10.30.2008

ain't this some hot shit...

After three hours of layoffs and a 30-minute “we hate to, but we had to do this” meeting with the “powers that be,” I got my reassignment. They basically broke up all the teams and formed new ones.

As of Dec. 1, I will be on the creative consistency team. I was apprehensive, but interested. And seriously after the morning we had I was just happy to still have a job.

So we all had one-on-one meetings with our new boss. I knew nothing about my new boss. I had just seen and heard of her. We’ll call her KP. The times I’ve seen KP she was dressed in tights, leg warmers, bright colors. (She’s a woman in her 50’s.) KP is very high up in the organization and she is looked well upon. I slowly realized, as I talked to people, it was a good thing to be on her team. I was told she’s crazy, but apparently this is the team everyone wants to be on.
I had a five-minute meeting with her. This is how it went:

“HI! IT’S SO NICE TO MEET YOU!” she said. I write in all caps because she’s very hyper and talks really loud.

I just smiled said the same and sat in her office. By the way, she has office. At my job, you don’t get an office unless you are very high up…very.

“I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU WE HAVE THE BEST TEAM. ONLY THE BEST IS ON THE TEAM. OUR TEAM IS HOT SHIT. AND YOU CAN GO BACK AND TELL EVERYONE THAT” she said.

She got out the organization chart and showed it to me. Our team is on the level of all the other 5 teams, but says “WE MAY LOOK LIKE WE ARE HERE ON THIS CHART, BUT WE ARE REALLY HERE.” She points to the top.

According to my new boss, we may be called creative consistency team, but we are really the creative lead team. We determine the direction of every marketing piece that goes out the company. In other words we set the tone, the voice, environment, etc. We determine what style is used, both art and copy-wise. We are more on a concept level. I will no longer be working on physical tasks so to speak; I will be developing concepts with a small group of people.

So no more Internet or catalog writing. I will now be the one my former co-workers hate. Because I will be the one telling them how they should write things in everything across the board - internet, catalogs, etc.

After listening to her and thinking about it, I think it’s a good move. Basically, I’ve been put on the team who initiates change. There’s only two copy positions. I was picked for one. So maybe someone was looking after me after all. It’ll make more marketable and it will make it much easier for me to move throughout the company.

Now if I can handle my new boss. My old boss was crazy, but this…is a whole other different kind of crazy. My old boss ain’t got nothing on this lady. It’ll be interesting…

10.29.2008

a sad day...

It was like they were randomly shooting at people. I knew it would be bad, but its totally something you do not ever want to experience. Good news: I’m safe and I could potentially have a very good job for the future. (We’ll talk about that in another post.) Bad news: There were a lot of people laid off.

We knew it would be a crazy day when we saw a mouse run across from my cubicle to my co-workers. I was pissed. I can’t work under these conditions, I kept saying. I said this would be a good day to do layoffs. Because if they lay me off I won’t be so sad today. I started applying for other jobs after a mouse was found in another co-worker’s drawer. Mice poop was on her desk. This was the fifth mouse sighting we had encountered.

Who knew 15 minutes later the layoffs start? It’s been a year since they told us there would be layoffs. It was like they were randomly shooting people. Six people were set up meetings with HR for packages, one was told he had until Nov. 30, then his position would be eliminated. Thirty minutes later it became apparent, this was the day. They started calling people and asking them to go down to the other side of the building. One by one people’s phone started ringing. You did not want to get that ring.

For three hours everyone was on edge. It was the longest 3 hours of our lives. Whenever a phone rang, someone jumped. After a while, the rule became, “don’t call anybody.” Because whenever someone got that call, they just walked down to the other side of the building. Each person was gone for a while, then came back, got their stuff and left.

I will never forget one of my co-workers who started packing up his stuff. We asked where we was going and he said, “They are going to let me go.” We all looked kind of like, you don’t know that. He hadn’t gotten the call. Then right there and then his phone rang.

It wasn’t just the people who had been there for 20 years and were over 60; there were even some people in their 20’s and 30’s.

There were about 120 in our department. Calls were made randomly on teams. By lunch a whole team was let go along with about 20 other people. That’s not including the people upstairs who were laid off. It was bad.

My boss who was part of the committee that outlined the reorganization came back after noon. She told us they were done laying off people. “That was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” she said. She just started crying and hugging all of us.

I’m not so sure if I like the fact of being warned a whole year in advance or not. But to endure three hours of lay offs was exhausting. It was sad…very sad.

10.21.2008

etiquette in the workplace...

I have a lot of pet peeves, but one that bugs me more than most is unprofessionalism in the workplace. I’ve never met so many rude people in my life. Since when it is appropriate for a manager to ask what rumors are going around in the middle of a staff meeting? It only spurs more rumors.

When is it appropriate to ask about someone’s health problems in a middle of a meeting? Even when that person isn’t there.

I think I hit my boiling point this week when I got a political e-mail from a co-worker earlier this week. It’s really not about the fact that I didn’t agree with the e-mail (it was completely endorsing mccain/palin, that’s another entry), but it’s the fact that the workplace is not for political e-mails nor conversation. What really pissed me off is the fact that my co-worker e-mailed it to my immediate boss who has made it (inappropriately) clear she was voting for obama and was pro-choice. So why e-mail it to her? My co-worker fell short of e-mailing it to our higher up who has also made it (inappropriately) clear she was a democrat.

I thought the bad etiquette would end there, but it didn’t. A manager asked a co-worker of mine how much she bought her christmas tree for. It wouldn’t have bothered me so if much, if it hadn’t been the third time I’ve had her ask somebody how much something cost. It’s none of her freaking business! I know she won’t ask me something like that because I will tell her exactly that.

All of this has got me thinking, where has good etiquette gone. Should I insist that our team take an etiquette course? Or maybe it’s that these people don’t have any common sense?

The older I get the more I realize I’m a lot smarter than I have ever given myself credit. I should start aiming a tad higher.

10.13.2008

cowboys...

I love how this city is so in love with the Cowboys. If anything happens to our beloved Cowboys, it’s front-page news; top story of the broadcast.

This has been a disappointing week for our boys. I think the headline that summed it up the most (and the one I loved the most was, “pinky panic.”

In any other city, the top news story would not be about how the quarterback will be out for four weeks. Or how Pac Man got into an argument in a restroom of a club (big surprise).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m just saying if the world was ending and at the same time Dallas Cowboys starting QB was out of the whole season or Pac Man went on another one of his “adventures,” the Cowboys would triumphant.

I learned a long time ago when I first moved to the city when they interrupted a regularly scheduled program to show the Dallas Cowboys parade for winning a championship.