Front
Back (apologies for my handwriting!)
The text of the postcard is:
Dear Ellen,
Sometimes I think how even people with the most amazing jobs in the world must want a career-switch.
But to ride on a llama and not even crack a smile!?
These guys need to re-examine their priorities, and then tip their caps to a llama.
Sincerely,
GetBradStanleyPublished.com
(Note: This is really not that interesting, but the ‘weekly wacko’ section serves as a diary for me and I wanted to write out how I felt about this. Also, I wrote this 11/9/10.)
Hello Again, Feelings …
Today was a fairly big day for me. Since I love telling stories I of course can’t just tell what. I have to tell why.
Last week I came back from my trip to Florida and worked on Friday. I saw that my boss had his door open so I swung by to tell him that since NASA had not launched the shuttle, I needed the Lego Shuttle set to comfort my wounded heart and spirit.
“Ohh! Yeah, I’m surprised I haven’t bought that yet.”
My boss is cool.
He didn’t say he would buy the Lego set for his kid – he’d be buying it for himself. He then pulled up the Lego website and complained that they misrepresented the size of the shuttle. We tried to figure out how big it would be, and decided that it’d be cool, but even cooler if it was 5 feet tall.
After that he asked me to sit down. I am a worrier and a pessimist so this made me nervous. I asked if I should close the door and he said yes. Yikes.
I came to Houston on a one-year contract: January to January. At some point I began working on another project outside the one I was hired into. This project was(/is?) slated to be finished in March so I approached my boss (actually I talked to 3 bosses about this – gooo corporate!) and asked about the idea of extending my contract until March. I got a thumbs up. This was a few weeks ago.
On Friday, I was sitting there and the first question from my boss was, “how do you like working here? Be honest.”
Double yikes.
I told him I enjoyed it, but lately the changing scope of the work (the economy and I are enemies) had sucked the enjoyment out. Currently the feeling is: “you can do that, it doesn’t matter anyway because this project might be trashed, so sure … go do that.”
He told me my name had come up for a new project that is just getting underway. It’s an intense one, it’ll be a big challenge, you know, that old bag of tricks. Nevertheless, it’s exciting and was a boost to my ego to be wanted for this team (though it’ll be a huge team so not that big a boost).
He told me to think the idea over during the weekend. I thought, and talked with my folks, and thought some more. My gut feeling was yes please and Occam’s razor told me go for it – but I felt like there should be some down-sides I was missing.
On Monday I met with another boss who talked with me about it some more. When I said, “this sounds like it’ll be very challenging work,” he laughed at me. An, “oh you poor, ignorant fool,” laugh. My bosses are piloting me across the river Styx.
Today I met with boss number 1 (Lego boss – who informed me that boss number two is a karate whiz and probably sits around thinking of ways to break people’s necks. Again, Lego boss is awesome). Lego boss was being pushed to get an answer from me and I … said yes.
Yikes!
The project may fail, it has a nebulous shape at best, it’ll be very challenging and this worries me because I don’t want to look dumb. But my desire to not look stupid does not outweigh my desire to be a part of this. I emailed my sister and told her that the two downsides to my accepting this offer are: fear of not being good enough/fear of the unknown, and not getting to move to a cooler place or closer to home. Sorry Houston, don’t mean to hate on you.
My sister had a very nice response which was: “Duuuuuude that is so awesome. take a moment to be positive before you start bashing yourself.”
This is my being positive. Congratulations, self. Don’t blow it.
Bottle + Emotions = Manliness
Obviously guys aren’t alone in this trend, but they tend to represent it.
Today I was doing some work when one of my boss’s walked up. He stood in the middle of the cube hallway and looked left and right, between myself and another guy. Then he said, “I’m trying to decide who to tell this story to, who would find it funny.”
I turned to give him my attention, so he started telling it.
Apparently every Thursday he does the same order from a pizza place for his daughters. He’ll call up, tell them the order, pay the same price, and wha-la. Last week he ordered and the delivery was really late, which prompted him to call and complain. The pizza place apologized and took five dollars off his order. No biggie. Wellll, the ‘funny’ part of the story is that he called today and again it was five dollars off. My boss figured they entered the five dollars off in a computer and it wasn’t entered as a one-time thing, but accidentally as a permanent thing. He was laughing at, I guess, people’s dependence on computers (an ironic thing for a computer programmer to laugh at I would think).
Anyhow. He was tickled while telling this story and then joking about it with us. I recommended he call and complain a few times, and eventually the delivery guy will arrive with two pizzas and twenty bucks to give him.
The story didn’t do much for me, but I really liked my boss because he did something I (and probably many people) do. He was very excited about something but didn’t necessarily want to talk about it or share those feelings, so instead he was unnecessarily giddy/happy about something that really didn’t warrant it.
His wife was/is in the Philippines and there was a scare for a while because he hadn’t heard from her (for my/whoever’s future reference – there was a hurricane that hit there). Today he got some great news, she’ll be back home tomorrow. Big sigh of relief.
My boss heard this and just kind of wandered around smiling and cracking jokes, trying to find some way to deal with, I would imagine, how relieved and happy he was feeling. I suppose he could’ve bear-hugged random people walking by, but he’s a pretty strong-looking dude and that may have killed some of our older co-workers.
Anyhow – I really enjoy that. I think it’s a common trait and it’s great to see.
Now, here are two little wrinkles to this story.
One, my boss at one point said to someone, “I’m not excited about the pizza, I’m relieved because my wife is coming home.” This ruins my whole being manly and projecting emotions into another story angle.
The other way it was ruined a bit was this hysterical/lame quote from my boss. After saying how relieved and happy he was to get to see his wife again and know she’s safe and it’s good for their daughters and this and that … “Also I get to play golf Saturday!”
Emotions, huh? So complex and golf-oriented.
DumbFunnery 