Intern-al Issues
So as I mentioned, I'm doing a contract/consulting project, and it's a huge scary undertaking that involves working with a 19-year-old intern. My client hired her to deal with the day-to-day business of this undertaking, and hired me as kind of a project manager. Which is odd because I'm off-site, she's on-site, and because the client keeps referring to both of us as interns. This makes me insane, because, as you know, I'm
30, I have an master's degree, and, as of four days ago, I was running an entire god-forsaken organization.
Alas. This project has many cool and challenging aspects, and I am incredibly grateful to have the work. One of the most challenging aspects is managing my relationship with Cara, the 19-year-old intern. If I had been hipper and more fun in college, and had better fashion sense, then I would have been a lot like Cara. The chick is ambitious, uber-organized, and has that same wet-behind-the-ears arrogance that I also possessed.
On the day I met Cara, she had already divvied up the work for herself and me, despite the fact that I, as I mentioned, am 30 and have a master's degree, and was, a the time, running an entire god-forsaken organization. She was responsive when I later reneged on her workplan, and has been, in general, receptive to feedback.
The weird thing is her 19-year-old-ness. I have worked with interns before, but they have been guys, and had a very
different set of shortcomings. Cara checks her email and cell phone obsessively. During one of our meetings, she answered the phone and said "Hey, bitch! How's it going? Awesome .... great ... definitely. Send me a facebook message, OK? You have my facebook address?" When she hung up, she apologized for the interruption and indicated that she had just been talking to her
professor. On the same day, she commented on the demonstration outside the building, which had convened in response to recent fracas about equal marriage in our state. She rolled her eyes and said: "Those bastard Republicans. Such idiots. Can't believe they're opposing this."
I put on my mentoring cap and told her that while I totally agreed with her, she had no way of knowing that I would, and she could have just inadvertently offended me. "I don't care. I have plenty of friends who are Republican. They know me, they know how I am, I'm not going to censor myself. You seem liberal enough." Later, she got into a tiff with the Chief of Staff about office supplies. Then she argued with my client (the president of the organization) about the semantics of his memo.
The thing is, when she's not being brazen, Cara apologizes for every tiny thing she does. When presenting her generally very fine work, she says things like "this is probably not what you wanted at all, and we can totally change it ..." She says "sorry" when her printer takes too long to print, and at least 20 times in every conversation. Yesterday I told her to stop doing this, that we women undermine ourselves and our capabilities by apologizing constantly. Her eyes lit up. "You would have been proud of me yesterday! I stood up to the Chief of Staff about those office supplies! I almost emailed you to vent about it!"
I backtracked and expressed the need to balance humility and respect for hierarchy with confidence, but I'm not sure I got through to her. And while I want to be a mentor and forge a good working relationship with her, my allegiance is to the Chief of Staff and the President and anyone else who might someday hire or recommend me. This is a tricky line to toe.
Posted by Dori at 11:13 AM
Forget you know my number, in fact, forget you know my name
So the soul sucking is over. Friday was my last day at my job. I cleaned out the desk, removed all the stealth job search documents from the computer, and deleted all the cookies from the web applications. I deleted all my sent mail, paying extra attention to the whiny despairing messages that conveyed my hatred of my job. Then I wrote and printed a 9-page (single spaced) "transition memo" for my successor.
I removed all traces of myself. If you call the office, you'll be prompted to press 4 for Jennifer, the new executive director. If you email me , you'll get an automated response that says "Thank you so much for your message. Dori has left the Organization. Please contact Jennifer at jen@organization.org."
If you have a terrible problem, and are facing imminent homelessness, you should talk to Jennifer. If you're upset because you don't qualify for a complicated government program, Jennifer can address your concerns. I'm sure she'd also like to meet with you if you're debating whether to participate in said program, and want to talk at length about the pros and cons and all the implications it would have on your life, your financial future, and the emotional well-being of your pet. Also if you're itching to do long-term community planning, and want to pore over maps and zoning documents, Jennifer's your woman. If you want to have a meeting at 9 p.m. or on a Saturday, Jennifer will be there for you. And finally, if you want to hang out in a basement office in which the windows don't open and the bathroom walls are so thin that you can hear people peeing, then you should absolutely stop by and say hi.
I won't be there, of course, because as Carrie Bradshaw said to the dysfunctional Mr. Big, just before she took off for a stint in romantic Paris with her romantic artist love interest,
"you can drive up and down this street all you want, because I don't live [OK, work] here anymore."Obviously, the parallel stops there, because unlike Carrie, there is no way I am
ever going back to that place. Leaving was a bizarre and surreal process, and I got a lot of love from co-workers and constituents, and that made me feel really good. I'm just now accepting that I no longer have a place to go every day; I no longer have a business card and title; and perhaps most importantly, I no longer have a paycheck. Today is my first day of freedom and even though I have a ton of stuff to do with my class, and my contract project, and my newly recharged job search, it is fucking strange to be sitting in my home office, listening to my neighbors yell at each other through the open window, and knowing that this multi-faceted freedom will be my life for a while.
Posted by Dori at 11:38 AM
Persnickity
I am feeling emotionally at sea with leaving my job and all, and being in a new relationship and all, but I'm going to write about library books.
My mom and my beloved friend
Melinda are librarians, so I do appreciate how most members of this profession are lovely, and I also appreciate how hard it is to deal with the crazies that patronize public libraries. However, some serious stickler types undermine the generally kind and knowledgeable biblio-workforce. They are closely related to the busybodies in HR who take attendance at staff meetings and take pleasure in enforcing comp time policies.
The university at which I am teaching agreed to--and then failed to--provide me with the books I've assigned to my students. I refuse to buy the books on principle, and have therefore borrowed them from the local library. I have had them in my possession for six weeks. They are due tomorrow, and are no longer renewable online.
Being the responsible citizen that I am, I took all the books to the circulation desk, assuming that if I presented them in person--thus proving they are still in my possession, and not lost or damaged--I could borrow them again.
But no. The power-hungry, Stickler Queen librarian informed me that six weeks was
clearly ample time to finish reading the books, and "it's time to give someone else a chance to read them". Even though there are multiple copies of all the books in many branches of the Greater Boston Library Network, and even though no one else in Greater Boston seems to have any interest in checking them out, "that's the policy". When I phoned later to plead my case, a different librarian sighed, reiterated the rules, and then magnanimously conceded to extend the due date-- for four more days.
Posted by Dori at 7:45 PM
Welcome to Chez Dori
Upon request, I'm inviting y'all in for a digital visit.
Come on into the entryway--note the prized Jay McCarroll Project Runway tote on the door handle!
Have a seat in my cozy, newly painted yellow living room ...
... or chill in the just as newly painted yellow dining room.
You can take a bathroom break if you want; the dark green ceiling obscures mildew.
Behold the calming bedroom ...
Want a snack? I can hook you up in the kitchen (two photos that don't exactly line up):
And this is my home office, where all the blogging magic happens.
It was great to see you! Drop by again anytime, you hear?!
Posted by Dori at 8:22 AM
How Long Does it Take 8 People To Paint Two 12x12 Rooms?
So I've lived in my apartment for almost a year now. I truly love it. It's huge and well-located and has parking .... and I'm completely free from
landlord tyranny. However, for the last twelve months, I've been vexed by the pasty white state of the walls in the dining and living rooms.
I have made noises about painting, but done nothing. Until last weekend, when six devoted friends and Banter Boy (below in the yellow shirt), came over and worked a little magic. The prep and cleanup took a long time (it's a big space with high ceilings). But the painting itself was done in
one hour.
Behold the dining room before and after. More photos forthcoming ....
Posted by Dori at 8:17 AM
Eeny Meme Miny Mo
I am honored to have been tagged by the lovely
Melinda and the lovely
Shannon for a meme. This comes at a perfect time, when I am a too frazzled to come up with an original, organized post. Thus, I have the pleasure of sharing with you 8 random facts/habits about myself, and I’m stretching myself by keeping this list to things I haven’t already discussed at length.
1) Milk revolts me in a big way. I drank it as a very small child, and then must have been inadvertently been given some sour milk (or something), because from one day to the next I stopped drinking it entirely. When I was a kid, I got all flustered at other kids’ houses when the parents would pour milk with dinner and I had to ask for water or juice. Even now, I can’t even think about drinking it, it just seems so disgusting. I like milk in coffee, and I love dairy products in general, but milk straight-up? No way.
2) I was raised with paranoia about clogs. Not the kind you wear, but the kind that stop up drains. My dad got all frantic about our garbage disposal, and couldn’t accept that we were meant to put scraps and peelings in there. Same goes for toilet paper. I remain totally paranoid about clogs and thus have become an abashed multi-flusher.
3) I am wicked superstitious. If I spill the tiniest bit of salt, a pinch goes over my shoulder. You won’t see me walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella indoors, and I say “rabbit rabbit” before saying anything else on the first day of every month, because obviously that brings luck.
4) I have the nose of a bloodhound. I can detect the scent of smoke even days after a cigarette. When I was growing up, I’d put towels under my bedroom door to keep out cooking odors. In college, I had a special outfit I wore only in the dining room, because I hated how the food smells permeated my clothes.
5) I think in words. So it matters to me if you’re telling me about Ann or Anne; Lee or Leigh. A friend has a cat, and for years I assumed he had the cool name of Night. I recently discovered that he’s actually called Knight, and this completely flummoxed me. (I’m actually not sure that Knight is still alive, but you get the point).
6) I have an uncannily strong memory. I can’t remember numbers, addresses, statistics, or any really useful information; but I will remember the names of your nieces and nephews, and your birthday, and I will remember that when you were in a wedding seven years ago, you stayed with the best man’s apartment, and he only owned one set of sheets. If you tell me some detailed anecdote, I will stash it in my consciousness, and I’ll bring it up after you have forgotten about it, which may creep you out.
7) I like my drinking water tepid (no ice). But I like coffee, soup, and bathwater to be really hot.
8) I have absolutely no sense of direction. I can’t reverse driving/walking directions—if I go somewhere, the way back is just as mysterious as the way there. And I need directions to be written down in words. Maps are useless to me.
OK. This meme has gone around quite a bit by now, so I’m tagging
Tamara and new blogger
Georgie Girl, with the caveat that they may have already done this one.
Posted by Dori at 11:04 AM
I Ain't No Lame Duck
So now that I've announced my imminent departure from this job, I can share freely.
My last day will be on June 22. I have agreed to teach a last hurrah job-related class on the 23rd (generating some extra cash). And I have a final Board meeting on the 28th (which I suspect will have some sappy closure component that I would just as soon avoid, but hey. Maybe I will get a present. Hopefully not dwarves.).
Then I'm mostly free. I'm teaching this online class about leadership (and trying to convey to my students that 1) A Certain Celebrity is not a leader because he has "spoken out" about Scientology and 2) Reinstalling a backyard swimming pool is not an adaptive leadership process), and also doing this contract project for a local trade association. My goal is to be a dean someday, so if you know of anyone who wants to hire a dean-in-training, by all means let me know. Hopefully the universe will reward my perseverance and loveliness and shake out a job for me by the end of the summer. ASAP, in any case.
In the mean time, I have to bide my time at my current job. I am deriving satisfaction from shrugging off the familiar sinking feelings of doom every time a) funding doesn't come through or b) program participants misbehave. This is just like that sensation we all had in college when there were lulls in the day and we thought about all the reading and homework that was hanging over our heads. Remember? And then after we finished the last final exam of each semester, we'd experience that same ingrained doom-inspiring reflex, and then realize that it was unwarranted because
in fact the semester was over? Remember that bliss? That's how I felt this morning after a higher-up left me a nasty voicemail, and how I felt last week during a cash flow crisis.
We have already hired a replacement, a really amazing former volunteer who will truly kick ass. She's been coming in for orientations, and expressed sympathy last week because "it's hard to leave a job, since people gradually stop consulting you and you start to feel like a lame duck." I tried to tactfully express that
not being consulted brings me huge heaps of joy. I am no lame duck. I am a
swan. I am honking happily, while spreading my lovely white wings and getting ready to fly swiftly away.
Posted by Dori at 4:11 PM
