Almost Caught Up!

In one of yesterday's posts I said that I would come back and write about Friday, which for some strange reason was "Appreciate Susan" day, not to brag or to puff myself up (like I need to be any more puffier!) but so I can re-read this post on the much more frequent "Bury Susan Under Piles of Crap" days.

It started fairly early in my day when my boss came in and laid something on my desk. I thought it was just a memo and didn't look at it right away, but when I did I found that it was a letter to my boss from one of the people from another agency that I work with quite a bit. The letter writer told my boss that he thought I was a credit to our company and that I was always helpful and attentive. For those of you that know what I do for a living, you can probably guess that I get a lot more complaints than compliments (it's kind of the nature of the work). For those of you who don't know what I do for a living, well, I get a lot more complaints than compliments. Now we're all on the same page. :)

I had also been sending messages back and forth with one of my high school friends about a situation that he is dealing with that is loosely related to what I do. While I couldn't help him, I was able to point him in the direction of some people that I am confident can see him through. At the end of our "conversation" he sent "Thanks Susie ('cuz that's what I went by in high school) you're the best." Actually, it might have been "your" rather than "you're" but I'm sure that we all know what he was getting at. And I know that rather than making "thank you" a throw-away statement as people so often do, he really meant it. It was nice.

Later Friday afternoon I got an out-of-the-blue from a new employee at one of the agencies that my office works with. He called just to introduce himself and as we chit-chatted he told me that he's good friends with someone at yet another agency we work with and that his friend had suggested that the caller make the introductory call. The caller's friend also said that I was the person to talk to in our agency if the caller needed anything. I really appreciated that the caller's friend thought enough of me to say that I was "the one to call" at our agency.

I will say that I earned the last segment in "Appreciate Susan" day, but it was still a good way to cap off my day. I had done some work for a company Friday afternoon and knew that there was a chance that I would have to do some additional work as the day went on. It was also the first high school football game of the season and, because Mal is a rah-rah * <) * (pom, megaphone, pom), we were looking forward to the game. The game was, wouldn't you know it, an away game at a town about an hour away. Just as I half-way expected, I got a call with about 7 minutes left in the first quarter that the company needed some additional work done. They tried to call one of my co-workers, who was unavailable, and my boss, who didn't answer, so it was kinda down to me. (Not that I was a last resort or anything but I had warned them that I would be out of town when we met that afternoon.) It was something that couldn't be done over the phone and had to be done in consultation with someone else, too, so after the game Shad and I headed back to town and he dropped me off at work at about 10:00 p.m. By the time I met with the first guy and we met with the second guy together, it was almost midnight on what had been a really long day (remember that Shad and I had made that errant trip to Chicago the night before so I was functioning on about four hours of sleep). Before we parted company, though, the first guy said, "Thanks Suz, you're the coolest." I mean, he's right because I had spend a good portion of my afternoon and late evening on this project, but it was still very nice to hear. It was even better when I found out that our extra work had doubled that day's returns for the company!

I hope that I'm pretty good about acknowledging my appreciation for the people in my life, both personally and professionally. You never know when a sincere "thank you" or a good word passed along will make someone's day, so I'm going to try to be better about taking a minute to express my gratitude to others. As there is no time like the present to begin, I would like to say "thank you" for taking a minute out of your day to read about mine (complete with all the parentheses, ellipses and commas you can handle!). You're the coolest!