Lisa and I were sitting together the other day when she turned to me out of the blue and asked why I had not been updating the blog. She rambled off a list of recent events and pointed out how I neglected to blog them. Its then I realized she was right, not only had I all but ignored the blog site. I had also grown lax in keeping in touch with people again. Sometime I hate when she’s right but I got to love her for the reality check.
My problem is I’m not sure where to start. I guess I can start by mentioning why i haven't updated the blog in a while. Believe it or not its work related. Everyone who knows me is aware I have a pretty cool job. It doesn't pay much but it keeps the mortgage paid and in today economy I’m considering myself lucky to be employed. Anyways back to my reason, while at work I would often find myself having some lulls between completing my duties. In the past I would use this down time to do small things like checking other family blogs, Writing emails or if things were really slow I’d update my own blog.
I know what you’re thinking “shame on me” and your right… I’m not going to make excuses but let it be known my activity was never at the expense of completing my duties. Work always came first and I only allowed myself to slip when I didn’t have anything waiting on me. But all that aside, you don’t have to worry because I won’t be doing anything like that again. I’ve learned if I look hard enough there is always something work related I can find to be doing. I have not used the company computer for anything beside work for nearly three months and there’s a pretty good reason.
In the first week of April I found myself ambushed and pulled into a meeting in the HR dept. I was seated at a table across from one of the company’s corporate ethics officers. He confronted me with evidence of my blatant waste of company time. I guess I can be proud of the fact that while ashamed and regretful of my activities, I was completely honest with the gentleman. He seemed to appreciate that and was quite civil and polite to me. This was a surprise and not what I would have expected from a guy interviewing a person who was so obviously guilty.
When the interview was over I enquired as to the status of my job. The man explained how nothing had been decided yet and it could take up to three weeks before I would be told. The next four weeks, yes… four weeks was virtually hell. I couldn’t eat or sleep for the first two weeks fearing the worst, At this time the worst was simply being unemployed in this economy. During these weeks I learned through various rumors at work nearly two dozen co-workers had also been nervously waiting to hear the outcomes of their own ethics interviews. I was surprised there so many others in the same situation as me. At about the third week my nerves started to settle. My co-workers and I all entered an almost surreal phase were we finally realized the fate of our employment was out of our hands and stressing out wouldn’t change the outcome.
Then something happened that made me realize worse things than losing a job could happen. I spent the next week worried about work and the health of my mother-in-law who had been rushed off to the hospital for unknown abdominal pains. She spent a little more than a week at Beth Israel in Boston. Lisa and I spent a lot of that week bouncing in and out of Boston to keep her company. The following week the doctors sent her home after her symptoms settled. She seems to be doing better now but they never did diagnose what the cause of her pain.
Into the fourth week more rumors started to spread about when verdicts were going to be released. During this week I found myself being a ball of nerves, even more so when I had in advertency learned in advance when my HR meeting was going to be held. Everyone else had been left in the dark and made to wonder until the last minute and then they would receive a random call to come to HR. I had learned about my meeting three hours in advance because my boss had placed a meeting time marked “1pm - HR about Parnell” in her shared outlook calendar and must have forgotten to mark it as private. I could have been mad and upset over listing my need to go to hr on a calendar the whole quality dept had access to. This whole ethics violation thing was meant to be kept private from fellow co-workers. But with the rumors spreading nothing about anyone ethics violations was private. I thought it best to let it go and just be happy that I knew when my fate would be reviled and so I did.
At 1pm I was called to HR and my fate was laid out for me. I had to read a statement that was written by HR, it stated that I acknowledged the investigation was held and it noted a few of my ethical offences. As I continued to read I let out a huge sigh of relief as I got to the part that read “Written warning - Suspended without pay for three days” When I was done with my sigh my bosses expressed a few verbal imperatives as they explained that they know I was a good worker and they felt that after this, they were sure I’d have learned my lesson. It was true I had. I was elated I got to keep my job but not everyone was so lucky.
So in a not so small nut shell there you have it, well at least you have from April to the first week of May… and the reason I haven’t been blogging as much. I think I’ll try and set aside some dedicated weekend time for the blog. I rather enjoyed sitting here typing this out today and there is quite a bit more to come in the next few days.
