A Tough Break
Last Monday I started off the day by walking into Doug’s office and letting him know that I screwed something up and wanted his advice on how to fix it. It was a pretty big screw up, so I was up front with him and wanted to be proactive in correcting it. He determined it best that he handle it by making a phone call and setting everything straight.
I left his office relieved that I went to him before the situation got out of hand but also disappointed in myself for making such a rookie mistake.
Two hours later he calls me into his office. I walked in ready to take my medicine.
He asked me to close the door behind me. “Oh boy, this is worse than I thought”, immediately went through my head.
He looked at me and said, “Alison just quit”. It took me a second to comprehend what he said. My reaction was a delayed/confused noise as I sat down, stunned.
May 23rd, 2016 was a Monday. I remember it vividly because it was my first day commuting to the city for work. As I walked down 35th Avenue towards 212 West 35th St. I was excited to start a new chapter in my life.
I walked in the building and made my way up to the 5th floor.
From the second I stepped out of that elevator until today Alison has been my burgundy-haired guardian angel. She helped me get set up. She taught me how to use all our internal systems. She’s been integral to my functioning everyday in some aspect or other. To show her my gratitude, I employ a steady stream of irritations to annoy her. And she takes it in stride.
She will be greatly missed at Algren. We wish her the best of luck moving forward even though she will not need luck, she will absolutely kill it.
For anyone invested in the early part of the story, the thrilling conclusion is as follows:
Doug left a message to try and set things right. When the callback came, Doug was unavailable to pick up the phone and it got routed to me. After some dialogue, we were able to reach the conclusion that there had been a misunderstanding in protocol and moving forward each party understands their role.
I was very pleased that it ended so innocuously and was able to report to Doug that I cleaned up my own mess.