27 feb 2012

today my coworker told a short tale that started with 'the refrigerator smelled like something had died in there' and ended with 'i got so wasted'. it was a shorter path than you might think between those two statements, and it was pretty funny, but i guess you had to be there. those of us who were there today attended our regular monday staff meeting. after a couple hours the meeting was sort of switching gears to a sales meeting, and i am not in sales, so i picked up my stuff and i left. later, my wasted coworker congratulated me on how smoothly i'd left. (haha, okay, he wasn't wasted #atthetime.) yes, i did manage to just get up and leave amidst a transition of sorts and yes, it was pretty smooth. it was part of my new schtick: 'i don't read minds'. i don't assume. i don't presume. i don't go where i am not invited. if i receive an email CC, i take it as FYI because if you want action from me, you can send an email TO me. i don't ask. i don't volunteer. i don't speak up. not that i wouldn't recommend any of those things to myself at perhaps a different point in my career, but now is not the time. now is the time to reinvent myself. i have become not so much a go-to problem-solving good-teammate type of coworker as one of your basic mop-up grunt-work dumped-on types. it's time for the rest of you to pull your weight around here. or, at the least, have the decency to explain what you'd like me to do. don't make me guess. because, i won't be doing that anymore.