7 Quick Takes Friday #40

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

This is one of the strangest weeks I have spent in a while. It was a week with two Saturdays, no Korean Wednesday in Korea and no American Friday. That is what happens when you cross the International Date Line twice in one week. It has also been a high intensity week.

1. Last Friday (the Friday I spent in America), I spent most of the day at an EEO hearing for someone I helped into a leadership position three years ago (he did not know that his application had been turned down, and I had intervened) but who had not been accepted into an even higher leadership position, and he blamed me for that, so sued our organization and me for discrimination. Ironically, his "class" is overrepresented among our leaders and the "class" of the individual selected for the position is underrepresented, so he did not even have a prima faciae case. The investigator was rather put out that he had come in from out of town only to find out that the complainant had not checked the facts. Further, and this was pretty funny, I had nothing to do with the selection. I always delegate selection to the immediate supervisor, who uses a panel with external membership as well as internal to keep everything above board. In this case, I was two echelons above that supervisor. The lawyer for our organization did an excellent job in bringing all of this out. When I had to present the information that no one had wanted the complainant years ago for the low-level supervisory job he has held since then and that I had actually intervened, recommending that the immediate supervisor give him a chance, the complainant, who works at one of our remote sites and was participating in the procedure by phone, seemed overwhelmed and asked for a half-hour delay and recall so that he could compose himself and recoup from the stress he was feeling. While clearly the finding will be for our organization, I feel sorry for the complainant. It did not have to come to this if he could have put aside his ego and objectively looked at his own lack of qualifications compared to the qualifications of the person selected. The only good fallout was the opportunity of all of us -- the immediate supervisor and senior manager and I -- to forgive the complainant for all the extra work that we had to do in preparation for the investigation and negotiation. (Obviously, we did not negotiate since the case had no merit.) There could also have been ego issues, but no one in this particular chain considers himself/herself better than anyone else, so I don't think any offense was taken by anyone in that regard. I did not notice any self-defensive responses at the hearing. It is rewarding for me to see managers in my organization acting objectively and with compassion. I think everyone benefits from opportunities for forgiveness. For whatever he thinks was done unfairly to him, I hope the complainant will also ultimately feel the pleasure and release that forgiveness brings. (Note: picture drawn by Latuff, a Brazilian artist who does marvelous artwork -- take a look.)

2. On Saturday, we ran all over creation -- well, at least, the Central Coast California part of it. We picked up Doah's belonging from his old group home and visited a new possibility very near by, just minutes from us, and in the same housing development where his brother Shane lives. Before picking up the belongings, we had lunch at Dairy Belle, a quaint dinette where we could eat outside in the warm, dry California sunshine. We spent the evening at a members' night at the Monterey Bay aquarium, where they have new otter pups. (Note: If you recognize the picture, it could be because the Monterey Bay Aquarium was one of the locations of the Star Trek IV movie.)

3. On Sunday, I had a reception for visitors from my organization's oversight board, who would be spending Monday and Tuesday with us. Ironically, one of them is a former vice-president at a college in Vermont where I taught in the graduate program in the early 1990s. My old boss! It is always fun getting to see old bosses -- if one has had a good relationship. We did. Now we are a mutual admiration society -- if two can be considered a "society"! It' s interesting how relationships change as life goes on.

4. On Monday, our prayer group met at our house, as usual on the second Monday of the month for an inspirational movie. Sr. M had just heard what happened to Doah and was in tears. She is such a lovely person. The group has been praying for Doah, and things do seem to be working out for him. We watched a very short documentary because people mostly wanted to talk about the situation. Doah and Donnie did not want to be there since Doah has trouble sitting still for more than 5-10 minutes and Donnie does not like crowds, so they went out to McDonald's for a leisurely dinner where they could be alone together for Donnie's sake and Doah could run about as needed to expend his energy.

5. Tuesday was another eating day. Tough on the diet. One of our teams, including me, went out to dinner at an Afghan restaurant to do some team-building. We had had three members of the team come in from out of town -- two from Washington DC and one from North Carolina. Working together over the phone and Internet is quite different from working together in person. One person was quite new and is somewhat of a counterpart to me. I liked him immediately. It turns out he has worked with some of my former students.

6. There is not much to say about Wednesday and Thursday. I did not see much of either day. I got on the plane to Korea on Wednesday morning after forgetting my passport at home and making a mad dash back there for it and got off the plane on Thursday afternoon in Incheon, Korea, after having slept the entire flight. There I realized that having the passport in and of itself was not enough. The passport had only two pages left for stamps, including the extra pages I had sewn in when I was in Bahrain. Fortunately, Korean immigration found a page they had used earlier and put the new stamp on the old page. Otherwise, I might have had some difficulties at the US airport upon return. (Will have to get some extra pages immediately upon return since I have four more countries to visit in the next five weeks.) Then, too, I had not only forgotten my passport; I had forgotten to get money from the ATM. I arrived with $4 in my pocket. At least, there are ATMs in Korea, too, although the person meeting me, one of our senior managers, had to spot me bus fare until I could to one.

7. Friday was a tough day. (Yes, past tense here in Seoul, present tense in the USA.) I don't do jet lag, so I was wide awake and bushy-tailed, but I would rather have had the jet lag so I could have been a little out of it. I had come to conduct an evaluation of our programs. The senior manager responsible for this area told me that the local director was not doing her job, had crossed some legal and ethical lines, and that she would not listen to him. My job, while conducting the review of the work being accomplished at the site, would be to make the final judgment on whether or not she should remain and be trained or fired. I opted for the firing when we both learned more details about some of the things she was doing, including working for a competitor during work hours at our organization and throwing her work onto one of her subordinates. I gave the go-ahead to cut the cord to the senior manager and the junior manager who had come with him (and is the immediate supervisor of the local director). I was not present when they did it since that would have been micromanagement. I don't like doing these things. I prefer to reward people, not punish them, but some transgressions cannot be overlooked. Objectively, an easy call. Subjectively, a wrenching one, especially since this particular director was someone I had mentored a few years ago. (On a positive note, during my lunch hour I had a local deaf artist prepare Fr. Ed's name on a wall hanging in Korean calligraphy -- not the picture shown here, but very similar, in green on white, green being his favorite color, of course, given that he grew up in Ireland.)

And now I am off to bed to catch a flight back to the USA tomorrow afternoon. Crossing the international date line again, I will arrive tomorrow morning. For next week's 7 Quick Takes, I guess I will have to decide which of the two Saturdays I include as the real Saturday. May all my problems become as simple. May all yours be as simple.

Have a wonderful weekend.