I think that of most politics, not just the office kind.
So today was very tiring, in a very different way than yesterday. BUT! Tomorrow is Friday!! And Amy and I are in the field tomorrow, and then it's the weekend, which means I don't have to see any of those idiots at the office FOR ANOTHER 3 DAYS!!
Woohoo!! (Yeah, I'm a regular Girl Gone Mild!) ;)
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