Yesterday I bought lunch for my employees as an appreciation for all of their hard work. I let them decide where we would get lunch. Of course getting 18 people to agree on anything takes a minor miracle. After much debate, some mediation and finally my drawing a circle in the parking lot and letting two of them fight it out with staffs, they decided on a local Bar-B-Que joint.

When I called the restaurant two weeks ago to order the food, they where very helpful by assisting me place my order. They asked how many people I was feeding, asked me what I wanted. I went with pulled pork, rib tips, coleslaw, potato salad and cornbread muffins. They then helped me determine how much of each I would need. Everything sounded great over the phone.

Yesterday I went and picked it up. After I paid for the food, they brought out a huge bag with three large foil pans. I knew I had too much food, there was no way my team was going to eat all of that. Then the lady told me there was more. I ended up having to have two of their employees help me carry it all out to the truck. I had 10 pounds of tips, 8 pounds of pulled pork, 3 quarts of coleslaw, 3 quarts of potato salad and 24 cornbread muffins. Yea, there was no way they were going to eat all of that.

Out of all the people eating, I was the only guy. 18 women are not going to eat close to a pound of meat each. That would be enough food if I were having 10 guys over for an all day football festÂ… maybe. That meant there was a ton of left over food. I offered it to my peers, to my bosses, to my bossÂ’s peers, to the secretaries in the front office, security, etc. I still had at least 8 pounds of left over meat, and at least one quart each of coleslaw and potato salad. Since I was the one that ordered it, I got to take it home.

Now as you all may remember, I loves me some good bar-b-que. This, however, is not good bar-b-que. DonÂ’t get me wrong, it tasted just fine. Actually the pulled pork was excellent, but this is nothing like the homemade stuff I make or some of those mom and pop rib shacks IÂ’ve visited. The tips were kind of tough and the sauce was a little on the weak side. Now donÂ’t get me wrong, that doesnÂ’t mean IÂ’m not going to eat it. It just means that IÂ’ve had much better.

For two nights now weÂ’ve been eating on bar-b-que pork. They boys are happy, IÂ’m happy; Ktreva really could live with out the new and strange body odors that are emitting from us. Now if youÂ’ll excuse me, I need to go hose the sauce off of the keyboard. Typing and shoving rib tips in my mouth at the same time is kind of messy.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I guess I tempted the fates. Almost a year to the date of my last visit to Sensitivity class I find out today IÂ’m being sent again. This time is utter bullshite. One of my employees did something wrong. Per our cooperate guidelines I was supposed to take some pretty drastic measures. After reviewing the case I felt my employeeÂ’s actions where a result of improperly communicated procedures.

Desperate to find an alternate method of dealing with the problem, I found a loophole that would satisfy corporate and have no punitive consequences on my employee. I.e. it ended up being a stern warning of “Don’t do that again”. Perfect huh? Everyone would be happy right? Wrong!

Corporate didnÂ’t have a problem with it. My employee on the other hand felt it was unfair. She felt I was being unreasonable. Okay, there really were only two choices in the matter. I either take the severe route the corporate dictated or use the loophole I discovered, (Which according to 5 people in upper management only I would have found). The corporate way left her with one foot out the door and no chance for promoting, getting a raise or collecting any bonuses for a year. My method changed nothing, except her access to a region on the systems. Yep, IÂ’m being unreasonable.

This employee got together with another employee that has been having issues and filed a complaint against me. They may be legitimate about some of their concerns, but why it wasnÂ’t a problem 4 weeks ago, but it is now I have no idea. Oh wait, it all came to head last Friday. (Yea, they brought up issues that happened between July and early November.) Since my company really doesnÂ’t give any protection to management if something like this happens, itÂ’s their word against mine and I lose.

The dates of my next trip havenÂ’t been determined yet. Once I know for sure I will let you know, hopefully IÂ’ll have a laptop by then so I can live blog my experiences.

Want to know what really burns me up. One of their complaints was that I donÂ’t appreciate any of my employees and do nothing to make them feel like they belong. Yet since November IÂ’ve been planning an appreciation lunch for them tomorrow. IÂ’ve included all of them on deciding what day we were having it and what food is going to be served. ItÂ’s being fully catered in. Right now IÂ’m half tempted to call the company doing it and canceling. If it wasnÂ’t for the fact I think that would do more harm then good, I would.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:01 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Well, I’ll be damned; the meteorologists actually got one right. Heck this morning on the TV one of the local guys even made the comment, “We finally made an accurate prediction on a winter storm.” I just got in from shoveling 13 inches of snow off of my driveway and sidewalk. We don’t own a snow blower mainly because we don’t have enough pavements to justify the purchase. Top that off with the rest of the day I’m hurting.

Yes, I went to work. I loaded up the family in Janine and headed out. We had no trouble navigating the roads what so everÂ… then again a couple of times Ktreva had to point out I wasnÂ’t on the road anymore. Damn snow made all the landmarks disappear and I couldnÂ’t tell where the edge of the road was. Still, we couldnÂ’t tell we werenÂ’t on the road and we had no trouble what so ever. After dropping off the boys we headed to work, I even took the scenic tour so we could view the idiots that where in accidents. There were 7 cars ditches, 3 rear-endings, 2 intersection t-bones and 1 jack knifed Tractor-trailer. . The idiots who think that four wheel drive means they donÂ’t have to be careful were out in force When I stopped at the gas station to get something to drink, the people working thought I was insane for enjoying the weather.

Of course I get to work and a quarter of my staff has called off. “It’s too dangerous to drive.” Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever. 3 of the people that called off drive 4-wheel drive SUVs and one lives less then a mile from work. They just didn’t want to come in and used the snow as an excuse. My employees that did show up even thought they were over-reacting. Especially since two of them told everyone the day before they where going to call off. It just annoys me that some people have a lack of work ethic. The ones that did show up today had a cakewalk day. I let them work on what ever they wanted and all the management got together and brought in pizza for them for lunch.

Now there is some downside to this weather. We have a new plowing company at work and they did a crappy job of cleaning off the parking lot. Not only did the not clean the entrances out, but they started late and plowed a lot of people into parking spaces. I spent most of the day helping employees at work get their cars out of snow banks, drifts and plow piles. I dug and pushed out 19 cars from 7:00AM to 2:30 PM. Some of my employees started worrying that I would hurt myself and wanted to know why no one else was helping. The told me that I should stop. As I told them, if I was stuck in the snow I would want someone to help me. Thus I see people that need help, IÂ’m going to help them. ItÂ’s the golden rule; treat others as you would like to be treated.

Right now IÂ’m sore from head to two. So if youÂ’ll excuse me, IÂ’m going to go medicate with some Jack DanielÂ’s.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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