The Apple of My Eye

The Day Before You Came

If I had had any difficulty submitting to authority before—partly because all my previous superiors had been a bunch of idiots who didn't know their right foot from their left foot—that was not the case now. If anyone in the world should have but one chance to work under a true leader, a true manager of people and talents, then they should have a chance to get to know and work with Danielle Peazer. Luckily, I did.

Peazer understood where each of her collaborators came from and put her experience and her knowledge into practice to make sure everyone was motivated. Not only that, but she also stimulated me to build upon my abilities and skills in the best possible way for my ascension in the company. Her teachings made me more than just a better employee. They made me a better leader of my team as well.

But Peazer herself was so much more than just a leader. She mentored me and she coached me. She made me want to stand out, to make a difference. I was pleased to please her, and, no, I am not talking about anything other than work here, come on. I don't know if this makes any sense, but she seemed to be driven more by meaning than by results. And by acting like that, lo and behold, not only were the results better, but the people who were working on team Peazer wanted to continue to work on team Peazer. Almost no one wanted out. You didn't find among us a great number of individuals who were unhappy with their work environment or their pay. Sure, everybody will take a raise any old time, I don't dispute that, but what Peazer did was teach people to genuinely appreciate the outcome of their efforts and to therefore want to get better at doing whatever it was they did.

In my particular case, I saw it as an advantage that, even though she was my direct superior and I loved working with her, she and I did not work together—geographically together, I mean—on a daily basis. That gave me space. That allowed me certain freedoms. Some I used wisely; some, well, you know how I used them. Peazer worked in corporate, which was in another city altogether, a six-hour drive from where I lived and worked. That's how big the organization I was working in was—there were branches in most of the country's capitals. Peazer and I did most of our communication via email and push-to-talk, but she did come to visit every two weeks or so. Remarkably, her visits never felt like she was coming to inspect my work or assess the environment, which she was, obviously. But she had a way of doing that like she was just paying me a visit, like she actually missed our talks and enjoyed hearing me go on and on about what was going on in the office. I was running the largest branch in the country, yes, but there were several other branches in the vicinity, and she was in charge of them, too, so, whenever she came into town, she'd spend a workday with me, another with some other branch coordinator elsewhere, and so forth.

Peazer was very satisfied with my work, she told me so herself several times, which made me very satisfied, too. Of course, there was always room for improvement, she'd tell me, and that was just as true then as it is now, and always will be. Conveniently, for me, she had no idea what kind of ulterior undertakings were going on behind closed doors in my office a lot of the time. She also had no idea what kind of trouble Michelle was causing me at that point, what with all her childish, unbecoming behavior. And I didn't have the guts to tell her because it made me look real bad. I knew I wouldn't be able to disclose the whole story to her, so why bother?

There was something else happening there that I needed to discuss with Peazer, though. what happened was that one of my assistants was frequently late to work, sometimes altogether absent. She'd always come up with these lame excuses about how her tooth hurt and how she had to go see a dentist on the other side of town, for example, but she never once produced a doctor's note. On top of that, she was doing lousy work, too, failing to meet her expected levels of performance and all—and leaving me extra work to do in the process.

This particular assistant had been employed there longer than I had, so if I'm to be completely honest here, I was a little intimidated by her. Almost as if she could tell I was a fraud—or some crazy shit like that. She was one of the only two individuals on my team I was not comfortable reprimanding or admonishing. The other one, as you may have guessed, was Michelle.