Raincharm’s Weblog

A little less than 6 years ago I officially gained an assistant at work.

He is retiring on Friday.
Today we had the retirement breakfast here at work, with all employees invited. This is not to be confused with the smaller lunch we had last week with just a few department folks. We have around 50 employees, and about 40 showed up this morning. But – it was a week heavy with vacations. Last week before school, and an added Monday, so it was to be expected.

A catered event – the food was quite good.
And I managed to get in a Top Ten type list of reasons you should be worried about your OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) inspection. The last one said, “The inspector knows everyone in your office because they were a former employee you fired.” I thought it was pretty funny.

We went with safety humor because my assistant assisted me primarily in running the safety and emergency response programs. Safety coordinator is a thankless job. At least most of the time. I did see/hear several people come up and thank him for pushing safety, and that it actually made them think more about their safety even at home. He started (at the District) the WYE (What’s Your Exposure) program.

I added a few words about working with him, and when we clashed and finally could come to agreement.

In the end I have to admit I really enjoyed having a “Mature” employee. I did not have to try to teach him to take initiative. He also did not worry so much about whether others here would like him. (This is almost essential to the Safety Coordinator position.)

And at the end of the day, I am tired.
Just this little bit of presentation in the morning took it out of me in the end.

(And we are not replacing his position. Just spreading the work around amoung a few other individuals. This is called government belt tightening. Or in our case, working longer to get it covered, at the same salary as before.)

Ready for a night off.

This entry was posted on August 29, 2012 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.