Showing posts with label IKFI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IKFI. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

My "Career" ~ Part 7 ~ Another New Boss?


I will readily admit that I liked having my boss 1,594 miles away.

It's not that we ever tried to hide anything, or misrepresented anything that we were doing.  It was just freeing to not have a boss sitting with his spyglass trained on me every waking hour of the day.

Peter was young (the first boss I ever had who was younger than me), and earnest.  I will give him his due (and later, I will give him his what-for; but that's another discussion).  He was a good boss.

Peter was all about incentivizing people.  That was important, in our biz.  Our people didn't get paid a lot, and the work was tedious.  We needed to give them a reason to hang in there (aside from the fun).

 Fun.

And he, rightly, understood that he also needed to incentivize me.  I was doing a manager's job on a supervisor's pay.  And I was basically turning over my life to my job and to the company.

One of our first telephone conversations involved the logistics of where I was to put all the additional supervisors.  We had two supervisor cubicles; one in the front of the unit, and one in the back.  I had five supervisors!  Two cubicles were fine, if we were only talking about the day shift and the second shift, but things were getting a bit cramped, and sharing cubes was sort of like the Warner Brothers cartoon of the wolf and the sheepdog, Sam and Ralph, punching in and punching out.


Peter said to me, well, what about that empty office back there in the corner?  I said, an office?  I'd never had an office before.  Nobody's using it, he said.  It's dark.  The light's never been turned on.  You should just move in.

Really?  I could do that?  Why not, he replied.  I said, I think that's not going to go over well.  "Just do it.  Move in."

So I did.

And it did not go over well.  I'd had a manager, Linda, before I'd made the transition from Claims.  Linda was Phil's lackey.  She occupied the office next door to him.  The contempt she felt for Phil dripped like tears of leather and acid.  But at least bleached-blonde, perfectly-coiffed Linda had an office!  That was her one consolation, seeing as how she had to play go-fer to Phil.

Now I had an office just like hers!

 Dennis, Lynnette, and Peg ~ "decorating" my office for my birthday.  Grrr!!

The first time she walked past that suddenly brightly-lit room, she actually did a double-take.  She was walking, and then she stopped walking, and then she began backtracking, until she backed over to my doorway, and said...."Congratulations?"

Ooh, Linda was not happy.  And I didn't have to report to Linda anymore, so I waved to her, sweetly, and replied, "Thanks!"  And then Linda fumbled a bit for words, and managed to propel herself forward again, on down the walkway to her own, identical, office....leaving trails of angry smoke in her wake.

Thank you, Peter.

Peter was also generous with the Super Saturday budget ("Hat Day", to us in the know).  He'd give us $300.00, and my main supervisor, Laurel, and I would head out and do some serious shopping, and buy enough nice prizes as we could with our allotment.

 My "main" supe ~ Laurel ~ decorating one of the other supe's cubes for her birthday

Oh sure, Peter would call once a day.  That was what a good manager should do.  Sometimes he would initiate conference calls, so I would make sure all my supervisors were in attendance, there in my office, and I'd put Peter on speaker phone, and the five of us were free to roll our eyes as much as we needed to, and to silently mouth replies to one another, and to stifle a giggle or two, but overall, we were respectful, because we respected him (at the time).

And our IKFI units kept right on producing.   The year after the "Hee Haw Halloween", I believe I made a promise to the staff that if they exceeded their goal, a famous singing duo would stop by and do a song for them.  They hit it out of the park, naturally.

So, along came Sonny & Cher:

Everyone remarked that I looked so much like Phil, with that mustache.

And we serenaded them with, "I Got You, Babe", although I somehow sounded more like Bob Dylan than Sonny Bono.

Our little department became such a success that it was determined that the company would try to replicate that achievement, in other locales.  A division was started in Allentown, PA, and later, one in Blue Bell, PA ("Blue Bell" ~ doesn't that sound pretty?).  I patiently schooled the new supervisors of those divisions in the workings of the IKFI Department.  I had, after all, authored the training manual, and I had developed the performance standards.

I took endless calls from the dolt, Pat, who was in charge of the Allentown office.  I became concerned that she didn't seem to understand things, since she asked me the same questions over and over, but I exercised patience, and I was blindly confident that she would eventually catch on.  I tutored the Blue Bell guy, as well.  Daily.

As a respite from the constant telephone irritation, the IKFI Department decided that we should hold our first annual (and, as it turned out, one and only) picnic.  We didn't rely on Peter, this time, to furnish us with an operating budget.  We financed it all on our own, and we solicited local businesses to donate door prizes.  Somewhere along the line, it was determined that we would have a Hawaiian theme (I think because the Oriental Trading Company catalog was featuring cheap party favors, including straw beachcomber hats).  We had volleyball, and face painting for the kids, and we offered the opportunity for everyone to have their "official" picture taken next to the surfboard, which had the welcoming logo, "You're Next", printed on it.

Official IKFI Party Planning Committee

Meanwhile, we were aware that Halloween 1998 was rapidly approaching.  I had become enamored of the movie, "Grease", so I suggested that we do a Grease theme for our contribution to the annual rite of October.

Once again, we outdid ourselves.  One of our people was a good graphic artist, so she created some signage, replicating the Grease logo.  We also designed one of those "test your strength"  hammer games, and we had numerous Grease carnival midway attractions.

 Dennis and Gaby (or "Gabby", as Phil would say.)



A bunch of us corralled one of our employee's daughters into showing us some moves for the song, "We Go Together", which she had at one time performed with her dance troupe, so she stopped by and tutored us in the proper moves, and we spent a few hours practicing our routine in my....nice, shiny....office.

 We were ready.

One of my supervisors, Lynnette, was designated to be "Frenchy", so I bought a can of pink spray-on hair coloring, and proceeded to spray her blonde hair pink.  She looked beautiful when I was done.

 Lynnette ("Frenchy") and Laurel ("Sandy")

I, as was my wont, was Danny Zuko, and my main supervisor, Laurel, was Sandy.   We, too, had our gangs.  Another brave lady, she, too, with short hair, became my Kinickie, and we also had Jan and Marty, and the whole crew.

 The T-Birds

When the judges made their way to our little corner of the world, we switched on a boom box recording of "We Go Together", and proceeded to dazzle them with our tightly-rehearsed moves.





During the instrumental break in the song, we actually grabbed hands with the various judges and performed a jitterbug with them.  Getting the judges involved in the action was....gold!

At the end of the song, everybody in our troupe boogied on down the aisle and were handed their yearbooks at the end of the line, and danced on off, just like in the movie.

It was spectacular.

People still talk about it to this day. 

Once again, we blew everybody away.  Over on the other side of the building, the self-insured employees did a "Titanic" theme.  But all they stupidly did was stand there stupidly in front of their cardboard boats.  Where was the dazzle in that?  They took second place (a "pity" designation, I have no doubt).

And, meanwhile, back in IKFI,  all the people loved us, and hated us.  But we got the trophy, so la dee DAH!

Alas, however, while we were savoring the good times, we had no clue about the bad times to come.


To be continued......

My "Career" ~ Part  8 ~ "Everything's Great!"

My "Career" ~ Part 9 ~ A Cold Wind

My "Career" ~ Part 10 ~  Thank You ~ Goodbye


My "Career" ~ Part 11 ~ Breaking the News

My "Career" ~ Part 12 ~ Loose Ends 

My "Career" ~ Epilogue



Previous Chapters:

My "Career" ~ Part 6 ~ Who Do You Think You Are?

My "Career" ~ Part 5 ~ Welcome to the I-Land

My "Career" ~ Part 4 ~ Phil

My "Career" ~ Part 3 ~ Karma

My "Career" ~ Part 2 ~ Evil Bosses

My "Career ~ Chapter One





















Friday, June 1, 2012

My "Career" ~ Part 6 ~ "Who Do You Think You Are?"


The IKFI unit was an outcast.

We weren't "Claims", after all.  But we shared the same floor as Claims, albeit with our own entrance that no one from the Claims Department deigned to use, because, after all, that would taint them.

There is an inherent snobbery that exists in any office.  A pecking order.  "We're better than....(insert department name here)."

We weren't "smart" like Claims.  We did data entry.  Some of the Claims supervisors even stopped by from time to time to let me know what my division was doing wrong, since they, naturally, were the end users.  I didn't have a problem with that; I did have a problem with the way the feedback was conveyed.  The condescension.

So, even though I had been a top Claims supervisor before my promotion, I was no longer part of the clique.

So, IKFI just went its own way.

We kept growing, and growing rapidly.  We had to take over more office footage, because we were running out of room to seat everyone.  We still had that mix of permanent employees and temps, but by this point, it was understood that a temp position was an audition, really, for permanent placement.  A top performer was guaranteed the opportunity to be hired by the company, and that word had gotten around.

Our first Halloween rolled around, and we, naturally, were delighted to participate in the festivities.

You see, at our office, a tradition had been born back in the first year of our existence.  I don't know exactly how it started, but I do know that I was part of its inception.

We dressed up, as a unit, generally, in some type of theme.  That sounds innocuous enough, but what began as a simple dress-up contest with silly prizes, quickly snowballed into an all-out competition.  Quickly, after that, it was not good enough to simply dress up.  A group had to put on a "skit" of some sort; really wow the crowd...and especially the judges.

Oh, it became cutthroat.  

It started like this:

And progressed to this:



And on and on.

Since the IKFI people were considered morons and imbeciles, we decided to do a "Hee Haw" theme.  It was wonderful.  We had a lady dressed up as Minnie Pearl, with the price tag hanging from her flowered hat.  We had all manner of rubes, especially me; we had a woman in her flannel nightgown and nightcap, ironing at her ironing board.  We even had a cow.

 That's me in my "cap".

My mentor, Carlene, and me (I looked lovely!)

Oh, we were all lovely hayseeds. 

Unfortunately, we were encroaching, it seems, upon a time-honored tradition; and when we won grand prize, well, that just capped it.

It was not our fault that the Claims units were lame.  They were timid.  We were not.  We had no reputation to uphold.  We didn't care.

As time passed, and things started to snowball, I was given the green light to hire additional supervisors.  We split into three units!  And then we hired a second shift!  Two more supervisors!  All total, by the end, we had over 150 people in IKFI.....from three to one hundred and fifty.  In about a year and a half.

The girl who was to become my "main supervisor", Laurel, had started out as an examiner in one of my Claims units.  We found that we shared the same birthday, so that became a natural bond, a starting point for our relationship.  When the opportunity arose to hire another supervisor, Laurel applied, and I took her immediately.  Laurel was one of those people whom you feel like you've known all your life, even if you've only known her for a minute.  She had that special touch. 

Laurel became situated in a glass-walled supervisor cubicle halfway across the room from me.  We could look out and wave to each other, but other communication required direct face-to-face interaction, or a phone call.

By this time, Phil had been "uploaded" to a more responsible position in Fresno, California, proving that it's not what you know; it's who you know.  His replacement was Brenda, who'd been moved upstairs from the Customer Service Department.  Brenda, in essence, shared manager responsibilities with the lovely (to herself) blonde-haired Linda, who was persnickety and decorum-obsessed.  Both Linda and Brenda elevated their secretary, Lisa, to the highest level on the office pedestal.  Lisa was, for all intents and purposes, third in line of ascension to the Acme throne; well above us mere supervisors. 

Some supervisors dealt with that insult by cultivating Lisa's friendship.  Laurel and I, on the other hand, dealt with it by being snarky at every turn.

One day, Brenda sent out a loving email to all the supervisors, informing us that Lisa had been blessed with additional responsibilities.  The email told of how indespensable Lisa was; what a vital wheel of the organization she had proven to be.

TIP:  If you are going to make snarky remarks about an email sent by, ostensibly your boss, be sure to hit "forward", and not "reply".

I don't remember exactly what I said, but it wasn't nice.  My intention was to forward my comments to Laurel, across the way; but I, as you have gathered by now, hit "reply" instead.

You know that moment?  When you realize you just made a giant faux pas?  And it's already been done, and now what the hell are you going to do?  Well, I did that.  One second after I "replied" with my remarks, it hit me that I had screwed up, badly.

Damn.  Here I go again.  Another apology, and I knew I had to give it in person.  Downtrodden, I willed my legs to propel themselves forward, onward to Brenda's office.  I blindly, instinctively, found a chair to plop my ass in, and proceeded to praise Lisa to the heavens.  I mumbled something about how I was "just kidding around", and how I was profusely sorry for my indescretion, and that, trust me, it would never happen again.

Brenda was, to her credit, pretty nice about it.  She kind of waved me off; said, don't worry about it.  She was most likely as uncomfortable, there, in her office, having this conversation, as I was. 

But, as my luck would go, this didn't end there.  Just a few short months later, my number one supervisor, Laurel, committed the exact same sin as I had.  Another glowing email; another snarky comment; another "reply", rather than "forward". 

Laurel was cool about it, though.  She blithely trudged into Brenda's office (I bet Brenda was getting weary of this drill by now), spilled out her requistite apology, and, as icing on the cake, said, "I guess I pulled a 'Shelly'". 

Thanks, pal!  Now I was famous infamous.  Any stupid, assinine mistake would henceforth be referred to as, "pulling a 'Shelly'". 

Even though Laurel blatantly threw me under the bus, I couldn't not stay friends with her.

Plus, I guess, one way to look at it was, we were in this thing together.  We made the same mistakes, we made the same right decisions.  We were a natural team.

And thus, IKFI continued to do things that annoyed the heck out of everyone.

Overtime was a way of life at our company.  If there was ever a stretch when overtime was not mandatory, people began to quake.  They started wondering what was wrong.  Thankfully, for most, those periods only ever happened for a week or two, and then things returned to "normal".  Frankly, the staff had begun to depend on their overtime pay, and they were adrift without it.

On Saturdays, we, like everyone else, had OT.  But we did things a bit differently in our department.  We had a (remote!) manager who gave us a budget to buy prizes, so the supes would go out shopping and buy as many nice things as we could with the dollars we were given.

Then, on Saturday, every half hour or so, we would draw a name out of the hat (literally, a hat), and blow some god-awful sounding horn, and bestow a prize upon some lucky individual, and of course, have our picture taken with the winner; all of us supes wearing our very special hats.........Yes, it was "hat day".


 Tracy on "Hat Day"

I can say without hesitation that we had fun.  And yet, we never shirked our work.  We posted great stats; both quality and production.  I believe it was because our people liked their jobs.

Who else had Elvis show up for my supe, Peg's, birthday?  Nobody, of course.  And, if anyone had even thought of it, would they think to corral an actual employee to play Elvis?  No.  They would have hired one of those impersonators.  And that would have stripped the occasion of all the fun (thanks, Rob!)



 Elvis (Rob) and Peg

And on Peg's next birthday, who would have thought to have President Clinton stop by?  Nobody.  And who would have written a very special speech for the President to deliver to Peg?  Nobody.  (Thanks, Rob, again, for portraying the President!)

 President Clinton (Rob) and Secret Service Agent, Laurel

Shortly after the "hat days", the baton was passed, back there in Philly, to a new manager; a new overseer of the IKFI Department.

A new, young up-and-comer.  Out to prove himself, with our division as the catalyst.

His name was Peter.


To be continued.......... 

My "Career" ~ Part 7 ~ Another New Boss?

My "Career" ~ Part  8 ~ "Everything's Great!"

My "Career" ~ Part 9 ~ A Cold Wind

My "Career" ~ Part 10 ~  Thank You ~ Goodbye

My "Career" ~ Part 11 ~ Breaking the News 

My "Career" ~ Part 12 ~ Loose Ends 

My "Career" ~ Epilogue


Previous Chapters:

My "Career" ~ Part 5 ~ Welcome to the I-Land

My "Career" ~ Part 4 ~ Phil

My "Career" ~ Part 3 ~ Karma

My "Career" ~ Part 2 ~ Evil Bosses

My "Career" ~ Chapter 1