The Untrustworthy

I think I'm going to blog every day about the Office and how I feel. Every day brings some new emotion and sad reality of how we treat one another.

I have been working in this office for 17 month's. I was hired along with two other new assistants joining a team of three, that makes six total. Since I have been here one assistant found another job, one left on maternity leave, and a third is out on medical leave (she hasn't worked a full week in over a year), so we are down to three. Of the three, the one that was hired the same time as me is now acting as office manager, and the other remaining assistant is one of the original employees who opened the doors of this firm, first in a cramped temporary space, and now in our gorgeous top floor penthouse office suite. She has had the full Roller Coaster ride all the way from the bottom, racing up, around corners, down, up, down, up, and finally racing towards the braking area of this thrill ride. As for the other employees, Vice Presidents, Associates, Manging Directors, etc... we peaked at about 20 and now have 7 that are living on the road and only come in when necessary.

The Assistants have each had slightly different experiences, but we have all enjoyed working together and care about each other. They, along with a few others are the reason I am staying around to finish things up. We have all lost one of the things we valued most working in this office and that is trust. Although I still trust the other two assistants, the trust I gave to most of the others has been completely broken. With that loss of trust has also come a complete lack of respect and a realization of the lack of Character of people I once looked up to and admired.

A plaque sits behind my desk reading "Guiding Principles and Shared Values" it states, "we work together as a team of Friends, not Individuals & Superstars...Our business Style is Professional...support Staff are valued members of the firm. We are mindful that family has precedence over workplace..." I bought into this and was willing to throw my complete self into a company that appeared to believe the same as I. I have sacrificed and always had my coworkers in my thoughts, picking up what they needed on my own time and making sure I was devoted one-hundred percent. I'm embarrassed to say I often put work ahead of family thinking this would better secure my employment and keep me in the running for advancement. I was a team player and willing to do just about anything for the Firm and the name I represented. R Williams said "Trust is the easiest thing in the world to loose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back."

What used to be a team of friends working together has been destroyed. What is left behind is whispering behind closed doors, keeping silent, spy wear installed on computers after being told its antivirus soft wear (really you think we are that stupid?), and every person for themselves. I am glad while I was an active participant at the firm there was trust. There was feeling of Family comes first and we were each others Family. I still insist that what we had was real and it was those who weren't in our location, day-in and day-out who had no idea what they destroyed because they didn't have it. So lets see... we might be able to keep those Guiding Principles with two small changes..."We work together not as a team of Friends, but as a Team of Individuals and Superstars." Yep! two small changes.