This week we had auditors come to our office to perform their biennial audit of our HR department. 6 months ago I was selected as the unfortunate individual who would coordinate these 3 days of hell. At the time I thought that they chose me because I had proven myself to be trustworthy and capable of such a large undertaking. Preparing for a departmental audit takes several months of preparation as they request record of all 1300 of our employees including a large sampling of position descriptions, personnel files, and a list of employees to interview while they are at our office. I had help gathering all of this information from other members of our team because they all deal with different areas of our organization and only they would know where to find what I needed. I must say it was difficult scheduling time to meet with each person to go over my list and pull the information because we are already stretched pretty thin but literally the day before all of the pre-audit information was due I got everything together and sent it in.
I was feeling pretty good about myself because I had completed half the battle and then 3 days before the auditors were to arrive I sat in a meeting with my supervisor, one of our assistant directors, and our executive director to go over the audit schedule and discuss any topics we thought the auditors might want to discuss while they were here. Towards the end of the meeting our executive director thanked me for putting everything together noting that they have had someone different take on this task each time because everyone hates doing it. So yet again I was assigned a task I thought was important only to find out that I was told to do it because no one else wanted to.
Initially her comment really took the wind out of my sails because I worked really hard to organize all that crap but then I realized, since I would be escorting the auditors around I would literally be the face of our department and I wanted to leave a positive impression. Regardless of how little everyone else cared I put together 3 killer outfits that I felt made me look equal parts professional and fashionable and I became the hostess with the most-est. I ordered them lunch from their favorite restaurant, I answered all their questions, I escorted them all over campus, sat in on their meetings to take notes, I even got the opportunity to schmooze with them in between meetings and I think they actually enjoyed my company. They gave their initial results yesterday and everything came back outstanding and they even publicly thanked me for having everything so organized. Afterwards my supervisor actually thanked me for a job well done and I could finally breathe a sigh of relief that it was over.
Unfortunately as soon as that all ended I had to go into the office for 3 hours on a Saturday morning to begin to prepare for my co-worker to take a 6-8 week medical leave. She is having the gastric sleeve procedure and has not been at all shy about talking about it to anyone who will listen. About 4 months ago her physician recommend that she have it done otherwise she wouldn't be able to have a baby in the future. Since I only believe about 20% of what I hear I'm not at all sure that this is a true statement but she's already scheduled the surgery so let the weight loss and subsequent baby making begin. For the purposes of this blog I will refer to her as The Sleeve. The Sleeve is a 35 year old singleton who has been slaving away at our company for nearly 8 years and although she has an active social life, a close knit family including a twin sister, and owns her own home all she's ever wanted is a husband and a baby. I have my own beliefs as to why that hasn't happened yet but I do hope that she is able to have all her heart desires I just hope she doesn't tie the success of her man search to the weight loss because it really does go deeper than that.
As I was preparing for my office audit I started to think about auditing my own life. Lately I've noticed certain habits of mine that are not helping me become one with my authentic self. For example, every Friday night I watch Say Yes to the Dress with my mom. The show itself is rather entertaining as it follows brides to be around lavish bridal salons as they search for the dress of their dreams. As with any reality show involving women all types of drama ensues either spotlighting a bridezilla wanting to spend twice her budget or family members and friends making the day about themselves with inappropriate comments. I started to realize that after the show ended I would feel depressed. I was able to pinpoint my feelings to the part where they show pictures of the women with their fiances looking happy and in love and at the end of the episode when they found the dress. You could see the triumph in their faces. It was almost as if their expression was saying "I did it! I found my prince and when I walk down the aisle I am going to be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen". As I watch each woman some very young and a few considerably older reach that level of success a little voice in my head whispers "That will never happen to you" and I actually believe it. I haven't watched the show for the past two weeks because of this and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Is it foolish that I let a scripted reality show get the best of me or is it wise for me to turn off the "noise" that clouds my brain with negative thoughts?
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