Letters from NYC

Long Stressful Day/Week

My week has been filled with early appointments for preliminary interviews, networking breakfasts, lots of work deadlines, dealing with my son's school and navigating the issues of my new work duties. Today started with a 7:30am meeting with the head guidance counselor of my son’s school, and a few other individuals. My son’s teacher has been having a bit of a challenging time with my son adjusting to his new school environment. She was so dissatisfied with his independent and sometimes willful spirit that I’ve been called to the school twice since September. On my 3rd visit this past Tuesday, she insisted so much there had to be something wrong with him, that I finally relented and agreed to have my son tested for ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

I did manage to get him tested by a private Dr. recommended by our pediatrician, rather than by their staff. Hey, this is my son they’re talking about, if he’s going to get labeled from now to high school I want to be the one to choose who labels him and who gets access to his medical information.

Well, having arranged for the results to be communicated to all of us via teleconference (through my Treo plugged into a regular speaker), the Dr. informed us that my son didn’t have ADD (music to my ears) and was simply bored, unchallenged and frustrated by the school environment where he’s “made to sit for hours on end” (my son’s words not the doc's). According to the Doctor, he’s a very bright and advanced student whose knowledge base is that of a 3rd grader, who happens to be in 1st grade. The guidance counselor said he suspected as much because my son has been getting 95/100’s in all his tests (he gets 5pts off for forgetting to write his name on the tests). It seems to him the conflict here is the teacher’s rigidity for not allowing them to move freely about the classroom during various points of the day. [No kidding!] Anyway, we discussed possible solutions we (me, his teacher and the support team) could implement and I set up a timetable for them to be impemented systematically and not all at once (so we could measure the success of each), then we set up a follow up date for next month to check on my son’s progress. Sigh! I’m so glad I waited till I was much older to have a child!

The rest of my day was spent in having my “field demotion” and possible exit, addressed by the appropriate individuals within my firm. The first meeting took place at 8:30am with my department head. He was so upset when he learned of the situation that he immediately went up the ladder with the info. To my surprise, by 3:30pm the matter went all the way to the division head. I chose this week to address the issue because next Wednesday is our deadline for everyone’s performance and compensation review to be submitted to HR. Unbeknownst to me, she is well known for her intransigence, belligerence, and inflexibility. Man she had me fooled!

So I accomplished 3 things by bringing this to light:
1) to have her input on my review minimized or neutralized by the truth of the situation, giving me the opportunity to possibly remain or to have plenty of time to move on to something better;
2) it provides those who are reviewing “her/my boss” with the proof that she’s still "not able to play well with others".
3) it helped me see that there's nothing wrong with me as she's been trying to make me believe, because the high turnover rate indicates differently.

My last meeting of the day was an impromptu one. The head of the dept asked that I accompany him to take a tour of our possible new work space. Well, I went, I saw, and I liked! Ohhhh, it’s sooooo pretty… cream and black marble walls and floors with beech wood trim! I would still have a cube, but this one would be a much, much bigger one. One in which my chair doesn't hit the wall when I move my chair back to get out of my seat.

Since I didn’t think the men in my group wanted to hear the word “pretty” associated with the space they’ll be spending 8+ hrs a day in, I instead used lots of big positive real estate terms with adjectives that men love to hear like: big, strong, bold, and impressive! At this last one my boss perked up, smiled wide, turned to the Property Manager and said: “Great! We’ll take it!” And thus, a deal was consummated.