Nice No More

I've had enough.

I'm so sick of being nice.

I can no longer cope with the fact that the office support staff can take their 15 minute morning tea breaks, their full lunch hour and 15 minute afternoon tea breaks EVERY DAY, whilst I barely have time to blink my eyes for fear of losing one precious minute. I will no longer tolerate slack-arsed workers who think they're too busy if they can't check their hotmail account every 45 minutes. And "Can I do that later?" will no longer be an acceptable response.

That's right folks, I'm going to put my foot down. Starting Monday.

Actually, I've slowly started working my way to becoming assertive. Firm, but assertive.

Even Gary, the managing partner, has noticed a change in the last couple of days. When I was talking to Gary a couple of days ago, he briefly commented that lately, he has "noticed a certain air of confidence" about me. I didn't want to correct him, but the "air of confidence" is actually a shot of "I don't have time for 'no'. Just do what I say". Which is the attitude that I've started to adopt in the most recent of days.

For example, I told Delia to post a real estate agent's commission cheque to the agent's office via registered post at the beginning of the week. Surprise surprise - the cheque wasn't posted off until Thursday. Whilst I thought she had attended to the task, I received a rather nasty phone call from the agent asking where his commission cheque was. When I checked the file, I found out the truth, and I had to profusely apologize to the agent for what happened. The agent was extremely unhappy and wrote me a very rude fax outlining his inner-most hatred for the situation. (Note the use of the word "hatred" - you should've seriously heard the agent's sarcastic remarks whilst I was trying to explain what happened. He then ranted on for ten minutes about how he was going to have to explain why he wouldn't be able to pay his staff for another week).

Once I received the agent's fax, I put it on Delia's desk with the following note:

"This is what happens when you don't deal with cheques quickly."

Short and sweet. When I got back from lunch, the fax was on my desk with a new post-it note and the word "sorry" scribbled on the paper.

I marched straight up to Delia and told her that whenever I give her something to do with money, it must be done straight away. I explained that when it comes to money, people get "antsy".

I seriously didn't think she took it all in, until I gave her another agent's cheque to deliver that afternoon. In ten minutes, the cheque was sent off for delivery.

Actually, I'm quite surprised that Delia hasn't quit work yet. In my previous post, I expressed great concern over her ability to cope with her workload (ahem, workload?). Yet she is still working at the firm, and to my astonishment, she is actually trying harder to manage her tasks.

A fairy clap for Delia.

Hopefully the rest of the support staff will respond in the same way to my assertive-ness.

Only time will tell.