They is YOU

My team is not perfect. In fact, we’re far from it. A few things drive me crazy, and one of them is passing out faxes and seeing paper pile up on the office printer. You see, we work in an open environment where everyone is in the same room without the barriers of tall cubicle walls. You know how it works. Everyone goes to the same office machines every day and sorts through what’s theirs while leaving the rest piled up. It’s very Cogger-like if you ask me, and I’m not a fan. Of course the 80/20 principle applies to this where 20% of my people pass out 80% of the offices faxes and completed print jobs. Guess what? It drives the 20% crazy that the other 80% can’t figure out how to do this correctly, much less find it in their being to actually put forth the effort to knock out this simple task. Finally it came to a head about a year ago and I had to address it. Below is the email I sent to my crew (the names have been changed to protect the innocent). Take a peek.

It’s been awhile since I’ve sent out a lovely reminder, so here goes. When you print something, stand up promptly, turn, walk toward those machines against the blue wall. The document you selected to print is coming out of the cream colored machine. That machine is our PRINTER. It is not electronic paper storage, a document organizer, or Jarrod’s girlfriend. When you have retrieved said documents, turn and return to your seat, have a conversation with a teammate or have a thumb war with Greg (he’s got freak-like thumbs). If the printer does not produce your document, check to see if it is out of paper. If so, look in the cabinet under the machines, select a package of paper, and begin to fill the printer. If you are unsure about the paper filling procedure, one Jon “Paper Samurai” Smith would love to take you through his 3 part training course Paper Filling and You: Grip It, Rip It and Stick It.

The other machines, which are more of a darker gray are our fax machines. Those are 1990’s high-tech communication devices. They not only allow you to send documents electronically but they also receive documents as well. When you go visit the machines on the blue wall look to see if either fax machine has documents waiting to be retrieved. If so, take them gladly and begin to distribute them to the team. It not only helps those around you, but it also helps you get to know our business a bit better and saves Jack the effort of actually needing to get up and move around. If the fax machines are out of paper, please perform the paper filling procedure outlined in the paragraph regarding the printer. Ironically Mr. Smith has a follow up training course entitled The Fax Machine Needs Paper Too: 3 Ways for Fax Machines to Establish Zen-like Status. .

Unfortunately we are seeing these tasks performed by a small contingent of our crew vs. the whole team. Having the attitude of “THEY need to hand out those faxes” or “THEY need to get those documents off the printer” is actually acceptable if you can decipher the true message, which is…THEY IS YOU. That’s right, all of us have another name and that name is THEY. Let’s try it together. Sarah says, “They need to grab those faxes” translation, “I Sarah Jones need to grab those faxes and I will gladly do it because after all, my name is THEY”. See how that works? Yeah, that’s right, it’s magic! So, let’s get our heads screwed on straight and do the right thing.



Happy Wednesday,



David