Last night I had to get tough with my boss. As you know, I’ve lamented that my ONE SINGLE FRUSTRATION with the job (okay, one of them…) is that I’ll present him with something very simple that only needs a few seconds of his time, and he’ll push it off and say “we’ll get to that later.”
Well, back in late November and early December I approached him with a folder that L-Train gave me containing some documents. I asked him about it, and he pushed it off saying we’d get to it another time. A couple weeks later I approached him again, only to be rebuffed again. In mid-December I approached him a third time, only to be brushed off a third time.
So I gave up presenting it to him. Three times is enough for me to get the lesson.
Last night he was discussing how messy my ledge was (with HIS stuff, may I add). He was rifling through it and – lo and behold – saw the folder. He opened it and immediately got upset. “This was supposed to be taken care of in 2007!” he cried. He began going on and on about the inefficiency of my ledge and how we “need a better system in place” to make sure work doesn’t fall through the cracks.
Me: …
At that point I stood up and said, “Let’s go in your office.” Once I shut the door behind me, I said, “I LOVE my job – I love everything about it, but there is ONE thing that frustrates me.”
I went on to tell him how I had come to him THREE TIMES with those documents he was upset about, and that each time he brushed me off. I said, “If I had known there was a December 31, 2007 deadline for those documents, I would have continued to push for you to address it. But you didn’t take the five seconds to say, ‘Can’t do it now – but make note there is a December 31 deadline on those so we don’t forget about them.'” I explained that if he had done that I would have spent the last week of December nagging him constantly to get them taken care of.
It felt good to address my frustration, and I think he realized it was long coming. We have decided to order him a very large white board for one wall in his office. On this board we will begin writing firm deadlines on things he needs to accomplish, as well as keep a list of all in-process documents on my ledge.
This morning he scooped up every single piece of paper off my ledge, and we spent 10 minutes going through it all. Ten minutes. That’s all it took. He’s been avoiding it for several months, and it took ten minutes. We both felt better seeing my empty ledge, and I’m going to do my best to see it doesn’t reach mammoth proportions any time soon. I’m always jealous of the other admins – their ledges have pictures, candy dishes, potted plants. Mine usually has papers, folders, and mail. Not nearly as pretty.