Thank you to everyone that has called or e-mailed me. Your kind words and encouragement mean more to me than I can express.
Today was not the best of days. I had to go clean out my desk and cubicle, and I had a few seconds of intense fear when I thought a dog was going to bite John and I. Fortunately, the dog was on a leash. The last dog I saw act like that had to be put to sleep after it attacked my sister-in-law. It was my brother's dog, and it had gone from being a cute, affectionate puppy, to being an attack dog a couple of years later, during the "dog days" of summer.
I was feeling melancholy as I went through my desk and filing cabinets, recalling when people had given me items, as I threw them into a box to take home. Several of those gifts were from people that were no longer with the company. It wasn't fun, ...taking down my name plate; throwing away 2 almost full boxes of business cards; seeing the cup of hot water for tea, now cold, that I had left on my desk on Thursday afternoon... It just felt strange, like I was throwing away part of my identity. I've had to catch myself as I used expressions such as "we", "us" and "our", when referring to things about my former place of employment.
What I had originally liked about working there was the "family-like" atmosphere. I remember sensing that even when I came in for the interview. People had worked there together for a long time, and sincerely seemed to care about each other, and yet they welcomed new employees and made them feel at home. There was occasional complaining or disruptiveness, but it was generally a good atmosphere. Somewhere I read a logo of the company that read something like, "big enough to deliver, but small enough to care..."
Unfortunately, things changed. Financial incentives to do your best work were taken away, people were layed off, other people left the company. People were on edge, and there was more grumbling and complaining. Some people were more concerned with themselves, and could care less about someone that sat around the corner from them. The "team spirit"/"family atmosphere" slowly started to die.
Injustices and unfairness became more common. Office politics and back-stabbing were prevailant. New employees were brought in at a lower pay rate, and weren't even introduced to anyone outside their department. A new face in the hallway could be a new employee, a vendor, a customer, or just a stranger. How would anyone know? A co-worker, who had been seriously ill, and out on disability, finally recovered, and was let go the day he returned. A couple of weeks after I came back to work after my car accident, a manager commented to me that he had not realized that I had been out of the office, let alone been in a serious car accident.
When you don't care about the people you work with, you don't care about the company you work for. This attitude is overwhelming, and spreads to even the most caring of people. It spreads throught your company, and now it spreads to your treatment of customers. You do not care about them, why should they care about you? You complain that your customers are leaving, but do they care?
Now, do you care?
Thanks for reading!
Ann Marie
