State Your Intentions

I am in the thick of the Season of Stupidity at work. It comes every year around this time. This year, it's particularly early, but I'm clinging to the fact that an early beginning means an early ending.

Right at the beginning, I made someone mad at me. I knew she was going to get mad. That's another ritual of the Season of Stupidity: People act stupidly. (And often predictably. This particular person gets mad every year.)

So, although I didn't let it bother me too much that she was angry, it did give me the opportunity to review my actions and see if I could do any better. Could I have done my job in such a way that it didn't make that person mad? Probably not. But, I could perhaps have tried to be kinder. It wouldn't have made any difference in this particular case, but it was something to think about moving forward.

I gave some thought to how I wanted to behave, and I decided to focus on three things:

Competent: My job at this time of year gets complicated and mired in minutia. Of the three, I do the best in competence. I'm good at my job.

Careful: Sometimes I move too quickly, and I could avoid errors if I were a little more careful. I'm fairly good at this, but it could use more focus. In the interaction with the cranky lady, she might have been less cranky if I hadn't made a silly typo. Probably not, but maybe.

Kind: This is the one that needs the most attention. Yesterday I was rebuilding a computer--something I really don't have time to do right now--because the end user had gotten a virus that the IT company called "particularly insidious." There is little doubt that the end user got the virus by using the Internet for non-work-related things, and that makes me cranky. She felt horrible, and it wouldn't have done any good to be snarky with her. I tried really hard to focus on being kind... and I told her not to use her computer for non-work-related things.

We have a ridiculously complicated, labor-intensive process at work for this Season of Stupidity. I'm trying to remember that the public only deals with this process once a year. The majority of them aren't trying to be assholes; they just don't understand that we need things a certain way because omg there are 1500 of you. Kindness.

I have no illusions that I'm going to be able to pull this off in all of my interactions over the next six weeks. I do, however, want to dedicate myself to trying.

I hereby formally state my intentions.

Go ahead and send a little positive energy into the universe on my behalf. Thanks.