Every now and then, I get things right. In the end, this might be a small victory, but it's still a victory, regardless of size or value. At least to me, it is.
Briana had been one of the many trainees that has infected the office for much of the past few months. I suppose she was one of the more competent trainees of the entire group and one of the few in her group with whom I thought I had made even a small connection. A couple of Fridays ago I had even gone so far as to neglect my own work for nearly two hours and I chatted her up for much of that time, catching up and otherwise checking in with her. Some weeks earlier, she was assigned to a work group and last week, she became official and managed to successfully shed the label of "trainee". She would soon be doing the job on her own, fully responsible for her actions and no longer able to hide behind her inexperience as a mere trainee. Again, she was now official. I knew that she wasn't thrilled with the work group which she would be joining. I wanted to talk with her and let her know that I was aware of her apparent discontent and tried to offer her some words of encouragement.
She had a birthday in mid-November. I don't know why, but I had gone so far as to buy her a birthday gift. I had bought her a book from the local Barnes & Noble, some kind of humor book written in the tone of a Mexican grandmother giving general life advice. It didn't cost me much and I guess at the time, I thought it would have been a nice gesture. I suppose it was. She thanked me for the book via text message and I remember that she wouldn't speak with me for nearly two weeks after that. I kind of took as a sort of "out of sight, out of mind" situation and really didn't think much of it.
Yesterday, we would interact with each other for the first, and frankly only time, this week, as we crossed paths near the office restrooms. For some reason, she gave me what I perceived to have been a nonchalant look as we passed each other in the one of the hallways in the office, one of the more heavily traveled ones, being that that hallway leads to the restrooms. I typically don't look at people in the office and I will admit that I have a tendency to look down at the floor when I walk through the office. It's comfortable. I'm used to it. It's just something I've always done. So, as I'm walking away from the restroom, I see Briana walking past me. She's not making any eye contact with me, which I thought was somewhat unusual. For some reason, I make the decision to greet her (which with most people in the office, I wouldn't have either bothered to do) and in response, I get a barely audible and hardly interested, "Hey". I kept on walking and I wouldn't see her again until today. After having endured what I would consider to have been a very feeble and disinterested, though seconds-long, interaction with her, I made the abrupt decision to not give her the Christmas gift that I had intended. I figured that she wasn't as deserving of, really, any gift from me and that I could just as well give "her" gift to someone else, someone I would have deemed to have been deserving. It didn't me long to decide on another recipient of the gift that I had originally intended for Briana.
Generally, I've never been type to give out gift cards as Christmas gifts. I've always seen going the gift card route as lazy and as not taking much, if any, thought, but sometimes they're just easier, especially for when you don't know people well enough, but you still want to get them a little something. I didn't know Briana that well. I still don't know her that well. Even the book I got her for her birthday wasn't something that I put that much thought into. I was focusing more on the thought aspect of that gift and not the actual gift itself.
I had intended, weeks earlier, to give her a $25 gift card to Starbucks. I knew that she was one of the many Starbucks aficionados in the office, so why not go with something as simple as a Starbucks gift card? I figured that I couldn't go wrong with something along those lines. It was simple enough and didn't require much thought.
It probably would have worked.
This morning just after 8am, when most people had already arrived in the office and the formal ruination of my day begins because the peace and quiet that I had calmly walked into three hours earlier would be effectively shattered, Briana just happened to walk by. A small part of me thought she was going to stop by my cubicle and chat a bit. Instead, I saw her walk by to another cubicle in front of me. She looked like she was dropping off some kind of gift to another one of the now former trainees in her training cohort. This sort of thing did not surprise me, as Briana and those in her cohort had obviously gotten close and were a tight-knit unit. That sort of thing is expected amongst every training cohort. So really, I wasn't entirely surprised to see that she was giving at least two of them Christmas gifts. I was actually kind of relieved that she kept on walking and didn't stop to talk me or give me any kind of present.
Hours earlier, just before 5am, I prepped a Christmas card for another one of the trainees in the office. Yesenia, who is in a different cohort than Briana, had started working for the department during the first week of November. Briana started back in July or August. For whatever the reason, Yesenia had taken to me since the time she started and we just sort of clicked. I'd consider her to be good people. She's eager. She wants to learn the job. She wants to become one of the more competent and proficient workers. I think she can do it. I don't want to say that I've taken her under my proverbial wing, but I've been willing and able to help her to learn the ropes and become acclimated to the rigors of the job. I wrote her a short and simple message in that Christmas card, but before I sealed the envelope that that card would go in, I made sure to include the two $25 Starbucks gift cards that I had in my backpack. Originally, I had only intended to give Yesenia just one of those Starbucks cards. After that negative interaction with Briana yesterday, I opted to give both cards to Yesenia instead.
Yesenia thanked me, both by text message, as well as with a fist bump, when she happened to wander by my cubicle this morning, as she usually does before she leaves the office and heads off to her training class.
I know that this probably looks very petty on my part and I'm okay with it. It probably is. Still, I felt good with my decision to give Yesenia 50 bucks worth of Starbucks money, rather than give her and Briana 25 bucks each. I had just deemed Yesenia more deserving than Briana and that's the direction I went.
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