Getting Away With It

Working really hard today.

 

 

Don't tell my boss. 

 

 

Well, actually, she already knows, but, if you say the words, "Shelly's getting paid to sit at her desk and do a toe reduction on a sock design," then it sounds like I'm getting away with something, when I'm actually just knitting during my down time.

 

 

 

When people ask me what I do for a living, the first, snarky, answer that pops into my head is "I talk doctors down from the ledge, all day."

 

 

Not entirely untrue.

 

 

What I actually do is, when my company tells all of the physicians in the US, "oh, by the way, we're going to be doing THIS" and springs some new product/methodology on them, and the docs liked it the old way, and they're all mad as hell and want us to die, I'm the one who calms their asses down and teaches them how to do that thing that we're making them do while simultaneously Rah-Rah-Rah-ing the thing we're making them do. 

 

There is a specific set of skills required to bring a person from the point of seething hatred all the way to "Hey, I guess this doesn't suck and/or You guys are the BEST!"  Lucky me, I have those exact skills.  For the record, "You guys are the BEST!" is somewhat rare, but I'm almost always able to achieve something between "I guess this doesn't suck" and "This is actually pretty cool."  Close enough.  Considering that I slept through my public relations classes in college, that's quite good.  Don't tell my public relations professor that I got good at it, in spite of the hours spent snoozing--I don't want her to think that I'm getting away with something.

 

 

I "get away with" a lot of stuff--mostly because it doesn't occur to me to ask permission before I do a thing--hey, if I'm dead-wrong, I'll apologize and hang my head in shame for the required amount of time, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try something just because someone who's never even thought about it is too scared to acknowledge that it just might work.  I admire my employer because they are a lot like that, and, that provides me with the most enjoyable job of explaining to people why that doesn't suck.

 

Know this: most people operate under a veil of fear.  To them, everything is a delicate balance, and they will go WAY out of their way to avoid toppling the cart.  People do all kinds of crazy things to stay away from discomfort, because they think it will be the end of them.  You wanna know something?  You're not that fragile.  Nothing in the world has more bounce-back than the human spirit.  People come back from horrendous situations, stronger than ever.  They come back as better people.  How can this be bad?  The dumb stuff my bosses throw out, for me to defend, is nothing compared to any real trauma.

 

I greatly admire the innovators--those that went out and did a thing and didn't wait around for the "no".  Or maybe they got a bunch of "no" and went ahead and did it anyway.  That takes guts.  It's also the reason why I really like my job, and the company I work for.  When an organization, or a person, is like that, I'm driven to support them--even if it means that I get to spend the day knitting because the company hasn't pissed anyone off this week.

 

What are YOU getting away with?  What would you LIKE to get away with, if you had the chance?