A Job Well Done

Most of my time at work is spent revising existing documents, maintaining existing help/source files, or occasionally creating new source documents for a product, feature, or whatever. For these tasks, the only person who really ever acknowledges the job I do is my immediate boss, as she's the only one who is aware of that.

 

It is somewhat ironic to me that the things I get praised for the most, the loudest cheers, the biggest thank yous, are the tasks that are the smallest part of my day or the easiest to do.

 

Recently, the manager in IT needed to write a quick and dirty manual to train his people how to use a new little web-enabled log he had created. He was struggling with it, then said, "I'll ask John if he can give me some pointers." I talked it over with him, asked for access to the application, and within 30 minutes had a nice document, well-formatted, with screen captures and a step-by-step instruction guide and definitions. He was so enthused that the next time he had something he didn't even bother to try it himself, he just went to my boss and asked for my help.

 

Another guy at work needed some help with a PDF. He needed to edit it, but of course a PDF is specifically designed to be locked from that sort of thing. But, as writers, we have access to tools and knowledge that allow us to get in there and do what needs to be done. I couldn't work on that request immediately, so forwarded it to Renee who had it done and back to him in under 10 minutes. He was so thrilled!

 

The company made the executive decision that all the Trainers should write, edit, and maintain their own training manuals, freeing Documentation up to work on other things. This past week, Cheryl in Training was struggling to get her project done as she isn't a writer, wasn't trained on the applications we use before having all the maintenance dumped on her, and had an immediate deadline looming. She called me for help. I was able to walk over, figure out where she was going wrong, right the ship, and teach her a couple of small shortcuts and tricks to use to make her life easier. Her response was a simple, "I love you!"

 

Even in my personal life, this has been true. For our Dungeons & Dragons group, I often request to be the secretary for the group. I then can't help myself; I format the document into chapters, add tables and charts, and even scan in the hastily drawn maps of dungeons and towns we make. They frequently wind up with cover-sheets, indexes, TOCs, glossaries, and more. Sometimes I do them as a novel, others as a journal, and sometimes from a single character's perspective (so the factual data is there, but biased by the character's perspective on things). Just things that, as a life-long writer, I can't help but do and feel excited about. My friends have often thanked me for that extra effort, which is always appreciated.

 

In the six and a half years I've been here, it has always been what are the easiest, simplest, quickest tasks or off the wall request that have provided me the most encouragement and joy in the job. Do you have a similar situation at your job, where the work you are paid to do is overshadowed by the work you do on the side or spur of the moment for others?