Kick in the pants

I was driving home from Marble Falls tonight and my inner monologue cadence consisted of, “I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job.”

Today was a shitty day. It started off with me being stuck in a line of traffic for an hour while DOT workers moved a median on Hwy 71 just before Hwy 281. Then I get to work and everyone is complaining about everything and everyone.

My current work dilema is staff. Next week it’ll be customers. The following week it’ll be financials. After that it’ll be vendors. The worst is when it’s staff.

I recently had to come down on two employees for absenteeism. We’re a close knit organization and when someone isn’t at work, it puts a huge kink in the hose. The work ethic just isn’t there right now. One of my employees is bitter for reasons I’ll leave unmentioned.

The thing that pisses me off is that all of these issues (I’m leaving 90% of them out because I’m trying not to think about work any more that I have to just to finish this post) can be solved by themselves if they would just take some inititiative.

My most recent hire and I talked for a couple hours this evening. She mentioned her two sons. One is a “go-getter” and the other needs a kick in the pants from time to time. She said they went to counseling a long time ago. The counselor told her that you can’t teach initiative. That’s very true. I don’t know what it’s like to not have initiative.

When I recently interviewed people, I inherently weeded out the candidates who I felt would eventually need a kick in the pants. I’m not a micro manager. I want my staff to be autonomous, and for the most part, they are. But then there are weeks like this one where a spark turns into a fire. The fire can easily be put out with some initiative.

So my boss came into the office today. These recent issues were brought up with boss, yours truly and another employee. Most of what was said by other employee kind of made me look bad - like I haven’t been doing my job.

Other employee left and I said to boss, “Bossman, remember last year when I took on the role of manager?… We had the same problem this time last year with staff. Remember when I asked for your advice and what you told me?”

Last year he basically told me to not stress and that these issues usually resolve themselves. I’ve been biding my time and waiting for this to resolve itself. And it will eventually. That’s not to say that I’m turning a deaf ear to a problem, I’ve been down this road before and in this situation, I know what to do and what not to do.

The other issue is the absenteeism and lack of accountability. I’ve addressed this with certain staff and thought it was taken care of. Well, it’s not. Now bossman is going to talk to everyone tomorrow morning. I’m a little ill about it all because I think I’ve done a pretty good job managing the business and haven’t had to involve my boss in things other than financials. I just feel weird that he’s going to take time out of his day to have a staff meeting about staff… something that I should have taken care of.

So I’m stressed, pissed at myself and won’t sleep for shit tonight because I have a staff meeting at 8 a.m.