Friday, December 12th, 2008

This would seem like an unlikely day for there to be documentation of the goings-on of... 1/2 the team was not in the office. Yet, here it is...

Sione showed up pretty late to work. It was very disappointing and though hidden, that disappointment showed in the boss's eyes. That was not the best start to a morning.

Well, the office was VERY quiet in the area. Not everywhere, though. A couple people took to going behind the giant snowman in the front lobby and jumping out to scare people. Again. It was pretty noisy and seemed not very surprising since everyone could hear it happening, especially the guy who yelled when he jumped out from behind the snowman. It was very fun for all involved.

Well, Sione started doing up some invoicin'... BIG time! He was requested to send out one specific one, but felt a little motivation to knock down that stack of papers and went all out. Maybe 6-7! :O It was pretty freakin' amazing, though he said it was no big deal.

Once the invoicing was "done", Sione moved back to reconcilin' it up... There was only one site to reconcile and he hadn't been able to contact them ALL week! It eventually turned into massive variance. Unfortunate, but what can you do? After that, the week was closed. No emails went out to announce it and it was a rather subdued closing of a week. :-\ Perhaps the mood in the air was to blame...

A couple months ago, there was a big surprise layoff of around 900 people. It creeped up VERY quickly and people were laid off on the spot the day they were told. The team lost 1/3 of its team members, which was pretty sad and also put quite a strain on the remaining team members to accomplish all of the tasks that were usually divided up between 6, now with 4. Well, after all of that happened, people basically just learned, over the last 2 months, to work with what they had and to deal with the task at hand. While it wasn't the smoothest of transitions, things smoothed out and it became business as usual. Then, on Monday, December 8th, an email went out from the President and CEO of the company. It stated that there was going to be another significant downsizing of the company and this time, it was going to be to the tune of around 4,000 employees! On Tuesday, there was a meeting of some corporate honchos who had flown in and people expected that there might be word (and layoffs) the next day. Come Wednesday, nothing. Rumor had it that decisions were made, but nothing would occur until the following week. The decisions that were made were still kept quiet, so it left a feeling of unsurety (that's a word, right?) in the office that is difficult to work with. It's like having a boss that wants to fire you, and you know wants to fire you, always standing over you as you work for 8 hours a day, scrutinizing your every move. In other ways, it's not really like that. Worry spread throughout the office and people whispered, wondered, and bemoaned what might be their fates. Well, no one knew (well, someone knew but they weren't talking) and the time passed by a little bit uncomfortably. It left a bad vibe around, as everybody could only guess at what would happen next and when. This paragraph was meant to explain the last sentence in the previous paragraph.

Friday ended with a whimper, not a roar. A sad whimper. But what would Monday and beyond hold?

Was it Wednesday already?!?!

Wednesday really seemed to start off a little slow, to say the least. The coffee seemed to not runneth over. If it did, it was pouring out as though Aramark's special blend of 13 herbs and spices, with just a dash of coffee, was replaced with freakin' Folgers Crystals! Scandalous to say the least, outrageous to say about the same, but in different words. They say Wednesday is "hump day". Well, the hump was here and it was a mighty hump to behold, yet a challenging obstacle to overcome. In all the Wednesdays of the entire month so far, this one proved to be the most challenging to find motivation in. What was it going to take?!?! There were already great accolades on Monday, freakin' FREE MONEY on Tuesday... If that weren't enough to motivate the team to just push past and get on to old day number three, the Wensmeister, then what was going to do it? After searching for answers to that question for quite some time, the answer became obvious and crystal clear... Work requirements. Once job duties were expected to be accomplished, emails were coming in, phone calls were creating audible sounds in the phones, and robes were hung up, the day began to fall into place, feeling much like the Wednesdays of yore. The day had begun.

FREE MONEY! $ $ $

Tuesday began as usual with the team going about the work day. Things significantly brightened up however, when Sione and Talkie received this exciting email in their inboxes:

"Hi guys,

Since you 2 didn’t get to leave early for the Labor Day Holiday you get 2 hours you can use. Let me know if you want to come in later or leave earlier this week and I can adjust your punches. It’s like free money!

<3>

"FREE MONEY!", exclaimed Talkie and Sione in unison, both wondering if the day could get any better. There was some back and forth with the emails, full of exciting planning about when to take the extra two hours off and what exactly each would do with the "free money."

This is the email Talkie sent:

"First an award, now free money?!?! Man! This week couldn’t get any better! (Who knows, maybe some Andes mints will even show up! You never know!) Can I leave 2 hours earlier on Friday?

Regards,

-Jackie"

Salue replied:

"Shouldn’t be a problem. When I hear talk of Andes mints, all I can think of are broken promises."

Sione then responded:

"Hello--

Even though it looks like that would be just about enough for me to just come in 15 minutes after Jacqueline and leave 15-20 minutes before her for the rest of the week, I think I’ll use them to leave 2 hours early on Thursday (I’m out on Friday and need to start planning Neil’s party on Thursday afternoon), if that’s no problem.

Oh yeah, on a similar topic, can you clock me out for the end of the day yesterday? I came back and just grabbed my bike and left yesterday.

Thank you--

Sione K. Phillips"

Salue's response was:

"That shouldn’t be a problem either, although you are giving yourself way too much time to plan the party."

They all read their emails and chuckled to themselves.

"That guy!" Talkie said.

"Oh you!" Sione replied.

"Fonzie" Salue exclaimed.

Then, when things didn't seem as if they could get any better...

Ilana jumped up and said, "Yay! Something great just happened!"

To be continued...

Monday September 8th, 2008

Monday brought about quite a surprise in a week destined to be chock full of surprises!  It was just the tip of the iceberg of a week full of fortune and fame, glamour and glitz, water and wine...

So, on Monday, September 8th, work started off most typically.  Having forgotten about the upcoming meeting that was going to take place in the afternoon, both Sione and Jacqueline arrived at their usual times instead of arriving much much later.  So, after such a blunder, who could have known where the day would take these folks, along with the rest of their team, next?  Well, it took them smack dab right in the middle of an average work day.  Salue was caught up in the excitement of purchasing.  Jacqueline was excitedly running around with unpaid invoices, getting signatures and such.  Ilana made deals on the phone and agreements via email as people continued to call and email, asking questions about such things as costs of various items and payment options and other minutae.  Kim P. was busy with some sort of reconciliation of things.  Sione was tied up in some legal trouble and found it quite taxing.

Then, along came Meeting.  The meeting for the second quarter began at 3 pm.  The team arrived at 2:45 pm, only to find a long line that moved at a glacier's pace.  They filed into line and the aroma of fresh paint and other painting chemical supplies wafting up and tantalizing their senses.  All but Ilana, that is, who was having a hard time breathing in the fumes that to her seemed a toxic and suffocating fog.  Well, fortunately the line began to move some time in the evening and the food tables came into sight.  It was freakin' sandwich making fixins!  The whole 9 yards!  There was food aplenty to create sandwich masterpieces the world had never seen!  The team excitedly created a variety of different things, from a whole host of salads, to Jacqueline's veggie sandwich to Salue's piled-high, touching-the-sky, far-as-your-eye, beauty that was a true piece of work.  What a start to a meeting, albeit following up a horrid wait in a hallway that seemed to be getting fumigated during the wait...

Well, the waiting was over and the meeting began.  There were profit reports aplenty!  The numbers were flying around like CARAZY!!!  The number one billion was brought up!  There were sixes, nines, fours, threes, and everything in between.  It would have been a freakin' accountant's paradise!  Awards started going out.  There was the blonde girl that works over on the other side, in the front of the building on the side that Jacky works.  There was the tall dark-haired girl that works over in the 9805 building.  There was that girl that works over in our old area for Ryan.  And...  if that weren't enough, there was a big prize winner on the Corporate Marketing Premiums team!  Finally, after exactly one year of slaving away, helping out others in tasks that don't really seem to fit into her job description, never learning how to say no, and coming in later and later like she doesn't mortgage it up like the rest of us, the everlovin' brown-eyed Jacqueline took home the big prize!  The 2nd Quarter big winner prize!  At nearly one full pound without the base, this prize was the real deal.  Then, everybody all went home.

Some things that happened during the week.

At various times during the week, some people were found to be working at their computers.  What exactly was going on with this so-called "work" is unclear, but folks looked busy and work seemed to be getting accomplished.

What Happened on Friday the 5th of September, 2008?

Well, let's just see what happened today at the ol' office. A lot happened today at the office...

Today, Jackie was caught up in a big UPS debacle. It became quite an issue and involved a number of different people, GL problems, forwards, emails, phone calls and face-to-face conversations. Sione tried to answer some of the questions to the best of his abilities and after numerous hours of frustrating back and forths, the situation seems to have been remedied, at least for now. This was a situation that paralleled a situation that occurred about two years ago.

Another big thing that happened today was that someone yelled out that there was free chicken in one of the big rooms down the hall. The excitement that this call out created was indescribable. Caught up in the wave of excitement, the team flooded the halls headed towards this chicken, which no doubt came from Ezell's Chicken! The aroma was wafting down the halls and teasing our senses before we ever made it into the room. When they arrived, there was a group of maybe 3-5 people that were just finishing up filling their plates. The serving trays, they were horrified to find, were bare and cold. There was naught but a piece of breading in one. Sione ate that small piece of breading, thinking about the fading excitement... There were still sodas and though none of them were really soda pop drinkers, they all took one as a sad consolation prize. The occasional cracking open of those soda pop can tops was surely a depressing sound breaking an eerily quiet atmosphere...

Those were the two most exciting of the events that occurred today. Aside from that, everybody all proceeded to continue with normal day-to-day job duties and expectations that are typical. There was a moderate amount of small talk on Friday and some things got accomplished.