Our state mask mandate ends on Sunday. Was going to be the end of March, then became the 19th, and then the 13th. This, when just a month and a half ago or so, our kids’ school closed for a week because the numbers were that bad. I know hospitalizations have been going down here, which is great, but all it takes is another bad variant to make everything go to hell again.
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I can see where the rush to go back to “normality” comes from, the economy and businesses have suffered for a long time now, but as we say in Spanish: “Rushing is a very bad advisor”. As you say, you are out of the grip of Omicron, but 6 weeks in epidemiology is a blink of an eye sometimes. It’s not like the don’t deal with flu campaigns every winter to know better, is it?
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I’m in a certain amount of pain at the moment, owing to this:
New ink! 
First in 12 years.
I also took a COVID test to make sure the cold I’ve been fighting has been just that, and good news, it is!
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That was a little terser than I meant, had to run. My expectation is that having failed to promote you once, they will continue to do so. Coupled with the vague feedback, it does not sound good. Did they fill the role, and was it an internal or external hire?
One thing that is often a barrier to promotion is replacing you in your current role. This is pretty common in management positions, especially going from managing people to managing managers.
My current position, which is technical, not people management, getting to the next level requires having groomed someone or someone’s to take over much of the services you “own”. In my org, that’s hard, because there’s not not a big bench of lower leveled staff to build up. I have not been around long enough to feel constrained by this, but I know people leave (both the org and the company) because of it.
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Resisting the urge to answer someone with
So, you’re using Microsoft for your mail server, you’re using BT as your email provider, and you’re posting about your email problems in a forum about VOIP. For which exactly of these bad decisions are you blaming the Russians?
because it would only make more noise…
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Or well led?
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Sorry, but no advice on those two feedbacks from me. But just to say that it was office politics that made me switch careers away from management.
My only weak advice is to make friends. People would be more accommodating if you have rapport with them, and they’ll support you. Office politics is still politics.
People usually promote people who are easy to shake hands with, not necessarily the best person for the job. And the logic is easy: they’d be dealing with this person everyday and prefer if that person doesn’t “cause trouble”, so they want the former more than the latter.
But this is me speaking from experience: I have good relations with my previous two bosses because I saved their bacon a few times and got recommended for promotion
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Decided the other day that we needed some new bedding. We were ordering from Wilko, so threw some other stuff in there, including toiletries.
The parcels just arrived and it was missing a bottle of shower gel my partner wanted. I doubt you’ll be able to guess what was included instead.
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That’ll be a very rough shower…
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I was thinking hand sanitiser…
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There is a big degree of that, although there have been a few cock ups, at least the worse one has been with the milder strain. Which is a relief.
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Thanks for all the tips and commiserations everyone. My promotion application was to go up a salary band, rather than a new role, so there’s no issue of being passed over in favour of someone else. I just didn’t convince the management team that I met the criteria for a “principal” rather than “senior” grading. I think a lot of my problems stem from the fact that our management team is basically a clique of people who have been with the company since it was founded, so it’s very difficult to get into a leadership position. They like to keep both information and decisions within this small group, which causes a lot of unnecessary secrecy and upset.
I had a meeting with my work coach today and we discussed the feedback and how to address it. This person is there to help me with my professional development and specifically how to navigate neurotypical people’s many unspoken social rules and expectations at work with my autistic brain. His suggestions:
- request to go on a leadership course and then use that to a) show that I’m being proactive about the feedback and b) learn the right language to communicate what I’m already doing in a way that the management team will accept as a valid leadership style
- request some specific, written expectations for my role (we don’t have job descriptions)
- request some guidance on the most appropriate forum for me to contribute ideas to the strategic direction of the company, since I’m not included in any of those discussions without having to cause a fuss.
I had to apply twice for promotion last time I went up a grade too, except last time the reason was that I didn’t have enough project management experience (I was managing quality control and testing for half of the company at the time). Given that I recently managed to successfully coach two of my direct reports through promotion applications on their first try this suggests that either I have a blind spot about my own work, or someone else does…
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Had an interesting thing happen at work today. The company president called as he was getting weird errors from Excel when making a copy of a worksheet. He showed me what was happening and took some screenshots, then forwarded them and a copy of the Excel file to me. After a bit of research I was able to determine the problem was due to a bunch of Names, including hidden Names that you need to use a macro to reveal or remove.
Cleaned up the file, sent it back with the explanation of the problem and what I did and figured that would be it other than a quick “Thanks” in reply. Instead, not only did he reply as expected, there was an added, “You are the employee of the day,” which is not really a thing at our company, a little later I found a card on my chair with a thank you note and an Amazon gift card.
Very surprised by this, as it just felt like a typical IT task, but I very much appreciated the recognition.
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Just had three members of the team back me for the potential lab ops role out of three potential people in the team who will apply
Shame it’s not an election, that’s about 25% of the electorate.
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I scattered some of my friend’s ashes today. I’ve not been in a position to do this for anyone before (and until a couple of days beforehand had not expected it on this occasion), but each of us received a small packet and were told to find a place that felt right to us personally (within the general area he had wanted to be). I didn’t fully understand what a beautiful gift this was until I realised I had found the right place, and was able to sit in solitude and feel connected to him and know that there was now a location which, for me personally, would always be him; and to say goodbye to him there in my own time. I really can’t imagine a better way to do this.
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How do I know it is spring time? My nose is running as soon as I open a window to listen to all the noisy birds outside… (it’s lovely).
I am in a much better place than even before the whole stress of the middle of last week started. I somehow managed to bring everyone involved to a better place where we know better where we stand with each other. It cost me some tears, some courage and a day. But that light at the end of the tunnel is so much brighter now. Or possibly I just turned on the tunnel’s own illumination. Who knows where a metaphor might go. I feel like a huge weight is lifted of my shoulders and that counts for a lot. It may be different next week but I will take what I can get now.
This morning a bug report from work brought happy tears to my eyes because the person who made it was so incredibly thorough in making sure to let me know about everything they tried to narrow down the cause of this.
I missed out on some socializing this week-end because covid but I also got some stuff done, games played and I started my Monday with yoga.
I wish everyone a relaxed week, lots of sunshine and easy solutions to all the snags you encounter.
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I need more sleep. I think we have the little one with COVID, the antigen test so far shows negative, but she had two cases in her classroom last week (Tuesday and Friday) and she’s had a very feverish night.
At least mum can work from home today. I took a precaution antigen test this morning at work and it came out negative. Fingers crossed, it may just be a common cold.
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I am FINALLY getting over my cold. Lasted a good week and a half with the coughing, and the spitting, and the trouble breathing. This morning, I got up and ONLY spat and hacked and coughed for about ten minutes before I was done. Still gonna work from home the whole week, to be safe, but heading back to the office three days a week on Monday.
Oh, and yes, I took a test before heading for my tattoo last Wednesday (my artist’s wife has cancer, not taking chances). It was negative. So I got that going for me, too!
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No, she’s got it. Well, at least the forecast is bad weather for this week and we have plenty of board games at home…
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May it pass quickly and stay confined to her.
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