A couple days ago, one of my co-workers sent me a picture of everything that was going wrong in my absence. (Everything.) And also, I’m not supposed to mention the rat. (There’s a rat.) And apparently, people have been asking her to post my schedule so that they don’t have to deal with my new counterpart. (They would probably ask me, personally, but I am quite frightening.)

I don’t understand it. I mean… counterpart has been well trained. Somebody pointed at my work area and said “You’re doing that tomorrow” and everything.

I’m learning a lot about running a business from this job. Mostly by negative example. I’m seeing a whole lot of short-term choices being made, and a whole lot of higher policies that incentivize those short-term choices.

And I’m starting to see the effects of making short term decisions.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the company as a whole, but I have the feeling the writing’s on the wall for this particular town. (We’re in a downward spiral of cut jobs, lose income to bad customer service, cut more jobs to make up for the lost profits. I don’t really expect it to level out, and I know I don’t have the power to fix it.)

I could actually see what I’m learning being useful, if I could figure out a way to market it. Fabulous business advice such as:

1. You can’t meet long-term goals with short-term solutions.
2. If everyone who works with a manager thinks he’s incompetent, he probably is.
3. Never mistake a retention problem for a hiring problem.
4. More training, less hiring. (And less firing.)
5. Don’t get in the way of peoples’ true passion. You’ll lose.
6. Don’t expect everybody to share your idea of success.
7. Understand other peoples’ personal goals, and help them meet them.

I’m not sure how those would relate to a writing business. I’m not likely to have an HR department. But you never know… I might find a use for them.