Although the decision to move to Dallas well-informed, I am still continually surprised by this place.
Exploring downtown Dallas in summer
The crowd at the March Gay Bingo / Resource Center Event at Station 4 in Dallas.
Michael started at the Thomson Reuters Carrollton office last week and already managed to score us free tickets to a Dallas Stars hockey game.
We also saw a Dallas Stars hockey game last fall because Michael won free tickets from his gig at 7-Eleven Corporate. The 7-Eleven seats were nice, but Thomson Reuters has a suite!
I was initially very apprehensive about returning to Minnesota. After being gone from a place from an extended amount of time, it is natural to plot a dramatic entrance.
But reality often looks very different.
Despite the awful weather and shady Delta checking agents, it was actually a fun and productive work trip.
The flight from Dallas and Minneapolis was wonderfully short and empty. I did not have anyone sitting next to me, but instead received the gift of seven toddlers behind me.
This is why they invented on-flight cocktails, and Starbucks!
A shot of the Texas countryside from my Delta flight to Minnesota.
The wintry landscape in lower Minnesota.
So grateful for the Starbucks on this Delta flight.
Our annual Account Management meeting was at the Radisson Blu, a swank new hotel attached to Mall of America.
Note: This post reflects my personal opinions, and not those of my employer.
Thomson Reuters is a conglomerate with about 50,000 employees across the globe.
Thomson Reuters is different than other conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway or Samsung, because it has a standardized set of operating principles, consistent branding across divisions, and shared IT and HR resources.
I first noticed the problem after glancing at my email around 8 a.m. yesterday. I somehow had 54 emails despite being at inbox zero the night before.
The logistics of moving are exhausting – choosing a power company, contracting with a new internet provider, closing accounts, getting paperwork together, and that nagging sense that I’m overestimating what fits into my car.
Almost all of my furniture is already gone.
I just have my ratty couch, my work desk, and a mattress on the floor (it kind of looks like a crack den.)
Also, apparently this is what $21 in used books looks like:
What $21 in used books looks like. I sold them at Half Priced Books in Roseville, Minnesota.
That store is one of the strangest places I’ve ever been to.
It looks like a normal book store, but it’s staffed by very thin and bored-looking hipsters. The customers were equal parts young parents, old people, and tatted 40-somethings.
I sat around for about 30 minutes while waiting for my books to get appraised. I was so bored by the time they called my name that I would have accepted any amount. (This is probably not by mistake.)
I had marathon meetings with our division’s biggest client. This was the culmination of a lengty, often painful, process that involved senior directors and VPs from across the company.
For weeks my life consisted of accommodating “stakeholders”/cooks with competing interests, resulting in way too many spreadsheets and draft contracts.
Last week I decided to stop wasting my time.
I quit a clerkship, dropped a pair of toxic “friends” and told the boyfriend that I not getting any younger, these ankles are swelling, and it is time to finalize our adoption and mortgage plans…
Well, maybe not that last part, (That is for this week!) but I have realized that this blog is one of the things that is wasting my time.
This blog is supposed to be a journal and a time saver. It is neither.
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) is a summary of the prior week.
I had two oral arguments on Monday. My moot court section has an odd number of students, so I volunteered to argue off-brief.
It was slightly awkward waltzing in and arguing for the other side: “May it please the Court, forget everything I said one hour ago! These guys are so totally not guilty, and US Americans…”
It wasn’t so terrible, and I survived.
I spent the bulk of Tuesday’s school day in the Sprint Store. The Rottweiler ate my phone, and a quick lunch-time phone replacement turned into an epic customer service fail.
I made a point of not being snide or pissy with the Sprint customer service reps. It is embarrassing and stressful enough for a worker to look incompetent in front of a customer. Exasperating someone’s discomfort is not going to make them provide better service.
My politeness also allowed me to adopt a sense of moral superiority while watching the parade of rude customers that came into the store.
The worst guy was a very short man with a baseball cap who walked in with his arms folded:
Chipper customer service rep: “Welcome to Sprint! How may we help you today?”
Napoleon: (dramatic pause) “I have been a customer for over 15 years! I demand service! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”
We eventually got my blackberry working, and I spent the rest of the week playing foursquare and connecting with more Minnesotans.
Foursquare is this stalkerish, twitter-like application that uses your GPS to pinpoint your location and broadcasts the location to your facebook and twitter streams.
You can leave to-do tips for other users, and even see who else is at your location. This is awesome because when I “check in” at work I am instantly connected to new coworkers.1
My workweek started on Wednesday. I’m not sure if this was a good idea.
I had the same problem last week: I went to work on Wednesday after an exhausting school day and I got behind on cases.
I did not want my quota to suffer, so I spent the rest of the week playing catch up and worked for free on Sunday.
Several of my coworkers had the same problem. You get behind, feel guilty for being behind… stress builds, productivity decreases, you wake up the next day with more to do than the day before…
I refused to get on the hamster wheel this week. I have always met my employer’s productivity quota and I’m not going to walk around like Raggedy Ann because I failed to live up to my artificially heightened expectations for one day. Cue Portia Nelson.
Friday was epic, Saturday was calm, and today is my day of work and homework. It is like prepping before cooking the feast. The more work I get done today, the easier my mini-school week will be. We’ll see how this goes….
1 My connectedness level has increased with the blackberry. I have never been so up to date on my email. I think the best part of the PDA experience has been meeting more Minnesotans. I hate to use the term “networking” but that’s essentially what’s going on.