Tag: Finances

Value/Time Management

Posted in Discussions & Opinions, WorkTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

How much is your time worth? 
That’s the question asked in articles on value of time and it can even be calculated with the Worth Calculator.

What is this “Value/Time” in the title?

It seemed the easiest way to get across multiple meanings:

  • The equation of Value ÷ Time (e.g. 1 of 3 = 1/3, therefore Value of Time)
  • Intrinsically connecting both Value Management and Time Management

After writing about working with my boss on PowerPoint presentations in my last post,  I started noticing instances where I was, consciously or unconsciously, making decisions and adjustments based on value of time.

It is an indisputable fact that her time is more valuable than mine.  It is plainly written on our pay stubs and in our titles.  I can, quite literally, show you a figure (private) that represents my hourly worth while at work.  You can also estimate the difference in our worth by the titles (public) of our positions.  I have no illusion that everyone’s time is of equal worth while at work.  We are called “Support Staff” for a reason. Of course, this works both ways: “Above my pay grade” is a useful phrase.

After many years of being short-staffed, and with an impatience to get things finished and move on to the next thing, she will often try to do everything.  In the beginning, it was only out of being frustrated with something for an extended period that she would hand something off.  It’s taken a long time to get her to delegate to the growing staff, myself included.  We also had to be proactive and take things off of her plate.

With the growing staff, I find myself assisting and managing everyone (don’t think I don’t see the similarities with above).  If I have something at-hand, or can easily finish a part of a project, I will do so to free-up their time.  It’s frustrating for me to see someone try to reinvent something that already exists, or not ask for help.

“Don’t go searching for that, Eric knows where it is and can send it to you.”

Part of this aversion to asking for assistance is likely fear that one will seem helpless or incapable.  Today, an office mate (of higher value rate) was searching for a letterhead template (she was in the file where it was, but didn’t know which one to use because there were several versions).  She may have been looking for this for several minutes (at a rate of 2.5x the cost per minute vs. me looking for it) before saying anything. A 5 minute conversation that included her, my boss, and myself (exponentially more expensive minutes now) ensued with her not explaining what the letterhead was for (just ‘important’) and ended with her saying “I just won’t work on this then, since Eric is working on something else right now.”  Since this would cost even more money (work not being done), I immediately walked back to my desk and emailed her 2 versions.

10 minutes talking without communicating = $~1650.00 cumulative value/time wasted.

Do you know what I could do with $1650?  Besides the money, do you know what all three of us could have gotten done in the 10 (30 combined) minutes wasted?  This is about more than efficiency, though that plays a huge role.

What about Value/Time outside of work?

It’s my personal opinion that Vacation time (no matter what you do with it), is worth more than any other time.  Then, in a descending scale: Weekends, Holidays, work hours, evening waking hours, and finally sleeping hours.  Unlike the work hours, though, I feel everyone has the same value for time outside of work.

However, the argument could be made that Work and Vacation hours are equal, since they are often part of the whole compensation package, but that’s not worth my time to get into…

What are your thoughts on Value/Time Management?  I’d love to hear your comments.

 

 

Let’s do the time hop again…

Posted in WorkTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

I know, I know: It’s Time WARP, but I didn’t want to give you false hopes that this would be a Rocky Horror-themed blog post.

It looks like my last post was November 2016.  This is exactly 19 months later.  Yikes!  Let’s pretend like there was a dramatic time hop from then to now.

I’m still loving my job and the people I work with.   I admit that sometimes certain behaviors get on my nerves, but it doesn’t bother me enough to be miserable or to come home and complain to my husband.  In the past, if someone was annoying, disrespectful, or bitchy to me, my frustration would grow and become its own entity,  I remember coming home every night to tell my husband yet another story of how I had been mistreated by X or Y.  He would attentively listen, agreeing that X was a total bitch and that what she had done was borderline abusive, that Y was treating me unfairly, etc.    Now, I come home and tell him funny stories about the quirky set of characters I’m surrounded by.

As I said, it’s not always wonderful in my current situation, but the less-than-fun bits don’t get me down anymore.  I owe this turnaround, in part, to a new attitude.

In my last job, I would keep a log of the more egregious abuses from X in a file called ‘Old Dog’ (as in, the kind you can’t teach new tricks to…and the double meaning of bitch).  It was a form of therapy to get it all out and it served as a record that I thought I may need later.  That, combined with telling everyone that would listen about it, or swapping war stories with other coworkers, caused the negativity to swell and cycle and become something that couldn’t be escaped.

Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s a heightened empathy?  Maybe it’s circumstantial after the less-than-stellar year we have had so far (see below)?  Now, I find myself brushing-off the nonsense.  When one coworker bitches about another (or another, or another…), I listen, but I don’t feed it or let it ruin my experience.  When a coworker treats me like a child or says something offensive, I know that it is her own insecurities that cause her to act that way, so I don’t give it the weight that I would have in the past.  Someone will say: “How can you stand working with Z? She is so _____!”  I simply say “I’ve worked with many Z’s in my life. I know how they operate and how to deal with them.”  You truly can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so stop trying.  They upset you with unkind words or looks?   They inconvenienced you for 15 minutes?  Let it go.  It doesn’t matter.

In the grand scheme of things:  IT.  DOESN’T.  MATTER.

This is definitely personal growth, and I’m happy to be able to recognize and acknowledge that.

I’m not saying that one should not defend oneself, or to let people walk all over you.  I am saying that, in this day and age, in this culture of self martyrdom and publicizing your victimization to get attention (we all have a friend or two on social media that consistently posts an attention-seeking/pity-me/I’ve been wronged update), it is easy to fall into the trap of letting our small inconveniences turn into monsters that eat away at our lives.

On those circumstances I alluded to above:

Donald Trump is still President, and every day some new dystopian degradation is announced.  It’s wearing me down to the point where I don’t read or listen to the news anymore.  The LGBTQ rights that my own family members (Trump supporters) told me not to worry about, because “they can’t take that away from you” that are being taken away, and the way innocent children are treated like animals is just too much to deal with.

2018 started for us with one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make.  We put our dog of 13 years, our companion, our Little Love, to sleep.  He was suffering from dementia, bladder issues, a heart murmur, glaucoma, and a myriad of small problems.  He had his good days when he acted like a puppy, not a senior dog, and he had many terrible nights.  We scheduled and postponed the appointment twice, but finally we knew that it was best for all of us to end his suffering before it became unbearable.  Our hearts were torn into pieces, and though it is easier today, we still feel an ache and a hole in our lives.

Shortly after that, my mother-in-law went into the hospital for some major surgeries.  My husband’s family lives 1100 miles away, so it was stressful for us to be getting updates, but not be able to be there.  My husband flew down there to be with his Mom before and after her surgeries.  This saga is not over, as she is currently in the hospital right now undergoing more procedures.  Without a doubt, her conditions are made worse by the next bit:

While that was going on, an estranged family member emerged.  She had been unconscious in a hospital for almost a week before we were told.  She had been dropped-off by her addict friends with MRSA in her spine, a second blood infection, and fluid in her lungs.  She required and received open-heart surgery, lung draining, and aggressive multiple antibiotic treatments.  Again, my husband flew down to be there.  She continues to check herself out and then back into the hospitals with worsening ailments, but it is only a matter of time before she is finally free of her pain. They will not operate on her again.

We lost a dear family friend who lived life to the fullest. Cancer ate through him in 3 weeks.

While my husband was out of state dealing with his ailing family, I drove down to see my mother, who is living in a memory care assisted living facility.  She had to be moved to a higher level of care (locked/coded floors and elevators to stop wandering, with more nurses).  I took her out for the day: blood drawn, lunch, shopping, mall walking, driving around – while my brothers moved everything from one floor to the next.  The Alzheimer’s made it seem to her that nothing had changed.  She walked into the new room -a mirror image of the old one – as if it were the same.  It was the plan, but it was heartbreaking.

Another family member gave us devastating news about his health, then became unemployed and unable to pay for his treatment.

My husband had a few episodes of ‘global amnesia’ that scared us both.  Multiple doctors and scans say that nothing is wrong, and that it must have been stress-induced (see above).

I developed kidney pain that specialists conclude I have to live with until it goes away in months or a year. Fun!

With medical bills, flights to visit sick family, and a vacation the we desperately needed, we are pretty maxed-out on credit cards.  We are working to fix that, but this was one more stress we didn’t count on.

So…although now this looks like the ‘poor me’ posts I talked about earlier, it’s really just a sample of what has built the foundation and watermark for how we deal with small inconveniences in our day-to-day lives…

In the grand scheme of things: it doesn’t matter.

Why I won’t be a car salesman…

Posted in Discussions & Opinions, WorkTagged , , , 3 Comments

When you look at my resume, it is clear to recruiters that my easiest and most recent marketable skills are in Sales.  This is not my happy place, but I know that it is what I have going for me right now.  In thinking about Sales positions to apply for, I have run through them all: Real Estate (I start classes today!), inside sales, Pharmaceutical, Tech, Auto, etc.  I determined early-on that I definitely did not want to be a car salesman.  The culture is not for me.  That feeling was reinforced this week.

We are in a unique situation that we have never been in before, my husband and I.  For the first time in our lives, we own our cars outright.  I am currently on my third car.  I still owed money on the financing of my first car (a black Dodge Neon named Effie) when I traded her in to buy my second car (silver Hyundai Elantra), and did the same with that one to get this one (dark grey Hyundai Elantra).  My first and second cars had been run into the ground with some major problems, so it made more sense to trade-in than fix them.  This one is in much better shape, it is paid off, and I hold the title (not the bank).  I can see myself trading this one in within the next year or so for an AWD (Hello, New England Winters!) Hyundai Tucson.  I would have chosen that last time, but for the color (white with gold trim) and the cost at the time.  I am also in the enviable position of having paid my car insurance premiums before they were due, so I don’t have any car-related bills (other than gas) until 2017.  This is a blessing during unemployment, believe me!

However, my husband has been bitten by the bug already, and he is also interested in the Tucson.  As I am still unemployed, I don’t think this is the best time to be adding to our monthly expenses, but we went to a few dealerships to check them out anyway.

The first one we went to was the new location of the dealership we bought our last 4 cars from.  They were courteous, knowledgeable, and appreciated our loyalty.  The  showroom was clean and well-ordered as was the lot, and the salesman came out to meet us after we had looked through the lot for a few minutes.  We went for a test drive, we talked numbers and specs, we learned about the different features, and were not given the hard-sell by the manager.  When it is time for my car, I’m going back there.

The second one we went to will never see my business, and it won’t see my husband’s if I can help it.  We walked around the lot for a long time trying to see what they had.  Where the other one had the cars parked together by model and year, this one was chaos.  The 2016’s were mixed in with the 2017’s, the used cars with the new, and the different models all over the place.  Service workers drove through with no regard for our safety, and no one came to talk to us, though we were out there for far longer than we were at the other place.  When we walked into the showroom, do you think they jumped up to talk to us?  No.  My husband had to walk up to a guy in the back of the showroom to ask if someone could help him.  That guy said that he was busy, but didn’t offer anyone else.  There was a woman sitting at her computer watching us the whole time, but not volunteering.  Only when both my husband and the other salesmen looked at her did she say she could help.  We came to find out (in an very unprofessional conversation later) that she had had a bad experience with a trashy man at the end of her shift the night before, and when she saw us walk in, she “thought: Hell no! Not again!”  Way to win-us-over, lady…  Anyway, she talked in circles and a vagueness that wouldn’t have been noticeable if we hadn’t already been talking to other salespeople about the same models.  She seemed distracted and not very interested in selling anything to us, though we were friendly and affable.  She continued her tact of not caring and pretending to be ‘on our side.’  Given the other stories she told us, and the way she interacted with the manager as we were driving away, that was obviously an act.  I’m sure there are people that feel that they can trust her and feel comfortable with her, but I was not one of those people.  The showroom was messy and they didn’t have any brochures for the car we wanted.  The brochure racks were half-full and disorganized, like everything else in this place.

Did I mention that my husband told her exactly what he wanted?  No?  He did.  When we told her the second time what we were looking for and referenced cars we had seen in her lot, she got frustrated and made us go back outside to look at the models.  Even she didn’t know where they were and couldn’t find them.  She took the number off of one of the cars (not one that we would have bought, mind you), just to “run the numbers on the financing.”  My husband had shown up with credit score and loan pre-approval with APR in hand, but they didn’t seem to believe any of it.  We made sure they did not run a check, risking a hit to the score.  They went into the manager’s office and she came back with $2800 off the sticker price.  When we asked what that was, she said she didn’t know, but it included the trade-in and “some rebates.”  We made her go back and find out what those were, knowing the deals that the other dealerships were doing, and knowing the resale value of the trade-in.  She came back to say the trade-in was $1500 and the rest were “rebates.”  We told her that we knew there was a $500 loyalty rebate and a $500 summer sale rebate, so really he was discounting the sticker price by $300.  Also, the resale value of the car was nearly 5 times what they were offering.

The manager came out (I forgot to mention that she was in jeans and a casual top, and the manager was in a too-tight red polo shirt and jeans. I saw one man in a shirt and tie.) to see how we were doing.  I was done being there, and it was time for lunch, so I told him that we knew what the rebates were, and that the trade-in was worth more.  He blustered that he used to be a cop, so he was always clear and transparent with everything.  Right. We had to go back out to the parking lot to find the actual car that my husband would consider, which was $2500 less. So they went back to his office to talk some more and go through those numbers.  After a few minutes, they came back out and told my husband that they would sell him that car for $— per month.  Period.  No discussion.  He was happy, because that’s what he wanted.  I, of course, would have none of that.

“How did you come up with that number?” I asked the manager.  “Well, I moved some numbers around, and I gave you some other rebates and discounts.” he said, not answering my question.  I pressed him, but he would give the same answer.  “So you gave us more for the trade-in, or you found other rebates?” I asked, knowing he didn’t, and he admitted that he was giving us 1800 for the car, and the two 500 rebates.  So… the same deal.  Anyway, the answer was enough for my husband, so they promised to hold that offer for 24 hours.  The saleswoman told us that she was off the next day, so it would really be held for 48 hours.  That’s when she took us outside for her unprofessional stories.

Here’s what the manager was doing:  He refused to commit to a price, and that is where I knew he was not dealing fairly.  If he guarantees what your monthly payments are (in this case, 72 months), he controls what the final price of the car will be after you’ve already agreed.  If you take this deal, he will work to get the lowest % on your financing, because then he can declare a higher cost on your car, giving them more profit and higher commission.  It could turn out that we get 2.5%, which would mean that we are essentially paying the sticker price for the car, and not getting any trade-in value or discounts at all.  That, to me, is crooked dealing.  If he was as honest and transparent as he says he is, then he would have answered my questions and told us what the new deal price would be, not take us for suckers.

As we were driving away, they watched us, talking and laughing with each other.

So I would be happy to be in a Sales position, but not at the cost of my integrity or soul.  Car dealerships, being naturally much more competitive than other industries, tend to breed a culture that is sickening to me.