Deadlines and a broken arm
We got a new coffee machine in the Climate coffee corner. ‘Finally’, most local users would say, as the old one lived a life of hope and a completely randomized pattern of breakdowns.
Since ‘coffee machine’ is in the same category as ‘food in the canteen’ and ‘weather’ – you can always complain about it – then we had deep discussion on what to prioritize in choosing a new one. Should it be in a flashy red color, so people could see it was new, or was the size of the waste bin the most important factor in the long run. We chose the latter. When I say ‘we’, then please read that Friederike did all of this – along with all her other tasks as section coordinator.
The ‘hallelujah-day’ arrived, and apart from the new machine not fitting the old shelf, we got it up and running. But! After about 22 cups of nice tasteful coffee, the new machine broke an arm – the arm adding coffee to the brewer just split in half. So instead of serving a nice cup of coffee, the new machine delivered ‘depresso’ and a bad case of osteoporosis. Friederike got hold of the service guy and got it fixed.
Friederike is one among many colleagues in the department who fix ‘the brokens arms’ of our daily lives. Colleagues who seem to go to work with the motto: “I expect the unexpected, and I will do my best to meet it with a smile”.
What is not unexpected is the constant flow of deadlines we meet – in relation to applications, education, theses, project deliverables, policy support, etc. Last week it was Plantefonden and Organic RDD, a couple of weeks back it was EU-calls, and this week it is DFF – just to mention a few application deadlines. If you walk down the hallway at any of our locations, you can be assured that behind one of the doors you will have a colleague trying to meet a deadline.
Meeting the deadlines and fixing the ‘broken arms’ are of course a key aspect of our jobs, but we have to acknowledge that all these daily achievements are what keeps our workplace running. Do we acknowledge these daily achievements? Maybe popping a bottle of champagne and serving cake will be too much, but we should remember to tap our own and our colleagues’ shoulders and say: ‘well done’. Appreciating the daily achievement is something we need to remind each other to continuously be doing.