Gail

Once upon a time there was an entry level worker named Gail. Gail worked very hard doing the grunt work on the company accounts. They were hard but they kept her busy and she knew they wouldn’t last forever.

Then one day her manager told her that she would be helping out another manager with his accounts. She didn’t have much time to give but this wasn’t a request.

So Gail began to help out the new manager. She couldn’t devote much time so she just took guidance from the new manager and did whatever she was told. The new manager soon included Gail on the weekly calls with the agencies that helped manage some of the accounts.

As time wore on and Gail became more familiar with the new accounts, the new manager began to do a peculiar thing. The external agencies would send weekly reports to Gail and the new manager on a regular basis. This wasn’t the odd part. The odd bit is that when the new manager would read the weekly report and have feedback to give, he would email it to Gail for her to send it to the agency.

‘Why not just send the feedback straight to the agency?’ Gail thought to herself.

Gail didn’t say anything the first time, she simply obeyed her superior. But then it became a regular occurrence.

The agency would provide insights, the manager would email Gail the feedback and Gail would then send the feedback to the agency.

Was this some kind of power trip? It’s not like he’s saving time typing because he had to type it out himself in the first place to send to Gail. She found it very odd and it seemed completely unnecessary.

Eventually Gail worked up the courage to ask the new manager why he didn’t just send it straight to the agency. The manager said he didn’t have the time to be writing to the agency. Gail was confused and her courage egged her on again to ask the obvious question.

‘But surely it takes you the same time to write the email you send me?’ The new manager was shocked at this back chat (well what he classified as back chat). He coolly replied with:

“Well it’s giving you something to say to the agency”

Gail couldn’t turn back now. She had to muster all of her newfound courage and say it as professionally as possible:

“Well I have a lot of work to be doing and I think that my time would be better spent doing that work”

The new manager had a furrowed brow and stared at Gail intensely.

“Fine, I’ll do it myself” and with this he turned away from Gail and looked into his computer screen.

Gail almost skipped back to her desk. She had finally worked up the courage to speak up to her superior and had kept her resolve long enough to make a change.

A courageous act no matter how small, matters.