Boss always has such impeccable timing. I wish. Characteristically, he makes grandiose plans, assigns a bunch of details, and gets a project JUST to the point where the presence, orchestration and input of the CEO would be indispensable, and then…..he cuts a trail.
That’s why it was so predictable, yet maddeningly baffling about a month ago, when Boss announced that he, Zilla and the baby would be taking a week-long vacation, JUST before a major organizational event. A fundraiser whose preparations absolutely SCREAMED for his participation in order to be successful. The demands of preparing for the event would absolutely PROHIBIT him going ANYwhere.
So, of course they WERE going, and planned to return in plenty of time. In plenty of time for what, you ask? In plenty of time to help with the important phone calls? In time to assist with site planning and set up? In time to make last-minute executive decisions? No. In time to arrive, all but squealing sideways into the parking lot on two wheels, a half hour LATE for the beginning of the event itself. Knowing Boss, we expected it, but we were still livid. But that’s later…
When I first caught wind of the upcoming trip, I considered the whole concept of a family vacation quite curious, because the baby was JUST shy of nine weeks old, and apart from the parents, a smattering of relatives and the previously noted doctors and nurses, nobody had held or even seen baby Izzy. (Thank you, Yakki! I just LOVE this name for the baby , I think, perhaps interchangeably with Speedway. It just is so cute, and so appropriate for this precious little mystery man – Izzy sick? Izzy crying? Izzy spitting up? Izzy sleeping? Izzy got crazy parents? Izzy REAL? Is he Izzy? Izzy? LOVE IT! )
Just a few days prior to their departure, Sis had gotten to hold Izzy for the first time. She had stopped off at Boss’ house on an errand and was allowed in the house, and then invited to cradle the infant in her arms for a brief moment. Tall nephew, it was reported was granted permission to actually TOUCH the baby. For real. Once. He got to give Izzy a pat on his little back.
I just can’t imagine. Sis was beaming in the afterglow of snuggling her young nephew, but I could tell the experience had been bittersweet for her. Sis had been one of the relatives who had posted the vigil outside labor and delivery when Izzy was born. Had waited patiently to see the baby after delivery, and then been unceremoniously shut out without warning. FOR EIGHT WEEKS.
Sis had told us that Zilla was determined to follow the pediatrician’s most conservative recommendation: “It’s safest not to take the baby into big crowds until about six to eight weeks.” Obviously, Zilla interpreted “big crowds” to include any number of people other than herself and/or Boss. Remember, it was three weeks before even the grandmas got a crack at Izzy. Sis had been the very first aunt to get to hold the baby, over a month after that. Crazy, in my opinion. (Sharing my babies with loved ones has always been one of my most treasured aspects of the newborn stage, and I’m sorry that Boss’ family - and even the nefarious Zilla - had to miss that. )
VP informed me of Zilla's absolute INSISTENCE that Boss make good on some previous discussion regarding a family get-away. Veep said Boss had finally conceded and, unfortunately for us at the office, made plans to take off the week immediately before our important fundraiser event.
Remember Colonel Sanders, the white-haired, string-tied elderly gentleman who had presided over Boss’ and Zilla’s chaotic nuptials last fall? Their “vacation” was a jaunt to his coop, errr… home, several states away.
This choice of timing, location and extenuating circumstance for their first family trip spoke volumes. Isn’t it hard to believe that Zilla, who hadn’t even been willing to venture into our small office with little Izzy, was nonetheless willing to pack up and abscond with him over a thousand miles away to uncertain rustic accommodations provided by folks who are virtual strangers to her? Boss has long considered the Colonel his most esteemed mentor – one of the only living persons whose advice Boss will follow without question. For months, it had been painfully apparent that married life was NOTHING Boss expected, and we could presume that Zilla was just as shellshocked. Educated guesses by members of the staff concluded that Boss and Zilla were headed to points remote for a little R&R, with a jumbo order of marriage counseling, on the side.
In other words, I think they were desperate for some help. As an added bonus, Colonel lives far away. Locally, no one would ever have to know that Boss had felt it necessary to humble himself and ask for counseling.
Off they drove, on a weekend morning. VP conveyed a report early Monday that the little family had safely arrived and were settling in for a time of repose and revitalization. The tranquility was maintained but briefly. A few hours into their stay, the telephone rang. Colonel Sander’s daughter dropped dead of a heart attack in a nearby town. I felt genuinely sorry for everyone. Poor Colonel and his wife, who had evidently generously invited a forlorn couple to their home for a time of refreshment, now suddenly cast into the throes of grief. Poor Boss & Zilla, whose heartbreaking plea for hope would now go unanswered.
None of us got many specifics, but I could fill in the blanks. Zilla would have been highly annoyed that it was no longer about her, even though common sense dictated that she be compassionate and consoling. Boss would shift into rescuer mode, consider himself the supernaturally provided fulfillment of the family’s need for solace, and proceed talk the ears off of anyone who would stand still for him. Zilla would consequently be put off that once again, Boss appeared to be paying attention to everyone but her, on HER vacation. Boss would be distressed and dismayed at Zilla’s reaction, but under the stress of pleasing his mentor, wouldn’t have much time to deal with his wife’s attitude, except for a few brusque, edgy appeasements. Feeling ignored and underappreciated, Zilla would retreat into the most inconspicuous location, probably the room they’d been assigned, and decline to venture out until their departure.
Is that really what happened? Who knows? All I can verify is that, at some point, the “vacation” morphed into a “business trip.” The fuel that I would have assumed should have been paid for with their personal resources somehow ended up being charged to the corporate account. There was only one final mention of the word “vacation” upon their return, as in, “It certainly wasn’t the rest and relaxation you would expect on a vacation.” Which, to me, indicated that even though it wasn’t what they had anticipated, it still WAS a vacation. Right??
I soon noticed the out-of-state gas station charges appearing on our corporate account. Maybe Boss had absent-mindedly used his business card instead of his personal card? I made note of it and passed the info on to Veep so he could confirm. Was it a vacation, or was that a business trip? Boss spied my note to Veep and went through the ROOF.
“Do you really think that was a VACATION??? We ENCOURAGED people there (okay, somebody DIED, and you just happened to be there, pal ), and we took a side trip to another city to see a site that is relevant to our organization (loosely relevant, very loosely ), and made lots of good connections (which means that he talked even MORE people’s ears off ) and we stopped on the way home to make arrangements for a musician for an upcoming event! (who besides being able to sing, also has a free guest bedroom! Oh, and who's WE???? Do you really expect us to believe that Zilla was a PARTICIPANT? Cause we haven't any reason to believe she has an altruistic bone in her body.)”
So, I guess the moral of the story is, if you happen to be on vacation and things don’t go as planned, you can real quick call it a “business trip” instead, charge it to your company, and avoid having to pay for it yourself. Save YOUR money for a vacation that meets your expectations. Good to know. And just in case you’re wondering, because he is the CEO and because he DID conduct some "business" on the trip, the board will approve the expenses without a blink. Grrrrrr…
You know what? Eighteen months ago, this would NOT have happened. Boss wouldn't even have SUGGESTED it. The combined stress of Zilla, those huge medical bills, the fussy newborn, scarce personal finances -- and yet STILL needing covert marital counseling after all that futile effort must have driven Boss to desperation.
Ultimately, the day of the major event dawned. We weren’t ready for it, and we knew it, due to Boss’ inopportune absence. We’d depended on him to make some key connections, and as we drew nearer the event, it was discovered that he hadn’t had time to make the contacts we had counted on him to make. The occasion was to begin at 1 p.m. At 11:30 a.m., Boss called from the state line. He was going to drop Zilla and Izzy off at their home, shower, change clothes, and be there shortly before the event began.
I know Boss isn’t stupid, but his time management skills are just not in touch with reality. What were they riding? A magic carpet? Zilla’s broom? I rolled my eyes, BIG TIME. Where were they? State line. BOZO NICKELS!!!! Even if they drove STRAIGHT to the event with no stops ANYWHERE, it would still take no less than two hours to get here from there. (And it isn’t as if Boss isn’t familiar with the travel time. He’s done that route many times.)
I surreptitiously predicted Boss’ arrival to be no earlier than 1:30 p.m. (half an hour after the proposed start, which incidentally, would make us all look like idiots ), with Zilla and Izzy still glued to the seats, because there was no WAY he’d have time for that detour, let alone attend to personal hygiene. Goofball.
Ding! Ding! Ding! And the contestant who guessed closest to the actual time of Boss’ arrival, without going over, and also correctly predicted the exact identities of occupants of the vehicle is……..Ellen!!!
So what do I win? Hopefully, a new job? Stay tuned.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Chapter 22 - Pregzilla: "A Dingo Ate My Baby!"
Well, not really, although the true status of Little Man/Baby Speedway is up for speculation. You see, even now, almost three months after his birth, I’ve yet to actually SEE the baby, except in a few early photographs. Seriously.
Zilla is still keeping the baby at home unless absolutely necessary, so I can’t confirm, in a tangible way, that this kid even exists. I've heard rumors it exists, but I don't know. We've tried everything to coax it out into the open (and this is beginning to sound like that Royal Caribbean commercial, but trust me, it's no vacation cruise ).
I’ve seen digital pics of a young baby in the arms of a grimacing Boss and a beaming Zilla. Photos by people who have actually laid eyes on the infant - Boss’ sis and our beloved organizational VP. I once spied Boss’ company vehicle, which reportedly contained a nursing Zilla and tiny Speedway, for a few minutes before it vanished from the parking lot. Didn’t get a glimpse of Momzilla or the babe, though.
There are a limited number of people who have actually HELD the baby, although again, I can’t personally verify, since I've never been that close . Half a dozen family members, and assorted medical personnel. Particularly medical personnel. You see, the little man spits up. A lot.
This was, early on, cleared by the pediatrician since he is having lots of wet diapers and gaining well. Same thing happened with several of my own kids, just some immature, weak little digestive muscles that take a few weeks or months to strengthen. More than a little alarming, at first, especially when you see them spew like a garden hose. Frequent, abundant, and sometimes even projectile regurgitation can be quite scary, and sometimes your initial inclination is to rush the the ER. But, over time, as you see that the little sweetie is happy, packing on the ounces, and making good use of his diapers, you calm down a little , use lots of bibs and wouldn’t be caught dead without a burp cloth. Still, you’re bound to have at least one panicked phone call and one office visit to discuss the issue with your doc, especially as a new mom having your first encounter with a major spitter. I get that.
As you have come to fully appreciate over the last several months, such a neonatal trial wouldn’t set well with Princess Zilla. Plainly put, she has freaked in a sustained and unrelenting way. Boss was frenzied too, to begin with, as he certainly has no experience with newborns and their digestive issues. He fed off of Zilla’s panic almost as predictably as Baby Speedway fed off of Zilla. VP’s wife, who is a nurse, had been consulted, and as a good professional who is not authorized to dispense medical advice would naturally do, she gave her shot of opinion along with a “you should probably have him checked out, just to be sure” chaser.
This was all the permission Zilla needed to justify a campout in the emergency room. I imagine Zilla was dismayed when the ER docs didn’t turn up anything alarming and the little family was released with instructions to call the pediatrician’s office for a follow-up.
Predictably, the follow-up visit(s) didn’t satisfy. Now, all of us have been armed with more emotion than reason from time to time, and there’s that thing about “mother’s intuition”, when you KNOW, despite a doctor’s insistence otherwise, that there IS something wrong with your baby. On the other hand, there’s also Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I’m not making any accusations, but I have my hunches as to which process of thought Zilla’s brainwaves more closely resemble. Yeah. So anyway… I'm just saying.
Boss’ family certainly didn’t help. They were all in a flutter because of the breastfeeding thing in the first place – the general consensus being that breastfeeding is “gross”, and wasn’t that just like Zilla to insist upon it. With an “I told you so” air, they informed Boss gravely that all previous babies in the family had been “allergic” to breastfeeding. Now THAT’S a new one. Look THAT one up in the Breastfeeding Mother’s Companion, will ya?
Meanwhile, before you could say “Pass me that burp cloth,” Boss was taking a day off so Speedway could undergo a round of tests at our regional children’s hospital. No local hospital mish-mash for Zilla. Since they don’t have health insurance, baby qualifies for any kind of treatment the doctor orders, anywhere, under a special assistance program administered by the state. After listening to Zilla’s harried repeated phone calls, I’ll bet that pediatrician will readily send them wherever necessary to get them out of his hair.
Poor little Baby Speedway has been put through the wringer more than a couple of times for extensive gastrointestinal assessment . Those of you who have accompanied your infant through digestive tests are well acquainted with the fact that these procedures are kind of torturous for babies . The barium swallow, the upper GI, the lower GI, the scope investigations. They require fasting, occasionally sedation, and often, special radioactive marker solutions fed to or shot up the behind of that sweet little defenseless baby . So far, all they’ve turned up is that the little guy has a weak gastroesophageal flap, the “valve” between the food pipe and the tummy.
I know you MUST be getting really tired of me relating my personal experiences with my kids, but a weak flap was what I suggested to Boss when he first mentioned the extensive upspitting. Of COURSE I’m not an expert on baby’s digestive systems, but I had a few profuse regurgitators, and that was my experience. Their mileage may vary, but I had hoped to reassure Boss that even what seems like vast amounts of spit up can be within the range of normal. Not always, but usually. Sometimes the key is to prevent the baby from swallowing too much air before or during feeding; don’t let him get too upset before nursing as hard crying creates air pockets in the tummy, burp often during feeding, use different burping positions to coax out those stubborn bubbles.
Turned out that was just what the ER said, what their pediatrician said, and what has been repeated to them at every hospital visit. The baby has a weak gastroesophageal flap. He’ll grow out of it. The flap over his trachea is fine, his digestive system is otherwise normal. The diarrhea Zilla was hounding the docs about Is NOT diarrhea, but the soft, sometimes liquidy stool of a normal, exclusively-breastfed baby.
Twelve-week-old Speedway, whose birthweight was just over seven pounds, reportedly now weighs more than 16 pounds, so whatever amount he’s losing isn’t affecting his growth a whit, to say the least. Boss, who was obviously alarmed at the outset of Zilla’s hysterics, now is clearly reluctant to admit their latest foray to the children’s hospital for a new baby-poking session.
I don’t mean this to sound insensitive or ungracious, but am I wrong to be incensed that my tax dollars are being spent on incessant high-priced tests for a baby who is, from all accounts, healthy? If I were to insist to my child’s primary care pediatrician that there was something haywire in my kid’s belly, he’d take me seriously and probably do some preliminary testing. But if the usual and customary examinations showed no problem, and there was a lack of concerning or worsening symptoms, my family health insurance would have put the brakes on any further testing, AND FAST. But since Zilla is bound by no such limitation, she is apparently free to seek opinion after opinion and demand that the baby be subjected to test after test, until such time as somebody can find SOMETHING wrong. ENOUGH already! Rant over. Deep cleansing breath…
Karma does bite, though. I have no info to back this up, but I do know that a “non-emergency” visit to the emergency room – a visit not authorized by the primary care doctor – costs a PRETTY penny. Since neither boss nor Zilla is good with details, I’d bet a dollar to donuts that they are being billed for at least that first ER visit. Even the most dramatic maternal histrionics is no substitute for prior authorization by your primary medical provider, and baby spit-up? It does not constitute a true emergency. I can almost hear Boss’ wallet say, “Ouch!”
Zilla is still keeping the baby at home unless absolutely necessary, so I can’t confirm, in a tangible way, that this kid even exists. I've heard rumors it exists, but I don't know. We've tried everything to coax it out into the open (and this is beginning to sound like that Royal Caribbean commercial, but trust me, it's no vacation cruise ).
I’ve seen digital pics of a young baby in the arms of a grimacing Boss and a beaming Zilla. Photos by people who have actually laid eyes on the infant - Boss’ sis and our beloved organizational VP. I once spied Boss’ company vehicle, which reportedly contained a nursing Zilla and tiny Speedway, for a few minutes before it vanished from the parking lot. Didn’t get a glimpse of Momzilla or the babe, though.
There are a limited number of people who have actually HELD the baby, although again, I can’t personally verify, since I've never been that close . Half a dozen family members, and assorted medical personnel. Particularly medical personnel. You see, the little man spits up. A lot.
This was, early on, cleared by the pediatrician since he is having lots of wet diapers and gaining well. Same thing happened with several of my own kids, just some immature, weak little digestive muscles that take a few weeks or months to strengthen. More than a little alarming, at first, especially when you see them spew like a garden hose. Frequent, abundant, and sometimes even projectile regurgitation can be quite scary, and sometimes your initial inclination is to rush the the ER. But, over time, as you see that the little sweetie is happy, packing on the ounces, and making good use of his diapers, you calm down a little , use lots of bibs and wouldn’t be caught dead without a burp cloth. Still, you’re bound to have at least one panicked phone call and one office visit to discuss the issue with your doc, especially as a new mom having your first encounter with a major spitter. I get that.
As you have come to fully appreciate over the last several months, such a neonatal trial wouldn’t set well with Princess Zilla. Plainly put, she has freaked in a sustained and unrelenting way. Boss was frenzied too, to begin with, as he certainly has no experience with newborns and their digestive issues. He fed off of Zilla’s panic almost as predictably as Baby Speedway fed off of Zilla. VP’s wife, who is a nurse, had been consulted, and as a good professional who is not authorized to dispense medical advice would naturally do, she gave her shot of opinion along with a “you should probably have him checked out, just to be sure” chaser.
This was all the permission Zilla needed to justify a campout in the emergency room. I imagine Zilla was dismayed when the ER docs didn’t turn up anything alarming and the little family was released with instructions to call the pediatrician’s office for a follow-up.
Predictably, the follow-up visit(s) didn’t satisfy. Now, all of us have been armed with more emotion than reason from time to time, and there’s that thing about “mother’s intuition”, when you KNOW, despite a doctor’s insistence otherwise, that there IS something wrong with your baby. On the other hand, there’s also Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I’m not making any accusations, but I have my hunches as to which process of thought Zilla’s brainwaves more closely resemble. Yeah. So anyway… I'm just saying.
Boss’ family certainly didn’t help. They were all in a flutter because of the breastfeeding thing in the first place – the general consensus being that breastfeeding is “gross”, and wasn’t that just like Zilla to insist upon it. With an “I told you so” air, they informed Boss gravely that all previous babies in the family had been “allergic” to breastfeeding. Now THAT’S a new one. Look THAT one up in the Breastfeeding Mother’s Companion, will ya?
Meanwhile, before you could say “Pass me that burp cloth,” Boss was taking a day off so Speedway could undergo a round of tests at our regional children’s hospital. No local hospital mish-mash for Zilla. Since they don’t have health insurance, baby qualifies for any kind of treatment the doctor orders, anywhere, under a special assistance program administered by the state. After listening to Zilla’s harried repeated phone calls, I’ll bet that pediatrician will readily send them wherever necessary to get them out of his hair.
Poor little Baby Speedway has been put through the wringer more than a couple of times for extensive gastrointestinal assessment . Those of you who have accompanied your infant through digestive tests are well acquainted with the fact that these procedures are kind of torturous for babies . The barium swallow, the upper GI, the lower GI, the scope investigations. They require fasting, occasionally sedation, and often, special radioactive marker solutions fed to or shot up the behind of that sweet little defenseless baby . So far, all they’ve turned up is that the little guy has a weak gastroesophageal flap, the “valve” between the food pipe and the tummy.
I know you MUST be getting really tired of me relating my personal experiences with my kids, but a weak flap was what I suggested to Boss when he first mentioned the extensive upspitting. Of COURSE I’m not an expert on baby’s digestive systems, but I had a few profuse regurgitators, and that was my experience. Their mileage may vary, but I had hoped to reassure Boss that even what seems like vast amounts of spit up can be within the range of normal. Not always, but usually. Sometimes the key is to prevent the baby from swallowing too much air before or during feeding; don’t let him get too upset before nursing as hard crying creates air pockets in the tummy, burp often during feeding, use different burping positions to coax out those stubborn bubbles.
Turned out that was just what the ER said, what their pediatrician said, and what has been repeated to them at every hospital visit. The baby has a weak gastroesophageal flap. He’ll grow out of it. The flap over his trachea is fine, his digestive system is otherwise normal. The diarrhea Zilla was hounding the docs about Is NOT diarrhea, but the soft, sometimes liquidy stool of a normal, exclusively-breastfed baby.
Twelve-week-old Speedway, whose birthweight was just over seven pounds, reportedly now weighs more than 16 pounds, so whatever amount he’s losing isn’t affecting his growth a whit, to say the least. Boss, who was obviously alarmed at the outset of Zilla’s hysterics, now is clearly reluctant to admit their latest foray to the children’s hospital for a new baby-poking session.
I don’t mean this to sound insensitive or ungracious, but am I wrong to be incensed that my tax dollars are being spent on incessant high-priced tests for a baby who is, from all accounts, healthy? If I were to insist to my child’s primary care pediatrician that there was something haywire in my kid’s belly, he’d take me seriously and probably do some preliminary testing. But if the usual and customary examinations showed no problem, and there was a lack of concerning or worsening symptoms, my family health insurance would have put the brakes on any further testing, AND FAST. But since Zilla is bound by no such limitation, she is apparently free to seek opinion after opinion and demand that the baby be subjected to test after test, until such time as somebody can find SOMETHING wrong. ENOUGH already! Rant over. Deep cleansing breath…
Karma does bite, though. I have no info to back this up, but I do know that a “non-emergency” visit to the emergency room – a visit not authorized by the primary care doctor – costs a PRETTY penny. Since neither boss nor Zilla is good with details, I’d bet a dollar to donuts that they are being billed for at least that first ER visit. Even the most dramatic maternal histrionics is no substitute for prior authorization by your primary medical provider, and baby spit-up? It does not constitute a true emergency. I can almost hear Boss’ wallet say, “Ouch!”
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Chapter 21 - VP: In the Loop
Before we continue with the story, allow me to extend an official shout out to our corporate Vice President. Welcome to the Pregzilla Chronicles, brother! Yep, VP is now a member of the Zilla fold. You might correctly recall that I wasn’t going to share the Chronicles with ANYONE on the inside of the office, for reasons of discretion and anonymity. Hey, things change. One day, VP came into our building with a long face and a draggin’ tail. (Which is a rather unflattering, canine description of someone who is actually a very nice man, but is nevertheless the most accurate way to describe his state of mental anguish.)
VP asked me to come into his office, where, out of total frustration with Boss’ lack of appropriate response to current circumstances and inattentiveness to sound business practices, he began asking me a few questions about Boss, Zilla and our organization in general.
Our poor VP had begun to think he was nuts. Did NOBODY else see the absurd and inept things he was seeing? Did everyone else think the familial and organizational goings on he had observed over the last six months or so was NORMAL???
He asked me to fill in some blank spots in what he already knew about the past few years of our company itself, and I shared with him some strange and wonderful corporate details. Details about which he quite frankly needed to be aware; I was no less than shocked to hear that Boss hadn’t revealed these facts to him, right off the bat, before Veep was even hired! I mean, how can the poor guy be expected to formulate a BUSINESS PLAN to take us through the next few years when he has been kept in the dark (or glossed over) about what has happened in the past? VP felt as though he had gained at least a few more pieces to the company puzzle.
Then our conversation turned a little into Boss’ personal life, and the zany antics of Zilla. Was she for real? Where did he get her? She’s a bona fide &^%$#! Was the engagement and wedding as outlandish and irrational as the marriage appeared to be? How does Boss stand it? I tried to tactfully elucidate the few things I could, but at some point, with fear and trepidation, I decided VP needed to become a reader of The Pregzilla Chronicles.
The general state of affairs in our organization easily becomes pretty heavy when you don’t see the sheer hilarity, and I thought VP was greatly in need of a little situational lightheartedness. So I made Veep pinky swear to secrecy and pulled up the Chronicles on Blogspot. “That ought to answer a lot of your questions. And by the way, all the readers love you.” So he read. And read. And read some more. And now VP knows that he’s not alone, or insane, or in some madcap dream from which he can’t awaken. And he’s laughing again…..sometimes, about the asinine stuff that goes on in Zillaland.
In addition, out of the often senseless and irrational way we deal with issues in our establishment, a new term has been coined: “Bozo Nickels.” (Get it? Coined? Nickels? Oh, never mind.)
Anyway, imagine yourself, at a store’s checkout, pulling a handful of change from your pocket or purse to settle up your purchases. As you glance over the coins, you notice that the tails-side of each 5¢ piece has the familiar image of Monticello, but when flipped over, “heads” is no longer the comfortingly customary bust of Thomas Jefferson. Instead, gaping at you from the front of the coin is a ridiculous grinning image of Bozo the Clown. You wonder if you’re entranced in a crazy dream, but no, you’re wide awake. Practically panicking, you check the other 5¢ pieces. ALL the nickels are Bozofied. The cashier is drumming the conveyor, waiting for payment. You hesitate. Finally,psychologically defeated, you hand over the change, purposely heads-up, to wait for the cashier’s comment. The cashier has a clear view of the Bozos, but says nothing, and you go incredulously on your way.
Later, you ask a friend about the picture on HER nickels. She gives you an alarmed look, fishes a few nickels out of her purse, and again, there is the bust of Bozo.
“Well?” you ask.
“What?”she says.
“Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”
“Huh?”
“That’s Bozo the Clown. On the nickel.”
“Riiiiiight…….and???? So what’s the problem?”
You want to SCREAM , because Bozo shouldn’t be there, but everyone is acting like it’s perfectly sane and normal. You feel like you’re in a crazy suspense movie, or on Candid Camera or maybe just off your rocker, but NOBODY seems to notice or make comment that there is a GLARING example of “What’s wrong with this picture” going on right before your eyes. Everyone just carries on as usual, behaving as though Bozo is SUPPOSED to be on the frontside of all your nickels. Perfect illustration of how things are when you deal with Boss and his cast of unconventional family members.
Anyway, “Bozo Nickels” is now covert office code. When something astonishingly peculiar happens, and the authorized, status quo response is to ignore it and pretend that it’s totally within the realm of the rational and routine , VP or I will catch the other’s attention and whisper, “Bozo Nickels.” Just a little reality buoy in a raging, oddball sea.
So now, The Pregzilla Chronicles has a burgeoning “mole”. (And I’ve just made allusions to VP not only as a dog, but a RODENT, for pity’s sake, but he’s pretty cool, and he likes the word “burgeoning”, so I hope he’ll forgive the word picture.) He gives me the latest news bulletins, reads me pertinent texts from Boss and Zilla, and just generally helps out with the information gathering so my cathartic journaling can flourish. Hats off to you, VP!
While my convenient mental health outlet is creative writing, VP has his own therapeutic method of dealing with the daily crises. He writes parody songs. The early Monday morning after the week I’d shared the Pregzilla blog URL with him, VP and I were the only ones in the building. He greeted me from his corner office, and advised me that once I was settled, he had something to share. Veep appeared, grinning, plucked an acoustic guitar from behind his door, walked over, slung his leg up on the credenza next to the printer in my workspace, cleared his throat and began to sing, to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”
“I can hear Boss a comin’, comin’ round the bend,
That man ain’t been on time, since, I don’t know when,
He’s been trapped in Zilla’s prison, and time keeps a draggin’ on…”
I was literally ROLLING. And Veep promises there will be more, because that’s how HE deals with stress. He writes songs. I can’t wait.
VP asked me to come into his office, where, out of total frustration with Boss’ lack of appropriate response to current circumstances and inattentiveness to sound business practices, he began asking me a few questions about Boss, Zilla and our organization in general.
Our poor VP had begun to think he was nuts. Did NOBODY else see the absurd and inept things he was seeing? Did everyone else think the familial and organizational goings on he had observed over the last six months or so was NORMAL???
He asked me to fill in some blank spots in what he already knew about the past few years of our company itself, and I shared with him some strange and wonderful corporate details. Details about which he quite frankly needed to be aware; I was no less than shocked to hear that Boss hadn’t revealed these facts to him, right off the bat, before Veep was even hired! I mean, how can the poor guy be expected to formulate a BUSINESS PLAN to take us through the next few years when he has been kept in the dark (or glossed over) about what has happened in the past? VP felt as though he had gained at least a few more pieces to the company puzzle.
Then our conversation turned a little into Boss’ personal life, and the zany antics of Zilla. Was she for real? Where did he get her? She’s a bona fide &^%$#! Was the engagement and wedding as outlandish and irrational as the marriage appeared to be? How does Boss stand it? I tried to tactfully elucidate the few things I could, but at some point, with fear and trepidation, I decided VP needed to become a reader of The Pregzilla Chronicles.
The general state of affairs in our organization easily becomes pretty heavy when you don’t see the sheer hilarity, and I thought VP was greatly in need of a little situational lightheartedness. So I made Veep pinky swear to secrecy and pulled up the Chronicles on Blogspot. “That ought to answer a lot of your questions. And by the way, all the readers love you.” So he read. And read. And read some more. And now VP knows that he’s not alone, or insane, or in some madcap dream from which he can’t awaken. And he’s laughing again…..sometimes, about the asinine stuff that goes on in Zillaland.
In addition, out of the often senseless and irrational way we deal with issues in our establishment, a new term has been coined: “Bozo Nickels.” (Get it? Coined? Nickels? Oh, never mind.)
Anyway, imagine yourself, at a store’s checkout, pulling a handful of change from your pocket or purse to settle up your purchases. As you glance over the coins, you notice that the tails-side of each 5¢ piece has the familiar image of Monticello, but when flipped over, “heads” is no longer the comfortingly customary bust of Thomas Jefferson. Instead, gaping at you from the front of the coin is a ridiculous grinning image of Bozo the Clown. You wonder if you’re entranced in a crazy dream, but no, you’re wide awake. Practically panicking, you check the other 5¢ pieces. ALL the nickels are Bozofied. The cashier is drumming the conveyor, waiting for payment. You hesitate. Finally,psychologically defeated, you hand over the change, purposely heads-up, to wait for the cashier’s comment. The cashier has a clear view of the Bozos, but says nothing, and you go incredulously on your way.
Later, you ask a friend about the picture on HER nickels. She gives you an alarmed look, fishes a few nickels out of her purse, and again, there is the bust of Bozo.
“Well?” you ask.
“What?”she says.
“Where’s Thomas Jefferson?”
“Huh?”
“That’s Bozo the Clown. On the nickel.”
“Riiiiiight…….and???? So what’s the problem?”
You want to SCREAM , because Bozo shouldn’t be there, but everyone is acting like it’s perfectly sane and normal. You feel like you’re in a crazy suspense movie, or on Candid Camera or maybe just off your rocker, but NOBODY seems to notice or make comment that there is a GLARING example of “What’s wrong with this picture” going on right before your eyes. Everyone just carries on as usual, behaving as though Bozo is SUPPOSED to be on the frontside of all your nickels. Perfect illustration of how things are when you deal with Boss and his cast of unconventional family members.
Anyway, “Bozo Nickels” is now covert office code. When something astonishingly peculiar happens, and the authorized, status quo response is to ignore it and pretend that it’s totally within the realm of the rational and routine , VP or I will catch the other’s attention and whisper, “Bozo Nickels.” Just a little reality buoy in a raging, oddball sea.
So now, The Pregzilla Chronicles has a burgeoning “mole”. (And I’ve just made allusions to VP not only as a dog, but a RODENT, for pity’s sake, but he’s pretty cool, and he likes the word “burgeoning”, so I hope he’ll forgive the word picture.) He gives me the latest news bulletins, reads me pertinent texts from Boss and Zilla, and just generally helps out with the information gathering so my cathartic journaling can flourish. Hats off to you, VP!
While my convenient mental health outlet is creative writing, VP has his own therapeutic method of dealing with the daily crises. He writes parody songs. The early Monday morning after the week I’d shared the Pregzilla blog URL with him, VP and I were the only ones in the building. He greeted me from his corner office, and advised me that once I was settled, he had something to share. Veep appeared, grinning, plucked an acoustic guitar from behind his door, walked over, slung his leg up on the credenza next to the printer in my workspace, cleared his throat and began to sing, to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”
“I can hear Boss a comin’, comin’ round the bend,
That man ain’t been on time, since, I don’t know when,
He’s been trapped in Zilla’s prison, and time keeps a draggin’ on…”
I was literally ROLLING. And Veep promises there will be more, because that’s how HE deals with stress. He writes songs. I can’t wait.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Chapter 20 – Boss: Tales from the Dark Side
Boss has been getting on our last nerves lately at the office , which is the reason he is the subject of this chapter instead of the fair Pregzilla. All of his former recalcitrant, backwards charm seems to have evaporated in the wake of the stark reality of his otherworldly union with Zilla. He has virtually ceased demonstrating any compassion or concern whatsoever toward his faithful employees, only seeming to have energy to deal with the copious and often irrational demands of his wife. He’s operating in survival mode, and while I’ve made a real effort to be patient and forgiving of his irresponsibility toward those of us who are struggling to keep his sole source of income up and running, his lack of pulling his own weight, and DOING HIS JOB is becoming almost intolerable. So there. Indulge me, please, while I get this off my chest.
All of us, I think, have a somewhat ugly underbelly of emotion. If you’re a hermit, no one ever has to know. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, only your family sees your most unpleasant moments. Unfortunately however, if we spend a lot of time in the public eye and/or have a great deal of face time with non-family members, it’s inevitable that some of the rough, unsightly borders of our psyche make themselves uncomfortably visible to others, much like an errant brassiere strap or glaring panty line.
Boss’ ragged edges of emotional inconsistency sometimes stare you in the face like that. Boss spends an inordinate amount of time interacting with others. In fact, even though he’s still a relative newlywed, with a new son, I surmise that unless he’s fast asleep, he’s either engaged in or thinking of engaging in a conversation with a colleague, client or acquaintance. He spends over 60 hours per month talking on his cell phone, in addition to his face-to-face meetings, which take several hours per day. I’m not even counting the time he devotes to text messages, which number in the several hundreds. (By the way, text messaging happens to be Zilla’s preferred means of discourse with Boss, so she’s responsible for a lot of these, which you’ll read about next time. ) So yeah, LOTS of time on communication with those outside his family.
I remember the very first time I was startled by one of Boss’ incongruous outbursts from left field. I’d been working in the office just a few weeks when Boss announced in a staff meeting that he wanted to institute a corporate fitness program. An area of the facility would be set aside for employee work-outs, and a plan was devised whereby the female staff members were to meet at 9 am, two or three days per week. The guys were to have a program too, but it would be revealed at a later time, and would be conducted in a different manner. Boss emphasized that keeping fit was an important part of the total mental/physical/spiritual wellness package where the staff was concerned, so he was going to make provision for fitness a priority. I was naïve enough at the time to consider it a wise and calculated corporate move. I realize now that it was probably an idea he thought of as it was coming out of his mouth.
Nevertheless, we girls embarked on our corporate fitness quest. A couple of our staff members were quite handy fitness instructors, so they took the lead. Time passed, and we’d developed a habit of working out for about half an hour two or three days per week, depending on what professional obligations we had going in the office. We’d even expanded our sessions so that acquaintances, family and ladies from the community could come join us. We arranged for someone to provide paid child care, the cost of which was covered by those whose children were being supervised. Boss always made it a point to stay away from our workout area, because he didn’t want to make any of the ladies’ uncomfortable, but he’d sometimes holler a cheerful “Hello!” toward our area as he entered the building. More often than not, though, he didn’t show up at our place of business until well after we had wrapped things up and returned to our desks in the office, so he was only remotely aware of what we were doing and how successful and popular our workouts had become.
The organization was even turning a bit of revenue from the sale of bottled beverages during the sessions, so we all began to agree that this was a great idea, and an excellent way to both keep fit and to reach out to the community.
Months passed. Things seemed to be going remarkably well, which I’ve learned over the years is usually a sign that there is a bizarre undulation about to take place. One day, when Boss appeared to be casually perusing our time cards on payday, he suddenly burst out with an exclamation directed toward me, but audible to nearly everyone in the building. “Wait a minute! I see that Susie has written 9 am on her time sheet on Monday and Wednesday!
“Yes….?” I replied tentatively, not sure what he was getting at.
“And so have you! But didn’t you work out on those days?”
“Yes….we did work out on Monday and Wednesday. What’s wrong?”
“YOU PUT IT DOWN ON YOUR TIME CARDS!!! I can’t be paying you to work out! You can’t put hours on your time card unless you are actually doing work in the office!”
Okay, so this had pretty much been my gut feeling, months ago, when he first told us he WANTED us to work out on company time. I thought that probably wasn’t the best use of corporate resources. But he seemed so enthusiastic, and he had made a good a point about the well-rounded, healthy employee thing. He even kind of talked it up as a peace offering to the staff from our organization, since we can’t afford corporate health insurance. So quite naturally, since Boss has the authority to determine whether or not we employees should be paid for whatever he chooses, I went with it. I even double-checked with him and confirmed it before I handed over the first round of time sheets claiming our corporate work-out time. But now, Boss’ tone made me feel quite shady, and a lot like a thief.
I wanted to retort, “But, at the staff meeting, you said….” I didn’t. I rationalized that if Boss had suddenly become so alarmed about the money coming out of the company coffers for something he had previously authorized, the financial situation must be dire. I didn’t want to stress him out even further and sound like a whiner, when he was obviously concerned about funding. I didn’t know him that well at the time, so I backed off without even a question.
From that point on, I DID vow to begin taking detailed notes at staff meetings, which had never been done before, but is a practice that I began and continue to do to this day. I informed all the hourly employees who had been joining us for exercise sessions that fitness was no longer a part of our employee package. Say la vie. Some employees subsequently decided that if they weren’t getting PAID for it, they would rather stay in bed and come in later. Others decided to focus their limited workday hours on more businesslike pursuits. Non-staff participants sensed the change in attitude and enthusiasm, I think, and gradually stopped showing up. Finally, the gals who had been instructing picked up some “real” evening classes in other locations, and decided that an additional morning workout was too much for them. Anyhow, before long, our workouts dwindled away to nothing.
At about this same time, we were in habit of frequently going out for lunch as an office. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Most of the time, they were impromptu instances of taking our staff meetings on the road. We’d all be invited to have a “business lunch” together, for which our organization picked up the tab. Boss had made a point of wanting us to be cohesive as a staff, and desiring for us to build relationships with one another, so we viewed these power lunches as an outgrowth of that. Besides that, as I’ve written before, our staff meetings NEVER started on time, so by the time they were even half over, lunchtime had come and gone and we were all RAVENOUS. It was either go get a bite to eat or scrap the meeting. Boss would NEVER scrap a staff meeting. NEVER.
Once, to my surprise, and by Boss’ suggestion, we went to a popular, but fairly pricey local eatery. We discovered after we arrived that we were there to celebrate a staff member’s birthday and encourage an employee whose husband had just lost his job. We didn’t conduct a huge amount of business during that lunch, as I recollect, but we were under the impression that it was “mandatory” that we go, so we all did. We ordered, ate, and spent a short time chatting about office stuff and personal stuff. When the checks came, Boss grabbed his own and the check of the birthday celebrant, and put their meals on the corporate card. The rest of us paid for our own meals. I didn’t realize we were going dutch until the checks came. I was shocked. I wouldn’t have felt I should afford to go had I known, but whatever.
So, at the end of the week, we all turned in our time cards and I submitted them, with the paychecks to be signed by Boss. While he was busy in his office, the rest of us took a few minutes and ran to a local fast food restaurant for a quick bite, since our computers were temporarily down, and the IT technician who was reconfiguring our system needed some “empty office” time to get things reworked. Boss stayed behind to sign the checks and confer with the tech. When we returned to the building, Boss and the tech were bent over a flowchart of some sort. Boss interrupted the meeting long enough to call my co-worker and I into the office where they were.
“I saw that you put 9-5 on your timecards last Tuesday. That’s the day we all went to the local café.” He raised his voice a little, inflecting a little indignance. “You both claimed that on your timecards. I can’t be paying you to go out for lunch!! You have to sign out every time you leave the office. I don’t have the funds to pay employees to eat.”
Wow. This had never even been an issue, especially since we almost always ate while we worked at our desks, unless we were required to accompany the rest of the staff to a restaurant for a meeting. For our typical mid-day meals, we’d either brown bag it or make a run to a nearby fast food restaurant. If one of us did happen to leave the building, we were ALWAYS back in the office within 10 or 15 minutes, where we distributed the food and got back to work. In fact, this day had been a rarity, because we’d all gone out and taken a half hour, since we had been asked to clear the building for the computer tech.
I was a little speechless. Boss had just revealed his ignorance about common business practices. Don’t even minimum wage jobs require a paid 20 or 30 minute lunch break? In addition, don’t they also offer a couple of 10 minute regular breaks within an eight hour shift? Our staff never TOOK breaks, as we were always loathe to interrupt our project momentum. We were also, as a group, very conscientious and wanted to make sure our time spent on the clock wasn’t squandering precious funds. Had we REALLY just been scolded about one hour-long lunch out after working through countless others at our desks? I believe you’ve treed the wrong squirrels there, Rover!
The most disturbing thing to me was the fact that this scolding had taken place in front of a complete stranger instead of being pulled aside and counseled privately. I had to work with that computer gentleman at a later time, and it took him a long time to realize that I wasn’t a lazy, money-grubbing bum, but actually was someone who had been placed in a trustworthy position.
I ended up appealing and securing a paid 30 minute lunch break for employees, and, as a bonus got an apology for Boss’ strident treatment of us in front of a stranger too. So that was good, and I appreciated his humility, short-lived though it was. He continues to call employees out in front of others, for things they may or may not have done.
See, Boss gets pretty stressed out sometimes , and he doesn’t always remember exactly what he says, and to whom. He will sometimes make a comment, phrased as an announcement, indicating that there is a new office policy. That office policy will be effective immediately, only not everyone will be aware of it, and it takes quite a bit of time for the information to trickle down to everyone on payroll. Due to the lag, Boss gets frustrated , because he assumes that the employees are deliberately ignoring his directives, when the real truth is that they’re simply underinformed. The truth is, he’s told maybe ONE MEMBER of the staff the NEW policy, the new policy which trumps the OLD policy, but since he sometimes makes the announcement as an offhanded comment to someone the new policy doesn’t affect, we assume he’s already spread the word to the parties who would be vitally interested. Humph. Not so.
Case in point. A few months after the tongue-lashing about paid lunchtime, somebody scored at a Best Buy Black Friday sale, and our organization was blessed with a new laptop computer. (For those especially alert readers, yes, this is the same laptop Boss later briefly bestowed upon “Eddie” when he joined our staff this spring.)
Because Boss had just purchased a corporate laptop, and the other office computer needs were primarily for desktop stations, Boss decided that the recipient of this shiny new machine should be……..ME! I was pretty stoked. I didn’t really NEED a portable computer, but he touted at length how handy it would be, and eventually sold me on the idea. It had a wireless card, so I’d be able to check and respond to emails even if I was away from the office at a remote event. I’d be able to create and save corporate documents, even do on-site invoices, if necessary. Perhaps most attractive to me, I’d be able to work on an educational program for clients that I’d been itching to flesh out and implement. What a great thing! What a blessing!
So I went out and bought a cool new laptop case, a small wireless mouse, USB cables….everything I’d need to take my portion of the corporate show on the road. I even signed up for a correspondence course that would give me some additional certification in the field of the program I wanted to develop. I took the laptop home almost every evening and most weekends, too. If it was particularly late when I left the office, or if I knew my weekend would be otherwise full, I’d sometimes leave the laptop on my desk for the next workday. Boss made the suggestion once that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the computer out in plain sight, since my desk is in a relatively easily-accessible area and could conceivably be swiped. The possibility wasn’t very likely due to the configuration of our office and the hours I worked, which is why it wasn’t a no-brainer, but still, his caution made perfect sense to me, and besides that, the tall nephews had been logging on and messing a few things up, so I started being diligent to take the computer home EVERY day.
This arrangement worked well for nearly a year. On a weekend sometime after the wedding, Boss called me in a veritable panic. WHERE was ” ‘the’ laptop you use? “ Boss had always referred to it as “ ‘your’ laptop” previously, so I had the presence of mind to sense that something was up. I assured him that it was with me at home, thinking that knowledge would calm his fears. It seemed to only stir him up more. He grilled me as to why I had it at home, which was to do some online studying for the class I was taking. Boss wondered aloud why I hadn’t asked for permission. Hmmmmm. Okay, he KNEW I was taking this class, he knew I’d paid for it out of my own pocket, but that I was hoping that it would benefit our organization. He knew I was using the laptop, at home, for that purpose, and that I wasn’t claiming ANY of those study hours on my time sheet. I’d made that quite clear. I was just using the laptop. The one he had DISCUSSED with me as being so versatile and handy. The one I’d be able to take with me anywhere, and use for a variety of purposes. Yeah, that one.
Boss said he’d made a comment to another member of our staff months ago about my desk being empty all the time when I wasn’t there, and that it shouldn’t be so. (Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. ) He went on to say that I’d NEVER had blanket permission to take my laptop out of the office, and that he was concerned for its safety because he had a notion and was pretty certain that my children were using it when I was at home, and downloading viruses and spyware. He was serious. Only…my kids had never used that laptop at home. In fact, there is no need, since we have no fewer than five other computers available at our house, which works out to one for every student in middle school and higher. We also have DIAL-UP internet access, which means that only one computer can access the Web at a time – and the only one with a cable is our main desktop.
End result? I had to leave the laptop in the office permanently without SPECIFIC, special permission to remove it. It turned out that my desk is empty anyway, because while leaving the computer in the office solved the possibility that the laptop would fall victim to evil devices or improper uses, it DIDN’T address the original issue of being safe from theft. So I now lock it in a filing cabinet when I leave the office, and things are mostly good with that.
Boss has a habit of getting really possessive about “stuff.” He didn’t have a lot of “stuff” growing up, and I have concluded that he kind of had to jealously horde and protect what he did get. When his folks got stuff, he wasn’t allowed to touch it for fear he’d break it. This very guarded, very possessive attitude is still prevalent in his family. Boss’ nephews live in a home with a computer that has internet access, but they aren’t allowed to use it. The boys, regardless of the fact that the youngest is a senior in high school, are NOT allowed to log onto that computer for ANYTHING. There’s an outside chance they might break it, or mess it up, so grandpa made it off-limits, permanently.
Totally understandably, when the nephews come to our office, which usually has several unattended computer stations, they are absolutely SALIVATING to use our computers with high-speed internet. (They even bent the drawer on my locked filing cabinet in an attempt to get at my laptop when they were bored and all the other facility computers were in use. ) Over the years, they’ve gotten into some pretty hairy situations by using office computers. Crashed individual computers and even our whole network a couple of times with some bugs from Limewire. They have, on occasion, accessed some taboo websites. I mean, they’re human, they have lots of unsupervised idle time when they’re there, so, to me anyway, it’s kind of a “duh” moment when it’s discovered that they’ve done something unseemly because they have nothing else to do. Setting them up for failure, in my opinion, and the primary reason why I rarely EVER bring my boys, except the youngest, with me to work anymore.
We used to all be there DAILY, but over time, I began to see that I was, by permitting them too much idle time there, allowing the finger of blame to be pointed in their direction for every mess that was made; for every misplaced or broken object in the facility. They’re not perfect, and they DO sometimes break things, lose things and make messes. It was wearying though, to feel responsible by default for anything that happened to go wrong in the facility. I diligently have tried to make sure they cleaned up their messes, replaced anything they broke, and found anything that was lost – even stuff THEY didn’t lose.
Not letting them “hang out” in the facility anymore has worked well, for the most part. The only hiccup was a few weeks ago, when Boss made a remark during staff meeting about an area of the facility he’d had to clean up himself, and stressed that he was VERY unhappy about it. It was a rather generic comment, except for his pointed use of the phrase “make sure your kids…..”. Well, my youngest had been the only staff child who had been in the building that week, and is the only employee’s child in general who regularly comes to the office, so I realized immediately that Boss was talking to me. I hadn’t remembered a mess in the area that Boss mentioned , so after the meeting, I asked on what day this had occurred. (Boss rarely pauses DURING the meetings long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise when he gets on a tear. ) The day Boss named was a day I hadn’t even been into the office. I told him so, and walked away. Go pin the blame on somebody else. Later, I found out that some of his sibling’s children had visited on the day in question, so they must have been responsible. But they’re family, so we’ll let it go , and at the next staff meeting, there will be no public apology for Boss’ jumping to conclusions. As far as everyone else knows, my kid made a mess, and I wasn’t responsible enough to clean it up. Whatever, only everyone knows I wouldn’t do that.
It’s all SO like Boss, going off all half-cocked like that, and showing the tattered, threadbare edges of his unsettled mental state. The frazzled, jagged edges we’d all hoped his eventual wife could help him slough away. The ragged, hurtful edges that his characterless wife has only caused to be more raw, brittle and pain-inflicting. Poor Boss. I’m afraid, at this point, it really might be hopeless…
All of us, I think, have a somewhat ugly underbelly of emotion. If you’re a hermit, no one ever has to know. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, only your family sees your most unpleasant moments. Unfortunately however, if we spend a lot of time in the public eye and/or have a great deal of face time with non-family members, it’s inevitable that some of the rough, unsightly borders of our psyche make themselves uncomfortably visible to others, much like an errant brassiere strap or glaring panty line.
Boss’ ragged edges of emotional inconsistency sometimes stare you in the face like that. Boss spends an inordinate amount of time interacting with others. In fact, even though he’s still a relative newlywed, with a new son, I surmise that unless he’s fast asleep, he’s either engaged in or thinking of engaging in a conversation with a colleague, client or acquaintance. He spends over 60 hours per month talking on his cell phone, in addition to his face-to-face meetings, which take several hours per day. I’m not even counting the time he devotes to text messages, which number in the several hundreds. (By the way, text messaging happens to be Zilla’s preferred means of discourse with Boss, so she’s responsible for a lot of these, which you’ll read about next time. ) So yeah, LOTS of time on communication with those outside his family.
I remember the very first time I was startled by one of Boss’ incongruous outbursts from left field. I’d been working in the office just a few weeks when Boss announced in a staff meeting that he wanted to institute a corporate fitness program. An area of the facility would be set aside for employee work-outs, and a plan was devised whereby the female staff members were to meet at 9 am, two or three days per week. The guys were to have a program too, but it would be revealed at a later time, and would be conducted in a different manner. Boss emphasized that keeping fit was an important part of the total mental/physical/spiritual wellness package where the staff was concerned, so he was going to make provision for fitness a priority. I was naïve enough at the time to consider it a wise and calculated corporate move. I realize now that it was probably an idea he thought of as it was coming out of his mouth.
Nevertheless, we girls embarked on our corporate fitness quest. A couple of our staff members were quite handy fitness instructors, so they took the lead. Time passed, and we’d developed a habit of working out for about half an hour two or three days per week, depending on what professional obligations we had going in the office. We’d even expanded our sessions so that acquaintances, family and ladies from the community could come join us. We arranged for someone to provide paid child care, the cost of which was covered by those whose children were being supervised. Boss always made it a point to stay away from our workout area, because he didn’t want to make any of the ladies’ uncomfortable, but he’d sometimes holler a cheerful “Hello!” toward our area as he entered the building. More often than not, though, he didn’t show up at our place of business until well after we had wrapped things up and returned to our desks in the office, so he was only remotely aware of what we were doing and how successful and popular our workouts had become.
The organization was even turning a bit of revenue from the sale of bottled beverages during the sessions, so we all began to agree that this was a great idea, and an excellent way to both keep fit and to reach out to the community.
Months passed. Things seemed to be going remarkably well, which I’ve learned over the years is usually a sign that there is a bizarre undulation about to take place. One day, when Boss appeared to be casually perusing our time cards on payday, he suddenly burst out with an exclamation directed toward me, but audible to nearly everyone in the building. “Wait a minute! I see that Susie has written 9 am on her time sheet on Monday and Wednesday!
“Yes….?” I replied tentatively, not sure what he was getting at.
“And so have you! But didn’t you work out on those days?”
“Yes….we did work out on Monday and Wednesday. What’s wrong?”
“YOU PUT IT DOWN ON YOUR TIME CARDS!!! I can’t be paying you to work out! You can’t put hours on your time card unless you are actually doing work in the office!”
Okay, so this had pretty much been my gut feeling, months ago, when he first told us he WANTED us to work out on company time. I thought that probably wasn’t the best use of corporate resources. But he seemed so enthusiastic, and he had made a good a point about the well-rounded, healthy employee thing. He even kind of talked it up as a peace offering to the staff from our organization, since we can’t afford corporate health insurance. So quite naturally, since Boss has the authority to determine whether or not we employees should be paid for whatever he chooses, I went with it. I even double-checked with him and confirmed it before I handed over the first round of time sheets claiming our corporate work-out time. But now, Boss’ tone made me feel quite shady, and a lot like a thief.
I wanted to retort, “But, at the staff meeting, you said….” I didn’t. I rationalized that if Boss had suddenly become so alarmed about the money coming out of the company coffers for something he had previously authorized, the financial situation must be dire. I didn’t want to stress him out even further and sound like a whiner, when he was obviously concerned about funding. I didn’t know him that well at the time, so I backed off without even a question.
From that point on, I DID vow to begin taking detailed notes at staff meetings, which had never been done before, but is a practice that I began and continue to do to this day. I informed all the hourly employees who had been joining us for exercise sessions that fitness was no longer a part of our employee package. Say la vie. Some employees subsequently decided that if they weren’t getting PAID for it, they would rather stay in bed and come in later. Others decided to focus their limited workday hours on more businesslike pursuits. Non-staff participants sensed the change in attitude and enthusiasm, I think, and gradually stopped showing up. Finally, the gals who had been instructing picked up some “real” evening classes in other locations, and decided that an additional morning workout was too much for them. Anyhow, before long, our workouts dwindled away to nothing.
At about this same time, we were in habit of frequently going out for lunch as an office. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Most of the time, they were impromptu instances of taking our staff meetings on the road. We’d all be invited to have a “business lunch” together, for which our organization picked up the tab. Boss had made a point of wanting us to be cohesive as a staff, and desiring for us to build relationships with one another, so we viewed these power lunches as an outgrowth of that. Besides that, as I’ve written before, our staff meetings NEVER started on time, so by the time they were even half over, lunchtime had come and gone and we were all RAVENOUS. It was either go get a bite to eat or scrap the meeting. Boss would NEVER scrap a staff meeting. NEVER.
Once, to my surprise, and by Boss’ suggestion, we went to a popular, but fairly pricey local eatery. We discovered after we arrived that we were there to celebrate a staff member’s birthday and encourage an employee whose husband had just lost his job. We didn’t conduct a huge amount of business during that lunch, as I recollect, but we were under the impression that it was “mandatory” that we go, so we all did. We ordered, ate, and spent a short time chatting about office stuff and personal stuff. When the checks came, Boss grabbed his own and the check of the birthday celebrant, and put their meals on the corporate card. The rest of us paid for our own meals. I didn’t realize we were going dutch until the checks came. I was shocked. I wouldn’t have felt I should afford to go had I known, but whatever.
So, at the end of the week, we all turned in our time cards and I submitted them, with the paychecks to be signed by Boss. While he was busy in his office, the rest of us took a few minutes and ran to a local fast food restaurant for a quick bite, since our computers were temporarily down, and the IT technician who was reconfiguring our system needed some “empty office” time to get things reworked. Boss stayed behind to sign the checks and confer with the tech. When we returned to the building, Boss and the tech were bent over a flowchart of some sort. Boss interrupted the meeting long enough to call my co-worker and I into the office where they were.
“I saw that you put 9-5 on your timecards last Tuesday. That’s the day we all went to the local café.” He raised his voice a little, inflecting a little indignance. “You both claimed that on your timecards. I can’t be paying you to go out for lunch!! You have to sign out every time you leave the office. I don’t have the funds to pay employees to eat.”
Wow. This had never even been an issue, especially since we almost always ate while we worked at our desks, unless we were required to accompany the rest of the staff to a restaurant for a meeting. For our typical mid-day meals, we’d either brown bag it or make a run to a nearby fast food restaurant. If one of us did happen to leave the building, we were ALWAYS back in the office within 10 or 15 minutes, where we distributed the food and got back to work. In fact, this day had been a rarity, because we’d all gone out and taken a half hour, since we had been asked to clear the building for the computer tech.
I was a little speechless. Boss had just revealed his ignorance about common business practices. Don’t even minimum wage jobs require a paid 20 or 30 minute lunch break? In addition, don’t they also offer a couple of 10 minute regular breaks within an eight hour shift? Our staff never TOOK breaks, as we were always loathe to interrupt our project momentum. We were also, as a group, very conscientious and wanted to make sure our time spent on the clock wasn’t squandering precious funds. Had we REALLY just been scolded about one hour-long lunch out after working through countless others at our desks? I believe you’ve treed the wrong squirrels there, Rover!
The most disturbing thing to me was the fact that this scolding had taken place in front of a complete stranger instead of being pulled aside and counseled privately. I had to work with that computer gentleman at a later time, and it took him a long time to realize that I wasn’t a lazy, money-grubbing bum, but actually was someone who had been placed in a trustworthy position.
I ended up appealing and securing a paid 30 minute lunch break for employees, and, as a bonus got an apology for Boss’ strident treatment of us in front of a stranger too. So that was good, and I appreciated his humility, short-lived though it was. He continues to call employees out in front of others, for things they may or may not have done.
See, Boss gets pretty stressed out sometimes , and he doesn’t always remember exactly what he says, and to whom. He will sometimes make a comment, phrased as an announcement, indicating that there is a new office policy. That office policy will be effective immediately, only not everyone will be aware of it, and it takes quite a bit of time for the information to trickle down to everyone on payroll. Due to the lag, Boss gets frustrated , because he assumes that the employees are deliberately ignoring his directives, when the real truth is that they’re simply underinformed. The truth is, he’s told maybe ONE MEMBER of the staff the NEW policy, the new policy which trumps the OLD policy, but since he sometimes makes the announcement as an offhanded comment to someone the new policy doesn’t affect, we assume he’s already spread the word to the parties who would be vitally interested. Humph. Not so.
Case in point. A few months after the tongue-lashing about paid lunchtime, somebody scored at a Best Buy Black Friday sale, and our organization was blessed with a new laptop computer. (For those especially alert readers, yes, this is the same laptop Boss later briefly bestowed upon “Eddie” when he joined our staff this spring.)
Because Boss had just purchased a corporate laptop, and the other office computer needs were primarily for desktop stations, Boss decided that the recipient of this shiny new machine should be……..ME! I was pretty stoked. I didn’t really NEED a portable computer, but he touted at length how handy it would be, and eventually sold me on the idea. It had a wireless card, so I’d be able to check and respond to emails even if I was away from the office at a remote event. I’d be able to create and save corporate documents, even do on-site invoices, if necessary. Perhaps most attractive to me, I’d be able to work on an educational program for clients that I’d been itching to flesh out and implement. What a great thing! What a blessing!
So I went out and bought a cool new laptop case, a small wireless mouse, USB cables….everything I’d need to take my portion of the corporate show on the road. I even signed up for a correspondence course that would give me some additional certification in the field of the program I wanted to develop. I took the laptop home almost every evening and most weekends, too. If it was particularly late when I left the office, or if I knew my weekend would be otherwise full, I’d sometimes leave the laptop on my desk for the next workday. Boss made the suggestion once that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave the computer out in plain sight, since my desk is in a relatively easily-accessible area and could conceivably be swiped. The possibility wasn’t very likely due to the configuration of our office and the hours I worked, which is why it wasn’t a no-brainer, but still, his caution made perfect sense to me, and besides that, the tall nephews had been logging on and messing a few things up, so I started being diligent to take the computer home EVERY day.
This arrangement worked well for nearly a year. On a weekend sometime after the wedding, Boss called me in a veritable panic. WHERE was ” ‘the’ laptop you use? “ Boss had always referred to it as “ ‘your’ laptop” previously, so I had the presence of mind to sense that something was up. I assured him that it was with me at home, thinking that knowledge would calm his fears. It seemed to only stir him up more. He grilled me as to why I had it at home, which was to do some online studying for the class I was taking. Boss wondered aloud why I hadn’t asked for permission. Hmmmmm. Okay, he KNEW I was taking this class, he knew I’d paid for it out of my own pocket, but that I was hoping that it would benefit our organization. He knew I was using the laptop, at home, for that purpose, and that I wasn’t claiming ANY of those study hours on my time sheet. I’d made that quite clear. I was just using the laptop. The one he had DISCUSSED with me as being so versatile and handy. The one I’d be able to take with me anywhere, and use for a variety of purposes. Yeah, that one.
Boss said he’d made a comment to another member of our staff months ago about my desk being empty all the time when I wasn’t there, and that it shouldn’t be so. (Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. ) He went on to say that I’d NEVER had blanket permission to take my laptop out of the office, and that he was concerned for its safety because he had a notion and was pretty certain that my children were using it when I was at home, and downloading viruses and spyware. He was serious. Only…my kids had never used that laptop at home. In fact, there is no need, since we have no fewer than five other computers available at our house, which works out to one for every student in middle school and higher. We also have DIAL-UP internet access, which means that only one computer can access the Web at a time – and the only one with a cable is our main desktop.
End result? I had to leave the laptop in the office permanently without SPECIFIC, special permission to remove it. It turned out that my desk is empty anyway, because while leaving the computer in the office solved the possibility that the laptop would fall victim to evil devices or improper uses, it DIDN’T address the original issue of being safe from theft. So I now lock it in a filing cabinet when I leave the office, and things are mostly good with that.
Boss has a habit of getting really possessive about “stuff.” He didn’t have a lot of “stuff” growing up, and I have concluded that he kind of had to jealously horde and protect what he did get. When his folks got stuff, he wasn’t allowed to touch it for fear he’d break it. This very guarded, very possessive attitude is still prevalent in his family. Boss’ nephews live in a home with a computer that has internet access, but they aren’t allowed to use it. The boys, regardless of the fact that the youngest is a senior in high school, are NOT allowed to log onto that computer for ANYTHING. There’s an outside chance they might break it, or mess it up, so grandpa made it off-limits, permanently.
Totally understandably, when the nephews come to our office, which usually has several unattended computer stations, they are absolutely SALIVATING to use our computers with high-speed internet. (They even bent the drawer on my locked filing cabinet in an attempt to get at my laptop when they were bored and all the other facility computers were in use. ) Over the years, they’ve gotten into some pretty hairy situations by using office computers. Crashed individual computers and even our whole network a couple of times with some bugs from Limewire. They have, on occasion, accessed some taboo websites. I mean, they’re human, they have lots of unsupervised idle time when they’re there, so, to me anyway, it’s kind of a “duh” moment when it’s discovered that they’ve done something unseemly because they have nothing else to do. Setting them up for failure, in my opinion, and the primary reason why I rarely EVER bring my boys, except the youngest, with me to work anymore.
We used to all be there DAILY, but over time, I began to see that I was, by permitting them too much idle time there, allowing the finger of blame to be pointed in their direction for every mess that was made; for every misplaced or broken object in the facility. They’re not perfect, and they DO sometimes break things, lose things and make messes. It was wearying though, to feel responsible by default for anything that happened to go wrong in the facility. I diligently have tried to make sure they cleaned up their messes, replaced anything they broke, and found anything that was lost – even stuff THEY didn’t lose.
Not letting them “hang out” in the facility anymore has worked well, for the most part. The only hiccup was a few weeks ago, when Boss made a remark during staff meeting about an area of the facility he’d had to clean up himself, and stressed that he was VERY unhappy about it. It was a rather generic comment, except for his pointed use of the phrase “make sure your kids…..”. Well, my youngest had been the only staff child who had been in the building that week, and is the only employee’s child in general who regularly comes to the office, so I realized immediately that Boss was talking to me. I hadn’t remembered a mess in the area that Boss mentioned , so after the meeting, I asked on what day this had occurred. (Boss rarely pauses DURING the meetings long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise when he gets on a tear. ) The day Boss named was a day I hadn’t even been into the office. I told him so, and walked away. Go pin the blame on somebody else. Later, I found out that some of his sibling’s children had visited on the day in question, so they must have been responsible. But they’re family, so we’ll let it go , and at the next staff meeting, there will be no public apology for Boss’ jumping to conclusions. As far as everyone else knows, my kid made a mess, and I wasn’t responsible enough to clean it up. Whatever, only everyone knows I wouldn’t do that.
It’s all SO like Boss, going off all half-cocked like that, and showing the tattered, threadbare edges of his unsettled mental state. The frazzled, jagged edges we’d all hoped his eventual wife could help him slough away. The ragged, hurtful edges that his characterless wife has only caused to be more raw, brittle and pain-inflicting. Poor Boss. I’m afraid, at this point, it really might be hopeless…
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