Work

For my job, I supervise 7 college students as Resident Assistants. I'm a pretty easy going supervisor but I am clear with my expectations and I don't accept crap. I hate being micromanaged and so I tend to NOT micromanage anyone... but I feel that if I show you respect in your work, if I do all the things I need to get done for you to do your job, you'll do it and you wont half-*ss it...

This weekend was the first time I really had to be a firm supervisor with my staff. One of their requirements is to have their bulletin boards up, doortags hung on all the doors, their welcome banners hung and all of the signs around the building done by 5pm on Saturday. As they were stressing out on Thursday, I reminded them that they did not have training sessions on Saturday so they had all day Saturday to finish these things up.

Well, Sunday afternoon some were still working on things, rushing to get them done. I decided I would let it slide and wait to do my walkthru until 5pm Sunday. Thinking that only one board was not up yet (for an excusable reason) I went on my round. Four out of the seven boards were not up and three welcome signs were not hung. This after finding out that more than half of them went out drinking three of the past five nights.

Monday was not a good day, for any of them!

I called a mandatory meeting over lunch and let loose!! When I told them that it looked like they basically said, "Screw Amanda, she doesn't care" they were mortified. One almost cried and the rest apologized and felt terrible. And I can't deny that it made me feel a little good to see them feel that way, after the way they made me feel.

Four of them have scheduled separate meetings to individually apologize to me and "not make excuses for themselves but..." It's fine. I remember being 18-22 and struggling with taking responsibility for my actions. This is a learning lesson for them just as it is for me. But man was I ticked off. I even went so far as to print up little cards with all the due dates for their bulletin boards for the next semester and programming deadlines. On the back of that card I printed the procedure for being fired "verbal warning, written warning, probation, termination"... it was a little extreme but it certainly got the point across!!

Tomorrow's staff meeting ought to be fun... I need to come up with some activity that isn't corny but hits on working with others and how people want to receive feedback, how they best give it, etc... If you have any such activities, please share!!