In The Wrong Hands

Usually I believe if you end up with something it was meant to be. But after opening the fortune cookie that came with my Chinese dinner, I realized some things just end up in the wrong hands. The fortune read:

“It’s always worth taking the trouble to praise people.”

This wisdom would be better delivered to my boss. It should come as no surprise that compliments and my boss are only typed in the same sentence when pointing out the lack thereof.

It got me thinking how he gets Chinese take-out at least once a week. If I accidentally dropped that fortune on his desk he might ponder it a moment. Well, probably not, he’d just wonder what happen to the cookie.

Okay, Plan B, maybe I'll get fortunes made up and put into cookies. Then I could bribe the place he gets his take-out from to put my special fortune cookies in with his lunch. When he opens them they would read stuff like:

 “It’s not about getting more, but giving more. So give your employees a raise.”

-or-

“Hard work deserves hard play. So let your employees off early to get a head start.”

Actually, since he considers himself an employee, he’d probably just give himself a raise and call it a day.

Heaven Help Us

A power failure sent our alarm board into a panic yesterday. While on his way to investigate my boss laughed and said, “heaven help us.” The divine intervention he should have been praying for was help with his own organizational breakdown. But instead he busied himself with denial by tending to things he didn’t have the first clue how to fix. Not that he’d have any better ideas on how to solve the problem of my co-worker dropping a two-week notice on him.

What has me saying my own Hail Mary is his lacking panic. Isn’t he taking her departure seriously? I mean, no one else is trained to do that job. I won’t go into job responsibility details, but hers involves generating the paperwork that gets me paid.

But maybe terror-stricken isn’t the best way for him to react. After all, in every disaster movie, the hero is the one who acts calmly when faced with crisis. And the casualties are always the ones running around in a panic worried about the least important things (i.e. getting the paperwork done so they get their paychecks).

Body Snatcher: Make Yourself At Home

On Sundays I find myself praying for the strength to get through another week. Today is no different, expect I’m adding that my boss remain as likable this week as he was last week. It wasn’t neccesarily that he was nice to be around, rather he wasn’t bad to be around.

On any given day my boss throws anger around like most people do smiles. But last week it was almost absent. He was just there. And that got me thinking of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you aren’t familiar with the 1956 movie or it’s remakes, I’m sure Hollywood will put out another featuring actors from the latest CW “it”show. The gist of it is: the pod people look exactly like the person except they have no emotion. I’m onto something, right?

Now my boss didn’t lack emotion completely, so maybe the pod people have a 2.0 upgrade. It is 2010 after all. I’m sure aliens have made great strides since 1956. Oh wait, I’m getting fiction confused with reality... or am I? Either way, I hope my 2.0 pod boss sticks around.

Give Him A Minute

It is hard for me to step back from the negative perception I have of my boss. But on the days he is -- dare I say -- pleasant, I can’t help but think it won’t last. At the forefront of my mind is the idea to “give him a minute.” With him, moods and decisions are made and changed in blink-time (for those who wouldn’t waste time looking up how fast an eye blinks – it’s estimated at 300 to 400 milliseconds).

But today, all skewed opinions aside, my workday was pretty good and yes, I’ll admit that my boss was there. It is on his “nice” days that I think maybe I’m too hard on the man. But then I’m reminded by my grudge, in about half the blink-time, of all the things I still can’t get over. Maybe one day I’ll get there, but not on this nice day.

Plum Therapy

If up to my worry, my morning commute would be spent weighing the huge mistake I’m making by subjecting myself to another day of my boss. Instead, I utilize distraction and found it to be my best defense. By tricking my mind to concentrate on -- besides driving -- something else, I can get to work in peace.

As much as I love listening to music, some days it’s the fuel of further worry. So, for me, the most effective tool is audio books. If I’m listening to a good book, not only don’t I worry about work, but I also don’t take much notice to the traffic, construction, school buses, or hitting every red light delays. Those time-suckers just give me more time to enjoy the story.

 My favorite commute-time books are ones that make me happy. What better way to start my work day than by laughing. Lately, my sense of humor has me enjoying the Stephanie Plum series written by Janet Evanovich.

Besides being funny, Stephanie Plum is someone I can relate to. Not in the sense that I can relate to being a bounty hunter, desired by two hot men or living in Jersey. Rather more in the sense that everything she does has setbacks. Her first attempt at anything usually doesn’t work out like she hoped, but she doesn’t give up. And that, to me, is a great message. She keeps trying and eventually it all works out. That is all I can hope for in my own journey.

McDonald's, Don't Fail Me Now!

My boss' crankiness was of the supersized variety this morning. Apparently when he arrived to work he informed my favorite co-worker that McDonald's had raised their prices, much to his dismay. Oh, no! And guess what he didn't have in his hand, McDonald's coffee.

I'm not sure how much extra they are charging for their coffee, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be his financial ruin. Let's hope it isn't mine.

Ten Little Monkeys

I’ve never been to a morgue, but I suspect the disturbing quiet present in our office, at least when my boss is around, is similar. I would equate it to a library except for the fact that, like a morgue, we always have someone (a.k.a. the boss) around doing absolutely nothing.

Some days I want to do something crazy just to see what he’d do. Like run into his office and start jumping on his couch. Hmmm... I wonder if I fell off and broke my head if I’d get workers' comp.

Blame It On The… What? The Sun?

Last week my boss was looking to fight everyone. Typically, I would chalk it as part of his charming personality, but today I read an article that had me blaming the sun. During a study led by Bryce Mulligan, a neuroscientist at Canada’s Laurentian University, Mulligan’s team found a connection between the sun (or if you want to be scientifically fancy, geomagnetic radiation) and brain activity (and if you must have specifics – the right frontal lobe, which, among other things, regulates emotions). Mulligan said, “It’s likely that things like mood, aggression and irritability can be brought on by increased solar-geomagnetic activity.”

Curious, I went on a website (spaceweather.com) that tracks this interesting Sun-Earth stuff and guess what they reported on Sept 29th (the day his bad mood broke loose): “During the past 24 hours, sunspot 1110 has increased in size more than 10-fold.”

Forget the McDonald’s coffee, I wonder if there is an SPF level high enough to protect again this?