Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Tag: work

  • Awakening

    The alarm goes off before I’m ready, it cuts off the music and blares at me until I get up to shut it off. I long for the days of my childhood when I could sleep the day away but I’d settle for just sleeping until I awoke naturally.

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    I then slip on some underwear or superhero pajama bottoms – depending on how cold it is – and go into the kitchen, right about then I remember to slip on my slippers and turn back around to my bedroom… every morning this happens. The coffee pot in the kitchen is prepped and ready to brew, I push the button and then head for the living room – the computer also needs to be awoken. After I push the button on the back of it I have to head back to the bedroom, the bed needs to be made… then I remember the pressure on my bladder and I stop in the bathroom to relieve myself… mornings are hard (no pun intended). Back to the bedroom I go and I actually make the bed, something else I never did as a kid, I was just going to mess it up again.  (more…)

  • Answering the Phone 101

    I almost forgot, this is one of those things that I wanted to write about.

    Photo on 10-10-13 at 6.52 AM

    Yesterday I called to schedule an initial appointment with the surgeon (more on that later – is this getting annoying or what?), they were supposed to call me and didn’t so I initiated the call and it went something like this.

    “Hi my name is Jamez and I have a referral to call you.” I said

    “What for?” she said in a not to friendly voice

    I specify why I’m calling, the referral and that I’d like to schedule an appointment.

    “An appointment for what?” she asks “just to see the doctor? surgery? what kind of appointment?”

    “I can schedule surgery without first seeing the surgeon?” I inquire

    “Why didn’t you say that to begin with?” she barks “which location do you want an appointment?”

    “I wasn’t aware you had more than one location what are…” I start

    she shoots off the two addresses before I can even begin to understand thats what she’s doing.

    This is an example of bad customer service, this is an example of how NOT to answer the phone for your job. She was not the least bit friendly, not the least bit helpful and maybe was having a really, really bad day (it was only 9 how bad could it have gotten by 9?).

    When I answer the phone at work (I do this for a living) it’s like this:

    “Good morning thank you for calling [insert workplace here], my name is Jamez how can we help you today?” and then I listen… and then I go out of my way to help that person get what they need… sometimes I have to put them on hold to think to myself “had this person just read the email they wouldn’t have had to call” but I don’t tell them that…

    My job is to be of service, to be friendly and to make them feel like they were listened to and cared about. If you answer the phone for your job that’s what you’re supposed to do, don’t be all bitchy to them no matter how bad a day you are having… You’ll actually find that when you’re grumpy or not up to the task that faking this kind of thing actually helps you to feel better… because those people sometimes say thank you, those people need to feel like someone is listening and most of the time they’re human..

    Remember that golden rule thing… treat them as you would have them treat you. And smile, it helps to make you less grouchy

    I’m keeping the doctor appointment, but I might be overly, syrupy cheery when I get to their office!

  • In All Our Affairs

    In All Our Affairs

    Everything I know about being a good worker I learned from 12 step programs.

    One of my first sponsors told me to shake hands with everyone before and after the meeting and introduce myself to them. 

    When someone comes to the office I stand up from my desk, walk over and extend my hand, introducing myself – they apparently like this and I see their shoulders relax a bit and a smile form on even the grumpiest of people.

    Our basic text, the Big Book, tells us “Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” A.A. page 62

    If I’m manning a table/booth at an event I smile and welcome people over – I ask about them, I want to know what they do and how they like it. I find out how I can help them. If I focus on helping others then I can’t spend time in my head thinking about me which is a great thing.

    I am Responsible.  When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.  And for that:  I am responsible. 

    and

    “How can A.A. best function” and, “How can A.A. best stay whole and so survive” A.A. page 177 (in the mini Big Book)

    I am responsible for my job too, my company and my co-workers. I want them to always be there for me so I have to be responsible. That means I ask how I can help them do their jobs, if there is anything I can do to make their loads lighter – if their load is lighter than that might make them have a better day. It also means I have to be aware of the rules and how the company is doing. “How can my work best function?” and, “How can work best stay whole and so survive?” Those are some great questions to consider when thinking about your job.

    “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.” A.A. page 178 (in the mini Big Book)

    I try to stay out of gossip at work – I don’t want to need to participate in it and become involved in any drama. I also just focus on the job at hand there and keep politics and religion out of discussions with co-workers. Yes, I do have an opinion about all kinds of things – but that doesn’t mean work is the place I need to share it.

    “…and when we were wrong promptly admitted it…” A.A. page 59

    That one’s easy – usually… it throws some people off when you come at them and say “Hey, I screwed up here, how can I fix this with you”. People like the honesty, the openness when you do things like that – sometimes it makes them wary but if they see you practice it more they’ll come to understand it’s a part of you.

    “As we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.” A.A. page 87

    This one saves my bacon time and time again – before I toss out my witty retort or type off a heavily worded email I stop and take a deep breath and consider what I’m about to do – sometimes I have to take a few pauses before I’m alright again…

    Sponsor Direction: Show up early, help set up the meeting – make the coffee, get to know people. Stay late – help tear down the meeting and get to know people.

    I’m always early for meetings, I’m always early for work. I make sure that I’m there to talk to people before the day starts and to see how they’re doing. I make the coffee (sometimes my co-worker does) I turn on the lights. At the end of the day I clean up the coffee (sometimes my co-worker does) and make sure everything is locked up tight… It helps to get the day off on the right track. Staying after is nice if someone needs help there you are, you can be in a place of maximum helpfulness to them.

    A.A. can and does make it easy to go to work and do what I do, it also bridges a gap in relationships with my co-workers and people my company serves that otherwise I wouldn’t have. My natural instincts are to stay to myself not talk to anyone else – even when I was drinking I was that way. But I have to be involved in the stream of life and participate, I’m meant to.

    November 2014 edit: People have commented over the years and recently about my great work ethic – I used to credit it to being raised in the Midwest, but then I recall my younger days at factories when it was all about me and my jobs didn’t last very long at all. Being a better worker means thinking about your coworkers, organization and those goals – it means focusing less on you and yours. Surprisingly these small changes can make a world of difference in every day.

    originally published July 2013

  • Busy

    I’m certainly busier than I usually am. Between work, AA and finding things in the new city Im have very little time to just sit and do nothing or even try out the pool (I don’t think the water is warm enough yet, but soon). I’m going to three to four meetings a week, bowling on Tuesday nights with a sober group and that’s been fun. 

    Several people here with long term sobriety regularly go to 2 meetings a day. They hit a 7:00 a.m. meeting and a night meeting. Not one clue why you’d need to, but if that’s what they need I guess that’s what they need. It might make them a stronger community I guess. But that’s not for me, not only because I am on my way to work around 7:00 but because I think it’s stupid… at the beginning of this paragraph i was trying to not judge… but thats what I really feel. A purpose of AA or any of the other 12 steps is to get us to be active participants of the real world in a beneficial way – I think going to so many meetings is trying to hide from alcohol or temptations of alcohol. There is a real solution written about in our book that makes it safe to go into even the most sordid of places if our motives are right. I think one meeting a day is overkill… two makes it hard not to shake my head when I hear about. 

    I picked up my 19 year chip at a few meetings in the last week and was asked to speak on Step 12 Monday night. That’ll be fun.

    I’m looking forward to seeing Star Trek this weekend and Memorial Day Weekend the following. 

  • Breaking and Entering

    Back in 1985  or 86 I wasn’t the most well behaved individual.

    On a particular school day me and a couple of friends skipped out and were looking for some money to get beer, cigarettes and maybe score some pot. I had been lifting $20s out of my grandmothers purse for quite a long time but this day she wasn’t home and we were desperate.

    She had this door in the house that she kept padlocked and that of course means there must be money in there (teenage thinking). We didn’t know how to pick the lock but the hinges were on the outside of the door with the lock and someone suggested we just take the door off the hinges – brilliant.

    We ruffled around in that room for probably 20 minutes and maybe found $15 – and left. My grandmothers probably wouldn’t have ever known we were in there except we didn’t put the door back on the hinges…. /doh

    As a result of that break in I was shipped off to foster care a few days later – really one of the best things that ever happened to me.

    Flash-Forward 2013

    There is no key to the supply closet door, someone the previous night had locked it – trying to be helpful or something. So this morning I couldn’t get in there.

    The life I live now is such that taking the door off the hinges didn’t even cross my mind. When other folks arrived and we explained what had happened THEY did it and it brought that memory back to me of how simple it was…

    Let me assure you, I wasn’t going to be the new guy that got fired for breaking into the supply closet … but it was cool that someone else knew exactly what to do (the door had been locked before).

    Also, let this be a lesson to you about security… hinges on the inside of locked rooms.

  • My Time and Work in DC

    I came to Washington, DC from Eau Claire, Wisconsin back in 1998 at the suggestion of a friend – my goal back then was California and warmth and I was assured DC was warmer than WI (part of the reason I believe in global warming as this hasn’t really been the case most of the winters I’ve been here). I helped a friends fiancé load up the moving truck with her stuff and my stuff and he and I drove out to DC (MD suburbs really) with one stop in OH on the way.  I’d been to Los Angeles before but DC traffic seemed overwhelming to me just that day.

    The internet was rather new back then and I found gay chat rooms fascinating here and met my roommate on one. He convinced me to come into the city and I had to take the metro – I was so scared about taking the metro by myself – which side of the tracks is the train I want? (Shady Grove it doesn’t matter, but I didn’t know that then). It shocked me to see people sleeping on the train, wasn’t that dangerous – everyone looked scary [please note, I’m from very white, very Lutheran WI].

    My first job was a temp job with Atlantic States Fisheries Commission on H downtown, it was so cool to be in a city with all the cars and tall building and people everywhere. Sadly they were paying me around $8 an hour and that wasn’t enough back then for here – would have been great in WI really. I took a position at BET with a temp agency but didn’t even last the whole day – I was unprepared for the attitude and awkwardness being almost the only white guy there.

    It was culture shock seeing people of different races not just everywhere but holding hands with other races and, gasp, in the open too. The most I’d been exposed to other races was the Cosby show and that didn’t do a good job getting me ready for the real world.

    A different temp agency got me a job at ARVO (the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology) which at the time was located near NIH. That job stuck and I worked there for a little over two years and liked it. I was at their convention working on my 4th AA birthday and oh so tired from being on my feet all day.  I met some nice people there and learned a lot about databases and membership issues.  But I really wanted to work in the city. I brought my cat Q home on the subway after work one day from out there.

    An AA member gave me the heads up on his job, he was vacating and suggested I should apply. So that’s how I became the data manager for a grant at Children’s National Medical Center – not really what I would consider “in the city” but it was nice. I remember that I was so convinced I wouldn’t get the job because I had forgotten to wear my belt during the interview – it’s that a weird thought to have? I did get the job and before I knew it my supervisor was replaced by Julie Ziegler – who I wasn’t too sure of, but she became one of my best friends (unless she’s pregnant then I really cant recommend staying away from her enough 🙂 ). I worked with a great team of nurses: Kristy, Jean and Zelda and a became a part of a huge team of people that worked on those same type of grants. I was with those folks on 9/11 and our offices were on the top floor of CNMC and we could see the pillars of smoke from the Pentagon where the plane hit. Zelda, Waldo and I were out smoking on the room talking about things and heard jets fly close. We watched that terror unfold on the internet and bonded those people to me if they weren’t already bonded. There are things that happened with them that matter so very much to me – Mrs. Doubtfire comes to mind. Eventually Julie left and I think the grant changed a bit and I took a job within the same department and got to know even more wonderful people – Michelle, Ann, Debra, Donna, Sonia, Kim, Chen (I miss you Chen), Denise, Phyllis, Maryanne, Mary Lou (good bye heart), Dr. D., Angela… so many people that are so very warm-hearted.

    In the year 2005 a lot of things happened, Donna M introduced me to World of Warcraft (some day I might sue), I quit smoking, Ann retired and I decided to go back to school to prove to myself that I wasn’t stupid. I moved to Virginia Beach near my best friend Suzanne and went back to school for a year at Tidewater Community College. I did really well and loved learning. I loved writing for people that graded me and advised me what to do. I had two stories published in the Annual Journal for the school and managed to get a 3.8 – who knew?  Sadly, there is no money in school so I was quickly out of funds and paying out of state tuition. So I came back to DC.

    My roommate Gary was unsuccessful finding a new roommate so I moved right back in with the cats. I worked a temp job for a few months at National Association of Home Builders as an admin type and really liked it. I was only there a brief time but they liked the way I did something’s and implemented them into their regular routine. While I was there I interviewed with Ann’s husband for an Office Manager job in Takoma Park – Ann’s husband liked the way I helped Ann and she talked well of me. The interview didn’t go well, one of the owners asked me why he got so many Viagra ads in his email and I answered simply “it’s the sites you visit” which outraged him.. but it’s true, if you go to a site and enter an advanced age and that your male and that site sells the info to others then yes, you’ll be spammed with Viagra ads. I was disappointed I didn’t get the job but was happy to still be at NAHB – then I received a call from them and while I didn’t get the OM job they did want me to come be an Admin for the OM.

    I was a really good Admin there and the OM they hired spent most of her time on the phone or taking long lunches – it was noticed and before I knew it they offered me the OM job and let her go. That was a fun job and I made friendships with some good people and made very good money. I was asked to be part of the management team to help make decisions for the good of the firm and that was fun until one of the partners seemed to lose his shit and started doing insane things. I was planning my exit when my friend Jim was terminated – I advised against it and tried to talk the other owner out of it so many times and on so many levels but he couldn’t see his way to not.

    I gave 30 days notice at the beginning of 2008 and was fired a few days later J. Jim and I then started our firm Access-Ability Consultants, Inc. with a commitment to give it five years and see what happened.  (I wrote about all that recently you can read it here)

    I’ve wanted to be somewhere warmer for quite a while now and this job in Phoenix appears to be my ticket out of here. I’ve learned a lot here that I probably wouldn’t have learned in WI on how to be a good worker and what’s expected of me and usually think there is a different mindset to workers here than there in in WI or maybe it’s a factory vs office mentality. I’m not sure. Every position I’ve had here has been good to me, even my one day at BET was a lesson to be learned about who I am and not taking things too seriously.

    I’ll miss the Metro, the celebrities, the politicians and the very openly gay city and a few select people (the list does seem to grow more every day) that I consider friends.

  • An End, a Beginning and an End to a Beginning

    During the summer of 2006 I interviewed at a company owned partly by a former supervisor’s husband, the job was to be an Office Manager. I interviewed with three people, one of them was my current boss Jim DiLuigi.

    I was kind of selling myself as something of an IT guy and Jim asked me if I knew why he was getting so many spam emails for Viagra in his inbox. I answered simply – “It’s the sites your visiting.” which he didn’t take well at all. I should have clarified that it is about filing out information on websites that ask for your age and gender and those sites selling your information to spamming companies.

    I didn’t get the job, partly I think because of that answer. Jim doesn’t recall it that way, but I’ll bet that’s what happened. The same company did call me a few weeks later to offer me an Administrative Assistant position which I gladly accepted.

    While at this company I sat facing Jim and we quickly developed a good working routine where he’d pass me things to type and I’d hand him the document that he’d then edit a bazillion times, sometimes reinserting words he’d deleted three drafts ago – that was kind of annoying (still is today). We were quick, efficient and comfortable.

    In a few short months it was obvious the Office Manager they hired wasn’t meeting expectations, she was let go and the position was offered to me. I took it, glad that my hard work hadn’t gone unnoticed and thankful for the opportunity to grow.

    In the fall of 2007 things with the other boss were getting crazier and crazier and logic was being tossed out the window at regular intervals. The other boss got it into his head that he should fire Jim and nothing I could say would deter him from that goal. So in December, Jim was terminated and I made plans to exit that company as well.

    In January of 2008 Jim approached me with the idea of starting a new firm, I had let him know previously I would be giving notice at the beginning of the year. Initially I was just humoring Jim, and thought such an endeavor would last maybe a few months and then he’d want to do something else or I wouldn’t like it… Jim asked if we could give it a try for five years and we both agreed to that.

    We did pretty well in those five years. We laughed almost every day. Every day I got a hug in the morning and a hug in the evening. We’d have lunch and take trips and spend time in waiting rooms and walk around the city. We worked too, Jim would travel all over the country to help find simple solutions for accessibility issues and then come back and we’d write up reports for the client and answer their calls and emails.

    One thing I’ve loved about this is Jim’s open-mindedness, even with the law he knows so well. He’d take my suggestions sometimes and answer my questions no matter how trivial they might have seemed to me.

    We survived snowmageddon, the earth quake, my Pa and his Ma’s passing, his friend passing, my failed engagement and arguments here and there. We took trips to Boca Raton, Maui, Cancun, San Antonio, Danville, and more. We ditched the PC’s and went Mac. We’ve had some of the most interesting clients and situations come up that kept us intrigued and entertained.

    The goal was never really about making money, the goal was about having fun and helping others. We met the goals.

    Sadly, we’re going to be closing our doors January 31, it was a great run and I’ve received a great friend (and his family) out of the deal. I’m a lucky man. I’ve just had the best job a person could ask for and it taught me the importance of loving the job you have and the people you work with, go do what you love and do it with people that are worth knowing.

    My boss, my friend, my partner – Jim DiLuigi is worth knowing.

  • Name of the Past

    So this morning I was fretting about having to update my résumé, which I’ve been procrastinating about for a few months now, and a thought occurred to me:

    “How do I address my old name in my résumé and references?”

    Wow, that’s a monkey wrench I hadn’t thought about. For those of you out of the loop, I officially changed my name from James Jody Appel to Jamez Ronald Prudlick in September of 2009 to honor my Pa who passed away in 2008 (wow, it seems like just last year 😦 ). I did everything by the book legally and paid all the fees for such a thing to happen.

    When it comes to referring prospective employers to my résumé and or references most of those employers wouldn’t even know I had changed my name. An odd position to be in and if I were an employer hiring folks this situation would make me think twice.

    Perhaps I could hint to new employers during interviews that I’m in the witness protection program and not at liberty to explain the circumstances? Nah, there must be an easier way to address this.

    I don’t know if contacting past employers would be the route to go … it’s a conundrum.

    If nothing else, it does give me a legitimate excuse for not updating the résumé at the moment…. 😉