Thursday, May 25, 2006

For Once, Turning My Stubbornness Into A Positive

I am officially a full-time associate at J.P. Morgan Chase as of June 1st. As you remember, I posted a few weeks ago that I was not pulling any overtime hours despite their desire to have me work six days a week while they're backed up because I would be doing more than full-time hours at part-time status. I distictly remember a recent Tuesday when a co-worker was scheduled to go to training and therefore leave a void on the floor. They separately sent two floor leads and my supervisor to request that I come in that Tuesday, which is one of my off days. I had to resist laughing in their faces. The corporate decision when I was hired along with several other new workers was to give some of them full-time status immediately, but not me and not a couple others. Why? I don't know. But I knew damn well that they were not about to screw me with that decision, then turn around and have me put in forty plus hours anyway. Not a chance in hell. So basically, by asking for full-time status and indirectly refusing to do overtime until then, I held my breath until they gave in. Finally, being a Capricorn paid off.

Speaking of the gig, I believe I called it CEDA Lite after the first week or so because of some oddities and inadequacies that I felt were not befitting a professional corporation. After three months, it's not as bad. I am getting a clearer and clearer picture of how they do bidness up in there. I can't complain about the constant meetings because at least they're trying to keep us informed of some of the goings-on. I am not letting the personality quirks of some colleagues get on my nerves as I would before. Quite the opposite, I'm making those quirks the highlights of my day, enjoying the entertainment value of the one chick who still has yet to come in on a Sunday morning sober from my observation; or the team lead who didn't start her new job that long before I did, leading to consistently inaccurate advice on basically every problem I've approached her with; or the supervisor with the broken English who learned her people skills watching "Happy Days," sticking a thumbs-up at everyone when she praises them (or a "hang-ten" sign on one occasion, throwing the earth into reverse rotation briefly); or the old lady who thinks she knows everything better than everyone else and takes Godfather-like scorn on anyone who thinks otherwise and doesn't kiss her proverbial ring. And what can you say about the older woman who smiled upon learning my name and softly asked, "You're not crazy, are you? I've never known anyone by that name who wasn't crazy."

I could only laugh and assure her that, yes, this Dre is crazy, too.

1 comment:

GrizzBabe said...

So that's where I get my stubborness from!