Being part of team is a wonderful resource. It’s easy to take it for granted though. Being a team player is an active role. Being a team player doesn’t mean giving up personal opinion and following the herd. Part of being a team player means standing up and being supportive when appropriate. There’s no point in trying to isolate yourself because later on when you might actually need the aid of your team they might not be there for you. There’s a lot of give and take.
Tag Archive: colleagues
Fêted
So my attempt to fly under the radar didn’t really work. Maybe you could accuse me of not trying hard enough. I had a small get together at a pub after work. I had a decent turn out. I was able to get two former colleagues. By the second half of the night we started reminiscing a great deal, making me realize that I really had been there at that job for a relatively long time. I suppose I don’t have much to say about last night other than that I’m thankful that I had people willing to come out. One of the reasons I didn’t really want to have a get together was that I was afraid that I’d get a low turnout. Well, it wasn’t that bad. It’s not like we rocked the place, but it wasn’t tiny. We spent about 5-6 hours there. I now feel at ease. Ah, but two more days…how am I going to make it through? And how am I going to deal with the resulting gut rot the following day?
Flying under the radar
It’s a bit of an odd situation at work. Like I mentioned a few days ago I gave my notice to my current company that I will be resigning on the 18th. That’s all well and good. My superiors have taken it well and are dealing with it positively. Thing is, my colleagues don’t seem to be aware. I had thought that the person I immediately report to would be the one to tell the group, but he thought I had already done so. In a meeting this morning he alluded to my pending departure, but it was so obliquely that I kind of hushed him. It’s at that point where I realized that I was purposefully trying to fly under the radar.
All things being equal, I would almost prefer to not make a fuss and just disappear with an air of mystery. Of course, that’s unlikely to happen. I do have to tell my colleagues sometime before. So, the question is now: when? I don’t need to be feted. I don’t need the fanfare. Still, out of respect for the people I’m around I do need to give them some warning.
This seems like such a silly thing to be worrying about. Why make a fuss about it, right? There really is no problem. In about a week and a half it’ll all be over.
Aaaaaaaaah!
Laying it all out
I am an evolved man. Or, at least I’d like to think I’ve matured a great deal. So, just as a result of the way things have been going I’ve sort of been in a funk lately. I didn’t really realize how stressed I’ve been all week up until a friend suggested it to me. Heck, that might explain why I felt listless yesterday. About mid-morning today I somehow got involved in a bit of an exchange with the team lead. I had to walk away from the situation, so I took my teapot and filled it up. Instead of letting everything stew for the next few hours I went up to him and asked him for the next task. Apparently that was enough to break the ice. We decided to take a coffee break together, and at the Tim Hortons we both just laid the cards on the table.
It was a great exercise for me in terms of maintaining a certain level of objectivity. I am a person that often reacts entirely based on emotion. There are a lot of good things and bad things that occur as a result. On the one hand I’m quite perceptive and have some sense of unspoken things that run beneath the surface. On the other hand, I have a tendency to take things personally, or absorb others’ emotions without much effort. So yeah, as much as I’m good at seeing other people’s points of view, the lines between my experience and theirs can be blurred.
So yeah, I made sure to get him to clarify his stances on certain issues, and made sure he understood where I was coming from. I mean, as much as I’d like to think I’m easy to read, no one is a true mind reader, right? I can’t afford to leave someone like that guessing as to what’s brewing in my head. In the end, we both came out feeling much better. Now, I consider all of this to be quite mature. I know that an older version of me would have just ignored it all and held it inside. In the end, it all just ends up as a messy explosion. By laying it all out, I’m effectively removing any doubt. In the work place, that’s the best thing that can happen. At this point, I’m feeling a bit better about the team and the situation. I can deal with this.
Seeing it all in action
I was originally planning on just taking a good rest tonight, but I was convinced to join a colleague to catch an ex-colleague do some improv with his improv team. I’m not just saying this, but the night was pretty damn awesome. Like I’ve mentioned before, it really is something to see other people put the principles I’ve learned into action. I really do want to get through the classes and do something like what they were doing tonight. It’s not about having the spotlight, but more about just having fun. Improv is a different beast when you actually have people you know and trust to riff off of. I do hope to get to the level of proficiency where I can play with a group like that. I mean, it totally won’t be my bread and butter: there’s no way it can be. However, it sure does look like a load of fun. One day, right? I suppose I’d elaborate more, but I’ve just spent a couple hours at the bar celebrating with our ex-colleague. I just need some sleep.
Dwindling numbers
When the team was larger, thing were a little bit more tolerable because at least the workload was more spread out. Now, as our numbers are dwindling it’s just becoming more and more difficult. This is especially true on a day like today that involved a code release. Handling an eleven hour work day, with a good number of those hours on my own, is just too much.
*sigh*
Why stay?
I don’t know. If you’ve been following along, maybe you can tell that there certainly are many things about my job that make me question my sanity. Then again, I’m sure that would be true of any job, right? Well, each time I find myself feeling a little bit down on myself for still doing what I do, I end up looking for the positives about it all. In the end, after all is said and done it doesn’t seem so bad.
I think I can boil it down to two big points. First of all, like I mentioned the other day, I think the bit of routine is necessary for my type of personality. I think, if put in a situation with many options before me I might end up sitting around looking for at least some clue as to where I should be headed. With a defined goal and a set of tasks I feel like I have purpose, know what I mean? The second big point is that it seems like my colleagues and I have grown really close; we’re like brothers and sisters. We’re all equally caught up in all of the bullshit. It seems that we’ve all decided that the only way to make it through is to stick together. I genuinely think that those of us that remain really have each other’s backs. I’m not saying it wasn’t like this before, but as our numbers dwindle the ties seem to be growing stronger. I remember someone telling me a while ago that no matter where you go you will find “good people.” Of this, I have no doubt. However, the confluence of supportive, intelligent, like-minded people we have here is just hard to imagine happening elsewhere. There’s something special going on here; I have no other way to describe it.
So, these are some big reasons why I put up with things the way I do now. With the ball in our hands, we have the ability to wrest a bit of control from the powers that be. And when things are out of our hands, we’ve vowed to stay within our parameters. Trust me.
Final shots
Yeah, I’m in bed with the laptop, well and truly cheating because it’s late. However, the fact that I’m still trying to churn out a blog post kind of makes me think about how much this blog means to me. I was out downtown celebrating with a colleague whose last day at the company was today. The four of us that decided to stick around really just sharing the time together. And doing shots. Lots of shots.
How am I supposed to work in the morning? *grumble*
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