Sassy Lassie .net

Days like this, I really love my job

I've been doing a lot of networking lately these past couple of months.  I'm not sure why, but this year I finally "got it."  I understand what networking is about, and how it works. I discovered I can easily talk to people, and figured out how to follow up and follow through.  Or maybe I just came in to my own this year after everything that has happened, and finally stepped in to who I authentically am. 

Regardless...it's working for me.

I went to a networking event early in the week that was hosted by a woman that I met at the end of February.  This woman works as a Senior Executive for a financial institution, and we connected personally.  I followed up and we met for coffee in early March -- that was when she told me that her daughter's friends had just adopted a baby who has some serious vision issues.  I gave her my card, told her about our children's program, and  described how we help families deal with the process of navigating the bureaucracy involved in getting their child's needs met in the school system.  We see children as young as 6 months old, and honestly?  The sooner they start getting help, the easier it is for them to adjust. 

When I saw this woman at the networking event this week, she gave me an update.  "Lives were changed because of Visionary," she told me.  "I can't tell you the profound difference you made in this family's life.  Lives were CHANGED."  She then proceeded to rave about Visionary to the networking group and told them the story of the family and how we had helped and made such an important and significant difference to them. 

Gotta say, it made me pretty happy.  Very good day at work.

Kinda makes makes it all worthwhile, no?

Excel is not my friend

I am in charge of a big project for Visionary (my organization, not it's real name), a big leap forward for them that I am excited to be doing.  We are buying non-profit software (which, can I just say, is surprisingly expensive) to better manage our information on bequests, events, donors, etc.  This software will make my life much easier, and will keep me from pulling my hair out and crying to the Gods each time we need to send things.  Before this purchase can happen, though, we need to consolidate the stupid ass spreadsheets we have been using. 

This lovely task?  Falls to me.

Now ordinarily I am a guru in Excel.  You need data sorted? Mail merges done?  Formulas written?  I'm your gal.  So I spent the last few days getting our data in order, eliminating duplicates, and doing lots of other boring stuff, only to find out that somewhere along the way...the data got all messed up. 

Grrrrrrr. 

I had the fun job of having to go in to my boss' office and tell her what happened.  I had to tell her that we have to pull earlier versions of the spreadsheets from last week's network back-up and do everything all over again.  THAT was a fun conversation, let me tell you.

Back to square one.

Sigh.

Flower power

I work for a non-profit called…let’s just call it Visionary.  Visionary is a great 501(c)3 organization that helps people, most of whom are low-income and couldn’t otherwise receive the care they need.  They don’t turn anyone away, and work on a sliding scale for those who have difficulty paying.  It’s pretty gratifying work, actually.  I head the development program (i.e. fundraising), and help to ensure that Visionary can keep doing the wonderful work that they do.

I meet and talk to people a lot for my job.  It’s the thing I like best about my position.  I am endlessly curious about people and find them fascinating.  I can't believe my good fortune that I actually get paid to talk to people.  When I was growing up I used to be incredibly shy, but somewhere along the way I seem to have become an extrovert.  Whodda thunk?

So yesterday one of our donors, Ms. M, turned 90.  (Ninety years old and she’s still sharp as a whip, and agile too! Would that we all are so blessed at that age.)  She recently made a generous donation of a charitable gift annuity to Visionary, so I took her a lovely flower arrangement as a birthday present and paid her a call.

I was secretly looking forward to this visit.  I love hearing old stories, and I knew Ms. M had plenty of them.  When I got there she made me one of her famous root beer floats (“I never did learn how to cook, but I make a terrific root beer float!”).  I was in luck…she had just gone through a trunk that she said she hadn’t opened in 50 years, and she had a bunch of old pictures from WWII that she had pulled out to look at for the first time in decades.  I talked her in to telling me about what life was like for her during the war years.  One of my favorite stories she told me was about the orchids.

Ms. M worked at a company in Los Angeles during the war.  It was her coworker’s birthday, and she was in charge of buying the girl a corsage.  (Maybe that’s why they weren’t overweight then – instead of office birthday cakes they had birthday flowers instead!)  Ms. M and two friends went to the flower shop downstairs to buy the girl a corsage, and while they were there they noticed that the shop had some orchids in stock.  They sat there staring at the orchids, ooohing and ahhhing over them because they had never seen them before.  Back then orchids were extremely rare, extremely exotic, and extremely expensive.  Each bloom cost $5.  In 1943 dollars.  Considering that her entire month’s salary was $75, that was quite a hefty price.

There was  a gentleman in the store that saw the girls admiring the orchids, so he told the proprietor to make each of them an orchid corsage.  The girls were shocked…  No one actually got an ORCHID.  Once they got over their disbelief, they were brimming with delight and thanked the man profusely.  They explained that they had never ever actually gotten a real, live orchid before.  When he heard this, he told the proprietor to give each girl TWO orchids. Now this was just unheard of!!  They couldn’t believe their good luck!!  These six orchids represented about 40% of their salaries at the time.  The girls were so giddy with excitement they plum forgot to get the man’s name.

When they got back up to their office, the news spread like wildfire.  Everyone stopped what they were doing and came to see the orchids.  Even the big shot executives on the 6th floor who ran the company came down to see the exotic flowers. Ms. M said no one got any work done for the rest of the day.

And her poor coworker never did get her birthday corsage.