02.december: How to suck up...101

Bring a cake to work.

I could end this note right there, honestly, but I won't. I'll give you the back story.

I work in a place where hierarchy is key; the people at the top stand on the next person's shoulders and the next person stands on the shoulders of the person beneath and so on and so on and so on. It's not necessarily evil, it's just the way it is. My position is not such that I have anyone's shoulders to stand on, but I'm not exactly at the bottom of the totem pole, either. There are many lateral shoulders I could lean on, should the need arise, or if they would ever let me, but nothing to speak of to stand on.

There is an office near mine where three or four women work (where I work it is primarily women, which has it's good points and it's bad ones). Let's not get into what they do (I don't want to get into terrible detail here as I might then get dooced), but they are on a similar hierarchal "level" as I am. The printer that my computer prints to just happens to be in that office, my internal mail comes to that office, my faxes come to that fax machine, ALL IN THAT OFFICE. So, I'm in there at least once if not forty times in any given day. Oh, and I forgot one of the more important things that occurs in that office: the mail I send out to the world goes from a bin in that office to the mail room in this building.

I edit the newsletter for my department and it gets mailed out to about 60 people every three months. I have sent out exactly two of these newsletters since I started this job in March of this year. I got the icy-cold treatment after I sent out the first one in June, just because I had the gall to put 60 envelopes in a bin in this office that someone then had to deliver to the mail room. I was asked what I was doing in there once, I was left standing at the locked door for over five minutes while someone pretended to ignore me at their desk (the door has a window), I have had my print-outs tossed in the recycling bin within minutes of my printing them and a few of my pay stubs have gone "missing" after being delivered to that office.

Then my second newsletter went to print and was ready to go to the bin to be taken to the mail room. I was so nervous the day I stuffed the envelopes that my stomach was upset -- I didn't know what to do. I left the envelopes on my desk at the end of the day, vowing to put them in the horribly troublesome bin the next morning. Maybe I could come in early..oh wait, no that won't work - I can't get into the office unless there is actually someone IN the office. Hmmm. What could I do? So I did what any rational domestic goddess does: I took a cake to work. I took it into that office and declared that it was for the department but that I'd leave it in there. I went back in an hour later to check with everyone to make sure they'd had some -- they had and they were full of smiles and compliments and happiness. One person even knew my name! I was sailing! I brought in my envelopes about an hour after that and, amid more compliments and praise for my cake, I plopped them in the mail bin. No icy stares, no mean looks, just smiles. The exalted cranberry tea cake had done its job.

I'd love to end this note here, go out on a high note ("thank you everybody and good night!"), but alas this story does not have such a happy ending. Today I went in to find my print-outs in the recycling bin and got the cold stares I got before...who would have thought that these women could be so sugar-dependent?! I strolled back to my office and asked my office mate (who is very nice) to show me where the mail room is so I can simply take my own mail there from now on. And from now on I also could bring in cake for just the two of us, instead of for everyone else.