Thursday, July 15, 2010

Respect

Well, it's been over a month since I went on semi-hiatus. I've been reading everyone's blogs about once a week, vs, every other day.

Life outside of work has been hectic. There's been a lot of different things going on at home that have sent me pinging between overly stressed, and relaxed to the max. I've been more on the stressed side unfortunately. I am determined to make the remainder of this month fun. There are friends coming from out of state, and other things to keep me happy and entertained.

Work has been a strange mixture of boring and crazy. There are some potentially huge changes in the works, but only time will tell. I'm trying to stay as unbiased as I can about most of these changes. I will be affected by the changes, but not as much as many other people will be. It's been an interesting ride so far.

I've somewhat developed a new pet peeve as well. Respect.

I was visiting another station for a few minutes a short time ago. Their brand new rookie was talking smack about waxing my station's floor on a house day. Offerring to help me load their floor buffer into my rig, the works. I tried to be nice, but my patience wore thin and I finally told him since he was so concerned about us having a floor buffer, he looked like a good one. So come on over and run our machine.

Why did he feel the need to pester me about the floors? Why did he think it was ok to talk trash to someone he's never even met before?

Respect is earned, not given...BUT, there is a certain amout you must display. I would never walk up to someone I'd never met and start telling him how dirty the floor of his station was. It's just not the way you should handle something like that. Especially if you don't even actually know it's an issue (I'm pretty sure he's never even visited my station).

There are also a few people about to be promoted. It's amazing to sit back and listen to some of them talk about how they plan to take over their new stations, everyone will do _____, etc.

Why would anyone want to walk into a station and immediately start "blowing his bugles"? Other than a poor reputation preceeding you, that is the fastest way to lose any respect from your new crew.

A few years ago, my station had a new (to us) captain transferred in. On the first shift, he started making major changes. He had never worked with us before and had no idea about how the station normally ran. It pissed a lot of us off. It also took a long time for him to start regaining any real respect from the crew. We all respected that he was the captain, but there wasn't much respect for the person behind the bugles.

It's going to be very interesting to watch. My crew will be changed around and all I hope for is to get equally fun and knowledgeable people that get along as well as we currently do. My biggest fear is to be part of a crew that doesn't get along, doesn't work well together, and don't know the job. My department is getting very young and there's no amount of ego that can make up for the experience the senior guys have.