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My greatest managerial achievement ever
By Betsy Richter | 10:46 amWe’re out of toilet paper this morning. Also out of paper towels. And – as I just discovered – out of the backup for the backup for the backup – paper napkins.
But before I go off to forage for paper goods for the household, I have to share my best managerial achievement ever – the memory that popped up when I thought for a brief shining moment about asking PK (short for 'Pirate King') (who’s due here later) to bring along some TP.
See, once upon a time, I was recruited to leave a big behemoth NYC media internet ‘start up’ to join a land-grabbing Silicon Valley internet start-up. Shortly before I arrived, the start-up swallowed whole another struggling start-up – and I was asked to help manage that small office 40 miles away from our own.
My first visit was an eye opener. While the company was located in picturesque Sausalito and the executive offices (on the second floor of a former shipbuilding facility right on the water) were equipped with the mandatory leather couches, the forty people working on the windowless first floor didn’t have it that good.
They were crammed into what a colleague referred to as ‘butt to butt’ cubicles (I called them veal pens), with plywood sheeting laid down for rows over the cables strung across the floor. They weren’t allowed telephones, the computers were sub-par, and those nice leather couches upstairs, only steps away? Off-limits. As was the entire executive floor (with 6 or so ‘executives’) once the death spiral began (and after the weekly late-Friday champagne parties were discontinued.)
Apparently, even requests for office supplies needed to be sent via email. And when checks started bouncing and rumors were swirling, well…the shit hit the fan, both literally and figuratively.
From what I was told in confidence shortly after I arrived, requests for toilet paper got this terse email response: “Bring your own from home.”
My first day up in the office after the acquisition finalized, I stopped first at the local Stop N Shop. Loaded my car up with coffee, tea, paper towels, coffee filters, an assortment of snacks and other pantry items – and a few cases of toilet paper. And then I quietly unloaded everything, put it away where it belonged, & walked around to say good morning to a few people. Only then did I go upstairs to the executive offices, leaving the stairwell door open behind me.
Did things end up happily ever after? Of course not – these were the high-flying internet days, after all. Did I manage to ride the rapids with grace and style? Uh, no.
But I earned a great deal of credibility that first day – just by showing up with toilet paper that I’d bought and hauled myself. And I’m proud of the other small changes I helped push through. We upgraded computers. Tore down the butt-to-butt cubicles and replaced them with better ones – with phones for all, no less! Packed away the six dozen champagne flutes we found & shipped them off to Goodwill, I believe. Opened up the executive rooftop overlooking the water for post-work margarita parties (bringing my own blender from home, of course), and the executive couches for mid-day breaks. We weren’t having any visitors here at this point, so why not?
I’ll never forget what I now call ‘the toilet paper lesson.’ (Nope, it’s not about kissing ass or wiping butts, oh cynical ones.)
A manager’s job is to take care of basic needs first; to clear simple obstacles out of the way.
And with that? It’s off to the store…
Topics: Snark Alert | 2 Comments »
August 10th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Permission to e-mail this to some of my friends at my last job?
August 10th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
I wish I’d done that when I resigned in a huff last year.
I am learning that you can’t eat a huff. A hard lesson, I know.