Do I Have Enough Bucks, Mommy?

This morning I was scrapping together quarters to get a cup of coffee on the way into the office.  In our current financial situation, I hardly ever buy coffee.  We have it for free at the office so; I don’t take on the additional expense.  However, this morning, I had to train a few co-workers in one of our India offices.  With the time difference being so great, I volunteered to start the training at 5:30 am , my time.  What was I thinking?  I did the training from home and finished just in time for our son to wake up and order his breakfast.  After getting him his eggs and toast, sprinting through the shower and jumping into my clothes, I started to search for coffee money.  I was exhausted and needed a little something to get me thru the hour commute to the office.  My son said that he had some quarters in his piggy bank.  I told him that he was sweet but that money was for him.  He shrugged his shoulders and went back to sipping his juice and watching his morning shows.  Once my husband was out of the shower and had eyes on the boy, I jetted out the door with my dollar fifty in change.  Once in the car, I realized that I had another fifty cents in the door handle compartment.  SCORE!  I was able to get a piping hot pumpkin spice coffee to get me to work.

When I got home tonight, my son came to me with his play wallet.  He was holding it in his little 4 year old hands, tapping on it and asking, “Mommy, do you think I have enough bucks in here to buy you a coffee?”  I welled up immediately.  What an amazing boy.

Humiliation at Work, Anyone?

Friday: Meeting in the boss’ office. 

My boss and I and one other team member in attendance. We decide the particulars to present in an upcoming meeting between our department and another department. We also decide that I am going to present these particulars.

Monday: Meeting between departments.

Key members of both departments are present. As planned, I take the stage (in the form of a whiteboard and expo marker).  I begin to present, as planned.  I expected the other department members to offer up some resistance since we were basically setting out a ton of requirements and design work to be done in a compact amount of time. (Resistance which I got right away.)  Again, I expected it so it was easy to deal with. What I didn’t expect was the resistance from my boss!  She seemed confused and frustrated with me as if I was writing and speaking in another language.  At one point she walked right up to me, grabbed the marker out of my hand and said, “May I?” She then proceeded to cross out the words and diagrams I had put on the board…words and diagrams that we had agreed to on Friday…words and diagrams I reviewed over the weekend to make sure I got it right.

As I stand off to the side of the whiteboard and watch her to continue to cross out my work and redraw (the exact same things I drew), one of the members of the opposing department asked why she was doing that and why didn’t we just look at what Frazzled Cheese (that’s me) drew. My boss’ answer?  “We are not going with what SHE presented and I am not sure why we are talking about that!”

At this point I decide to sit down and just let her go at it.  She turned an already hostile meeting into an all-out bullying session.  She told the other department what we expected from them in a disorganized fashion, held back expectations from them that we had agreed to the Friday prior (I guess she will sneak attack them with this information at a later date?) and continued to berate them for not getting this work done when she was in the initial stages of making the first request. (I liken this latter tactic to yelling at the plumber for not fixing your pipes as you are making the appointment…cart before horse, anyone?) She was particularly nasty to the only female member of the opposing department by shushing her, cutting her off and making statements like, “I can assure you that you are wrong”. 

After the meeting, my boss turned to me and said, “Sorry I had to be harsh, you have to be straight with these guys and make them do what you want them to do.”  She didn’t say that she was sorry she was being harsh to me…just harsh in general I guess.  I just laughed it off as if it didn’t bother me as a defense mechanism.  I wanted to tell her she was out of line and totally just treated everyone in that room, including me; like we are all idiots and she is the only competent one in the entire company. I also wanted to warn her not to burn bridges with members of this department since we actually need a fair to large amount of work out of them if we are to be successful.  And, let’s be honest…I also wanted to ask her who she thinks she is to treat me like?

When I returned to my desk, the female member of the opposing department was already pinging me. She was laughingly competing with me to see who my boss treated worse during that entire debacle. We both agreed that I won and was thrown the fastest under the heaviest bus, most likely a double-decker with tons of horse power.  

While I was driving home, I was talking to my husband who was talking me down from giving my boss a piece of my mind.  He reminded me that I actually like my job; I am pretty good at it, receive a lot of accolades from numerous colleagues and have the fortunate situation of doing something that I am not only good at but get satisfaction out of doing. He also reminded me how broke we are and that if nothing else, we need the healthcare for our family.

So, I shall swallow my (Pride? No; not pride.) applaudedness? (think I just made up a word) and just keep on going and hope that the other department will see through her insecurities and hostility to the requirements that we laid out so that we can have a successful project roll-out.  Here’s hoping!

I am half pig and half thief!

Tomorrow is my son’s forth birthday.  Every time someone has a birthday in his daycare class, he reports with glee that they had cupcakes to celebrate. The cupcakes are provided by the parents, of course and are served as an afternoon snack.  Along with the snack, they sing the daycare version of “Happy Birthday” with the ‘cha-cha-cha’ between verses.  Nothing tickles him more than to report that it was one of his classmate’s birthdays and all the goings on during afternoon snack to celebrate.  And, every time he reports another birthday, he asks me if we will bring in cupcakes for his birthday.  And, of course, every time, I answer with a resounding “yes, baby!”

Well, my husband and I have been having a lot of financial difficulty lately.  Our financial picture looks like this: our income – outgoing monies = a big negative.  As soon as I get paid, all of my bills are paid immediately. I have to rely on my husband scraping together gas money for me just to get to work and back.  I can never eat out for lunch.  I repeat; I can never eat out for lunch.  This is not something that I can afford.  I don’t mean that I can’t afford it because it will take money away from my retirement savings or a discretionary fund. I mean, I can’t afford it because I just don’t have it.

The last time my husband gave me some cash for gas, I held back ten dollars because I knew this special birthday was coming.  I was hoping to work from home a day or two to save on gas and make the ten spot stretch its way thru a pack of mini cupcakes for his class and a little something special to put a candle in after dinner so we could make a big deal out of his special day.

Here is where it all went awry.  Yesterday, my boss was particularly rude to myself and another colleague in a pretty tense meeting.  This colleague and I both received an invitation via outlook for lunch late this morning.  We both chatted about our suppositions as to why she wanted to have lunch with us at a nearby eatery (prices are a little more than 15 a head for lunch on average).  Her knowing that I have been on a very tight budget, we decide that she must be treating us to lunch to apologize for treating us so badly in the meeting previously mentioned.  (More on this in another post.)

The entire lunch goes by without mention of her bad behavior. She fills the conversation with what all three of us have in common, motherhood.  When the check comes, she reaches into her purse, pulls out a twenty, places it into the check folder and hands it to my colleague. My colleague gives me a slight look and then puts in her twenty.  It is now my turn to make the awkward move of taking out my ear-marked ten and embarrassingly state, “This is all I have, will it cover the balance?” My colleague offers to put in more for me so that my boss will get change back but, my boss said it was fine and we were all set.  This embarrassment is nothing in comparison to the guilt I feel from spending my son’s birthday treat money on a lunch that I didn’t want to have in the first place.

I am in no way blaming my boss for this.  I should have checked the subject of the email appointment.  Typically, when she treats she expense the lunch.  She also specifies in the subject of the meeting that it will be a working lunch.  When I got back to my desk, there it was in the subject, “just catching up”.  Should have paid better attention!  Should have passed on the lunch and just ate the tiny can of tuna I packed.

I have searched the house and, nothing! I don’t have anything to bake, no cookies to pass out…nothing.  The best I can come up with is a pack of stickers that he can give out and hope that he is excited about it. He is such a good kid, always very grateful for what he is given. But I know he wanted cupcakes.  And now he can’t have cupcakes or even a little sweet treat with a candle in it after dinner because his mother made a selfish decision at lunch time. And that is why I am half pig and half thief. I stole his birthday treat money and then ate it in the form of a ham sandwich and fries.