The Tale of Two Meetings…

Yesterday was the worst day on record at work. I finally got to find out what my Project Manager, Elaine, wanted to talk to me about. She sat me down to expound on how a certain instance of not knowing the table structures that we have (a large database system by anyone’s measure) disappointed her and she was surprised with my lack of knowledge on the topic.

She also explained that she wanted me to be more careful in my work because she needs to recommend someone to be the Equipment Data lead developer, and right now she doesn’t feel like she can recommend me. Among the other pearls of wisdom that she imparted was that I tend to talk a lot (instead of quietly focusing on a project) and that I might want to try to focus harder.

I explained to her that is my personality and there is nothing I will do to change it. She was surprised to see that I was so upset about hearing all of this. I went downstairs to the bathroom and ran into our technical director and WIU alumnus and he wanted to know what the problem was. I told him that I hadn’t been this offended in a long time, and that I couldn’t believe that we had three weeks of peace to be blindsided by something like this.

He recommended that I go and talk to our supervisor, because no one on the team (PM’s count as the team) deserves to rate my performance and I didn’t deserve to be put through this. I wanted to finish the conversation with Elaine before I did so, in case any other bits of awesomeness popped up. The conversation continued to rehash the same topics over again, and Elaine asked me to go and think about things she can do to help me do better in my job. I had to hold my tongue there… but that’s OK.

After Elaine left for the night, I went to talk to Sharon, my supervisor. She was shocked to hear that Elaine came off that way, her mission was to empower me to do better on Equipment Data stuff because Sharon feels that noone else has the ability to step up as ED Lead except for me. She said that she wanted to make clear an opportunity for me to shine in this case, and by no means was my performance in question. I felt a million times better after talking to her, she told me not to worry about it and just do my best to pick up the ED stuff so I can succeed when they need me to be ED Lead, which should officially happen soon.

It amazes me how two people can have the same goal but go about it completely differently. When Sharon was done, I felt like it was my duty to do better in order to fill a higher expectation. When Elaine was done, I felt like destroying her and everyone in the surrounding area. Luckily, I have insider information that says that Elaine won’t be my Project Manager for long. 🙂

Then maybe I can get off this three month emotional roller coaster that has become my job. Assholes.