August 30, 1991
Dear Everyone:
This is going to be a
very brief letter as I have a
filthy cold and want to go home. (Word
of caution: Don't breathe too
close to this.)
We had a two-day “team building” workshop,
attendance mandatory, and wouldn't you know that I'd come down with a
cold (the first since the
Loma
Prieta Earthquake in October 1989) on the first day of it.
Technically, the title of the
course is “Agreements for Excellence”. We
spent two days locked together in a meeting room of the newly
refurbished Sheraton Palace Hotel. When
it was time to break for lunch, they herded us downstairs to the hotel
dining room, and then back up to the meeting room in the afternoon.
After two days of enforced
“togetherness”, we'd agree to anything.
We “agreed” to get the Records Management Manual
published by the end of this year (it was only overdue four years ago,
what's the rush?). We also
“agreed” to “put the past behind us”, a thinly-veiled reference to the
fact that “Ashley” was once the department’s supervisor and certain
individuals would sooner see Company Corporation burn to the ground than
forgive him for it.
Lastly, we “agreed” to resolve the “conflicts” in a
more constructive manner that we have so far.
Up until yesterday, the way to
deal with a “conflict” was to pointedly ignore the person with whom you
had the conflict, generally behave like a spoiled brat, and go off and
complain bitterly to someone else in the department about it, thus
effectively wasting two people's time instead of just one.
Also, evidently, some people feel that if you don't
go out of your way to say “good morning” to them each day, there must be
some terrible sort of conflict going on.
The way to resolve this problem is for everyone to act like
adults and say “good morning” to everyone in the department as many
times as possible. So we “agreed”
to behave, at least for a little while.
Right now, everyone is acting dreadfully cheerful
and saying “good morning” to anyone who will hold still long enough to
hear it, a state that I expect to last about 1½
days, after which, we’ll all relax and slip back into our
normally dysfunctional selves.
Incidentally, the Sheraton Palace
did do a very nice job,
although the “continental breakfast” was a little skimpy on the
pastries. And the workshop
leaders went to considerable efforts to avoid being
too California.
“Thanks for sharing that” was a
sardonic joke. And “Sissy” only
slipped once or twice in to “the group needs to know how you
feel about that”.
(I feel like I'm going to sneeze,
that's how I feel about it.)
Summer is “officially” over; the weather should
start warming up. This is the
3-day weekend coming up, plus I have a vacation day tacked on next
Tuesday, which should give me plenty of time to get over this cold.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. Apropos of nothing except the news…
Doesn't “Kenny
Bunkport” sound like someone
George Bush
grew up with?
“Mom, can I go play at Kenny Bunkport’s?”
“Where’s little George?”
“At Kenny Bunkport’s.”
“Again?
He's
always over there!”
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