My working personality is one that I don’t like at all: I get comfortable and I plod along, doing the same thing. I lack confidence in myself and make no attempts to make myself shine, even though I see others around me doing it and getting recognition for it. They’re no smarter than I am; they just know how to play up their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. My attention to detail is one of my greatest strengths but you’d never know it. I’m a very helpful person and often put aside my own work to help others and lose track of the time, while they seem to know when to be helpful and when to step back, and how to avoid staying late at work catching up. My welcoming nature makes my office one of the more popular ones for people who want to talk to someone who is interested and who will become engaged in the conversation, but at the end of a 15 or 20 minute conversation, I’m left with nothing more than a closer bond to a colleague (which I love) and a backlog of work to do (which I of course detest).

When I come up with good ideas that are put into place and prove effective, I don’t make a record of it. I don’t devise ways of measuring the success of my initiatives so that these can be used to bolster my salary during my appraisals (not that I have ever requested a salary boost, mind you!). I do so many things half way, not taking full advantage of opportunities, and definitely leaving a lot on the table.

Far too often I simply do what I’m told and let others draw out the path of my career. Much like I am when it comes to things where I feel I’m not an expert, I let someone else steer my career. Others use me as a resource to help them get where they are going (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but I don’t end up doing the same. And as I see others moving ahead, I realize that I have to step up my game and make sure I have something to show for my time at this place, especially as my five-year anniversary approaches.

In the last year there have been some changes to my position, and these need to be fully digested and recorded, especially some unclear elements. Why haven’t I done it yet??? Can you believe that I haven’t updated my resume in four years? Of course you can; my reputation for procrastination is hardly a secret. I don’t even know where the last resume I updated back in 2006 is, while some people I know keep their resume so up-to-date that they would be able to print off a copy and hand it to a potential employer within a minute.

This entry was supposed to go in a completely different direction: I wanted to talk about how I need structure and try to get structure in many areas of my life, including my job, yet I have trouble maintaining it; I guess I’ll save that for another entry.

Where do you see your career going? Are you in the career or job you intend to still be in in the next five years?

Ads are also blocked from most websites that we can see, as are flickr pics on blogs that I can still access. For some of the blogs I read, reading the entry without the pictures is not quite the same experience, and those huge gaps where the images should appear are very distressing (what am I not seeing? Is it a picture of a dog? A piece of luggage? A fossilized piece of dung?!!???). Sites that are religious or political in nature remain blocked, and I noticed that all blogs with a wordpress.com extension are now off limits to me (like Sizzle’s blog).

But worse than all of these is the fact that I can’t access this blog from work any longer! This means if the site is messed up or if I have late-breaking house-related news, or if I meet the man I’m going to marry during my workday, I’ll have to wait until I get home to share this news. This is terrible because what if I’ve moved out of the house or married by the time I’m able to come and blog it? Then what? In fact, can my life actually progress if I’m not able to blog each experience as it happens? I guess we’ll see.

Tomorrow I’m going to check the reason given for blocking access to this blog. I’m hoping it’ll be something innocuous like “Advertising”, and not something damning like “Site spends entirely too much time talking about not working while at work. The site author (who we believe desperately needs to remain employed in order to make her mortgage payments) would be best served by working, and should not try to find alternate means of regaining access to this site.”

Fingers crossed.

Well, I guess I would hesitate, actually, but only because of my brother. I was telling him how I want to move to the UK so I can be halfway between Canada and Nigeria and he reminded me that um, I bought a house here. That was quite sobering. I forgot that I loved living here for a moment. I guess I’ll have to go back to praying the Atlantic Ocean shrinks and the continents move closer together.

All last week, I woke up between 3 and 4 in the morning and usually spent an hour or two online before returning to bed and then waking up — sans alarm, shockingly— with plenty of time to get ready for work. I was early for work every day last week. The last time that happened was three years ago, when I first started working there.

And if that isn’t the perfect segue, I don’t know what is. Things I missed while I was away, in no particular order are:

My Three Year Anniversary (at my place of work)
The middle of November marked three years since I got the phone message* that changed my career. You see, I had interviewed for the job in January 2005 but they chose a more qualified candidate over me. But then, the qualified candidate decided to start a family and she went on maternity leave and it just so happened that I was the first runner up that they called on when the winner was unable to do her duties. And somehow my one year stint became a permanent position. I am so blessed.

(*I’m not sure if I should admit this but I saved that message. Hear me out though: I have 40 messages on my voicemail that I just keep re-saving over and over again. They date back to 2003 and include gems like my youngest brother singing happy birthday to me, my mom apologizing for driving home and forgetting to take me with her (she sounds so contrite), to a friend congratulating me on the completion of my Biochemistry degree. I’m a packrat in all aspects of my life; what can I say?)

NaBloPoMo
If I had been here for the month of November, this would have been my third year in a row pledging to post every day for the month and hopefully I would have made it again. Now that NaBloPoMo is a year long thing, I’m going to do it for the month of December, which to me is the easiest month to mess up because it’s just so busy. Especially when you haven’t started brainstorming gift ideas, talk less entering a shopping mall and attempting to shop.

An Indian Wedding
Indian weddings are such a treat for the eyes because they are so colourful. I have never been to one. One of my friends got married the weekend we left so I missed out on their wedding. I haven’t even had an opportunity to ask anyone how it was, nor have I seen any pictures. I’m sure it was gorgeous though.

What I didn’t miss: the cold weather. In fact I’m partly convinced it’s the jarring difference in temperature that’s responsible for my body’s inability to get used to being back. This may also be why I haven’t called any friends to let them know I’m back (I did send a few emails, text messages and facebook messages), and I haven’t seen anyone (though it’s been a week). I need to shake this vacation brain of mine.

I become timid when I have to speak French with fluent French speakers, but only if I know their English is better than my French. If I think my attempts to speak French will be less difficult and allow us both to understand one another, then I will stammer out my few phrases. If, however, I think hearing me speak French will cause the other person to cringe inwardly at every misstep, I’d rather they speak English.

I have had two classes so far. They are private lessons, which is really great: I have the teacher’s attention for the whole hour and he can correct my many errors (and I make so many!). He asked me what I enjoy doing as a hobby and I told him I have a website that I update and after avoiding giving him the link during the first lesson I gave it to him and he says he will check out the blog and be able to gear our discussions towards things that interest me and concern my life because apparently it will be easier for me to have conversations about things that I am familiar with.

Let’s hope he won’t become dismayed when he brings up house hunting or my single status and I burst into tears.

My father is my educational inspiration, and really he deserves his own entry but for some background I’ll share his part of the story:

• He finished highschool in Nigeria but could not afford to go to University despite his great love of education (sometimes love just ain’t enough!). His father was not a wealthy man (he was a farmer) and therefore could not help him.
• Undeterred, my pops worked for six years to make money to help support his family (his parents and siblings), all the while doing what he could to make sure he didn’t lose his any of the knowledge he obtained in school. During this time he also applied for full scholarships to finance his education.
• Finally, he got a full scholarship to study in the USA, and that’s where he got his Bachelors and Masters degrees. He had decided my mom was the woman for him prior to his leaving Nigeria for school, so after he had been in the States for a little while, she went to join him. My sister and I were born there.

Back to my mom:

While in the USA, my mom got her Associates degree in Accounting a month before I was born. In fact there is a picture of her from her graduation, in a royal blue graduation gown, large with child, beaming and holding her diploma.

When I was three, we moved to Nigeria, where we lived for three years. My mom worked in accounting while we lived in Nigeria.

When I was six, we moved to Canada; it was my dad’s fault: he received a full scholarship to obtain a PhD. While he studied, my mom took care of my sister and I and worked in jobs that would allow her the flexibility of being at home for us children after school. She worked in restaurants, fast food and otherwise, doing food prep most of the time. She also cleaned houses. My brother was born a year after we moved to Canada; and my second brother followed two years later. While the boys were growing up, my mom was home when we came back from school. She baked yummy treats for us and we always had home cooked meals (we rarely ordered out in our early years in Canada). My dad received his PhD a year after the baby of the family was born.

My father found work in another province in Canada, so we moved across the country to our current city. I remember having a paper route, and delivering the fat Saturday edition of the local paper with my mom. My mom sold Avon as a way to make some money while working fulltime as a stay at home mom.

Then, four years after moving here, she started working part time at a department store, in the shoe department. Given her long break from the working world, and the fact that she could only work part time because she wanted to be at home when her baby arrived home from school, it was the best choice for her at the time. It was a good fit too: her love of people and amazing customer service skills (and a flair for makeup application) soon took her from shoes to the beauty department, and full time work, and that is where she works today. She continues to provide amazing customer service, and has no qualms spending an hour with one customer, showing her how to apply makeup to suit her face, even if it means missing out on a number of quicker sales. She truly has a passion for helping people.

I don’t know a person with a better work ethic: she’s honest, believes in not breaking the rules, won’t call in sick unless she’s sick (and often doesn’t call in even though she is sick), she doesn’t take extended breaks, she won’t lie and tell a customer that a certain shade of lipstick looks good on her if it doesn’t, even if it means losing a sale that has been hard to come by. She has helped the store catch shoplifters on more than one occasion, and has testified in court against a shoplifter before .

(Do you get the feeling that I sort of adore this woman?)

Anyways, that is her story, and that has been her story for the past 14 years. But the job is wearying. She’s in her mid-50s and she deserves (and needs) a job where she can:

• sit down once in a while, and not just during her breaks
• have Saturdays and Sundays off (as it is, she works three out of four Saturdays, sometimes until 9:30pm, and she works one or two Sundays a month)
• avoid the stress of what has to be one of the most poisonous work environments I know. Remember how I said she’d rather spend one hour with a customer than ring in quick sales? Well, her colleagues who have no qualms with ringing in six sales all in a row have a big problem when one of my mom’s one-hour sessions turns into a huge sale. They get catty and go and tell coworkers that my mom “stole” the customer away from them, or that she forces customers to buy things they don’t want (a claim easily disproved by the low return rate she has), not remembering the number of times my mom has customers who thank her for the lovely makeover and don’t buy a thing, or the sales that they took instead of sitting down with the more needy customer.

(I’m biased, of course, but I also work in retail too so I know how it is.)

My mom has some health problems and I would love it if she could have a job where she didn’t have to also worry about the mental stress of a job where she has to deal with jealousy, backstabbing, and two-facedness. Her heart is too soft and although she can bite your head off one minute, and comes across as very gregarious, she’s also very sensitive (I am totally my mother’s child) and has a hard time dealing with people not liking her when she’s done nothing wrong. She can’t just brush it off as the other person’s problem. As you can imagine, her attempts to have a good relationship with all her coworkers have led to more pain than anything. My sister and I constantly tell her to go to work and not give a darn who talks to her or not, who goes off to whisper to other colleagues about her, that she should just ignore them. However, the truth is that it’s hard to work in that sort of environment.

Very often in the last few years, I have this lovely daydream where I make enough money that my mom doesn’t have to work. Instead, she stays home and spends time on her passion, cooking, and I call her from work and force her to go for a walk. The whites of her eyes turn bright white again, and lose their tired look, I no longer hear stories of work that she claims she’s telling me just so I know, and not because she was hurt by the incident (liar). So my motives are selfish then: I absorb her pain and take it as my own, and I can already feel its toll on me, and I’d like it to stop.

As long as my parents’ health remains ok, they will continue to work. They entered the home owners game late compared to the majority of their home-owning Canadian-born counterparts, and they entered the “saving for retirement” game late too because of their circumstances. This means that my mom’s income is needed, and just not working isn’t an option. So, because of that, we’ve been thinking of some career options that would take advantage of her skills and abilities, give her the hours she wants, and remove the coworker-induced stress in her life (or lessen it; I know all workplaces have their issues). Two of the ideas that have come up are freelance makeup artist, which would be so awesome (but it won’t give her weekends and nights off as I bet her easiest area to break into would be doing wedding makeup and weddings tend to be on the weekend), and Nigerian food caterer, but that’s another job that occupies your weekends. And she’s definitely at the age where having a health plan at work is sort of important, so this may rule out working for herself entirely.

My mom is open to retraining, and is actually dying to learn how to use computers, but she also thinks that at her age alone, no matter what qualifications she has, will cause employers to avoid hiring her. She doesn’t look her age, so unless she tells her potential employers, I think she wouldn’t have trouble getting a job, as long as she has the right qualifications she needs.

So, I’ve made myself my mom’s job search agent, and I figure that’s only fair since it was my dad who led me to the website that my job was posted on, one day before the due date for applications. If you have any ideas or suggestions that take into account her particular situation, they would be much appreciated.

Ves thinks that I would be mortified if someone I knew from a past life (highschool, the grocery store I used to work at, university) came by the store and saw me vacuuming. She’s right, because I’ve told her this before. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with vacuuming, or earning an honest living, and I know the following shouldn’t bother me but I worry that they’ll think “I was in highschool/university/worked at the grocery store with Jummy and she seemed to be going places. Why on earth is she still working in retail?” Basically, my fear is that they’ll think this is my only job. If I know they know I have a full time career, and they see me cleaning at the store, it doesn’t bug me. I just don’t want any misplaced pity.

Jess thinks that perhaps I don’t find the job inspiring and this is also true. I used to care so much about the place, I wanted it to look its best, I cared that we organized sizes from left to right, small to extra large, dark to light. Folding piles of tshirts with beautiful corners mattered. Hanging pants so the legs all lay flat was KEY. And when I worked more often, I would spend the quiet evening shifts doing all those things that brought me joy, things that I thought were part of our job description under “keep the store neat, tidy and shopable”. But as the years have passed, I’ve realized that only one other coworker actually cares about this (she’s the other one who’s been there for a number of years, at least four). The other coworkers just don’t care if a size 20 is in front of a size 14, or if a long sleeved white shirt is stuck in among the tank tops. They don’t care. This job is something they do half heartedly to earn a few bucks, and it bothers me that they don’t care enough to do what they’re paid to do. When I work with the other girl who does care, we run around obsessing about getting the store in perfect shape. But now that I work less often, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of organizing there is to do when I get there. And my coworkers, slumped on the cash desk, look at me with dismay when I suggest we divide up the store and straighten it.

I also operated under the impression that if we do our best, provide good service to the customers, and make good sales, the profit would trickle down to the employees. I can’t say that’s been my personal experience.

Emma’s point that maybe my schedule (namely the short shifts/low number of hours) is why I haven’t been made a manager and that is true. I have been asked to apply for the manager position but I never wanted it because I didn’t want to come to hate retail as many managers I have known do. With respect to giving me a position to show that “hey Jummy, we think you’re a good worker!”, they have given me what they can—the title of key holder—but of course that never came with the big fat raise I hoped for; all the new title meant was that I am trusted to open and close the store, and stay late if need be. The latter is a great perk, let me tell you.

- – - -
Four or five year ago, I had a chance to leave, but I made the wrong decision. You see, the company was on its way to bankruptcy, but there was a chance that the company would find a buyer before this happened. Either way, all the store’s contents would be liquidated and the store would close for a while, and either reopen under new ownership or close forever. The employees working there at the time were given the option of being laid off and receiving a small settlement. This meant that if the store reopened and you still wanted to work there, you’d have to reapply and there was no guarantee that you’d be rehired. With option two you remained an employee of the company and crossed your fingers that they’d get the funding and reopen. If they did, you’d still be an employee and wouldn’t have to reapply for the position.

Guess which option I picked?

Of course, what happened is that my coworkers who went with the first option got a little money, a little break and then got rehired, while I got my break without pay. My decision-making skills are stellar, I tell you!

Anyways, the same thing happened again this year, and it looked like we were going to be faced with the same decision. While some wondered if they should start looking for another job I thought this was my chance to get what I didn’t back then (moola) and leave the job without being fired and without having to actually make a decision. If the store closed, my decision would be made.

Of course, it didn’t get to that point and as far as we know, everything is fine.

Great.

So now I’m back to having to make an actual decision. I’m afraid of quitting and then having something wonderful, like amazing pay increases, or cool clothing for pllus sized women come out that I love and now have to pay full price for. I’m afraid I’ll miss the “spending money” I get from the job.

Sure I groan audibly every time I’m called in to work but that doesn’t mean anything right? I just hope I don’t make it to my ten year anniversary there!

This last one is a bit of a shocker, even to me. The years have managed to dull the feelings of shock somewhat.

Back in 1999 I was working at a grocery store, Farm Boy. My highschool friends thought it was hilarious to mock me for working there but I didn’t let that stop me from working there for five years. I ended up leaving Farm Boy eventually to devote myself fully to retail job at the clothing store. As a plus sized girl, I had struggled all through highschool to find clothing that was cool and actually fit. One of my friends from that group of friends that accepted me in spite of my geeky tendencies was also plus sized and she always shopped at this clothing store. It was because of her that I started shopping there and while their clothing was never as cool as the cool kids’, just finding clothing that fit and wasn’t granny style was a boon. I was a beggar and therefore not so choosy.

It turned out that my mom knew the manager of one of the store locations and because of that it was easy for me to get the job. She left soon after she hired me, however, and I stayed on and have done so for the past nearly nine years. I still see my old manager, and the first question out of her mouth is always to ask if I’m still at the store. My answer of course is always in the affirmative.

In my almost nine years at the clothing store, I have seen many managers come and go, at least 15 of them. The number of employees who have worked for a couple of years, or a month or two, or half a shift, or an hour (in one case) and left is also staggering (turnover is notoriously high in retail). I have managed to be something of an institution there and I have mixed feelings about this.

I have seriously considered leaving for few years now, but too much crying wolf on my part means that nobody actually believes it will ever happen. A couple of things that stop me from handing in my notice are:

I like being on the “inside”
My friends Ves and Richard find this hilarious because I was silly enough to tell them that when I walk into the store, even when I’m not working, and walk into the back room, I feel like the other customers are thinking “Who’s that girl strutting into the back room? Lucky her!” (No, my insanity has not been diagnosed yet.) I like the insider perks of working there, such as the 50% discount off the clothing, getting to be the first person to try on an item I decide to buy, and putting it away even before it is put on the sales floor, and getting inside information on when new clothing lines will be expected and when big markdowns will occur.

It’s easy work and I actually like it
Because the shifts I work are generally on weeknights or on Sundays, all of which are slow times for this store, I spend a lot of my shift walking around tidying, something that I enjoy doing. Sometimes I even get customers in the store that I can interact with, something I really enjoy. Because I’ve never worked in retail full time for long stretches, I still enjoy it and don’t hate all human beings.

Sometimes friends drop by the store to visit and that’s always great. The job could never be accurately described as fast-paced, and it is certainly not stressful. Employees are not paid on commission, and depending on the manager currently reigning, there is rarely a lot of pressure to sell a certain amount. And even when managers who care about sales are in charge, I don’t stress because I’m used to working a three and a half hour shift on a Monday night when no customers at all enter the store. It’s very hard to sell when you don’t see anyone to sell to.

I get what I want
Ok, that’s not 100% true. The pay is atrocious. Really, really awful. So awful that I’m embarrassed to divulge it. What I do get are the shiftsI want. I don’t work Friday evenings or Saturdays. Back when I was working more often, I would tell the manager the maximum number of hours I could work and the managers would always accommodate me (except when it comes to the darn pay increases!). When other things come up such as volunteering for Bluesfest, the managers have generally worked around my other schedule. I think because I am a good employee (I show up, I don’t quit in the middle of shift, I don’t steal money from the cash register, I don’t call in sick to travel to Newfoundland to meet a guy I met off the internet) they are willing to work with me.

I gives me my spending money
I know I complained about how little I make there (and really the hourly wage is minuscule! teeny!), but back when I was working there 12+ hours a week I managed to make enough every paycheque that it became my “fun money to spend on things like daily lunches and craft supplies. Now my paycheques barely cover lunch for two days but still I continue to work there.

BUT, I keep thinking that if I were to purchase a car sometime before the government decides to give me one for free because they think it’s pathetic that a 52 year old woman has never known the joy of owning her own automobile, my clothing store money could actually pay my monthly car bills, though that would mean I’d have to work 15 hours a week consistently, leaving my full time job to pay my bills and to save for a house, which is what I currently do. Although, since I’m barely working at the store lately, I’ve been using money I could be putting in my savings account for lunches.

If working there is so great (well, except for the pay thing, which really, really sucks), why have I been thinking of leaving? Any guesses?

Saturday morning dawned and the roads looked ok more or less: the ploughs had definitely been down my street so I decided to take the bus downtown at 7:15am and that went well. I arrived at the hotel on time, had a yummy hot breakfast (the bacon was especially delicious) took part in the all-day meeting and then headed to the office (located conveniently next door) to do the aforementioned work.

Then it was off to the suite where before dinner drinks were being served and more importantly, Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii had been set up. After protesting half heartedly I got up there and had a ball for a few minutes before I had to go help get ready for the awards portion of our dinner.

The dinner was delicious and the dessert was especially toothsome and about 10 000 calories too decadent:

The chocolate icing covering it had gold bits in it, this fine gold glitter.

After dinner and the talk, there was time for more DDR. When I discovered that the storm that had been brewing all day would in fact make getting home near impossible, I decided to see if I could snag a laptop with some internet access for my hotel room. I got the computer and it appeared that wireless internet was working but of course once I arrived in the room and tried it, it was a no-go. Since it was after 1am anyway, perhaps it was best that way, although I did consider going next door to my work computer (I am an addict).

The next morning, after being roped into running some errands, I packed and got ready to take a cab home. The main roads looked perfectly fine so I was a bit curious about why finding a cab was near impossible. A driver eventually showed up and he let me know that:

• the weather was so bad and he was taking a big risk being out (the weather was actually not that bad: it wasn’t snowing and the roads had been ploughed. I, novice driver that I am, had driven on at least three occasions this winter that were far worse) and when I told him that he conceded that the main roads were in good condition but said the side streets were pretty bad.
• the long wait times were due to many cab drivers deciding to stay home and not bothering to dig themselves out of their driveways. He said he would have done the same but he is renting his car and he’s charged $130 in rent every day so he has to make that money somehow.
• cab drivers should be able to charge double the fare in bad weather because they are taking a risk by being on the road (I was silent because I see his job as driving his cab and if the weather is prohibitive, he has the option to stay home like some of his colleagues did. If he decides to drive it is his decision and he even said he was working because he didn’t want to lose out on the cash that he needs to pay that daily rent fee that he is charged).

Now, a note about tipping. When it comes to tipping, I’m a fair tipper: I’m not extravagant unless I receive amazing service but I follow the general rules on how much to tip at certain places. However, I don’t have a problem not leaving a tip if I receive poor service. Some of my friends are great tippers, and tip all and sundry. I, on the other hand, would expect to be tipped only if I provided service that went above and beyond my job description, and would regard any tips received for doing my job a bonus. So, in a retail environment, spending two hours helping a woman pick one outfit is to me my job. They pay me to sell clothing. But if a customer that I had sold something to previously called me with a clothing emergency and asked if I could pick an outfit for her, charge her account then deliver the garments to her house, then I would think that’s a tip-worthy endeavour.

When it comes to tipping cab drivers, my basic rule is if the guy says hello and is conversational and doesn’t smoke in the car, I’ll likely tip. If I’m going or returning from a trip and I have bags in the trunk and he pops the trunk and helps me get my bags in and out of the car, I’ll tip. If he doesn’t, I won’t tip: driving me from one place to another is not tip-worthy in my opinion, just like me selling a skirt to a customer is not tip-worthy either, even if it takes me three hours to make the sale.

In this case, when I tried to tell the cab driver where to turn and when (because he didn’t seem to recognize my street when I gave him the name), he waved me aside saying he knew he was going. Our car got beeped at for stopping at a green light for nearly a minute even though we were nowhere near my house and the light had been green before he arrived at the intersection. When the cab driver pulled up in front of my house, he popped the trunk. I had a taxi chit, so I filled it out for the amount on the meter. I don’t know if we’re supposed to cover the price of the tip, so just in case I usually pay the tip and just charge work the amount on the meter. After I finished filling out the chit, I looked up and saw that the meter was still going and the amount I had written was wrong and was getting higher every 23 seconds! I asked the driver why the meter was still going when I had told him that this was my house, and what the amount due was, and he finally stopped the meter and told me the least I could do was add five dollars to the amount on the meter because he was driving in poor weather. I told him that this was a work chit and was about to explain that because of that I tip separately but he didn’t even let me finish: he just told me to give him the chit and said he couldn’t believe how ungrateful I was after he drove me in this weather. I couldn’t get out of the cab fast enough and grab my things from the trunk.

What really got me about the whole situation was that he had no idea whether I was planning to tip him separately or not, then he presumed to tell me how much to tip him (big no-no with Jummy) and then he practically drove off with my things still in his trunk.

Interactions like that always get me angry and I made sure I took note of his cab number and driver number and will be making a complaint about him if I remember to.

So tell me: what’s your most horrible tip-related story? Have you ever been told by someone how much of a tip you should give them? What prompted you to leave the worst tip you’ve ever left (or not)? What about the best tip? (no need to go into the actual amounts tipped, I’m more interested in the reason).

But this time around I’m kind of nervous about my evaluation, which is just over 24 hours away. It’s not my first (I’ve been here for over two years) but for some reason I was overwhelmed from the start by the goals that were set. I felt there were too many, and that I didn’t have what I needed to accomplish them all. A year ago I saw that as the challenge part of the goal so I didn’t say much but now, as I’m getting ready to do a pre-evaluation of my work, I suddenly feel like I didn’t do anything at all in the past year.

I don’t think this will be my best evaluation but I hope it doesn’t lead to me feeling like crap because I was really hoping to delay that feeling until Thursday.

Update: It actually went ok. I felt like I was understood and my concerns considered so that’s good.

I don’t want to give up the bookshelf because its loss will make my office look even more sterile. Back when the bookshelf was completely bare and I saw the Office Manager eyeing it for another office that doesn’t need (either), I quickly put my crazy growing plant on it, hoping to distract the eye from the emptiness. It worked for a while but recently she asked about the shelf again. I’ve decided that the next time she asks, I will think hard and relinquish it. In the meantime, I need to find a way to decorate my bookshelf. What can I bring in from home that will turn my bookshelf into a lovely display shelf that expresses my individuality, but will still be tasteful and work appropriate?

I suspect bringing in my stacks of clothing that I just don’t have the closet space for is a no-no.