Four Letter Word

A friend of mine says work is a four letter word.  I guess it doesn't matter what you do.  Working sucks.  By all accounts today was to be a celebration.  We have a little monthly contest at work.  After a year, my team came in first place on two critical metrics.  First was mishandled bags with a ZERO mishandled bag ratio.  It doesn't get any better than that.  Second, the team won the turn tracker contest measuring various milestones within a turn.  The thought is if you meet all these benchmarks within a turn, the chances of getting the flight out on time increase exponentially.  My team was been steadily climbing since last May when the contest was launched.  I've rallied my team, held them accountable, put pressure on my supervisors and set expectations for nearly flawless performance on every turn.  While my team is far from flawless, we are performing better than the other teams in the region.  Another par of the equation is luck.  Sometimes, no matter what you do, an on time departure just doesn't happen.  It's maintenance.  A a customer issues.  Excessive wheelchairs.  Someone makes a god awful mess in a lavatory.  Whatever.  Yet somehow we aced it this month.

My manager was quick to congratulate as were a few members of my peer group.  The thing about it is - I don't care.  In some ways I've become the kind of boss I didn't work well under.  Always talking about numbers and questioning stumbles - just like the treatment I get.  What are you gonna do to prevent failure x from happening again?!?!?  Blahblahblahblah.  Who cares?

Now the pressure is on to do it again in February to prove it wasn't an accident.  Then comes March and we have to prove we can do it again with more flights.  

While I should be happy about this - I'm not.  

Today, we (the team) did a community service activity.  We spent 3 hours working at the local food bank.  In our world, we are expected to give back to the communities we do business.  Every quarter we do something as a group.  A few years ago we adopted a creek in a park behind the airport.  That stopped during covid.  We asked about doing it again and they required a 400 dollar donation to continue picking up trash at the creek.  ????  No.  Thank you.  Now we do the food bank.  Todays activity was either sorting rotten carrots from marginal carrots and putting 5 lbs of them in a bag and sending it down the line for someone else to verify and knot.  Either that, or re-arrange dry goods in a box so vegetables (squash and zucchini) could be added.  The box is then sealed, labeled, palletized.  Then amazon comes and delivers takes them away delivering them to the recipients.  I think we did 5 pallets of boxes stacked about as tall as I am.  It takes a village to feed a village.  I don't know.  Whatever.  When our shift was over we were notified we packaged roughly 2000 meals worth of food.  Took a picture.  Sent to the boss.  She approves.

SO...  won contest.  zero mbr.  community service project.  #BLB / #BFD