When I first became June’s boss, she brought up the idea of me writing a guest post for her blog—a whole “I Supervised June” thing. I said sure. Now I’m not her boss, and I have time to write the post. Those two things are not related.
I think June expects me to tell you all what a challenging person she is to manage. I think she expects me to say:
That she’s a drama queen. Not really. I’ve managed rafts of interns and no person is as much a drama queen as a college senior.
That she’s got bizarre taste in desk décor. You all may have seen the “It’s not mean if it’s hilarious” cross stitch she has and the like. Again not really the bizarrest, in my experience. One of my mentors had a freeze-dried octopus in a plastic bag pinned to his office bulletin board—for years. I think he snuck it through customs on his way back from Malaysia. He also had a model airplane made from a deer mandible that he got on a trip to South America. The teeth were still attached.
That she never listens to what I asked her to do. In truth, I think she’s psychic. I have a belief that it takes three things to do well here at our company: Make friends in other departments, have a creative outlet other than what you write and edit here, and be vocal when you’ve got too much to do. I didn’t have to tell her any of that when I became her boss: June, as you all well know, has plenty of friends at work, has a creative outlet that she works on daily, and if I ever had missed that she was overcommitted at work because I was, too, I could just check the blog and catch up.
That she takes too much time off. Nope. See above on college interns. Hire them their final semester, and they’ll leave for spring break, midterms, commencement rehearsal, parents’ weekend, senior class birdwatching and teambuilding, Greek senior beach bonding and then ask for more time so they can actually study and pass their finals.
That I roll my eyes every time she has a migraine. Actually, I’m very sympathetic. I used to get them almost every week in my 20s. The worst one I had, I thought that the side of my face was melting off. I’ve got them controlled now, but I would drive her home if she had one and needed to leave the office midday.
That I think she’s weird for blogging. Well…. I do think that I couldn’t possibly blog about losing a pet or train sex with Ned (I’m putting myself in her shoes; I never had any sex with Ned and in fact have never met him), but I do enjoy reading her blog very much. I had no idea how the Naughty Professor (who started working at our company before I did) found love again after he lost his longtime partner until I read that post. And I have known Griff since 1998, and almost hyperventilated when I binge read his/June’s Twitter feed for the first time. (*Fun fact: Griff is squeamish. I once unintentionally made him turn white when he overheard me telling a coworker about a bad Red Cross blood donation experience.)
So, sorry, June. She and I actually have a lot in common. We’re both Midwesterners and I make her do the Michigan hand map thing sometimes. We both think Meyers Briggs is awesome and explains much of how the world works. We have some of the same shoes and why I’ve never seen her at DSW at the same time as I’m there, it has to be because I was in the clearance section while she was checking out and we just missed one another. We both like this corner bar in town that has blackened green beans. I don’t know if she likes their green beans, but she should. We both know and think her neighbor Peg is awesome; Peg and I used to go to the same church and worked on a big mission trip fundraising silent auction for several years together. We both think there is no frigate like a book. We both adore The Poet; she set me and my husband up on a blind date.
We have a lot that we’re not alike about, too. I’m very allergic to cats, I have kids, I think California is evil (ok, not evil, but I’ve never had that pull to it that so many other people do) and she’s got a zippier car (I heart my minivan).
Anyway. That’s what it’s like to be June’s boss.
