Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: work

  • 34 years later, email still uses most of my screen time

    WRITING PROMPT: What app uses most of your screen time, and do you feel bad about it?

    I was 24 — in 1992 — the first time I ever saw email.

    I was working as a teller at a local national bank branch, and one day they installed email on our branch’s shared computer. It was pretty mystical, really. Suddenly, you could go into a black dos based screen, type in someone’s email address, send them that email, and they’d receive it. We didn’t have to send a memo versus interoffice mail, or call the person on the phone, we could quickly type up something, hit send, know that they’d receive it instantly and when they could they could get back to us. It was pretty surreal, actually. Almost magical.

    Very few of us actually needed to send emails, but one day I thought it would be fun to email the CEO of our 50,000 employee company. So I searched and found his email address, then typed a polite email along the lines of, “Hi, I recently graduated college, I’m an employee at one of the bank’s branches, I really enjoy working here and I really love the email access we’ve been given.” I remember word spreading around my six colleagues and they gathered around and watched as I finished the email then hit “Send.” Whoosh.

    Maybe because my dad’s career was always fast tracked and at the time he was an executive at a Fortune 500 company, but I wasn’t intimidated at all by this endeavor. I was on employee at the company, he was in charge of the company, why wouldn’t he want to hear how much I appreciated working for the bank and the email he’d probably authorized? Still, people were amazed (or maybe stupefied) that I’d sent that off, and for the next few hours people would ask, “Did you get a response?”

    Then a response came in. He replied that he appreciated hearing from me, that he appreciated that I chose that bank as my first after-college job, and what were the long term ambitions for my career because maybe he could introduce me to that department? It was a minor celebration among all of us that I’d gotten an encouraging response.

    Except our Branch Manager From Hell didn’t see it that way. Not one bit. I was young at the time, so didn’t quite realize that there were some good bosses, a lot of less-than-stellar bosses, and a handful of spectacularly toxic bosses in this world. 34 years later, I can honestly say she was one of the latter. She was spectacularly bad on morale (for too many reasons to list here). And when word trickled through the branch that I’d received a response from the CEO, she marched up to the front of the branch and asked to speak with me. To make a long story short, she was irritated that I’d sent an email to the CEO. She felt like it reflected poorly on her branch because it showed that maybe we had too much time on our hands, that it was a misuse of company resources, that I’d gone around the chain of command (which wasn’t my intention), and that it was borderline insubordinate. I was instructed to delete the CEO’s email with no response, had a formal notice of unsatisfactory deposited in my HR Records, and was suspended from unsupervised computer usage for 30 days. This might seem like an extreme response, and it was; maybe her only justification was at the time email was still so new people were trying to figure it out and perhaps to her it was a little too much like witchcraft so reacted in kind?

    I learned something from that experience.

    I learned that most people are innately fearful of superiors who are many rungs up on the ladder, and that to be unafraid (confident) around them is actually a potential career booster. I learned that there are a million different unsuspecting ways to trigger a terrible leader. And that email was actually a pretty powerful and awesome real-time tool.

    Over the next 15 years I would use email extensively. To reach out to friends, negotiate contracts, and even to expand my network. I loved that email was instant, that I could put details in emails that most people will read, and just found it to be an amazing communication tool that was actually superior to phone call, meeting or (later) text.

    At a glance, I would say I use other applications more frequently than email. But if I drill down into it that’s not really true for me. I still spend an hour each morning scrolling through my email, reading through the day’s news (including great newsletters by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Morning Brew, Apple News and The Seattle Times). And I still use it to send and receive detailed responses from people I need to have detailed interactions with.

    So I remember that first time using email in 1992. And how magical it seemed to be. And 34 years later I can still say it’s the application I use most and I have no regrets about using it.

  • The Beauty Of Sunday Work

    We worked yesterday, on a Sunday. Because Larissa and I are real estate agents and working on a Sunday is just part of the job. Which honestly makes me grateful.

    I’m thinking of 2019. I was working on a $4 million opportunity for my company, and on the Wednesday before Easter Sunday I got a call from the Executive Sponsor. They’d decided to go with us, he told me, but before they signed the deal the CEO wanted to meet with our CEO. Could our team (including my boss and CEO) meet with the CEO’s team (including the entire Executive team) in two weeks? Of course we could!

    But here’s the problem. Here we were, on the cusp on a $4 million contract that would make my boss’s team numbers for the year, and he was just so afraid that what was technically a formality (CEO handshakes) would somehow go awry. So he insisted we work over the weekend preparing.

    So Easter weekend that year was spent working on a lengthy word document that we could give to our CEO. Among all the standard details about the opportunity and the company, the document included long profile descriptions (including links) for every executive who may attend the meeting. Want to know where they went to college? Where else they worked at? What hobbies they partake in? Their spouse’s background? It was aaaaaalllllll there. It took hours and hours to put this document together, and that was before we started formatting it, which my boss was obsessive compulsive about in the best of times.

    Oh my gawd.

    It was so frustrating, so maddening, such a waste, to work that Sunday. And I had no control over it since I knew to refuse would probably cost me my job since that was the type of company it was. Of course we won the opportunity, but it had nothing to do at all with that document or its formatting or its creepy detail that we invested an entire weekend in compiling or even with the work of my CEO who was actually painstakingly and shockingly quiet and awkward in that CEO handshake meeting.

    That memory created some pain for me for a long time for reasons that go beyond Sunday work.

    But yesterday was different. Yesterday — and working yesterday — was in a strange way redemption seven years later.  Because yesterday I felt sooooo grateful looking back on that frustrating Sunday in 2019. Because the work I was doing was important for our client(s), who were regular people, and more importantly the work was essential and I was doing it not because of a micromanaging detail-obsessed-on-a-pathological-level boss but instead because I myself was choosing to do it. And there is beauty and tremendous satisfaction when we work 100% by choice.

    So yesterday was Sunday. Much of America was off, especially in lieu that it was a holiday weekend. But Larissa and I worked. And I didn’t mind at all and fact it helped me come to peace (redeem) that weekend in 2019 because I realized how much of a better place I’m in today.

  • If I Want To Live Forever, I Need Only Attend Corporate Presentations From Hell

    What bores you?

    There is the saying that only boring people are bored. But is that true?

    I’ve found in life that I’m rarely bored when left to my own devices. There is sooooooo much to do in life!!!! So many books to read, magazines to peruse, films to watch, exercises to do, hikes to take, places to explore. If I lived a thousand years, I couldn’t begin to cross everything off my list that I’d like to do. So for me, the problem isn’t boredom but sometimes of feeling overwhelmed.

    For me, the only time I feel bored is when I’m trapped. When I was a kid, that meant sitting in class with teachers who dictated what we had to do, or sitting in a class (e.g. shop class) where I had no interest. As an adult, it’s corporate mandated trainings and meetings. Life is an ETERNITY when I sit in these meetings. I feel so bored. So trapped. I feel like if I want to live forever, I should just spend every day in a Corporate Presentation. But who wants to live forever in that way? That’s like an eternity in hell.

    Have I ever left a corporate presentation Zoom call or a training or a meeting where I thought, that was worth my time? Not that I can think of. But I do feel like time has slowed down and that the day was 10 years long.

    So I’m rarely bored when left to my own devices. It’s when I’m forced to waste my time in meetings where I feel trapped and bored. If I want to live forever, I’ll just spend the rest of my life going to corporate meetings.

  • My Struggle With The Balancing Act As Social Media (AKA A Natural Goofball Trying To Reign It In)

    I’m a bit of a goofball by nature.

    It’s largely genetic.

    My dad (who is long retired and nearing 80) is by nature a clown. Although he wore a tie and reigned in his goofy behavior during the work day, as a kid he was voted “Class Clown” and as an adult at night he became a natural ham.

    For me, he was the dad who at a crowded restaurant stepped up to the front desk and pretended he was the snobby host, much to the laughter of the crowd when they learned he was just a patron like the rest of us. He was the Huskies fan who mowed a big “UW” into Cougars-loving neighbor’s lawn to the laughing delight of all the other neighbors. People love him and his antics. But at work he was someone else. I first witnessed this when I joined him for lunch at work 30 years ago, when he seemed very serious and people called him “Mr. Mathison.” I had never seen that side of my dad before.

    Time was in my 30s and into my 40s I tried to reign in my own goof behavior. But I find it increasingly hard in this era of social media and the ability to post words anywhere and everywhere. One where as agents or professionals we’re encouraged to post often to build a platform.

    For example:

    • Last week, I wanted to post a video of using children’s clip clops to navigate between houses to keep my shoes dry during a rainy day.
    • I wanted to post a mock video of ways to help our children cheat on tests better, saying this was the real way of helping them get ahead in 21st Century Corporate America.
    • I wanted to post an AI-generated video of a superhero real estate agent (me) saving a tree from crushing a client’s house, not unlike the infamous Vern Fonk videos.

    Of course, a calmer head and my wife (and real estate partner) stopped me. “Would you want a goofball negotiating for you?” My wife asked. But it’s hard.

    I’m in some training the past couple of weeks. “Social media, social media, social media,” we’re told. But I don’t want to do social media to self-proclaim how amazing I am. Or to add yet more seriousness to the world.

    I want to be spontaneously me. And genuine. And for me, what is genuinely normal is being a good at what I do but also being a total goofball who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Because work is work, but social media takes itself too seriously. There are too many pundits and influencers out there who proclaim they are The Stuff.

    Me? I want to do the social media thing as a sign of respect to my trainers. But I want to do it my way, much to the chagrin of my respectable wife (she wisely asks, would you want someone who is goofy on social media negotiating for you?). In the end, I guess I’ll choose to do it more anonymously (here). And not so much in a professional forum.

    In other words, I’ll try my best to be serious with a tie on (figuratively speaking) who then mows a giant UW into the neighbor’s lawn at night.