Tag Archives: attitude

Housekeeping, Garbage Birds, and Dumb Rats

Long-Winded Metaphors, , , , , , , , , ,

Housekeeping

Sometimes, people bring tasty treats into the office. Always delicious, rarely healthy.

Not always this elaborate. But we do have a lot of snacks.
Not always this elaborate. But we do have a lot of snacks.

Healthy office snacks are for healthcare establishments that practice what they preach. Not mine.

Given that we’re all a bit isolated in our own offices and, dare I say, a bit self-conscious (or maybe I’m projecting?) it tends not to be terribly obvious who ate what exactly.

Not that it really matters.

Let me rephrase that.

Not that it really matter to everyone.

Almost every time, though, someone gets worked up that maybe the snacks are disappearing and that housekeeping (gasp!) is the one eating them.

How dare they?!

Well. Because. They’re snacks. For the office. And the housekeeping folks come around the office day after day, just like all the non-housekeeping folks do. So what if they ate the snacks? If they did, quite frankly, I hope they enjoyed it. Certainly not worth the upset. Right?

Garbage Birds

I’ve got five bird feeders hanging around my backyard. At our old place, it used to just be two. Those first two were so ridiculously excellent because the squirrels were always doing their best to get at the birdseed and it was a daily battle of Seth vs. the squirrels.

Pre-squirrel baffle. Let the battle begin.
Pre-squirrel baffle. Let the battle begin.

We inherited several more when we moved into our new place. It’s not new anymore, but I continue to fill the feeders and we’ve got a lovely crop of birds that come by, particularly in the summer, for a bite. My favorites are the mourning doves that lumber around under the feeders waiting for the little guys to knock seed down for them to eat. But they’re all lovely and chirpy.

Except not everyone agrees. When we had some people over this winter, I was admonished for using the cheapie seed blend — the one that’s always on sale at Fleet Farm. Apparently, it attracts garbage birds.

Ummm. Oops.

But then again, what makes a garbage bird so undesirable?

Apparently, they’re all brown. And they don’t belong here.

Meh.

I’m ok with feeding the garbage birds. Even garbage birds need love. Love and a little bird seed.

Dumb Rats

Those first two stories are old stories. They’re things I think about relatively frequently though. Things that really rubbed me the wrong way. I knows it’s people and birds and not really the same thing, but in both cases, the situation, the prevailing attitude, just seemed unfair.

Why does it matter who ate the food???

And then I went to a really great Grand Rounds presentation the other day by Dr. Michael Harris from OHSU about his Novel Interventions in Children’s Healthcare, or NICH, program… and it tied it all together. The program was incredible, the talk was inspiring, I loved it, but that’s not what brought the point home for me in this context.

Rather, it was a relatively small, illustrative point that Dr. Harris used to describe how people, well, rats, actually, rise to the occassion based on the way they are treated. The way they are handled. The assumptions we make about exactly how far they can rise.

The premise was this: once upon a time, a researcher labeled a bunch of cages of rats either “maze poor” or “maze adept” … something along those lines, anyway. Then he had a research assistant run the rats through a maze and record their results. As expected, the “maze poor” rats did poorly and the “maze adept” rats did well. Except, and here’s the kicker, all the rats were standard lab rats. None were actually maze poor or adept, there was no difference between the two groups except in the way they were handled by the research assistant conducting the test.

Ba-bam.

Dr. Harris went on to explain basically that this is exactly the same thing that he sees happening in clinical care when you’re dealing with children that are both socioeconomically vulnerable and medically fragile. The way their parents get treated– either as deadbeat layabouts who neglect their children vs. parents who are trying to do the best they can with what they have — makes all the difference in health outcomes. Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of difference in healthcare costs, too. And that gets big attention.

Completely fascinating. It really made me think. Two things:

1) Maybe I should pick up and move to Oregon to work in the NICH program where my motto will become “Nothing I Can’t Handle” so that I can help kids and their parents when nobody else will.

But more realistically…

2) How often do I treat people like dumb rats?!

{Source} I know, they're laboratory mice, whose genes have been spliced... not rats.
{Source} I know, they’re laboratory mice, whose genes have been spliced… not rats.

—-

Ideally, we’d treat everyone like a smart rat. Like they are capable. Maze adept. Good enough to be good at anything you put in front of them. So, what about me? In my daily life, do I treat everyone like a smart rat?

Of course I do. I’m perfect.

…

Actually… sorry, I was thinking of somebody else.

Me?

Heck no!

I’m full up-to-here with prejudices and preconceived notions just like everybody else.

So I’ve got to try to be better. To live life a bit more blinded. Because maybe we’re all just basic, run of the mill rats, doing our own little rat things.

Not dumb rats. Just rats.

Not garbage birds. Just birds.

Not housekeeping people. Just people.

That’s all.

And the rat, the bird, the person… they’ll all respond appropriately to the treatment they’re given.

Birdseed for the “garbage birds” certainly results in gorgeous coos from the mourning doves outside our kitchen window. I see no problem there.

The Ugly Meet-ling

Seriously, , ,

I had to go to a meeting today.  It was a long meeting.  And it was an ugly meeting.

I already knew a lot of the people who were there individually.  I like a lot of those people individually.

But collectively?

Nope.

I had hoped for respectful dialogue and constructive criticism.  But it was more like this:

Angry Meeting

Angry.

Angry.  Angry.  Angry.

(That’s me in the pink, by the way… everyone in our office wore pink today to support breast cancer awareness and it was our pink challenge day, so I was SUPER pink.  Pink dress, pink tights, pink nails, pink jewelry, pink scarf (hand-dyed by my aNut!), and even pink bobby pins!  So yes, I really did stand out pretty much just like that… except that I wasn’t the only one with hair.  I just didn’t feel like drawing it on everyone else.)

There was nit-picking, items were mocked.  Mocked!  I wanted to shrink out of the room.

But shrinking wasn’t an option.  (If it were, I wouldn’t still be wearing a size 11 shoe.)  So I had to make a choice: keep silent, implying tacit agreement with the tone in the room, or sit at the table, lean in, and speak my mind.

I spoke my mind.  And by speaking my mind, I did NOT make any new friends.  But I couldn’t stand what I was hearing.

So I shared a little bit of love.

Angry Meeting Solution

I’d love to tell you that I won over the room.  That I lulled the angry masses into a calm and respectful group.  That sitting at the table and leaning in worked.

But it didn’t.  I was readily dismissed.  And I suppose sometimes it’s like that.  You can’t win them all, no matter how hard you try.  But at least my conscience is clear and I can rest well tonight knowing that I went to bat for what I thought was right.

Worth it.

My dad has a lovely little term for just such situations.  This is precisely what he calls an AFGO: Another eFfing Growth Opportunity.  Genius.  I recommend adding the word AFGO to your vocabulary, effective immediately.  I think you’ll find that life is full of opportunities to use it, and AFGOs really don’t seem quite so bad when you think of them that way.  After all, personal growth is a good thing.

Except when you have to buy new pants 😉

 

PS: I really wanted to use The Ugly Duckling as the title somehow, but I just couldn’t work ducks (or swans) in… so I had to settle for “meet-ling.”  Dang.  Better luck next title!

Silver Lining: Poo and the Proverbial Fan

Silver Linings, , , , , ,

I know you’ve been reading along since that first post because you couldn’t wait to find out how this blog is a silver lining… haven’t you?  Well, the wait is over, my friend.  I’m about to tell you that story.

I love my job.  As I’ve mentioned before, I really didn’t even know such a job existed, but I also don’t know that I could have come up with any better of a fit for me if I tried.  (And I mean legit job, things like beach bum and pina colada tester don’t count.)  As this is my first real job out of school, I was a bit unsure how to react, though, when things got tough.  Not the work itself, but the interpersonal dynamics of working in a team environment.  (I know, could I be anymore vague?  Just seems like a situation in which I ought to use a bit of discretion, putting it out there on the Internets and all…)  Long story short, I took action, the poo hit the fan, things got craaaazy awkward and tense around the office, and a professional third party was called in to assist.  I was pretty sure my life was over and work would be crappy forever and ever after.  And that was the truth, for about 5 minutes.

The third party came in and I was resolved to keep my mouth shut.  (Yeah, it’s like I don’t even know myself at all.)  So naturally, when things got silent and awkward, I filled that space up with WORDS.

ALL OF THE WORDS!

My mouth was like, “Ha ha!  Things may still be awkward, but at least that awful silence is GONE!”   But my brain couldn’t respond because it had totally checked out.  Yeah, this is a problem for me.

Except in this case, it really wasn’t.  I talked.  (Ok, let’s be honest, I suffered from a severe bout of verbal diarrhea.  At least it was just the verbal kind.)  But the good news is: it was contagious!  (Again, it’s cool, it was only verbal.)  And we all started talking and we had an honest and open dialogue and it was good.  Even more importantly, my favorite third-party-man told me about an article he’d read in Time Magazine about Sheryl Sandberg and it sounded interesting to me so he routed it over the next day.  Alarm bells went off all over in my brain (it had come back at this point)—I was excited!  I logged on to Amazon, bought Sandberg’s book Lean In, had it shipped overnight (seriously, Prime, best thing ever), and then devoured it.

I highlighted the book.  I called my mom and my sister and my friends from grad school and I made them all read it too.  I read passages out loud to my brilliant sister-in-law and I forced everyone in my office to borrow my copy when I was done.  I became an absolute Lean In zealot because I honestly believe it’s that important.  It’s empowering to know that even the brilliant and successful Sheryl Sandberg feels many of the same insecurities that I feel.  And she challenged me to do the things I would do if I weren’t afraid.  This blog is one of those things.

So, as usual, I’ve rambled, and a recap may be in order:

Work.  Trouble.  Awkwardness.  Third party.  Dialogue.  Lean In. Blog.  Silver lining.  Boom.

In addition to resulting in the conception and ultimate birth of this blog (waaaa!), I am grateful for the whole experience for several other reasons.

1)  I am an extremely sensitive person by nature and this whole experience really thickened my skin.  I endured a lot of crap in grad school and always expected that I would eventually develop that tough exterior, that I would stop taking things so personally, but I never did.  Until now.  My skin has grown so much tougher.  (Of note: my skin has literally grown thicker.  Just ask the nurse who did my IV before my endoscopy/colonoscopy.  I believe her exact words were, “Oh!  I’m sorry!  Your skin is much thicker than I expected!”  Totally worth the extra pinch to hear that!!)

2)  My confidence in the work place has sky-rocketed!  When I started, I was, to be blunt: mousy.  (Which isn’t that cute on a girl as big as me…)  I deferred to the opinions of others, rarely weighed in, and kept my head down as much as possible.  I don’t feel the need to do any of that anymore.  I express myself as calmly and professionally as possible, but I make sure that I am heard.  (The THREE of you I called “nerds” today at work may disagree; that probably wasn’t a very professional thing to say.  But you deserved it and you know it.)

3)  I demonstrated to my co-workers that they can count on me and I know that I can count on them.  We all went through this craziness together and although it wasn’t the ideal way to do it, I’d consider it a pretty good team-building exercise.  I work with some seriously amazing people and I love them.  I don’t know how I got so lucky!!

4)  Finally, I learned that there are a lot of different ways to make things better– even when the system is fundamentally broken, and that’s an important lesson for me.  Even when you can’t fix the problem, you can change your attitude and approach.  And sometimes that’s enough.  (At least in my limited experience, n = 1.)

So I guess my point is this: read Lean In.  And then do it– lean in, you won’t regret it!

 

(And by “you won’t regret it” I mean: you probably won’t regret it.  Who would have thought cloning dinosaurs would be such a bad idea?  Not me… but that guy leaned in, and perhaps he should have leaned back.  I think we can all agree that that’s a pretty extreme scenario.)