Daily Reflections

12/09/2022

Make Your Mood

Immediately, and I mean immediately, a co-worker was in a bit of snit. By a bit, I mean short for bitter. As if the angel, Vitriol had opened the door to the shop for them. One of those moods you can see coming on their face from across a dark room. I tried to avoid stepping into the path. Sadly, I was the only other person in that early. You know, like in the movies when the bully drunk enters the saloon and stares you down, you look around in the feigning hope that they’re eyeballing someone else, and find yourself alone under some kind of spotlight with no obvious or logical source. But I knew I was going to have to face this one down. If not right now, sooner or later.

I decided it would be best to get this potential confrontation before the rest of the staff arrived. In hindsight, I recognize the panic pattern of simply assuming the train is going to hit you anyway, so you just step on the tracks to get it over with. The idea to do so before the staff came in was just a convenient rationalization to do so.

You see, it was potluck day. By office declaration sometime last week, this was the first semi-sporadical Rockman’s Employee potluck day. Ever. A fresh attempt to bolster a bit more community spirit to the place. Now. Before I explain a few reasons why this was a bad idea from the start, I should qualify it all by saying that I forgot it was potluck day. Thus, any expos facto apologetics might very well be my attempt to divert from the possibility that I was a bad boss for not really caring enough to remember.

However, it was not a bad idea exactly. An employee potluck is actually, kind of a cute novelty of a thing, that some of the staff would jive with. But not this week. We are all overworked and exhausted. I don’t think it occurred to the office staff that the cooks might not want to cook to relax after incredibly long and taxing days. You never hear of plumbers getting together to refit pipes after work for funsies. Furthermore, many of the staff spend a good chunk of their discretionary income on liquid diners and “seasoning”. Asking them to spare some income to feed one another might not be offensive, but perhaps, foreign. The point being, one does not engender teamwork by making others participate in something you want to do.

This simple bit of oversight, I know now, lay in the crux of the climb over the mood that just walked in the door. So convinced that no one cared about potluck day. And many did not, if we are being honest (the author said as he typed this with hand raised in admittance). And when I asked what time the potluck was, the answer was, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” At no point in history, were these four words uttered in that order without dismal irony stitching them together.

Upon hearing them, my inner diva sang out a melodic “Fine then, I won’t make anything, you said it didn’t matter,” inside my head. I think this diva was rehearsing for the argument it knew it was going to start about this. Thankfully, my inner tight ass was whispering that it would be in poor taste to engage in this catty bullshit over a potluck. My inner professor thus spake, “Pick better battles.” And by a two thirds super majority, it was decided that someone needed to get a hold of my inner contractor and build a different day with fewer right and wrong angles.

In my defense about forgetting altogether, I would like to state also for the record that when we were told about this event last week, I told myself I would come in early and make something. So, technically, by choosing to concoct something in that moment was not exactly dishonest, just absent minded. If the staff didn’t bring stuff, I would make them do that first. That was the plan. Not to have a potluck to build teamwork, but to rescue one for a member of the team who put in some effort to give everyone a good time.

It was then we got a call saying three of the staff would be late. My office manager, the co-worker I mentioned with the halo of daggers this morning, just dropped the phone after hanging up. Their immediate assumption was that those three were all hungover and therefore, weren’t going to bring a dish to pass except for an aperitif of whining and stale cigarette smoke. I, must admit, that if one were playing the averages, this would have been even money to place one’s bet. I found myself thinking of a new dish, a few canapes with aspirin, Tylenol, and No-Doz perhaps.

Unfortunately, before fully working out how to balance the bitter from the pills with cream cheese and something acidic -maybe strawberry and balsamic now that I revisit it-, I was pulled from my reverie. That angel, “Vitriol” was no longer content being the greeter at the door, strutted right on in and sat down in one of the desk chairs to join the conversation. After listening to a level of histrionics I thought only myself capable of at that hour, I realized I hadn’t said a word good, or bad the whole five minutes the ensuing tirade had lasted.

I would ask myself later if that is why people say, they held their tongue or breath. When something or someone else is sucking the air out of the room, do we hold our breath to keep it from being stolen? When someone is waving their words like a broken halberd, do we hold our tongues for fear of getting them cut off? But hold them both I did. My inner diva was screaming to point out that it shouldn’t bother them so much since they said it didn’t matter. Meanwhile, the professor and tight ass were enjoying the Jasmine green tea I brought with me and calmly telling the diva the one thing no diva likes to hear, “its not about you.” As you can imagine, the headache over that inner monologue was peaking over the horizon.

At that point, the contractor told me to hush as it was trying to draw up blueprints for the workday. It further reminded us that three legged structures are among the least stable things one can sit atop. This may have been an overture to the contractor’s importance, as it is only summoned to take over in times of crisis. To be fair, anyone given a gavel will swing it. And the other three were grateful, if not exhausted. The contractor, sensing this, decided on a union break. Cold air and Camel blues might just be the shades of blue it needed for its prints.

And then…oh my, then. Just before I was making my escape, the three staffers that were going to be late had made good time and were only two minutes behind the clock. All with dishes to pass! Go Team! As did many of the other staffers. No one whimped out and brought napkins. There was a full-on strawberry cake of some kind, meat and chips and buns and cookies and pasta salad. Well done guys, I thought. They really do cook. And they have been taught well. It was refreshing.

I forsook the chemical canapes and went green. Spinach salad with dried apricots, squash croutons, red onion, and sunflower seeds, with bacon and merlot Sartori on the side (vegans…what are you gonna do?). the contractor did its work well, and the diva, tight-ass and professor were pleased with their psychological democracy.

I have since, petitioned all three to draft a resolution giving the contractor a permanent place on the board. It makes better moods.