Keets

I’m not sure why baby guineas are called keets rather than chicks, but they are. They are wild little things. When Joe picks up the baby chickens, they get passive immediately, just waiting for the ordeal to end. But the keets continue struggling and cheeping throughout. If you release them just a hair, they flap their wings wildly. Chicks and keets just have different ways of doing things.

I saw my new office today. It’s small and private and has relatively immovable furniture. I am having quite mixed feelings about this new nest. On the one hand, I will be shielded from the soap opera that has been going on between two colleagues for years now, a drama impervious to all of my attempts at facilitating reconciliation and understanding. Most of the issue is cultural, I think, different styles. One colleague, S., is used to slow talking, long interactions to say hello, treating co-workers as friends, and freely sharing information. S. is also often sick and her family is fairly continuously in crisis. The other colleague is the boss. She is brusk, dislikes being interrupted, does not break off her work to extend greetings and knows herself to be extremely important. Certain people inspire her to become downright flirtatious. I am not one of them. I have had the experience of waiting patiently for my turn while she finishes with an important conversation with someone else only to have her walk away without even acknowledging the fact that I was standing there. The other day, I asked this august personage (yes, I’ve got attitude, sigh) whether S. was out sick. The boss replied, “S. is out today,” and turned to her computer. Although I have worked through my relationship with this boss … my former boss as of right about now …, I was nevertheless taken aback and happened to have the leisure at that moment to examine why. The fact that she is no longer my boss probably gives me additional perspective, additional freedom to recognize an unpleasant moment. I kept thinking about the interaction and eventually realized that I felt acutely reprimanded for having asked an inappropriate question. Since there had been no actual reprimand, I of course couldn’t know if my crime had been trying to converse when she was busy with important matters or if it had been asking for personal information about S. or whether there was some great mystery. When my thoughts started wondering if S. had been fired, I wrote to her on Facebook and learned that she had food poisoning and that the box had known this fact. S., unlike me, has to work closely with the boss, so I gained new insights into why she can’t get comfortable with her. What would it be like to feel constantly under reprimand and yet be unable to figure out how exactly one was failing? In any event, I will not miss being around their interactions. I will not miss being around S.’s continual troubles and eye-rolling whenever the boss goes by or is even mentioned in conversation. I will not miss never being sure what the boss thought of me. I feel liberated.
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However, I think the new nest will be a bit lonely by comparison. Whatever I may have said in the previous paragraph, I think I will miss these ladies immensely.

[Kathryn]

Interesting photo and interesting story. I, too, have been thinking and noticing our "office dynamics" lately; I think they are as complicated than family relationships. I hope you settle into your new nest soon.

[katy]

Interesting shot, this little keet that lead you to your even more interesting musings about your old and new nests

[Helen Jane]

I love the texture and the patterns in the photo. YOu paint the picture at your office so well - it is going on - in variations - all over the place. People are not straight forward. I do hope you will settle to the new circumstances without loneliness creeping in.