My intern and training a new colleague

My intern's work term ends in 1.5 weeks. She has been great helping me with recording training videos as I update my training slides. I let her know that I appreciated her help. I'm glad that I did.

In a few hours, I am training a new member of our team. I am ready. It will be different, but everything I seem to do is different!

Last workday before going on my vacation

Today is my last workday before I take some much needed time off. I'm ready to take a break.

This vacation will be interesting. For years, I didn't have a backup. Well, we instituted a backup plan at work this year.

My backup is on vacation. My second backup is the diva. What goes around, comes around.

For years, she has had the tendency to take vacation during the height of craziness at work. She once took two weeks off and left our team to pick up the slack before a major software release. She can no longer do that. She has taken over many of my duties and I feel that she finally appreciates just how much work I did and do.

My manager is also taking the same week off. I usually back him up. Instead, it's diva who will.

I'm glad that I don't have to witness how things will go with diva handling all this extra work. We'll see.

For my regular work, I'm good and don't need her to take over. I just want her to back me up for pressing issues. Here's hoping that it's quiet for everyone's sake.

Appreciation and respect at work

For years, I successfully handled completed every software release containing documentation. As of a few months ago, this main task was handed off to two of my counterparts.

During this entire period, I felt that folks on my team took my work for granted. I wasn't losing my mind. They did.

The woman who has been doing half my role finally realized that I do a lot of work. I had invited her to a meeting on what to do after a release is over. She decided to waltz into this meeting 1.5 hours later.

It just shows that when folks aren't responsible for a task, they don't care. When they are, it matters and they panic when they don't have the answers.

It's happening now.

With my manager,  he makes me the representative for everything. I had a good talk about this issue again this past Tuesday. It needs to be spread around the team. If I'm not available, the knowledge is likely lost when I do not have a backup.

Folks are listening. In a team meeting on Thursday, this woman thanked me for always being there for her when she has questions and I quickly reply. She called me a "data bank," which is a fun nickname.

My manager decided to nominate someone else to represent our team for development work. He said that normally, it would go to me, but he said that I am pretty busy. You think?

My manager also said that for the last seven years, I have been handling all these release activities "quietly and flawlessly." I complete my work. I communicate well. I don't complain, other than when things are completely stressing me out and I need help, or when someone is holding up the process.

Progress is good. It's important to vocalize how you feel. It is also noticeable how valuable you are as an employee when you no longer do a specific task and your manager worries about the folks (yep, plural) who are taking it over.

Happy 2020!

Happy new year! Here's hoping that 2020 will be healthy, joyous, and wondrous for you.

Thanks for your support, especially in 2019 when things were rough for me. It means a lot!

Meeting new employees over lunch and finding out that I am appreciated

While I was away on vacation, we had three new employees joining our team. I am typically the one who trains anyone new who joins our team. For the last couple of waves of new hires, one of my co-op students has been doing it.

It's nice to get some of this work off my plate. It's reduces my workload and stress. My co-op student realized the first time that she did training that it requires a lot of water and admitted that she doesn't know how I can talk so much!

Getting back to the three new employees, I hadn't officially welcomed them to the team. I did it through an e-mail before I left for my vacation. I didn't feel too bad, though. After all, I had interviewed all three of them.

On Friday, I got to sit down and have lunch with them, as well as a few other colleagues. Our team has a weekly lunch on Friday. No one is obligated to go, but I then to go because I like food and don't want to pack a lunch that day. It was great catching up with them over a leisurely meal.

While I was away, my manager took over working with my three students. It's funny, but one of them told me that my manager admitted to them that I do more work than he realized and that he was appreciative. Perhaps I should go on vacation for extended periods and make my manager even more appreciative of what I do!

Gifts and appreciation

I like my co-op students. I have three of them for this workterm, which is a record number for me.

On Monday, I met with them and gave them small gifts from my Shanghai travels. I tried to get a couple of items that were made or from China. We joke fairly often that most materialistic items come from this country. However, I truly was looking for items that they would like from China.

I got them each a bag of loose leaf jasmine tea. From China? Check. It's fragrant and helps reduce stress, among other things.

My other gift sounds odd. I found the Hershey's Store in Shanghai. I got milk chocolate in the shape of small balls. They were housed in a beautiful Hello Kitty tin with no English on it. You had a mountain behind Hello Kitty with Chinese characters on the tin. Perfect!

On Thursday, they mentioned how yummy the chocolate was and how much they appreciated the gifts that I had given them. They didn't see it coming, which is the best type of gift that I enjoy dishing out.