2006-01-25
Teamwork - Hated it!
I don't work well with others.
No, not because I smell weird - because I'm a control freak and I can't stand it when I have to do anything that doesn't have a clear plan for execution. I can't hop in and help out without having to suppress the urge to kill, especially when I am dealing with a project that is unfamiliar and that I can't totally take over and do my way.
I've been working on this project and it's killing me. I have to coordinate, ewwwww, with someone to put together a massive quarterly presentation.
For like two years, I�ve done the data and printed my stuff and washed my hands of it. She�s way more hands-on to the client; in fact, I�ve never met them in person. I don�t know how this stuff gets put together and why if Person A doesn't get his or her home-made binder, in the color that was designed especially for the user, based on 17 elements of body-type, then time will bend in an alternate-universe and the space-time continuum will be so changed that here on Earth, dinosaurs will spring up in Canada.
I have two choices: The first is that I take over and flex both seniority and organizational skills. The second is that I finesse her into organizing her project so that I can assist her more effectively. My natural instinct is to take over and run the show when I'm put in a situation where there's not a lot of direction.
The second choice is the only viable option since I don't know jack about how this is supposed to look when it's done and how to get it to that state. She usuallly does her own thing with her part of the project, and at her own pace. This year, she wanted help.
Only her mouth said, "Help" while her actions said "Try to guess how these get put together and what you need to complete them, in terms of supplies. The thing is, I know you got your part done for me but I�ve decided to not give you one ounce of guidance on how I've been doing my portion of the project for the past 2 years? Each and every quarter for the past two years? Because I want to stand back watch you have a complete nervous break-down (again) and I want you to have to flat out tell me 8 times (I'm counting) that you need my help because I've arranged things so that you can't figure out my half of the project."
That's what we call 'push-back'. She's making me responsible for not having the information that I need from her in order to make things work.
I don't need to point out, dear readers, that I know what it's called because I just recently resigned as the Queen Pusher-Backer of the Universe.
You can't play a playa.
It's like 7:45 in the am and we're in the print area. I'm lost but I get down to the business of figuring out how to get found. I don�t know what goes where and you�d be surprised at how intricate things get in the CA. Corporate America, dumbass. CorpAm? Whatever. the important thing is that you remember that I�ve never seen this project from her side. I do the first part, she does the second. Why we varied from this, I can�t tell you. Come to think of it, why I never made her sign over her first-born in order to avoid my ever being called to help with this part of the project is something that I can�t address either.
I suppose that I was young and na�ve. And plus she and I talk a lot about penii. Anyone with whom you can crudely discuss anatomy that's not located on your own body map is valuable. You just don't get that kind of natural rapport very often with a colleague.
I'm toward the end of the project now, sweaty and hopeful that I didn't screw the whole thing up. "Hi, ummmm�. Can you help me? I don�t have all the templates that you use to finish these and I�m not really sure what goes where so if you could start prin��.."
"FINE. GAWD. What-ev-ER. You can't print some stuff on blue pages, Sarah? You're making me do all the work? (I'm quoting, by the way)"
Is she kidding me?
Sadly, no. There was honesty in her eyes. She seemed to believe that I wasn�t helping her out with a project she has done 8 times and I have done 0; with a project that she hasn�t pulled any supplies for me to use (how so I know what freaking tabs are the right ones?); with a project that I was technically done with: My part = Fin. I mean, I�m happy to punch some holes and stuff some binders but if you need me to do more than that, you�re going to have to tell me what you need because for the 6th time, easily,: I do not know what you DO with this stuff.
Cut to three hours later and I�ve now figured out everything she didn�t fill me in on, so� everything is done. Everything except for some blue pages. That�s it. Fucking blue pages of great, no ROYAL import, apparently. All you�re going to have to do to help get this finished is print the blue pages. And she's giving me attitude.
There was a time where I would have seen her impudence, and raised her 7 by snotting around with eye-rolling, hair-flipping, and exaggerated sighing for the rest of the day.
Today, I felt like being a bigger person.
Today, I just told her off, straight-up and in a slightly threatening manner.
"Listen up. This is the CA, okay? Not some street fair where we are sharing a project like making corn-dogs or filling up Garfield-shaped balloons and any homeless a-hole behind the Lucky Duck booth can stumble through it with a generic cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Mad Dog in the other. In fifteen minutes. This is Binder Tabs, okay? It's not a copy project. B-I-N-D-E-R-S. Let me break it down for you: I sit four Cubies down from you and I don't have a damn clue what you do on this half of our project that we share. Chances are very good that the reverse is also true, so you better think long and hard before you go crying to any management that I am roughing you up, Ms. Stone-Thrower.
Now, before this gets any uglier and we get into your lack of time-management skills today, let's go back in time. I'll take on a trip to last April. You had to do a project that you didn't understand, mathmematically, remember? And I did the whole thing for you and told everyone that it was because you asked me to even though you didn�t � you were just completely and inexcusably clueless about that kind of funding arrangement. Before we travel into the archives of helping, I think you better quite bitching and give a hand up to a sister today.
Print the blue pages before I implode, please and thank you.�
I totally am not going to be working with people much longer. Luckily, if I can prove that I work well while not working with others, than this summer, Operation Actually Make What You're Worth will be in full-effect.
La dolce vita.
Just let me bask for a second. It's rare that I don't feel like crawling under my desk with a bag of Oreos and a crazed look in my eyes.
Let me savor this.
I am glad that I dug deep and found a way to work with others today, since I am going to be off of that hook sooner, rather than later. And I mean it. I sick of teamwork in the CorpAm.
I'm all writing my little bloglet and I've got auto-preview on my email system? And I can see another email-bomb that just came in. It's another stunning example how teamwork is really code for Fight Your Way to the Alpha Position Most Gracefully? Annnnnnd go!'
You have no idea how much I can�t wait to stop working with people.
Except when we are talking about genetalia on the company clock... which...
My ploy to make her help me and still respect me must have worked because she's been over at my cubical/lair three or four times alreadt to share with me a couple of anatomical insights that I never would have thought of on my own.
arizonasarah at 10:58 a.m.