Better Late Than Never
Jesus, when's the last time I wrote anything on here? Roughly a year, I imagine. Something about "HailStorm"? Funny thing about hail storms... they're intensely interesting, completely engaging, but in and out in a flash, leaving you with only a handful of quickly liquifying and disappearing mementos... save for the damage wrought.
Yeah.
In giving her that name, I quite unwittingly predicted that one. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. I'm 35 now, staring down my 36th year of life here in a few short months. I'm tempted to say that not a whole lot has changed, but honestly, quite has in the form of a sudden maturation which the swift kick in the emotional nuts that said HailStorm's totally unexpected departure has induced.
In the meantime I've gotten yet another low paying job at some factory producing little metal and plastic widgets... but I'm strangely ok* with that. I've since been promoted and have stepped up to the first rung of the proverbial ladder. I've actually embarked onto, and have managed to fool myself into thinking that I'll actually complete, a new college education toward a degree in network engineering. Don't get excited by the "e" word... it's not real engineering like electronic or mechanical or chemical. It's just basically being the IT guy. But photography having failed me miserably, I figure my other love and fascination (which I should have pursued in the first goddamned place [again... hindsight]) will be slightly more blue chip and able to weather economic turbulence. Plus, with a foot in the door already, and this being a global corporation, I'm ready to whore the shit out of myself for a job that pays a bona-fide living wage over the basic survival wage I'm making now, and have been for my entire life up to this point.
OK, Ok, ok... in a nutshell: Got dumped. Learned. Grew. New job. Promoted. New leadership responsibilities. Am the best fucking Line Leader that my new company has ever seen. I tell my peeps that I'm the "Trojan Horse", fighting the shitty system from within. I lead with everyone in mind. My girlfriend Laura says this is called Servant Leadership. I like that. It's my job to promote my fellow worker homies and our production lines, and make sure that they have the proper resources to manufacture the shit that makes our company money. We're all in this together, man!
It's not difficult. It all boils down to one basic concept that somehow seems to leech out of leaders' brains a little bit more and a little bit more with each step they take up the ladder:
"Don't be a dick."
There. That's it. Sum total, end-all be-all of supervision... the Alpha and the Omega of being a non-douchebag supervisor. I don't care if you're some fucker hired off the street with a shitty attitude making a wage which amounts to little more than a slap in the face, or some top level manager who has completely lost touch with the realities of the struggles of blue collar life and thinks we give a SHIT about your stock options... just don't be a fucking DICK.
We're all in this together. It's up to us to either make our work days and work weeks, if not fun, at least tolerable rather than miserable.
---
Oh, yeah. This past January, having learned a hard lesson and matured logarithmically, I met a damned fine woman. Her name is Laura. No cutesie blog nickname. Just... Laura. Unless she unveils some massive and yet unforseen personality flaw, she's the one. :-) I know, I know, I know... I say that about every one that I meet. This time I've waited six months to say it, not six days. Yay, growing up!
---
* I had initially typed 'okay', but realized that I'd broken my own cardinal rule of never spelling out the word 'okay'. It's not normal how much that irritates me seeing it spelled out phonetically like that.
Yeah.
In giving her that name, I quite unwittingly predicted that one. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. I'm 35 now, staring down my 36th year of life here in a few short months. I'm tempted to say that not a whole lot has changed, but honestly, quite has in the form of a sudden maturation which the swift kick in the emotional nuts that said HailStorm's totally unexpected departure has induced.
In the meantime I've gotten yet another low paying job at some factory producing little metal and plastic widgets... but I'm strangely ok* with that. I've since been promoted and have stepped up to the first rung of the proverbial ladder. I've actually embarked onto, and have managed to fool myself into thinking that I'll actually complete, a new college education toward a degree in network engineering. Don't get excited by the "e" word... it's not real engineering like electronic or mechanical or chemical. It's just basically being the IT guy. But photography having failed me miserably, I figure my other love and fascination (which I should have pursued in the first goddamned place [again... hindsight]) will be slightly more blue chip and able to weather economic turbulence. Plus, with a foot in the door already, and this being a global corporation, I'm ready to whore the shit out of myself for a job that pays a bona-fide living wage over the basic survival wage I'm making now, and have been for my entire life up to this point.
OK, Ok, ok... in a nutshell: Got dumped. Learned. Grew. New job. Promoted. New leadership responsibilities. Am the best fucking Line Leader that my new company has ever seen. I tell my peeps that I'm the "Trojan Horse", fighting the shitty system from within. I lead with everyone in mind. My girlfriend Laura says this is called Servant Leadership. I like that. It's my job to promote my fellow worker homies and our production lines, and make sure that they have the proper resources to manufacture the shit that makes our company money. We're all in this together, man!
It's not difficult. It all boils down to one basic concept that somehow seems to leech out of leaders' brains a little bit more and a little bit more with each step they take up the ladder:
"Don't be a dick."
There. That's it. Sum total, end-all be-all of supervision... the Alpha and the Omega of being a non-douchebag supervisor. I don't care if you're some fucker hired off the street with a shitty attitude making a wage which amounts to little more than a slap in the face, or some top level manager who has completely lost touch with the realities of the struggles of blue collar life and thinks we give a SHIT about your stock options... just don't be a fucking DICK.
We're all in this together. It's up to us to either make our work days and work weeks, if not fun, at least tolerable rather than miserable.
---
Oh, yeah. This past January, having learned a hard lesson and matured logarithmically, I met a damned fine woman. Her name is Laura. No cutesie blog nickname. Just... Laura. Unless she unveils some massive and yet unforseen personality flaw, she's the one. :-) I know, I know, I know... I say that about every one that I meet. This time I've waited six months to say it, not six days. Yay, growing up!
---
* I had initially typed 'okay', but realized that I'd broken my own cardinal rule of never spelling out the word 'okay'. It's not normal how much that irritates me seeing it spelled out phonetically like that.
posted by Grover at 6/07/2014 02:14:00 AM
3 comments
