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Woman screaming at me

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-01-26 08:06:30 - Graham Ellis

An irate woman stood in front of me. "I want you to stop keeping my Darren behind and let him leave at the time that everyone else can go" she demanded.

School scene? No - this was at work, and Sharon had marched in, past the bemused receptionist and up to my desk, and Darren was her husband and not her son. The incident happened some 20 years ago, but it's still fresh in my mind.

I love having enthusiastic people working alongside me - it makes for a fabulous team, for a job well done, for a customer base that's happy and growing and it makes the job fun for all. And a motivated team member will look not only at their own role, but beyond it. They'll make those useful suggestions that make the whole machine more efficient, they'll notice those odd little extras that need doing, and quietly do them, and they'll be "worth their weight in gold". Ok - let me rephrase that - they'll be an asset that's worth paying very much over the odds for their participation.

I think that everyone has it in them to be an enthusiast - it just takes a while to find the right position sometimes, and sometimes there are going to be conflicts between different facets of someone's life. It's a question of finding a round peg for a round hole, and a square peg for a square hole. There's times that holes can be eased to suit a peg, and times that pegs can be shaved to fit (but, hey, I'm not in the peg-shaving business). And alas there are times that you find you've got a peg and you're left looking all over the board and having trouble finding a suitable hole.

Why was Sharon yelling at me? Was I punishing Darren like some naughty kid? No - he was a bit of an enthusiast - he designed us some amazing video mixing board was back in the '80s when such technology was in its infancy. And he loved to stop around after the end of his formal day and learn a little more of software which was new and intriguing to him; with his own office key he was stopping around, it turned out, long after the rest of us had headed for home.

There was a new, yelling baby at their little home. He could have headed off to the pub at 5, but that's not the sort of peg he was ... his learning more about his software was his hobby. Now that's the sort of team member who with just a little bit of guidance was a real asset to the team.

Sharon - thank you for shouting at me. You opened my eyes.