My work day would be monumentally easier if I could just accept that the following circumstances will, without fail, occur.

• Both employees: Whining. All volumes and varieties.
• K.Lo: Drastic mood changes at the drop of a hat.
• Both: Kicking and screaming with diaper changes.
• Both, especially N.Lo: Running away when it’s time to change clothes.
• Manager: Repetition of reprimand: daily, hourly, by the minute.
• Both employees: Requests for *whatever* the second I sit down to do anything.
• Manager: Brushing teeth/using employee restroom while little hands try to beat down the door and/or little voices demand attention.
• K.Lo: Meltdown prior to dinner time, because someone doesn’t want to stop playing.
• K.Lo: Rejection of most or all carefully prepared meals.
• Both, but K.Lo can talk, which is more annoying noticeable: From 6:00 to 6:45, repeated, incessant requests for milk.
• One or the other, or (horrors) both: Wakeup call one or more times in the dead of night.

I’ve mentioned before that N.Lo finally, after a full year, learned to drink from a sippy cup instead of a bottle. But what I haven’t mentioned is that he really actually sit up and drink from the cup yet. Is it me, or is that odd. I suppose anything goes with these employees. And I suppose that he’s been fairly trained to drink while laying back, whether in my arms, or on the Boppy pillow, or while being changed (good distraction technique). But one would think that he would have picked it up by now? Isn’t that what 1-year-olds do?

K.Lo has always helped herself to drinks, took to a sippy cup pretty early on, so I’m not programmed to think much of it throughout the day, to remember that the boy needs a drink. So if he’s fussy these days, after hunger, tiredness, and diaper change, the most obvious conclusion is thirst. He crawls over to his juice, and we hold the cup up so he’s drinking from it like a hamster. Refuses to put or keep his hands on the thing. So the CEO has suggested the following item for N.Lo’s Holiday Bonus Package this year: Maybe installed under the Conference Room Table? It could work.

Following Afternoon Break, it is wise for Managers to refrain from the following offenses:

1. Talking to the employee.
2. Looking at the employee.
3. Daring to suggest a reasonable or fun Post-Break activity.  
4. Smiling, laughing, or generally having a good time with the employee’s coworker.
5. Attempting to tame the employee’s hair.

The following tactics can be helpful in relieving tension in the workplace, and/or dispelling *possible* pent-up frustration toward one’s employees or coworkers.

• Use of the water hose, out on the Grounds. When filling the pool, you might spontaneously direct the spray elsewhere, such as onto your employee. Only the ones who can run, of course.
• Also out on the Grounds, use of the squirt gun can be helpful to both Management and employees. May want to double-check skill sets before arming certain employees.
• Inside the office, a strategically spontaneous tickle or (my personal favorite) flip-upside-down maneuver can instantly redirect one’s train of thought and even inspire laughter. Works especially well in response to whining.

Another useful Managerial strategy for grabbing a few quiet, deep-breathing moments at one’s desk is Task Allocation for Company Excursions.

Our company fish tank has a sadly high turnover rate,  and the CEO has been after me for weeks now to recruit a new team of fish. Taking a new hire and two-year employee on one’s own to the pet store, though, may *seem* like a good idea in theory, since there are so many interesting things to look at, but it is not.

The CEO says, What, it’s pretty much a field trip! Right? CEO’s can be so naive, the poor dears. I suggested that if it was so easy, why didn’t the CEO take over this excursion.

Ultimately, perhaps after realizing the word-eating potential of the proposed mission, the CEO opted to take just one employee to the pet store. But in many ways, it was still a win-win decision for the entire company. At the pet store, K.Lo assisted in selecting a new team of fish, and also participated in a pet store-wide scavenger hunt, with a mission to find: The snakes! The birds! Lizards! Spiders! Frogs! Rats! Chinchillas! Ferrets! Rabbits!

On second thought, maybe the pet store is a great field trip for a two-year employee. However, with a new hire under one’s supervision as well, all a Manager can see in the pet store are: Glass tanks! Puppy puddles! The Canine Cookie Bar! Among other potential hazards.

Back at the office, The Manager assisted both the Kitchen and Housekeeping staffs in a whirlwind tour, cooking and straightening at a speed simply not possible with both employees underfoot. N.Lo played happily on the floor with a pile of Company Kitchen supplies, while I completed a stack of paperwork. After about an hour, K.Lo and the CEO returned from their excursion, which was deemed a success.

The only question remaining is for the Scheduling Department: can we do this again soon?

Occasionally, a common workplace issue, such as lack of productivity on the Night Shift, can be addressed  using a surprise tactic. The other night, as K.Lo broke loose from her cubicle for the umpteenth time in a week, and the CEO grouched about having to get some work done for his Other Job (tell me about it!), I jumped in and took over. The little employee, wearing a Night Shift uniform of an oversized T-shirt and whale-patterned pajama pants, wore a look on her face that was equal parts defensive and worried. Defiant, yet pitiful. I said to her, "Come with me. You're going to help the Kitchen Staff."

For the next half hour or so, we made the first part of a cake for the next day's company holiday celebration. After a shade of initial skepticism that she really wasn't being punished for her ECC violation, K.Lo proved to be quite an enthusiastic apprentice in the Company Kitchen. She stirred up the strawberry Jell-o until all the ice cubes melted, she placed all 10 slices of pound cake into the pan, lining them up just right. And for her grand finale, she dumped 2 cups of blueberries and chopped strawberries into the Jell-o. As it does for The Manager, work in the Company Kitchen seemed to calm my employee right down.

Afterward, we returned to business as usual and marched back to K.Lo's cubicle, where I caught up on paperwork until the employee fell fully asleep at her desk. I'm pleased to note that she didn't complain this time, prior to clocking back onto her shift. And bonus, I was able to soak up some unexpected quality, one-on-one training session time with K.Lo. Totally a win-win.

Problem: Everyone in the office is sick. All employees would like The Manager to take care of them. The Manager would like someone to take care of her. The CEO is at The Other Office, and anyway, he's sick, too. Resources are spread thin. Everyone is getting a little bit of what they need, but overall no one is getting enough. Employee dissatisfaction is high. An all-company meltdown is imminent.

Solution: A big cup of Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate--er, coffee, to the employees it's coffee--piled high with marshmallows. It solves everything.

Bringing another employee on staff so soon after hiring the first was a decision made under the influence. Not the influence of mind-altering substances, but the influence of a happy, productive little employee with a limited, though extremely charming skill set: K.Lo wasn't even walking when we decided to bring N.Lo on board. Our office is thrilled with our new employee, wouldn't think of hiring anyone else for the job, but the entire Managerial Staff admits that training two new-hires at once can often be... difficult.

Particularly on company excursions, our staff draws questions and comments regarding how we do it. How do we get out of the office. How do we maintain a productive, at-all efficient environment within the office. How do we even function, period. The short response is, I have no idea. The longer, true response is that it takes an enormous amount of managerial preparation.

As a manager, I tend to do a lot of this preparation in my head, which quickly becomes a juggling act, and a tiresome one at that. Although I may appear calm, cool, and collected on the exterior (or at least, that's the goal), internally, I am constantly organizing, adjusting, editing, sifting, sorting, and mainly just trying to keep all those balls in the air. Often, a ball gets dropped, to which I have to say, what can you do. You just pick it up, if you can, and add it back into the mix. When managing such a young company, I have found it's wiser not to worry so much about the dropping.

I also make a lot of lists. I would be lost without lists. Office supply lists, upcoming function lists, to-do lists. My Personal Assistant's main function is to make lists.

As for company excursions, the basic, physical act of it has to be broken down into amazingly small steps. Negotiating myself and our two employees from the office to the company car, for instance, not to mention everything we need for the trip, is a process that demands pause, followed by careful consideration, and then (finally) action:

Step 1. Prepare self for excursion, i.e. change of clothes, trip to employee rest room, and gathering of all excursion materials for self, such as water, phone, briefcase, office supply list.
Step 2. Gather all excursion materials for employees, such as juice, blankets, burp cloths, hats, company car toy, snack, jackets, pacifier.
Step 3. Clothe, diaper, and feed employees.
Step 4. Rally employees for excursion, attempt to garner enthusiasm, i.e. "We're going to COSTCO!"
Step 5. Secure new employee in company car seat.
Step 6. Gather as many excursion materials as humanly possible, take older employee by hand to company car, deposit excursion materials, buckle employee into car seat.
Step 7. Return to house for new employee, install car seat in company car.
Step 8. Return to house for inevitable missing/forgotten excursion items.
Step 9. Remember Managerial Snack, weigh possibility of starvation with inconvenience of returning to office for third time. Curse a little, return to office, and retrieve Managerial Snack.
Step 10. GO.

A detailed procedure such as this is required for every company excursion, and is only the first procedure of many on the actual excursion itself, as The Manager must then oversee all-company travel from the car to the store, navigation of the store itself, travel from the store back into the car, and travel from the car back into the office--with newly purchased office supplies in tow. And the implications are weighty; if not carefully thought out, a manager might find herself chasing an overly-ambitious employee into traffic, while leaving the other screaming in the rain.

So much of managing seems to be pretending you don't care, even when you do. Of course you do. You want your employees to develop good work habits, to be productive, to be the best employees they can possibly be. But wearing this desire on your sleeve is not always the best strategy to achieve those results.

All that being said, it is proving quite a challenge to play it cool in the face of K.Lo's latest work habit. I hear many small employees approaching two years with a company are prone to small uprisings when their demands are not met. They wish, in fact, to be the manager, when of course this wish is not possible. The simple fact that the manager has been on this earth longer than the employee establishes the pecking order.

But I digress. K.Lo has taken to expressing her employee dissatisfaction in the following manner: a searing look, a pause as though gearing up, clenched fists, and then an extremely loud shout. It is a true "barbaric yawp," if I have ever heard one, and it has made every one of us at Lo. Co. jump out of our skin. Poor N.Lo has been subjected to K.Lo's outcry while in the break room, innocently eating his lunch.

It is very hard not to react, but as The Manager, I feel like it's the quickest way for this habit to be broken. The CEO takes his own approach, which is to match her volume and adamance in telling her that the yawp is not acceptable. I don't mind at this point that our approaches are different; the CEO can be quite intimidating when training employees, and she needs to hear it in that way from someone. But not from me. Because I spend all day, every day with K.Lo, I choose to fight this particular battle with a different managerial strategy. Depending on the nuances of the moment, I might pretend I didn't hear the yawp for several seconds, then ask her if there's something she would like. Or I might whisper, "We don't do that. If you need something, use your words and ask nicely." Or, if we are out in public, I might take her arm and get in her face a little, tell her in a low voice that yelling in a store is absolutely not acceptable.

Wussy, or effective? You decide. Or time will decide. Note that the behavior just started three days ago, and has occurred a mere handful of times. But it really packs a punch--I just can't let her know that.