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smg01I didn't get my first job until I started college. The job I got--sometime mid to late summer before my freshman year--was in an academic department on campus. In some ways it was a fluke that I got it. I didn't have any experience, but I happened to walk in to fill out an application at a time when they desperately needed someone. I happened to be in the right place at the right time, so R took a chance and hired me. I don't think I would have been hired otherwise.
It was a good job. I loved working on campus. No night or weekend hours. A student friendly work environment. A nice staff overall. And R was a really, really good boss. I consider it a stroke of great good luck that I wound up with such a good boss my first time out. I grew into the job, and I think they grew to like me as an employee for the four years that I was there.
Along the way--I think it was my junior year--R decided to leave her position to be a stay at home mom for awhile with her young children. I was devastated. Not only did I like working for her, I considered her a friend and I missed seeing her at work. Plus she was really good and really well-respected in her job. The person who replaced her was someone who moved up in the office to take over the position. She wasn't the same. And she had different ways of doing things. And different ideas. She wasn't doing things right. Looking back, I'm afraid that I was pretty bratty for awhile.
I still saw R quite often because I babysat for her sometimes. If the kids were in bed when she got home, we would often have long, interesting conversations. I don't know if she sensed I was having trouble making the adjustment to a new boss (she was pretty intuitive) or if it was just happenstance, but one night the conversation moved in a direction where she talked about how happy she was to be where she was right then. That she had liked her job but that it was the right time for her to move on. That A had new insights and new ways of doing things and that it was time for that to happen in that position.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, she probably never knew it, but she did A a huge favor with that conversation. And did a huge favor to me too, and from time to time I come back to it. Essentially, she gave me permission to like A and to do what she wanted. (Or, you know, to suck it up and do my job.) I'm a lot older now. When I look back, I have a much better understanding for what was going on for me. I'm an extremely loyal person. I think that's a good thing. But taken too far, it can also be a roadblock. I realize now that when A wanted to do things differently, I was taking it as some sort of repudiation of R. And I was becoming offended on R's behalf. I was carrying the attitude that to do things differently was to say R was wrong about the way she did things. I was operating from a sense of overdeveloped loyalty.
That conversation with R is what put me on the road to figuring out that accepting--or even embracing--someone or something new isn't the same as rejecting what came before. It is possible to like/love/accept a new person or a new process and still have affection and respect for the old. I can be informed by the old ways. It is possible to look with nostalgia on the way things were. It is possible to look with thanks and love to the people who came before. And it is possible to do that while respecting and accepting the new things that have come along. This is not to say that all change is good. Sometimes it isn't. And sometimes new people just plain suck. And sometimes the "new" does need to be undone. But more often than not--at least in a healthy environment--there aren't massive agendas attached to change. Or there don't have to be. The difference between new and old isn't necessarily "better" or "worse" (in either direction). The difference is usually just, well, difference.
I think of this from time to time. In my own life when situations or people shift. Or even in fandoms when characters or other personnel leave and new ones come in, and sometimes camps are set up among fans on the side of oldbie or the newbie. Or when I watch people I know come to terms with or grapple with similar situations in their lives. I still have the instinctive loyalty to whatever or whomever first captured it and I have to fight the impulse to be suspicious of/reject the new stuff that comes along. But at least now I recognize those things in myself more often when it happens and I'm better at finding a way to come to terms with it and resolve it internally than I used to be.
R probably has no idea that 20 or so years ago I took such meaning from a late-night conversation. But I did and I'm grateful that I did. I think I'm a better person for it. Like I said, R was a good boss. :)
It was a good job. I loved working on campus. No night or weekend hours. A student friendly work environment. A nice staff overall. And R was a really, really good boss. I consider it a stroke of great good luck that I wound up with such a good boss my first time out. I grew into the job, and I think they grew to like me as an employee for the four years that I was there.
Along the way--I think it was my junior year--R decided to leave her position to be a stay at home mom for awhile with her young children. I was devastated. Not only did I like working for her, I considered her a friend and I missed seeing her at work. Plus she was really good and really well-respected in her job. The person who replaced her was someone who moved up in the office to take over the position. She wasn't the same. And she had different ways of doing things. And different ideas. She wasn't doing things right. Looking back, I'm afraid that I was pretty bratty for awhile.
I still saw R quite often because I babysat for her sometimes. If the kids were in bed when she got home, we would often have long, interesting conversations. I don't know if she sensed I was having trouble making the adjustment to a new boss (she was pretty intuitive) or if it was just happenstance, but one night the conversation moved in a direction where she talked about how happy she was to be where she was right then. That she had liked her job but that it was the right time for her to move on. That A had new insights and new ways of doing things and that it was time for that to happen in that position.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, she probably never knew it, but she did A a huge favor with that conversation. And did a huge favor to me too, and from time to time I come back to it. Essentially, she gave me permission to like A and to do what she wanted. (Or, you know, to suck it up and do my job.) I'm a lot older now. When I look back, I have a much better understanding for what was going on for me. I'm an extremely loyal person. I think that's a good thing. But taken too far, it can also be a roadblock. I realize now that when A wanted to do things differently, I was taking it as some sort of repudiation of R. And I was becoming offended on R's behalf. I was carrying the attitude that to do things differently was to say R was wrong about the way she did things. I was operating from a sense of overdeveloped loyalty.
That conversation with R is what put me on the road to figuring out that accepting--or even embracing--someone or something new isn't the same as rejecting what came before. It is possible to like/love/accept a new person or a new process and still have affection and respect for the old. I can be informed by the old ways. It is possible to look with nostalgia on the way things were. It is possible to look with thanks and love to the people who came before. And it is possible to do that while respecting and accepting the new things that have come along. This is not to say that all change is good. Sometimes it isn't. And sometimes new people just plain suck. And sometimes the "new" does need to be undone. But more often than not--at least in a healthy environment--there aren't massive agendas attached to change. Or there don't have to be. The difference between new and old isn't necessarily "better" or "worse" (in either direction). The difference is usually just, well, difference.
I think of this from time to time. In my own life when situations or people shift. Or even in fandoms when characters or other personnel leave and new ones come in, and sometimes camps are set up among fans on the side of oldbie or the newbie. Or when I watch people I know come to terms with or grapple with similar situations in their lives. I still have the instinctive loyalty to whatever or whomever first captured it and I have to fight the impulse to be suspicious of/reject the new stuff that comes along. But at least now I recognize those things in myself more often when it happens and I'm better at finding a way to come to terms with it and resolve it internally than I used to be.
R probably has no idea that 20 or so years ago I took such meaning from a late-night conversation. But I did and I'm grateful that I did. I think I'm a better person for it. Like I said, R was a good boss. :)
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Date: 2007-02-28 08:58 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing!
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Date: 2007-02-28 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 10:59 pm (UTC)It's hard to get a new boss, and it's hard to be the new boss. Some new bosses never figure out how to negotiate those waters. Or they don't want to figure it out. It kind of feels like that's the situation that you're in. Which is a pretty stinky one. You have my sympathy.