A number of packages arrived today, both expected and not expected. I tend to do most of my shopping for staples like skincare/cosmetics/clothes around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and if I am buying Christmas/birthday gifts for friends or family, I usually use this time to take advantage of all the discounts and deals. What I was not expecting to be delivered today was a huge Amazon box that was gift wrapped and not from our baby registry.

When we opened the box, which was addressed to me, there was a large vacuum-sealed bag. It came with a gift note, which said it was from “the Dream Team.” The label said it was a 55-inch teddy bear… for Pookie. I couldn’t believe it; my team at work had sent me a life-sized teddy bear. I read the reviews, and this guy will need to be unzipped and re-fluffed to be in his full, optimal glory!

“DO NOT take it out of its packaging!” Chris exclaimed, bewildered that someone had sent us such a massively sized stuffed animal. “We have so much clutter! There is stuff everywhere now!”

I’d always wanted a life-sized stuffed animal, just for shits and giggles. In my dreams, it was a Totoro or Snoopy the size of me, but hey, this teddy bear will do. I cannot wait to see how Pookie looks next to this teddy bear in terms of size. It will be too cute.

Since I’ve started working at the current company, I’ve been pretty happy with my colleagues for the most part. Of course, there are always selfish, dickish sales people and self-seeking individuals to look out for, but overall, I’d say it’s been a breath of fresh air, especially considering I came from a place that reeked of stereotypical office politics and backstabbing at its finest. But recently, I’ve noticed that some of the newest hires are not the brightest bulbs, and it’s not because they are not “getting it” right away; it’s more because when new information is presented to them, instead of confidently digesting the new information, they clearly freak out over the video chat and start panicking. Multiple times in the last few days talking with new people, it’s like I was working with deers with headlights, and the freak out sessions were painfully obvious even over Zoom. I can’t even imagine how frustrating this would have been if it were in person.

My general belief about people in customer facing roles is that at minimum, you need to be able to be pleasant, friendly, firm, and exude confidence even when you aren’t even sure what you are talking about. Confidence makes people trust you, and trust is really important with customers. If you are not confident and freak out over little things you don’t understand, customers aren’t stupid; they will pick up on it and call you out for it.

So I’m not sure if I’m just feeling a little impatient because I am slowly preparing to step away from my day to day duties to go out on maternity leave, or if I am just being a jerk in my thoughts. I am definitely patient and kind when I speak with these individuals, and to catch myself, I always smile and take a breath before I speak. I need to pause before I speak, otherwise I know I will end up saying something I will regret.

Yesterday afternoon, I met up with two colleagues from my last company. One of them is originally from New York but has spent the last five years living in San Francisco, so she was out here to see family and hang out. The second one is a New York native and someone I was quite close to while working at the last company. We were on a texting basis when working together about all the dirt at the last place, yet I knew that once we no longer worked together, we’d have little to nothing in common. The visiting ex-colleague reached out to organize a coffee meetup, so we got some drinks and brought them back to my rooftop and chatted for about an hour. It really wasn’t that long because one of them needed to head back to Queens for dinner, and well, the other reason was that we really don’t have much in common anymore. Sadly, it didn’t really feel that natural to be interacting with them, and it felt a little forced at times. It’s not that I think they are bad people, as I definitely do not think that at all. It’s more that we’re not really people who could ever be friends outside of work. Sometimes, that’s just the way it is with certain people. Once you take away the one thing you used to complain about and commiserate on together, it’s kind of over for you all. It’s always a bit of a gamble seeing former colleagues when they are no longer your colleagues because the one thing you had in common, work, is no longer a commonality anymore. I knew we didn’t have much in common in the way of hobbies or life interests in general, but at least we caught up on each other’s lives, respective work, and how that was all going. And with the pandemic’s end not really being in sight, we talked about how we coped with that and how our families managed, as well.

It was a good attempt, but oh well. You can’t always remain friends with former colleagues even if you were really close while working together. C’est la vie.

As long as I’m at the company where I am currently employed, I will never have to go into an office and work a traditional 9-5 or 9-6. I will never have to deal with pumping breast milk in a mother’s room or bathroom between meetings at work. I will never have to post on a Slack channel that I’ll be out for a baby’s appointment for whatever hours of the day. Given the pandemic and the general nature of working from home during this period, this is quite a privilege I have. I remember my mom marveling at the idea of a mother’s room at my last workplace: “we never had that when I was working!” So she never had the option to pump milk for Ed or me; we just had to have formula after she went back to work after eight weeks of maternity leave.

I recognize how lucky I am to work from home and have the flexible schedule I have. My boss, who has a 6-year-old daughter, shuts down her computer to pick her daughter up from daycare at 4pm on the dot every single day, and she doesn’t check email again until about 9pm in the evenings, likely after her daughter is already in bed. We have other colleagues who shut down at 3pm each day, and no one ever blinks an eye at it. It feels good to know that parents are accommodated well at my organization, at least as far as I can see.

I’m having a chat with our benefits team about my leave next week and am curious to see what they will say is required from a paperwork standpoint. In the U.S., regardless of what company you are employed at, this process is rarely fun or enjoyable.

You know how I said yesterday that there is a special place in hell for customers who don’t respect their partners’ time off and give them work to do even before they return from vacation? Well, there’s also a special place in hell when your sales partner decides to put an 8pm local time meeting on your calendar for the day you get back — a meeting that you have to lead, put together a deck for, and do the majority of the talking at. Granted, this customer is APAC based, so it’s not like any time is going to be ideal since we are on the east coast of the U.S., but this really, really sucked and was NOT good. Couldn’t I have at least gotten one day to settle back in after six days out, or is that too much to ask your colleagues?

In the end, this group I was working with was very fun and pleasant, so it was a good meeting at the end of the day (literally), but I still wasn’t pleased to take a call so late on my first day back. It’s no wonder people in other countries take longer periods off… it’s because they want to avoid work as much as possible for as long as possible in a single go.

During pretty much every vacation since my first Europe trip in the summer of 2011, I always check email while I am out of the office, even if it’s just for one day. I learned my lesson that trip: I was out 2.5 weeks, and I was inundated with emails and inane requests when I returned. I didn’t feel fully settled back into work until two months later, which was the worst feeling ever. I respond to things that I think are easy or urgent, but for the most part, I let my backup respond for me. Or, in some cases, when customers are being jerks, they don’t contact my backup and just wait for me to respond when I get back. And I really, really hate this.

I’m not sure why customers do this. When I let them know I will be out, and I tell them who my backup is, some of them just really do not get it and think, oh, it’s okay! Yvonne will respond when she returns, so she can still help us! What this ends up creating is a huge back log of requests (that came from ONE specific customer, mind you) that ended up taking several hours on this Labor Day holiday for me to take care of. I knew if I didn’t work on these requests today that I’d have to work late to catch up tomorrow, and I hate working late. I’m beyond that point in my career that I have zero motivation to work beyond 5 or 6pm on a regular workday unless I’ve actually chosen to procrastinate on something.

It’s been said that there is a special place in hell for women who do not support other women. Well, there is also a special place in hell for customers who do not respect their partners’ time off and give them work to do even BEFORE they return to the office.

My manager and I had a level-set conversation last week when we talked about how I can build my network more widely. I thought about this and realized how hard that is, not just during a pandemic when everyone is 100 percent remote, but also as a full-time, remote employee even after the pandemic has come to an end. How do you really “network” with people who are outside of the everyday people you work and collaborate with on customer work or internal projects? It’s awkward to just send a calendar invite to someone you have no established relationship with and expect them to show up simply because you asked. It’s also difficult to do this given we’re now at the one-year mark with the pandemic, and so everyone is experiencing massive Zoom / video chat fatigue. I generally don’t even like networking in person, but it’s much easier to meet or run into people in the office kitchen or at the water fountain than forcing a Zoom invite on them.

So that make me curious. My manager said she’s strongly considering me for a promotion come my one year mark, but how does that work if “building my network/my brand” is a part of this?