Last Day of Work

My last day of work was the 15th. The thing I first noticed (like at 4:40 that afternoon) was that I no longer needed lots and lots of accumulated email. Probably none of what’s in my inbox, but because the company uses Goggle everything, there’s really no way for them to retain my filed/saved email, or what’s in my inbox. A limited search revealed I could upload email, one at a time to Google drive. I have thousands. My boss and I decided I’d hang onto email regarding our contracted educators, and what category of things I could toss regarding our communities. I’ll button it all up in one umbrella folder and it can live there until some statute of limitations is up.

I’ve since found out that I cannot forward business email to the gal who took my place… Like algebra, I figured out how to get her what she needed, but this is one of the challenges of depending on free platforms for business technology.

Looking through email brought home just how much time was spent on things that were time sucks: 

• Deliberations on what watering chart to use. This happened before Covid, and brought everyone, including our supplies person into the conversation. The founder jumped in with both feet rather than simply saying, “Use this one.” It went on for days. We’re talking about a piece of paper that helps the communities track watering the gardens. All the gardens I rolled out this late summer and fall were still delivered with a different watering chart than the one we trained the communities on. So much for long-winded conversations.
• A community lost its nursing beds (and so couldn’t use grant dollars to pay for the gardens any longer) and was interested in retaining the gardens for its memory care. There must be a solid 75 email around this topic. Possibly more. After it wasn’t part of my fiefdom any longer, I was still copied on the subject. And upon my exiting, the issue wasn’t resolved.
• Another community wanted to cancel us all together due to being 1000% overwhelmed by Covid protocols. We worked to retain them. But, 60 email. This one matters, and the explosion that was my inbox made me feel aphasic. I literally was not able to keep up.
• Since the educators weren’t able to enter the communities and take care of the gardens for most of 6-months, a handful of the gardens grew mushrooms. Some of us have been hunting mushrooms since we were children, complete with serious education about fungi. Some of the staff have not. I, having been one of the former sort, was pretty excited about the possible liability issues, real or imagined, with mushrooms growing in therapy gardens around elders, many of whom have cognitive struggles. The official protocol that was implemented was about removal of offending mushrooms, the soil around them, and then to sprinkle a common cooking spice on the soil, because it’s a natural fungicide. This did nothing to stop the growth. I finally rolled my eyes (aren’t I lucky to have been working from home~) when the expense of a complete remove and replace to bring this problem under control was brought up as a reason not to do what really needed to be done at one community. 50 email for that community, and probably 100 or more for the problem at large, with NO WORKING SOLUTION.

The things that brought us screeching to a halt baffled me. The mission, the product, and the people are really good for the most part. I feel good about my contribution, and proud of the people I worked with. And sometimes I was mystified.

One interesting side-effect of no longer being employed is my typing speed has increased 6-fold, and that’s while my Mac sits on my lap. Better said, my head feels clear. It’s been almost a week now. Lots has gotten done that was dragging on me. I’m planning on working mornings and turning to creative pursuits in the afternoons. So far I’ve managed to save us $60+ a month on our internet and TV, drop our land line (We only kept it for mom…), and take the next step in transferring an inherited IRA from the Island bank to our brokerage. I baked up a storm too.