 Seattle - Monday Morning
It was a wet, cold, dark, dreary, dismal Monday in Seattle, inside and out. The best the meteorologist on Channel 4 could offer was a possible break in the clouds around noon. On days like this Mary Jane Ramierez missed Southern California.
“What a roller coaster,” she thought, as her mind retraced the last three years. Dan, her husband, received a great offer from Microrule and she had been confident she could find a job once they relocated in Seattle. In just four short weeks they had given notice, packed, moved, and found a great day care for the kids. Their house hit the Los Angeles housing market just at the right time and sold immediately. True to her confidence, Mary Jane quickly found a supervisory position in the operations area of First Guarantee Financial, one of Seattle’s largest financial institutions.
Dan loved his job at Microrule. When he came home at night he was bursting with energy and full of stories about the great company for which he now worked and the advanced work they were doing. Dan and Mary Jane would frequently put the children to bed and talk well into the evening. As excited as Dan was about his new company, he was always just as interested in her day, wanting to know about her new colleagues and the challenges she was facing in her work life. Anyone watching would easily guess that they were best friends. The spirit of each seemed to shine in the presence of the other.
Their detailed planning had anticipated every possible contingency, but one. Twelve months after moving to Seattle, Dan was rushed to the hospital with a burst aneurysm—“a genetic oddity” they called it--and he died of internal bleeding while never regaining consciousness. There was no warning and no time to say good-by. That was two years ago this month. We had hardly been in Seattle a full year.
Stopping in mid-thought, the memories flooded her mind and emotion welled up inside. She caught herself. This is not the time to think about my personal life, the workday is less than half over, and I’m swamped with work.
First Guarantee
During her three years at First Guarantee, Mary Jane developed a great reputation as a “can-do” supervisor. She wasn’t the first to arrive or the last to leave but she had a work ethic that almost always left her in-basket empty. The thoughtful way she conducted her work actually led to a small problem in the organization as others tried to make sure that their work passed through her organization and not one of the others. They knew the work would get done on time and with the highest quality.
She listened closely to the concerns and ideas of her staff and was well liked and respected in return. It was not uncommon for her to cover for someone with a sick child or important appointment. And as a working manager, she led her department in production. She did this in an easygoing way which rarely generated any tension—other than the tension to get the job done well. Her direct reports and associates enjoyed working with and for her. Mary Jane’s small group developed a reputation as a team you could count on.
In sharp contrast, there was a large operations group on the third floor which was often the topic of conversation for the opposite reason. Words like “unresponsive,” “entitlement,” “zombie”, “unpleasant,” “slow,” “wasteland” and “negative,” were used frequently to describe this group. It was a group that everyone loved to hate. Unfortunately for the company, nearly every department needed to interact with the third floor since they processed most of First Guarantee’s transactions. Everyone dreaded any contact with the operations group.
Supervisors swapped stories about the latest fiasco on the third floor. Those who visited the third floor described it as a place so dead that it sucked the life right out of you. Mary Jane remembered the laughter when one of the managers said that he would probably win a Nobel Prize. When asked what he meant he said, “I think I may have discovered life on the third floor.” Everyone roared.
Then a few weeks later Mary Jane had cautiously and somewhat reluctantly accepted a promotion to manager of the operations group on the third floor of First Guarantee. While the company had great hopes for her, she had major reservations about accepting the job. She had been comfortable in her present job--and her willingness to take risks had been much higher before Dan’s death. The group she had been supervising had been with her during the rough days after Dan’s death, and she felt a strong bond with them. It would be hard to leave people who had shared so much of themselves during such dark times.
Mary Jane was acutely aware of the terrible reputation of the third floor. In fact if it hadn’t been for all of the unforeseen expenses of Dan’s hospitalization, she probably would have turned down the promotion and pay raise. So here she was, on the infamous third floor. The third person to have the job in the last two years. |
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