A Little Epiphany - (and a newbie delurking)

[Dia]

Thus endeth week 3 of the impossible work schedule, though this week it was probably only 43-45 hrs instead of 60. Silly me, I thought that once I packed the CEO and VP off to the trade show, my life would get easier. NOT!! They left me with all the fires they didn't have time to put out before they left, and with the task of arranging a catered dinner for 20, by phone, on the opposite coast, by last night.

Next week, however, next week looks promising in the sanity department. My accountant is on stress leave for a week. She's disconnecting her computer and her phone, and believe me, this will save her life (cuz I was gonna keel her!). See, while I was putting out said fires mentioned above, not to mention consulting on wine list, pasta selections, projection screens and whether or not the Vietnamese Spring Rolls were vegetarian, she emailed me with this little "I NEED THIS ASAP!!!" message. You know, the kind with the red exclamation point to mark it 'urgent' and in case you missed that, three regular text exclamation points in the subject heading. The time stamp was 1:18.

Our email program refreshes every five minutes. That's the fastest you can make it go without manually clicking the Check Email button. Five mins seems pretty reasonable to me. Anyhoo, so there I was, debating the merits of Spring Rolls vs. Stuffed Mushrooms with a caterer who does NOT return calls, so when you get him, you talk to him right then. She buzzed in during the call and I let it go to voice-mail.

When I got off the phone at about 1:25, there were TWO of those ASAP emails from her. One time stamped 1:18 and the other time-stamped 1:23. It took me 5 minutes to locate the piece of info she needed, so estimated time from when she sent the ASAP email to when she got her answer was maybe 15 minutes.

And the witch was pissed at me for taking too long!! "I shouldn't have to send you TWO emails AND call you to get something done!"

Her stress leave is a good thing. Not only will it get us out of each other's hair, but it will give me a chance to have a talk with the CEO about using her doctor's recommendations re; stress reduction to change a few difficult work behaviors. She complains a LOT about how she works 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, but she's a control freak who actually takes work away from other people and insists on doing it herself. Example: She sent me an 8 page itinerary document for this trade show. My job was to update all of the info to make it current for this year. Complicated document, actually, containing travel arrangements for two people, every contact and vendor for the trade show, a detailed shipping log of all of our products, copies of all the order forms for the booth set-up, etc.

So, being the 'new girl', I gave it my best shot and sent it to her to check. She sent it back after 4 hours, griping that she'd had to CALL the travel company to get the time zone for all of the flight connections, WAIT on hold, FIX the document, then explain to me ad nauseum why it was SO vital to have that info. (5:38 pm wasn't enough. It had to say 5:38 MST.)

Then there was the FONT issue. Did I KNOW how long it took her to make sure all of the fonts were the same? She had to highlight every piece....

Ok, so - the work this woman does is abso-flipping-lutely amazing. Star quality stuff. She is an invaluable asset to the company.

BUT...

1) How hard is it to Google "Denver Time Zone"? Takes 1.5 seconds and no waiting on hold!

2) Even better, send the document back to ME, saying, "Please put in the time zones for the flight information and make sure the font is consistent." No problem! That's my job. Would have taken her maybe 15 mins total, including the time to review the doc. Would have made me responsible for my own mistakes, and would have been the best way of teaching me to do it right in the future, as well.

15 mins vs. 4 hours. So immediately I wonder how many of those 80 hours she worked were unnecessary and how much of her 'stress' is self-inflicted.

It's a very sticky wicket. I am actually in training to run the whole darn company and I'm not sure if the accountant knows that. She treats me like a witling two-bit temp, and I'm not sure if that's because she thinks that's what I am, or if it's because she's thinks belittling me will ease her insecurities about me eventually being placed over her.

When I interact with her, I am consummately professional. I maintain boundaries, though. Example: "I'm sorry, Accountant. I was on the phone with the caterer and couldn't take your call. The info you need is XYZ."

Getting back to the stress leave thing, CEO and I have already had a convo about her professional development, in a word, helping her learn to let things go and not obsess over minutia. The docs orders re: stress may give us just the tool we need to make the message stick.

Doing stellar work - Great!

Making life heck for yourself and your co-workers in the process - Gotta change.

Part of me has to wonder if she thought SHE was going to be taking over the company, and that's fuelling the "Office Girl" treatment.

Back to the beginning...

Next week, the CEO and VP are taking 3-4 days comp time AND the accountant is on stress leave. So nobody to make fires for me to put out! I can attack my undone To-Dos in an orderly, maybe even leisurely fashion.

The downside - I've been left 'in charge'. This idea that things will be slow and easy is a pipe-dream, isn't it?

Hrm... and this just hit me. Accountant's stress leave coincided with Dia being put - ever so temporarily - in charge.

Methinks I see a power struggle in full bloom.

Upside: Not my problem. CEO's problem. My job is to be professional and do what I was hired to do. CEO's job is to handle temper tantrums about succession.

I've been handling the accountant with a combo of boundaries, praise and appreciation. I know it's not marriage stuff, but I'd happily listen to suggestions on anything I should do differently with her.

Ok, next post will be about M stuff. And food!