"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

a timeline of my day.
April 08, 2002 - 6:06 pm

here is, in as short a form as i can present it, my day.

8:15am - with everyone who works in the office finally here we prepared to go into our morning meeting. one rep instead walks out to go get breakfast.

8:17am - i tell jeff that i need to talk to him before we start the morning meeting, so we go and talk. i explain that i'm looking for a new job. that, in short, more and more what i do now is not pleasing to me.

8:30am - we break up our little meeting with the promise of more talks to come. everyone is again in the office and we proceed with the normally scheduled meeting.

9:00am - i'm back at my desk and trying to catch up on voicemails and juggle the sparse number of incoming calls. i'm thinking about alot about what i told jeff, trying to actaully ferret out my opinion on things. i find it somewhat odd that i don't feel super relieved and happy that the end has started.

10:20am - jeff calls me into the conference room and we begin out talk in earnest. he seeks for clarity in what i'm saying, wanting to read between the lines and find the root problem. i help identify the root problem as i don't like what my job has become and i don't like living in stamford. the job, i feel, is not to my strengths and i have little to no desire to, dispite jeffs repeated assurances that i could, become very good at it. it's a rambling kind of topic and jeff decides he has a good understanding of the situation, asks if it's ok if he talks to steve. steve was the location manager previous to jeff. i say sure, not a problem. we adjorn.

11:30am - i'm back at my desk and have even more voicemails than before. i begin to wade through them, feeling better than before...but still not the relief i thought i'd feel.

noon - i'm again away from my desk, but this time in a lunch n learn meeting. picture a guy comes in to tell us why his stuff is good and we should sell it. picture we get free food. i like lunch in learns. a free lunch is a good deal.

1:00pm - back at my desk and still catching up on things. i'm glad it's a slow day. i could be caught up, but i'm not really going at anything in high gear.

1:15pm - jeff tells me that steve will be in the office at about 3:00pm.

1:20pm - unrelated to me jeff heads into a conference with anthor inside rep and an outside rep.

1:45pm - the unrelated conference is still going on and everyone in the office is kinda anxious. we don't normally have any closed door conferences. i'm asked what did jeff and i talk about, i play it off and say this current one is unrelated to me. people are suspicious, but generally have no idea what's going on. i'm sort of amused by this.

2:20pm - the unrelated talk ends. i have no idea what it was about and don't much care.

3:15pm - steve arrives. jeff and steve head off to pow-wow

3:40pm - jeff emerges from the room and nods at me to go in, so i go in. Steve and i bullshit alittle and then get down to business. i repeat alot of what i told jeff, since steve wants to hear things from me and form his own ideas on what i'm saying. he appears to be fixated that i want to go back home. i repeated say with no other place to pick from, that's where i want to go...but i'm open to anywhere. we go over my current role and what i don't like about it. we go over that the role i did like no longer exsists and especially couldn't exist in my office. i understand this. my office is small and the role i liked is a kinda specialized (for lack of a better term) role. people, in much larger offices, do exist doing what i liked to do, but the company focus is on a new role. i understand this and explain that's why i told jeff i'm looking for a new job. steve likes to speak in managerese, by this i mean in cliches and tired manager sayings. the meeting is much longer than it needs to be. my position, in short, is that: i want out of stamford, as i have said for two years AND i'm not interested in my role to change, but infact i want it revert even more than was before to an 'old time' role. two things. i say atleast once that leaving stamford i've wanted for two years and in the two years steve has known me, i've been pertty clear with him what kind of position i like and what i don't like. the talk moves to possible ways to keep me with anixter, all hypothetical.

4:25pm - jeff enters the room and enters the dicussions again.

4:30pm - i'm pulled from the room by a frantic customer who is pissed and must speak to me. it turns out, after ten minutes, that he does indeed have the correct material and his employees choose not to fully take the items out of the box. i'm very annoyed that i got a good five minute bitching at when it turns out they have the correct material. i'm very annoyed he choose to call and bitch before even verifing what he was upset about.

4:45pm - i return to the confernce room. we kind of finalize things. steve lists off what he and jeff will do and asks what's my time frame on things. i avoid his question and sort of put it back on him that he's know my desires for two years and so it's really more like what's _his_ time frame?

4:55pm - i return to my desk and amazed to only have four voicemails. one requires a callback and the others do not.

5:00pm - i shut off my pc right on time with everyone else and make it as far as the elevator before i get a comment about the amount of time i spent behind closed doors. i play it off.

5:30pm - i'm leaving the supermarket with today's dinner on my seat. my phone rings. it's northwest pa job woman. we weren't supposed to talk until wednesday. she offers me a job at the pay i wanted, but the actual position to be determined. she's not sure if i'd be best in A or B, but she wants to hire me. i had this same idea right after we talked last...before she went away for four days. i thought, after we hung up, that we should have agreed on terms and left the position open, since i like both. i thank her for the offer and say that i'm like her, conservative in jobs decsions and ask for a day to decide. she has no problem with this and rings off.

5:50pm - i'm home and put away the groceries. i go through my mail and then start trying to decide what i do. i realize i'm very tired and really have been all day.

6:06pm - i start writing here.

6:33pm - i'm done with the above. i'm sure i've left things out. most of which involve my thoughts on the situation or if i did say them..i forget i said them. i'm very happy, on one hand, to know that steve drove 2 hours just to talk to me. i'm gratified to know that i am, indeed, an asset in steve's and jeff's eyes. i like that for today and the near future, i am on the minds of whole region. i don't like that it seems to have taken my saying my resume is going out to get this sort of response. i don't like that i asked for a transfer in january and was told there were no jobs on the job board. i can see the job board. i wanted jeff to ask his boss and have his boss find out if there's anywhere i could go. i feel jeff blew me off. i feel steve blew me off when he was the manager. well not so much blew me off, but decided that wanted me in thier office desipte knowing i'd be happier else where. i like jeff and steve as people and do understand their motivations. i don't like that the company has changed and that i don't like my new role. i don't like that i keep getting told 'but you'd be good at it' when i have no desire to do it. i could be a world champion sumo wrestler, but i'm not going to. i could learn an become the best build-a-ship-in-the-bottle person in the world, but i have no desire to.

6:39pm - i'm not positive of what i'm going to do

6:40pm - i hit done.