The Little Things

Sadly, I think that I lack the right attitude to make this work enviroment positive. But in my defense, I did try.

I came to work this week full of positive energy (seriously, I did). I had been reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (if you haven't already read it, do so immediately) and it made me feel like I did have the power to change my circumstances. That I had choices- how to react to situations and people, how to smile, how to order my coffee etc. Little things, I have power over.

Well, sad to say its the little things that really get under my skin. And before the end of Monday I was over the positive energy thing, sliding again into comfortable old cynicism and anger. Fits like a glove.

Gave it another shot on Tuesday. Ended the day frustrated, exhausted and headachey.

The little things right? Well here is a list of little things that really get my goat- assuming that I have a goat to give.

A slow operating system. It irks me no end when I am trying to speed through my work and my operating system is unable to keep up. Am even more irritated when I am told that while we used to work on 5 terminals, we are now only working on 3. Yeah, that makes sense. More people, more work volume-- less power. I get it. Except that I really don't.

Making me have meetings on your time. I'm all for having meetings (well no, actually I am not) but when these meetings are scheduled during my lunch break, I'm probably going to be somewhat irritated. I'm not big on fitting into your schedule when you don't fit into mine.

Unclear emails. I get it-- we don't all proofread our emails (or blog posts). But there is a limit to how much I can take. When I ask you an open ended question please don't respond with "yes". Yes what?? If you want something to be imaged into the system, please don't ask me to imagine it. I can imagine lots of things, but they probably won't find their way into our system that way.

Work talk on my break. Aside from working here, we probably don't have that much in common. But on my lunch, the last thing I want to talk about is work. So please save your war stories for someone who cares.

Loud talkers. Phones are an integral part of an office. But please don't complain about my level of chatter when I can hear both halves of your phone conversations from down the hall. And muttering to yourself as you read out your emails...read in your head. Third graders master it, why can't you?

Elizabeth Gilbert was frolicking in Bali when she told me I had power over my destiny. So I'm sure that she would understand my lack of positivity, even over the little things.