As the scarcity of posts might suggest, I have been occupied with extrablogular activities. Work, mostly, which has been time-consuming and difficult, but also some hockey (with more in the offing); okay, lots of hockey, because I’m watching on television what I’m not watching in person. Friend has been in a frenzy, as well, because he’s going turkey-hunting two weeks in a row, and the preparations are extensive. (He fusses more than anyone I’ve ever met, except myself–his systems have systems. Of course, many of mine do, as well, so I understand. But back to that in a moment.)

Next week, for example, I have two hockey games and a concert, as well as major deadlines at work. The following week I have a concert and possibly a hockey game, depending on how the series is playing out, and dinner with a friend. I have promised to (and want to) hook up with at least one pastry school friend in the next two weeks–if we can figure out how to include the Brazen Tart (so i can hear more about this farm thing she’s mentioning!), then we’ll do that, too. Then there’s Indy at the end of the month, and June will be consumed with preparing for a visit from our federal funders at the end of the month.

The last two weeks at work have been difficult–we’re supposed to be using this new financial software to do our budget for the year, which, okay, whatever. Except, of course, it doesn’t necessarily accommodate all of the quirks of federal funding and the program income (in the form of Medicaid and/or Medicare reimbursement) that is sometimes included in the federal budget and sometimes is not. And I’ve never done this before. And the person who was doing the budgets before me was an ass, in multiple dimensions, primarily in the form of not telling anyone what she was doing and making things unnecessarily complicated. On top of that, the controller for our organization keeps changing the bits we need to pay for and is less than clear about where, exactly, they’re supposed to go in the context of this software.

So, of course, yesterday I had to spend the whole day at a management retreat with the management team, doing team things. The person who facilitated it was good at it, and it wasn’t as completely heinous as it could have been, but the timing made it less worthwhile. I’m being pressured to have the budget done by close of business on Monday, so being forced to spend a whole day away from it was rather problematic. As a result, I’ll do what I can on Monday, but that’s it. And I have a concert to attend Monday night, and a hockey game Tuesday night. My feeling about the whole thing is that I’ll do what I can do, but if the organization sees fit to drag me away from the budget for a “retreat,” then I have no problem going to a concert on my own time, rather than, say, working through the weekend or something.

One of the interesting dynamics yesterday is that our manager self-identifies (according to one of the exercises) as a “feelings” person (or “informal” and “easygoing,” to use the metric of the day)–he’s the only one in that quadrant. Which means to me that he’d damn well better have some people who are “formal” (in the sense of write things down, have meetings with a purpose, be task-oriented) and “dominant.” At first, I was the only one in that quadrant, and I was kind of pissy about being forced to put myself there, because I have adapted to so many different environments. Reasonably quickly, the new medical director–whom I like tremendously and with whom I really enjoy working–realized she belonged with me, and a third person (whom I actually don’t think belongs with us) joined us. I pointed out to the medical director that she and I had more education than anyone else in the room, and that we had obtained it in male-dominated environments, which I think affects how one operates. it’s also worth mentioning that, except for our boss, who is gaygaygay, everyone on the team is female. It’s the most female environment in which I have ever worked in my whole life.

The funny thing about this, to me, is that you can only have these discussions in office world. Of course there are different personalities in other environments, but in a place like the bakery, we have to get a product out the damned door. Everyone had best be task-oriented. And, more to the point I’m trying to make, in many ways, in that environment, I was, by comparison, more “analytical” (i.e., formal and easygoing), when I was working with Bossman on a new product, and also the person who did a lot of smoothing things like a feeling person would do (e.g., the pizza on Saturdays). Yes, I was also organized and task-oriented and so on, but so was everyone else, so that became an irrelevant evaluative criterion. In office world, you can lose sight of this. Of course, one could argue that this is a typical task-oriented-person’s assessment, and you might even be right.

The other thing that was interesting is that we nearly left without discussing the biggest challenge we all face: the boss’s boss is demanding, doesn’t respect boundaries, wants what she wants when she wants it, etc. (which sounds like addict behavior, if you ask me, though I have no reason to think that’s true). But as we were discussing challenges and how we were going to meet them, etc., I finally said, “Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room?” And our boss said yes, we should, and the facilitator said, good, let’s finish this other thing first and come back to it. What was amusing was that everyone knew what i was talking about; it was also amusing, to me, that I was the one who mentioned it. If I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have gotten said, and all of the fine suggestions the facilitator was throwing around would have been useless for 70% of the problems we face. (What happens is she decides something is a crisis, she fires off urgent emails to our boss, and he comes barging in to whatever we were doing and flails around about it. The underlying issue is that she does not realize that we cannot do the grand expansions she has in mind without getting the operational infrastructure in place–the infrastructure that either never existed or that crumbled under her watch.) So we actually talked about it, but what I’ve been saying to my boss for months is still true: he’s going to have to suck it up and confront her on these things. At least other people thanked me for bringing it out in the open, and I could sense the relief everyone felt to be discussing it; as I said yesterday, I’m nothing if not blunt. Actually, the whole group became more animated during that discussion, despite it being the end of the day, than they had all the rest of the day, which means everyone wanted to talk about it, even if they were afraid to bring it up.

And I think that is yet another advantage of being a cranky old broad: it’s clear to me that this is one of the main underlying issues, and we can do nothing if it isn’t discussed. No one else was willing to bring that up, however, even though nothing would get solved if we don’t discuss this and do something about it. But, really, I don’t care: what’s she going to do to me? And, frankly, I’d tell her to her face–diplomatically, of course, and acknowledging her needs and her position, but seriously. So, for once, my what-the-fuckityness came in handy for actually addressing an issue. We’ll see what happens.