Good morning folks,
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The weekend is almost here!! I just need to brave 15 more hours of this place and I''ll be set. Shouldn''t be too difficult as I''ve spent longer in front of a computer playing games. :)
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How was everyone''s evening? Mine was somewhat crummy at first but picked up as things progressed. For starters, I''ve been fighting off this cold since the weekend. The cough has somewhat subsided, but the "feeling" of bleh is still there. Last night I logged in to play a bit of WoW and was killing Yetis outside of Everlook in Winterspring just farming some leather pieces to craft with. Things were going well until I started feeling a bit dizzy and tired. Realizing I hadn''t eaten much that day and wasn''t hungry, I decided to lay down and rest my eyes for a bit. Luckly ''a bit'' was only about 30 minutes to an hour and I felt refreshed and ready to continue on. I went downstairs and logged into Teamspeak to chat with a couple friends there.
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An interesting topic started while we were playing. A friend of mine named (name changed to protect identity) Keith was asking me how my work was going and how I was coping with each day. My response was simple, "I''m taking it one day at a time".
Keith had been drinking a wee bit last night, so the conversation was good. He talked about his work and about stresses of corporate life and I could relate to everything. In fact, as we were talking, I decided I would write a bit about this in my musing. :)
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If you''re anything like a human being, work can have some interesting effects on you. Those who work in a corporate environment know how the stresses of one person can sometimes cause a chain reaction to the rest of the team/office which will result in people who are normally stressed to become even more stressed. This got me thinking of a few things while getting ready for bed last night. For starters, I was trying to figure out who we, as corporate employees, can make life better around our offices. I was also trying to come up with ways to relieve some of that stress we bottle up and find someone to share it with. Nobody wants to feel stressed, and some people have enough of it to go around.
In yesterday''s musing I mentioned we''ve had 3 people let go from the Western Canada district. Well yesterday another person from our office was let go. The person they let go yesterday was a very important member of our office. This person did pretty much everything administrative that needed to be done (work office administrative). There was no reason to let this person go and by doing so the company has placed a whole TON of work onto someone else. The administrative job in this office was taken care of primarily by 2 people. Now the job those 2 individuals did falls onto 1 to take care of. This sucks!
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Back to stress sharing for a moment. If you work in a corporate office, you NEED someone to talk to. There are other places of work that require this as well, but in a corporate environment you will always need someone to talk to. If you don''t have someone to talk to, find someone quickly as you are at risk of a mental breakdown.
Our team in the office is pretty close. We sit back and chat about a lot of different things. Whenever something stressful comes up, I''ll head to one of the other cubes and chat with the guys there. This helps me to "share" some of my stress with others. They may not be able to help me, but talking about it is half the battle (G.I. JOE!!!.... GOOOOOOOOO JOE!!). Sometimes through talking about your issues, you''ll find talents within certain individuals to help you deal with these things. This isn''t to say you need to talk with this person everytime you''re feeling stressed. You need to remember this person is talking to someone as well and doesn''t need all your issues on top of his own.
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If you work in a corporate office and are reading this musing at work, take a look around you. How many people do you see? How many people do you hear? If it is anything like my office (refer to musing about ''Office Space'') then you have a bunch of people around you who are part of your Team/Group and then over there you would have something like accounting and then sales and then Managment ass kissers. Against the wall you would have a few nice offices where the managers and board rooms are. If you''re real lucky, you''re bathroom will have more than one stall in it (yeah.. we''re not so lucky).
Ok, now after taking ALL that in, think about each person in your office and think about how many people they talk to on a daily basis. This sounds like a great time for an exercise!!
What you need:
1 Sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper (or whatever is laying around)
1 #2 Pencil (or pen, or marker, or crayon)
1 Ability to count to 10
Ok, this exercise is fairly simple. On the sheet with your sheet of paper using your #2 pencil draw 10 squares. They can be anywhere you want on the page but must take up most of the piece of paper as possible. They can be any size you wish and can not overlap.
I''ll go for a smoke while you complete this part of the task.
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Ok, hopefully everyone is finished here. Take a look at your piece of paper and all the pretty squares. Doesn''t that look nice? Now take your pencil and draw one straight line connecting all the boxes together.
That''s right, ONE straight line connecting ALL 10 of your boxes.
Let me guess, you can''t do it can you? Why is this?
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Like any other job in any other place there are multiple lines of communication. Suzy Q in Square 1 may not have a direct line of communication to Billy B in Square 8, however Johnny J in Square 3 can talk directly to Mary O (get it? Mario? I crack myself up sometimes) in Square 4. Taking that into consideration, draw straight lines from box to box making sure all possible connections are made without having to go through any squares. You can see the lines of communication here and how many potential possibilities people can have to talk to others around them. Like any other office I''ve worked in, there is gossip and "transfer of knowledge". So Suzy Q in Square 1 can talk to Jimmy K in Square 2 and then Jimmy K can talk to Johnny J in Square 3. We are all somewhat connected to everyone else in the office and need to utilize those communication lines when we need to talk.
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Stress is not an easy thing to deal with especially with the possibility of being layed off in your company. If you are the primary income in your family, this can create added stress as you worry about what will happen to your family in the event you do get layed off. Unfortunatly, this is one of the realities we need to face on a daily basis. No company is perfect and safe from downsizing. Faces you see today at your work place may not be the same faces that are there a year from now. I have been working at this company for over 7 years now and I have seen a LOT of change. Most of the people I worked with when I started are no longer here. I''ve gone through 4 different managers and every single member of our team (with the exception of 1 person) is different than when I started.
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Talk it out folks. I like to express through my musings using the Internet line of communication available to me. I do talk with people in my office but I talk to you folks first thing which makes you my primary outlet point. People need people to talk to.
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Well, it has been almost an hour now so I better wrap things up. Remember to keep your heads high. We are all human beings and should be treated no different than the person sitting next to us. Only through equality can we truely achieve social perfection. Not like that will ever happen, but life would be nice if it did. :)
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Take care my friends!
Cheers,
Al
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