It's good to be nice

I have been told that I am a nice person. You hear the old adage that nice folks always finish last. There are times when I feel like that's the case, especially when people on my team cannot handle their workload and I end up having to do their work. It is completely unfair.

However, there are moments when folks surprise me. I had several of those on Monday.

To backtrack, an extraordinary event took place. In the past, I could never get any of my co-op students to get proper access to do their timesheets electronically. It would take weeks, simply because those people at work who are responsible to give proper access privileges to new co-op students drop the ball.

Guess what? I managed to get both students to complete their timesheets by Wednesday. Yep, the had access less than three days into their stay with the company.

My manager came up to me, oddly, on Friday the 13th, while I was cutting birthday cake to celebrate special days for a couple of colleagues, including one of my students.

"What did you do to give them access?" he asked me.
"I contacted the Finance department and submitted a request to fix their workcentre code," I replied.
"I was surprised that they had completed their timesheets for this week," he replied.
"You shouldn't be. I finished my timesheet on Monday. You know that they will complete theirs early, too."

It's true. Every student that I have had so far has never been late submitting their timesheet.

On Monday morning, I had a busy start. I had to talk to the contractor, get RAM installed for my laptop, and complete various requests. I managed to talk to both co-op students, to tell them that we'd meet in ten minutes. I then stopped by my manager's desk to ask whether he got RAM installed for his laptop. He did.

"I got you these," he replied, handing over a large bag of shelled, dry-roasted peanuts.
"Awesome! Thanks so much. You made my day," I replied, which was true.
"You're welcome. They come like that, without any labelling, which should not be the case," he replied.
"Well, thanks for the contraband peanuts. I will enjoy them," I replied.

Then, my students surprised me when it came to how quickly they pick up concepts.

The contractor had edited a couple of guides in the past. One had a couple of issues, which were pointed out to her by another writer over a month ago. I tasked her to fix them, which would have been a fairly quick update. She never got around to it, so I decided to offload it to the co-op students.

The update involved fixing a missed letter in a word, adding the chapter number and date, converting the Word document to a PDF, uploading the document to a network drive, and creating a new documentation build.

I showed them what steps they needed to do. One of the writers followed along and actually completed the task as I showed her. I was impressed. I told her so.

The other one managed to update our helpful how-to instructions on fixing timesheet issues. Again, I was impressed.

I have forgotten how wonderful it is to work with bright students who absorb information fast and are eager to work. It's a nice change.