Managing From The Bottom Of My Heart

So my company distributed their quarterly inter-company news update/letter this week to all employees with the latest company info/for their reading pleasure. These updates are usually 10 or so pages long and always highlight one or two ongoing projects from each of our divisions. There is usually a write up on some community service project, an up and coming department or policy committee and maybe some kind of safety article. Well this quarter’s update highlighted not only my community service project but both of my ongoing projects too! Yes, my two little rinky-dink projects represented our southeast division in the update, going up against much more vast projects out west in the $50-150 million range… how is that for scary? But, the coolest part was the write-up on my community service project. We scored an entire page! The project consisted of a group of us (7 total from my city of Atlanta project) demolishing and hauling off old, dilapidated playground equipment and other unused hazards from a playground behind a classroom building on a church campus in the midtown Atlanta area. And, we also raised over $8,000 from our project vendors and subcontractors to pay a professional fencing company to come demo the old 4 ft high chain-link fence around the perimeter of the playground and replace with a brand spanking new 8 ft high chain-link fence! The church campus has quite a time keeping the nightlife out of the playground and leaving their “paraphernalia” behind for the children to discover each day. The old fence was bent and broken and just not doing its job… The classroom building houses two different non-profit organizations that help the homeless or children with special needs…. So our team was proud to help them out! The bottom half of the full-page layout on the news update had a nice big picture of all seven of us standing on the playground after our day of work… I look at each face in that picture and it brings sadness in my heart… because all four of the men from our field crew that did the majority of the manual labor on that day have all been laid-off since then… How sad is that? And what makes it even more upsetting is that I KNEW on that day that their days were numbered with our company. I was guilt-ridden the entire time… I thanked them for all of their hard work on the playground and on our project… I gave them gifts with our company logo on them out of my secret stash of gifts I keep in my truck toolbox… I felt so bad that day. It is so hard to do my job and not carry guilt every time I am required to lay someone poor soul off. And during these days and times in our company, it seems to be happening WAY too much! Being a manager just absolutely sucks! I remember when I was a level below manager and did not have the responsibilities that I do now… life was carefree and fun… I had no idea that the golden award of a promotion to project manager was not just the title, the money, the company truck and all the other perks… it also came with a price… a price that I seem to pay dearly almost every day… and it sucks the life out of me…