Category: The roaming admin

Made my 1st online sale

I made my first sale on poshmark yesterday and I was very excited, no I am not endorsing poshmark and I will not be retiring any time soon. The reason I am excited is that I’m finally moving extra clothes I do not need or have ever used out of my house, decluttering and making a couple of bucks in the process.

Cleaning your closet is an emotional process, at least for me.  It is the process of learning to let go and actually letting go. I have clothes in sizes that will not fit me again any time soon. I kept telling myself that I will use them in the future once I lose some weight , but in reality I was afraid to admit that my body has changed and that is ok.And in reality when and if I will need smaller size clothes I can always buy more.

The other items  I am letting go off are all the great deals I got during the pandemic and boy there were really good deals, such good deals that they were never worn and still have tags on them. Shopping online was very dangerous back then, we got constant deals and free stuff. The 

the only problem with all the good deals was that I did not need them. Like many of us I worked remote and meetings were on zoom and there was no real need for dresses, dress pants or blouses. But like other people I justified it with “ I will use it when we get back to the office” , I was over optimistic. I have yet to use 80% of the items I bought and now I am sending them on a journey to a better home and in the process making enough money for a sushi dinner.

When you had enough

I quit my previous job after almost five years many years ago.  I quit without notice and I did not even  give my employer at the time the courtesy of two week’s notice. I was burned out, working in a toxic workplace that had me having PTSD every text message I received from the owner. I saw the owner and his wife several weeks after I quit and had such a big panic attack and that just proved to me how terrible this workplace was.I liked my work, it was fun and challenging. I didn’t like the owner, his ethics and his work practices and definitely did not like the fact that his personal life with ex wife and second wife kept spilling to the workplace and got me stuck in between quite frequently. But as I returned to the workforce after many years as a stay at home mom, my choices were limited and I needed work experience on my resume. Employers looked at my volunteer experience and said great and ignored it.Me quitting without notice was way before the great resignation of the last two years, some employers and workplaces were toxic even before. There have been many articles lately about how you need to quit “nicely”, give your employer transition time and maybe get a good reference from them as well. But reality for some of us might be different. Some workplaces are so hard to endure that the daily panic attacks and the anxiety are not worth it. And at the end of the day we all need to do what we need to do to survive and keep our sanity. I do not regret quitting, I did leave everything for my employer organized and made sure that they will be able to continue functioning, not because he was worth it but because my internal justice mechanism would not let me do it otherwise. So recommendations are great on how to leave a workplace but there are so many reasons why we leave, and in some instances we have to put ourselves first. 

My Emogi Stone

In July 1799 Napoleon’s army found the Rosetta stone and ever since then hieroglyphs have been interpreted and understood. This was a great moment in history for the human kind and as someone could finally interpret the hieroglyphs in Egypt.

And then in the 2000 we had another monumental discovery, emojis. Ever since then humanity went back and humans started conversing again in pictures, apparently the cave man had it right. I recently received a text from a prospective client of mine on my work phone in response to something I texted them. Instead of a real conversation I received a text back with 5 faces with tears, 10 praying hands and 3 hearts. Mind you, this prospective client is an adult and this was a business text. We have never met each other. As I am  an adult who only uses emojis in texts with immediate family and friends, I was a little dumbfounded as I had no clue on how I am supposed to respond to this. 

What happened to business writing or texting? A couple of years ago I took a great class through Coursera on Business writing, professional texting etiquette was not part of the course. Neither was interpreting emojis part of the course. I am aware I am a little older and don’t use emojis that often and I do use real words and sentences so I am not always sure what the interpretations for emojis are. I am debating creating an  “ Emogi Stone” to help people interpret what other people are texting us or to make sure we are not texting something weird to others.

However, in my own personal humble opinion, there is no room for emojis in business emails and texts unless you work for a software company that creates emojis as part of their business. It seems like we regressed back a couple of hundred of years. So in your personal life go ahead, and if you really feel inclined to send me a business text, please   📧 🔠🙏

Jumping in puddles

 

There is something fun about  jumping in rain puddles, unexplainable it’s just fun. You see kids doing it all the time, jumping and splashing all around. Just pure fun. As adults, we don’t do this so much. I in fact hate to get my feet and socks wet so I used to avoid puddles like crazy.

Technically living in southern california kinda helped, rain is not really big here and we have had a drought for the last several years.  But not this year, we had rain and rain and more rain. It’s March 22nd and we still have more heavy rains coming. We had so much rain this year that we surpassed Seattle.

Many years and a dog ago I bought rain boots at Costco, black rain boots with colorful polka dots on them. I didn’t get to use them much because rain is not really big here. Last winter I didn’t get to wear them even once. I broke my foot, courtesy of my dog. Not only did I not get to wear my rain boots, I hardly got to wear any real shoes. When I got these boots my husband thought I was crazy, my kids might have thought I was crazy even the dog might have thought so and yet I still wore them to walk the dog and I was happy.

We went on a trip to Japan this past November and the weather was mostly great except for one day. We had a tour at an old style village called  Shirakawa-a and it rained non stop, we got completely soaked including our feet, socks and shoes. The tour bus had nice warmers underneath the seats so we could dry our feet. And even though we got wet, it was fun and we used a hair dryer to dry out the shoes later when we got back to the hotel. This experience reminded me that it’s not so bad to get your feet wet although it would have been better if I had waterproof boots.

These days in the rain I walk in the puddles and have lots of joy when I do it. I am not worried about getting my socks wet when the dog keeps looking for a spot on the wet grass to do her business and when we walk on the sidewalk I don’t shy away from those rainy muddy water puddles.  

My take from this is we can always find joy in simple actions like jumping in puddles  but the other take is that it’s easier, less stressful and funner  to do things when you are simply  prepared or when you have your polka dot rain boots on!

The true judgment of character is how we treat other human beings.

I partially work in a front facing customer support job. Every once in a while we have that one customer that we all scratch our heads and do not believe they are real. We are a multicultural workplace, we are all multilingual and most of us speak more than 3 languages, so we are all fluent in ,most of the bad worse used.

We had a customer who we  could not assist with their request. We explained why and even spoke to the customer’s husband on the phone explaining everything. The husband was polite and understood where we were coming from. The wife was a different case, in the presence of her son she started cursing the office in her native language, which most of us understand and described us as having the oldest profession on earth. The words she used were very crude and yes, she thought we did not understand her  and we continued to smile politely while enduring all the insults. 

What did this customer get out of this, absolutely nothing. Besides venting her frustration in a very extremely poor manner, he taught her child that it is ok to abuse and mistreat customer service people, definitely taught him a word or two that he did not need to learn at his age. Did she achieve anything, nothing at all. We all remember her now and like any business we have the right to refuse service.

The big picture is why do people treat customer service in this way? When has rude and crude behavior become the acceptable norm.We have noticed more mistreatment especially after the pandemic. People have become more impatient, rude and expect everyone to answer them asap if  you can not.  I was always taught that if you treat people nicely you will be treated nicely back, the old saying – you get more flies with honey, still stands true in my opinion. And just because you treat a server, cashier or anyone else in a rude manner does not make you better than them. There is no justification for rude behavior and being an asshole

The true judgment of character is how we treat other human beings.

When unprepared for class – regressing back to high school.

I woke up early today for my 7am zoom class, I was very tired. I got home from work the night before at 9:30pm and after walking the dog and decompressing I ended up going to sleep pretty late. And yet, when the alarm rang this morning I crawled out of bed and made myself a strong cup of coffee and logged into my class. Up to now all sounds good, except when I logged in I realized I forgot to submit my homework. Me, the mom who always yelled at my kids when they forgot to submit their homework , actually forgot her homework.

My fight or flight response kicked in and  I felt back in school. In one  moment I regressed back  40 years to a 15 years old me,  waiting for my parents to be called because I didn’t do my homework, except that I was a nerd and always did my homework so this was worse. 

Many times I can talk myself out of situations, but when it’s a language class and you’re a beginner it is not that easy. After my first freak out moment, I calmed down. I remembered that this class is with all adults who do have work and other commitments and is full of curious people who are taking the class to enrich their lives and not from a need to gain a grade, certificate or advancement in the workplace.  Did I like joining class feeling unprepared? Nope, definitely not. But I can guarantee that I will not forget to do my homework again, at least not for this class. I will start on my homework at some point today or tomorrow and will even submit.

What I found amusing is that even as an adult when you are not prepared you regress back to your highschool self, being called to the board and having no answer. Luckily I can also laugh about this and make fun of myself. 

Next I am going to review the quadratic equation in case I am ever asked, no, not really!

Resenteeism or hating your job

Read an article  this weekend about work resenteeism as in resenting our work, I started laughing, apparently I love humor columns. They coined this as a new term and a new  danger to the work environment.  However, some of us have resented or hated our jobs for many years without having a great term to define it, we just called it hating our jobs. That’s why you see so many people going drinking after work in TV shows or in the movies, at least in my opinion. I on the other hand do not drink at all, maybe I like my job, maybe not.

According to the latest articles there are several reasons for resenteeism, being underpaid, overworked, feeling like you missed the boat on getting a different job with all the layoffs going around, not feeling appreciated and undervalued by your company. These are all valid reasons that have been around forever and will most likely be around forever. However for most of us, we don’t always need to find a reason why we hate our jobs and yet stay at the job we hate. Most of us stay in our jobs because we are responsible, we have family obligations, we need to  put food on the table,  we have kids in college, a mortgage and the need for health insurance. Maybe we should all  start drinking.

Finding time for taking time off

It is very easy to delay time off and  vacations, telling yourself you are very busy right now and postpone fun activities. God knows I have found many excuses before – I have deadlines at work, this is not the right time, it’s the end of the quarter or year and many more excuses. But when is the right time really? It seems like when we become adults with full time jobs there  is never really a right time to take  a vacation or sometimes even just a day or two off.

I know some people with unlimited PTO and  from what I hear these unlimited PTO people take the least time off. I have a limited amount of time off, it is not small at all but still limited and I get to transfer only a small amount of vacation days to the next calendar year.

Time off is important, we all need it. We need time to refresh, clear our heads and do things outside of our professional life for ourselves and our families. Weekend breaks are really not enough, at least not for me. 

Although my time off is limited to specific times during the year, times that are not flexible and do not always allow me to get the best rates for travel, I still choose to take my vacation days and have some fun. I even stopped taking my laptop with me as I learned to let go and trust my team to cover for me (this was a big issue for me as a recovering workaholic).

Something happened in the last couple of years that made clear what my priorities should be: family,  friends , health and time off for fun. Health I can’t really control but everything else I can.

I can not only make sure I take care of myself but take care of my work team as well.

And since no time off makes employees burn out, it is very important for us as not only to take care of ourselves but as leaders and managers to make sure our team gets time off as well.

I read somewhere that employees don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. Not sure how true that is for everyone who quits, but having managers that truly care about their employees’ life balance , happiness and yes, their time off is, should be part of managing a great team.

Being Rude to Customer Service People

There is an expression that goes something along the lines of – you get more flies with honey than vinegar. I am in the customer service business and about a quarter of my time I am customer facing. I  am always very surprised when people start yelling or are rude to us in the customer service industry.

It seems that it even got worse after the stay at home orders were lifted. People come in and immediately are rude and disrespectful. Yelling, raising their tones and thinking that will get them a better deal, a discount or just better service. Truthfully, I never understood that point of view.

You are supposed to treat people nicely, from my own experience, if you are nice you will be treated nicely back.  And from my point of view, if you are nasty to me there is no way on earth I will go above and beyond to help you no matter how big a bully you are. I had a customer come in yesterday and they requested something that does not exist anymore, we tried to explain that it does not exist anymore and we got yelled at, her tone was raised and she became more and more loud. Other customers in the office were looking at her as she continued to yell .

What this customer forgot besides that being an ass hole does not really make people want to help you  was that some of us live in the same community we work at, that means you will see me at Target, Costco and Pilates class. There is also a chance that you or your spouse work in something related to what my spouse is doing or to one of my many connections.

People think that just because some of us work in customer service we are uneducated, not connected and not worth being treated politely and thus show their true color. Those who I work with all have masters degrees and chose our industry for various reasons, they are all very smart and educated but even if they were not being rude to them is still no excuse.

Now, when I encounter these ass holes around town, I always look at them directly and smile. It is nice to see how uncomfortable they are once they realize who I am , but it would have been better if they actually behaved like nice human beings in the first place.

The going back to work positivity

I really enjoyed my last two weeks off work, it was nice not to return emails or answer phone calls, no meetings, training sessions or work to do lists. I thought I would be bored but I wasn’t. 

I read a couple of books, binged shows on Netflix, and had meals with friends. 

But even though this was a great mental break for me, I am still happy to go back to the office today , not because I miss the work but because I miss the people I work with. I miss my team!

I have a great team. Some unfortunate weeks  we spend more time together at the office than with our families at home, so naturally we are close to each other.

Most of us are immigrants and have shared experiences as strangers in a strange land (yes, I love the book), moving to the USA  without our families and reinventing ourselves in a foreign country. We make sure we all have breaks, make sure that the workaholics among us stop to eat and cover for each other when an emergency happens. So yes, your work is not your family but there is something different about a group that really cares about each other. And no, we are not all women, we are a mix of men, women, younger and older who come from different backgrounds and are in different stages of family lives and careers.

Not everyone has this experience with their work colleagues, I believe I am quite lucky. I worked with teams and bosses before that were just terrible and Sunday night was filled with agony about going back to work on Monday. The question is why is this team different?

It is different because our supervisor built this team from scratch and when she chose team members  added people that are positive and can contribute to the team.  She surrounded herself with team players who are good at what they do and there was no fear of overshadowing herself. This  leadership played an excellent role in building a great team that most of us are happy to be part of. 

So yes, I am happy to go to work today and see my team.