How Things Get Done

As mentioned, our Supply Chain Director jumped on me over an email sent by our headquarters on a global audit project. My boss had appointed me the project coordinator for AP, and my job was to help ensure that the audit was being carried out for all countries in the region, and to compile country updates and send them to global.

Well, I had a meeting with the key 3 markets in AP (as they were the only one listed in the template sent over by global) and obtained all their updates, including their requests from global for assistance in issues arising out of the audit, and for more guidelines. I communicated that over to our HQ, and received the guidelines some time later.

For some reason, the person in charge of the global audit decided to send a summary update on the status of completion of the audit in each country. However, they only included countries in Latin and North America. And the information had been compiled by the Public Affairs Business Unit for our Business Unit in those countries.

I have no idea why she did not include in her summary other regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific. She obviously has her updates from AP already. However, unbenownst to her, the email she sent got my Supply Chain director jumping on me - in a nutshell, he was asking me if I had done my job. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had personally checked with me first. What he did was to write directly to my boss, copying me in the email. In it, he asked my boss why regions like Europe, Pan Asia and Asia Pacific weren't included in the update sent. It wasn't my boss' job to know that, and she would not have access to that information. Then in the next line, he directed his question to me with "I assume you are coordinating this?". He obviously knew that I was. I had been receiving emails from him if I had been doing my job on this every week since he knew that the Vice President of our company was visiting the region for a launch related to the audit. I wonder if he was aware of the fact that my boss had a personal health issue for which she had taken medical and personal leave until the 2nd week of February. She had requested that no email messages be sent to her unless absolutely on a must-know basis. I didn't feel this warranted a must-know for her part.

Funny how no one cared about the audit at all until when the President decides to visit us for a related issue. Funny also how otherwise calm, sane and reasonable human beings suddenly turn into nasty ogres out to make sure that they have got their backs covered. Of course, it could be that I am taking this the wrong way.

Luck is Relative

So it was one of the worst days I have ever had in the office. The primary trigger for the bad day was of course the discovery that Prima Donna would be mucking through my personal work performance profile, AND discussing it with a group of my bosses' peers which was utterly humiliating. My boss had done me the favour of handing my dirt to the enemy who has now been magically given the power to decide my fate in the company.

In addition, I had problems with a vendor with creative tantrums, and claimed that because I had been unable to meet the timeline which they had drawn for me, they were ending the project and pronounced it finished even though I had not approved on any of the copy at all. To make matters worse, procurement had mistakenly paid them the sum of the entire project so I was without negotiation power.

Throw in the email from our Supply Chain Director who literally jumped on me for a global audit project for which I was in charge of coordinating for AP. More of this in the next entry.

Then have disgruntled colleagues who start panicking that they have missed my deadline for them by over 2 months and start demanding updates from me on the status of the project, forgetting that I had already updated him 2 months ago and even given him the materials I needed him to work on. As he couldn't find them, it automatically became my fault that he didn't have it, and that he had missed the deadline for the project.

At this point in time, my job is like a hot potato that's roasting in my hand that I'm dying to drop off. I thought this was the worse run of bad luck that I have been having this week.

Then I meet up with a friend to resume our regular gym sessions. We went for dinner after our workout and she received a phone call on the way to the coffee shop. She was visibly upset after and told me that she had a friend who discovered that she had leukaemia immediately after she had given birth to her first born. This friend of hers had just lost her dad to cancer. For a while, the friend underwent chemotherapy and seemed to have become better and even got a bone marrow tranplant from her sister. However, the phone call was to inform her that her friend's body was rejecting the bone marrow, and that her white blood cells was down to an all time low count of 0.1. To make things worse, her friend's son had somehow contracted hand, foot and mouth disease. And now her husband was down with flu, and there was no one to take care of her boy.

Luck is so relative isn't it? I thought I was having the worst luck of all this week. But compared with what this woman is going through, I'm considered blessed. Of course, if I were to compare myself with Prima Donna, I might seem cursed. The conclusion of the day? Shit happens, and life is unfair. But everyone still has their course to run. Its not really how bad a life you have, but how you choose to live it that makes it worth your while, or not.

Weird Twist of Fate

Our company employees have recently undergone our annual performance review. That includes me, of course. After the review with our bosses, they will then have a meeting where all employees on the same grade scale will be compared with their peers, and a performance score will be given to each employee based on bosses' recommendation of who should be deserving of a 1 (the top performing employee) to 3 (employees who have completely failed to complete all their designated tasks).

Well, today was that meeting for discussing group of employees of my employee grade level. Typically, my boss would be representing me, highlighting my achievements and tasks to compare with my peers, and recommend me for the grade score that I deserved. By a strange twist of fate, she is on medical leave from yesterday to 7 Feb, and has asked the person who has her delegation of authority to attend the meeting on her behalf, and to represent me. Usually, it would be our group operations manager. For some mind-boggling reason, she decided to delegate that task to none other than our company Prima Donna. It is too humiliating to think of her going through the list of my personal achievements and tasks, dragging out delayed timelimes and snickering over comments from my colleagues in areas of room for improvement. I can certainly imagine what satisfaction of sweet revenge she would have savoured this morning.

I never really understood the saying "the straw that broke the camel's back" as a straw seems too puny, and an exaggeration. I finally understood today the might of that straw.