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:
- You can’t meet long-term goals with short-term solutions.
- If everyone who works with a manager thinks he’s incompetent, he probably is.
- Never mistake a retention problem for a hiring problem.
- More training, less hiring. (And less firing.)
- Don’t get in the way of peoples’ true passion. You’ll lose.
- Don’t expect everybody to share your idea of success.
- 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.
Amy Laurel
Stephanie Faris
Karen