What missed opportunities do you regret?

[sheeplady]

Like some of you, there's things I wouldn't change for the fear of pulling a thread and destroying the trapestry.

The one thing I do regret is not having a backbone earlier in getting toxic family members out of my life. I would have had more happiness, more money, more time, etc. But I thought for a long time I could control the situation by setting boundaries and that I "owed" these family members something.

I gave up numerous opportunities to be there for them (I stayed within driving distance so I could "rescue" them whenever they needed or demanded it). Granted, taking those opportunities would have made me a different person. In the least I could have dealt with a lot less demands and accusations over the years.

 

[HudsonHawk]

There are some crazy women in my past that didn't exactly move me forward in life. Of course, there's the good side of being with crazy too...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I kinda wish I'd made a go of the acting, professionally, when I was younger. Life would certainly have been very different then - it's certainly notg a financially sound career forf all but the very, very few, and I don't have the mindset to manage without a reliable income. The mortgage certainly puts that out the window for the foreseeable. That said, I was always a character player anyhow, which doesn't have an age limit in the way some others do, so I'll probably fall into it again in future.

Character actors always have more fun.

 

[tonyb]

I don't regret those old relationships, nor their dissolutions, so much as I regret the psychic energy I expended once they were no more.

I did some women wrong, and some women did me wrong, but there's no point in keeping score. I would apologize, given the opportunity, but I wouldn't fault any of those lovely lasses for not wishing to hear so much as a word from me. Such relationships were all-or-nothing propositions. If I couldn't give it my all, I couldn't give it anything.

 

[Nobert]

There was a time when I regretted not going to college, but I look back at my life and realize I've done everything I ever really wanted to do without having done so, so what, exactly, is there to regret?

I never had "making a spitload of money" as my life goal, so there really isn't any disappointment over not having done so, and I have the satisfaction of never having had to violate my conscience for the sake of a job. That, to me, is worth more than all the money in the world. I have all the posessions I've ever needed, I have close friends I care deeply about, and I'm living exactly where I want to be living, doing a job that, for all its long hours and irritations, I really enjoy. So who needs anything more?

I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly, it's just a matter of trying to get some pinhead in H.R. to believe it. I haven't held down a regular, steady job since 2013 (unless you count working for my family). You practically can't get a job in a call center without a degree these days. Whenever I tell people I'm looking for work they say, "what do you do?" This includes the student roommates in an appallingly filthy place I sublet last month who never did anything except get stoned and sit around watching T.V. I do what I have to to pay the bills and still can't get decent employment.

 

[Fading Fast]

Sheeplady, it took me into my mid thirties to realize that I am happier when the negative energy people are out of my life - the bad friends or family members you continue to be friends with out of "obligation." Once I started culling my list of friends and family to only those I thought were good people, my life improved dramatically. I have a small group of friends and very few family member I talk to, but I am happy that each one is in my life. And I don't have all my energy sapped by negative, mean, angry, conniving people anymore. I try very hard to keep the negative people out - in business you can only control so much - but having made that decision, it is one I'd never ever go back on. While I could regret not having made it sooner, I needed the life experience to understand it and to know it was the right one for me.

Hudson Hawk, like most, I've dated some crazy women (and I'm sure our women members have dated some crazy men), and it is all part of it for me - seeing what is out there in the world, having the experience, learning what you want no part of and, then, appreciating the good ones you do meet more. And, yes, your implication was not lost on me - but even there, some things are just too crazy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly, it's just a matter of trying to get some pinhead in H.R. to believe it. I haven't held down a regular, steady job since 2013 (unless you count working for my family). You practically can't get a job in a call center without a degree these days. Whenever I tell people I'm looking for work they say, "what do you do?" This includes the student roommates in an appallingly filthy place I sublet last month who never did anything except get stoned and sit around watching T.V. I do what I have to to pay the bills and still can't get decent employment.

I've been lucky in that I've never had a job where I had to deal with an H. R. department -- I've always worked in mom and pop type of operations, and when I saw that radio was going corporate that was my cue to exit. I don't think if I was in my twenties or thirties today I'd be having anywhere near as easy a time of it -- I have good friends with good degrees who are making minimum wage, so it's hard telling what I'd be doing for a living.

 

[tonyb]

In smaller businesses the titles and hierarchies usually matter less than they do in large operations. People know who really does the work at small businesses. My advice to people concerned about keeping their jobs is to make themselves hard to be without. Show up on time, every day. Do all that's expected and a bit more. Take the time to show the new guy how this place works.

Perhaps this final piece isn't as relevant as it was a few decades ago, but in my early working life I found it wise to befriend the most senior woman in the place, no matter her title. She knew how things really worked. She knew the guy who (allegedly) ran the place before his son took over. She knew what it took to keep the doors open, usually because she was the one who saw to it those things got done.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think of my role at work as being like that of a top sergeant. The officers come and go, but the senior enlisted people keep things running. It also helps that I'm the only one who really knows how the equipment works, or even where all of it actually is.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think of my role at work as being like that of a top sergeant. The officers come and go, but the senior enlisted people keep things running. It also helps that I'm the only one who really knows how the equipment works, or even where all of it actually is.

Corporate America never, ever lets that go on. I now work for myself, but before that, I spent decades in CA. They would - and do not exaggerate one bit - have us write out a full job description of what we do then have "organizational people" create policy and procedures manuals so that if "you are out sick for an extended period of time" someone could do your job. You had to (again, not exaggerating) certify in writing that this or that person is fully trained to do your job.

CA figured out a long time ago not to let anyone be indispensable. This way, when they need to cut costs, they always know whom to fire and who can do his or her job. The manual writing, proofing, checking and certifying is oppressive. They come up with all sorts of euphemisms for it - "if you are on 'extended leave'," "disaster recover," "career development" (we are only doing this so that if you get promoted, we can have someone jump right in to your old job - uh huh), "organization planning," blah, blah, blah. Whatever they call it, is is all to ensure you can be replaced.

 

[LizzieMaine]

At one of my radio jobs, we had a grizzled old janitor whose main job was to nurse the boiler along. A new management team came in and decided he was superfluous and outsourced his job to a contractor. Two weeks later the boiler ran dry and came very close to exploding -- the walls in the offices got so hot that oil paintings hanging over the chimney melted. The asbestos shell on the boiler cracked from the heat, and you could see the cherry-red metal underneath.

I saw the ex-janitor a few days later and told him the story, and that it was costing the station owners a fortune for repairs and asbestos abatement. "Serves the SOBs right," he chuckled.

 

[Fading Fast]

At one of my radio jobs, we had a grizzled old janitor whose main job was to nurse the boiler along. A new management team came in and decided he was superfluous and outsourced his job to a contractor. Two weeks later the boiler ran dry and came very close to exploding -- the walls in the offices got so hot that oil paintings hanging over the chimney melted. The asbestos shell on the boiler cracked from the heat, and you could see the cherry-red metal underneath.

I saw the ex-janitor a few days later and told him the story, and that it was costing the station owners a fortune for repairs and asbestos abatement. "Serves the SOBs right," he chuckled.

It takes a small business owner - who knows his employees intimately - and probably didn't go to business school or at least didn't buy in to all the efficiency this and structural-design that that he was taught to appreciate the value of your grizzled old janitor. I've worked for very small proprietor-run businesses to several of the largest companies in the world - the only time you will get that kind of appreciation for quirky skills, devotion and loyalty is in the small owner-run ones. Even if a manager in a large company does appreciate the quirky employee, that manager will be rotated out of that area and, eventually, the automaton efficiency manager will get rid the quirky valuable employee as he doesn't fit the mold or there appears to be a "cost save" (that, as with the janitor, won't be, but it can be justified up front as one).

 

[Redshoes51]

LizzieMaine...

I have regrets for certain things I've *done* -- but not for anything I didn't do. And at the same time, I realize that if I hadn't done any of the things I've done, I wouldn't be the person I am now. Pick at one loose thread, and before you know it you've unraveled the whole sweater.

I certainly enjoy some of the things that you write... such as this. Brief, yet so eloquent...

Thank you...

~shoes~

 

[Hercule]

At one of my radio jobs, we had a grizzled old janitor whose main job was to nurse the boiler along. A new management team came in and decided he was superfluous and outsourced his job to a contractor. Two weeks later the boiler ran dry and came very close to exploding -- the walls in the offices got so hot that oil paintings hanging over the chimney melted. The asbestos shell on the boiler cracked from the heat, and you could see the cherry-red metal underneath.

I saw the ex-janitor a few days later and told him the story, and that it was costing the station owners a fortune for repairs and asbestos abatement. "Serves the SOBs right," he chuckled.

It seems that when new movers and shakers come along, the first thing they always do is get rid of the people who actually do the work.

 

[Redshoes51]

It seems that when new movers and shakers come along, the first thing they always do is get rid of the people who actually do the work.

Isn't that the truth? If I've learned nothing else in my lifetime, it's that I appreciate the custodial staff... and the secretarial staff in the building where I work at the university. Those are the two groups of people that keep that place running.

~shoes~

 

[ingineer]

There are not unimportant jobs, just unimportant attitudes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Virtues:_A_Treasury_of_Great_Moral_Stories
Something all should read
The one company decided to to remove the oiler, months later thousands of dollars of equipment broke down and production came to a standstiil

 

[sheeplady]

There's only one person who has a key to every office in the building... and it's not the CEO.

(Other tan the person who handles giving out keys, but sometimes this is spread between multiple people.

 

[Nobert]

There's only one person who has a key to every office in the building... and it's not the CEO.

(Other tan the person who handles giving out keys, but sometimes this is spread between multiple people.

During my long career in the Custodial Arts, more than once, I would think to myself in regards to someone who was making my life more difficult than needs be: "Do you really want to cheese off a person who has the key to your office and access to more T.P. than you've ever seen in one place?" It was just an unspoken idle threat, of course, but it served its purpose as a stopgap.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You didn't even need to be a janitor to be a menace. At that same radio job, I took the time to get to know the paths of all the ventilation ducts in the building, and when it came time for me to bid farewell to this particular General Manager and move on to another job, I was able to leave him a parting gift -- half a ham sandwich and an orange, jammed up inside the ducts that blew fresh air into his office. Within a few days of my departure, I am told, he was driven into a rage by a vast and swelling cloud of fruit flies.

 

[Nobert]

It's a good thing for him you never discovered the Chicken Bomb.