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Text of the page (random words):
ly able to see how decisions are made i was finally able to watch the interactions and the dynamics between members of senior leadership the partners and between the senior leadership and the middle managers associates and some senior architects and i was appalled with his unwarranted and unprovoked explosions at colleagues not paying attention to whoever is speaking or even flat out leaving the meeting before it was over bosley was a bully howie was a jittering pushy micromanaging bully audrey whom i once thought was a great role model for women in leadership positions turned out to act like a passive aggressive hypocritical micromanaging flake molly an associate partner whose arrival had also given me hope for da was simply put a fucking nightmare for my colleagues and me a master manipulator with poor listening skills and even poorer senses of boundaries and propriety she was bosley s syncophant for as long as it helped her get ahead and avoid blame for any project gone wrong other partners popped in and out of meetings to deliver their own flavor of seagull management fly in make a lot of noise crap on everything and then leave i would sit in the meetings and watch the other partners bulldoze over sven one of my favorite partners and patty an associate partner i had long worked with and admired sven would sit back quietly in his chair and patty would sigh and look down with her head in her hands after being shot down by bosley and howie yet again after my experience with the st ermahgerd project i vowed that this truly would never happen again as a somewhat leader at this firm i needed to make it work if not for me then for the others who weren t able to be in this room to defend their interests i decided to study how to make projects work better so i could show the partners and help them improve the firm s employee satisfaction and maybe even its bottom line too so with the help of a colleague with a great deal of experience setting up research projects and surveys i complete the first round of an in depth research project and presented it at a national conference where it was received with great enthusiasm and almost delight after i presented i lost count of the number of times someone said something to the effect of your firm is so smart and brave for doing this sort of self study yes i thought i m really doing work that can help people and then i went home after getting bumped off the agenda for nearly three months i finally got to present my research to the partners and associates however many felt like showing up that day i went through the data explaining my methods and then i got to the punchline my research showed that the most successful project teams were the ones that had only one partner or no active partners on the project this was not going to be good news for howie molly and bosley who for some incomprehensible reason insisted on having two of them or even all three on a project at the end of my presentation i was met with puzzled silence it was as if no one knew what to do with what i d shown them they began discussing amongst themselves in such a way that i sensed they didn t really get it should we share this with our clients if we get to the design solution faster would a lot of these stresses go away my inner lewis black rose up in my head you re not listenin asshole the main problem on your projects is your fucked up behavior you want to be a partner but you also want to be designers and planners and architects and unfortunately those things are mututally exclusive of being a partner you either get the work or do the work it s my job to do the work so go get the work and then get the hell out of my way and my colleagues ways the emporer was naked and no matter how many times or how loudly i shouted it the emporer wouldn t even go put some fucking shorts on i recounted some of this to my dear friend and advisor vinnie while hiding out at 3pm one afternoon at the cruise room for a glass of wine or four after a pause vinnie said quietly over his long island iced tea honey i think you ve outgrown design associates i must have looked puzzled because he continued these people are doing to you what your dad s family did to your mom they re making you crazy literally they say they want to give everyone autonomy and opportunities for growth and all that but their behavior says they want things to stay as they are but just want the staff to do more and when you speak up about the delta between what they say and what they do you get gaslighted like maybe it s your fault that you can t do an unreasonable amount of work over and over and over at first i was skeptical of vinnie s assessment but the longer i stayed at da the more i realized he was right howie tried to give me room on my next project but he keep fucking with my staff on a project that was already 5 to 1 person short by putting them on other things he needed help with for just a hour or so read all afternoon further i noticed howie and molly treating my utterly competent and professional colleagues like they barely knew how to be architects they were giving me a wide berth and bosley literally hadn t spoken to me in six months because of my meltdown and my survey delivered hand slap so you ll continue to treat my colleagues like shit because they haven t had a massive meltdown yet is that what it takes to get this firm s leaders to hear us it was during yet another micromanaging moment from the partners one day in may that i had the strangest feeling settle over me as one of my most senior colleagues told me not to make my staff surveys so nit picky and getting so into the details data is details fuckhead i thought to myself you don t really want me to give you true information you want to keep living in an echo chamber well you ll be living in it without me i left work early that day went to a coffee shop and started writing my resume and assembling my portfolio i applied to megaarch guy s firm the next day uploading my new resume and portfolio a few days later guy brought my resume by hand to his boss and apparently his boss went into a semi orgasmic convulsion to hear that a highly experienced healthcare planner and architect with research and speaking experience as well as a pleasant personality and good if indecent sense of humor might be interested in changing firms every few weeks i d have lunch with a new person from megaarch s national design specialties group guy s boss the head of architecture lady the head of healthcare and the healthcare marketing guy and lunch after lunch i felt so strangely light conversations with people who are interested in what i can do and know how to do and are so excited about the stuff i want to research and do and so on i finally realized that maybe just maybe i had skills to offer the world that really were well honed skills that maybe my work was valued somewhere by somebody the offer came in late july i got approval to start on january 2nd of 2016 i got the what i thought was insanely high salary i asked for and they didn t even blink i even got a signing bonus for which i didn t even ask i nearly started crying when i got the offer and showed guy i waited a couple of days for what reason i m not sure it was a big deal to leave design associates but it was time each time i tried to frame leaving da as a bad scary or negative thing i couldn t scare myself away or talk myself out of leaving and going to megaarch even if it went poorly there the fact that they would want me there enough to give me everything i wanted meant that i could still go somewhere else i remembered my sister kitty and i walking away from dad s family after he died and they started acting like unrestrained dipshits i had known them for 21 years and i shared dna with them and i walked away and i haven t spoken to them in almost 20 years and i have no regrets i d only been with design associate for 15 years do they think i couldn t leave i accepted megaarch s offer on a tuesday i told design associates on a friday that s the next post posted by mile high pixie at 2 30 pm 7 comments monday august 10 2015 i just resigned from design associates it s been a long time coming and i m formulating a series of appropriate posts to describe the saga of the past few years but yes i handed in my resignation last week and my last day is at the end of august more to come posted by mile high pixie at 9 28 am 5 comments saturday november 8 2014 don t call it a comeback i ve been here for years okay okay okay it s been a long ass while since i posted i either haven t felt like it or have felt like i didn t have anything to say that wasn t just a bunch of bitching and whining i ve come to realize that a lot of what makes me drink about architecture is what makes anyone who does white collar work drink copious quantities of cheap liquor and boxed wine architecture and the design construction profession gives these everyday white collar pains a special twist that makes one extra familiar with the flavor of mr boston vodka the way we architects conduct our business seems almost antithetical sometimes to good business sense and for the past couple of years it s left me feeling like i need to get out of this profession and yet that feels like giving up just as i m getting to a place where i could really make a difference what s an angry li l radical to do when i m frustrated i do what i always do make lists what s got me so irritated let s see 1 i ve seen that the emperor has no clothes and a very small wang by being promoted to associate a two years ago i ve seen how decisions are made how things get done and who really feels what about each topic we bring up and deal with it s amazing appalling even to see the politics and personalities behind how anything happens at design associates and there are many times that i m embarrassed to be part of it but i also am coming to realize that as a human being not as an associate or architect or any other hat i wear as an identity i have a responsibility to do what i can to change what i can 2 i m fucking tired i am i m exhausted from striving and trying and performing and outperforming and jumping through hoops and being the good girl i m learning that in order to keep fighting the good fight especially having just turned 39 that i need to protect and defend my energy better and set better boundaries at some point i get to turn down defer delegate or throw aside any tasks or behaviors that are truly not helping me or are a good use of my time 3 weed is fucking awesome yes it s legal here in colorado yes i finally tried it for the first time at the ripe old age of 38 1 2 years old and i completely understand why people do it relaxing fun great sleep and no hangover we have some bugs to work out of the system but overall i m glad our voters made it legal i m embarking on a big new project to talk about and walk everyone through so far it s shaping up to be the opposite of st ermahgerd but we ll see there have been a lot of changes at design associates but things are still interesting i continue though to evaluate a balance between how much i gossip about my work and colleagues with you all and how much should i be professional and ethical given my position at my firm and my own craptastic attempts to be quasi buddhist a few of you have written me wonderful emails about this blog and i owe you responses and you ll get responses but meanwhile thanks for checking in i hope to be a little more regular with my posts as i climb further out of this depression and massive sea change in my behavior and personality posted by mile high pixie at 9 42 am 6 comments labels one flew over the cuckoo s nest friday may 2 2014 hanging in there wow been a while since i posted huh guess i should say something huh i am indeed still alive and feeling better six months of antidepressants frequent chats with vinnie my erstwhile antiques dealer and therapist pal and some serious changes at work have started me on the road to recovery or at least the road towards giving a fuck again i ve been getting the support i need to do my job well and properly and i ve generally been given the space i need to do the stuff i like doing i think i scared the shit out of howie my long time boss during my meltdown i think he might be a little more willing to back off from me so i don t just quit design associates in a desk flipping and burning blaze of glory i ve had a hard time coming up with anything to say here on wad and when i do think of something i don t feel like writing it down the biggest change in my life that i m finding is a lack of my former energy and what i call sudden onset procrastination vinnie however has diagnosed it as how everyone else feels all the goddamn time i don t know if it s my late thirties doing this to me or if this is how i m supposed to feel when i peel away the layers of depression and anxiety either way i m adjusting to a new normal i m still committed in some way to continuing to share with the world why architecture is still fucked up and needs to fix its shit having been broken and chased into a black hole by my job and profession i cannot stand by and watch it eat its young and itself when i can i ll muster up the energy to blog n bitch about what i see and what the profession s future can be word posted by mile high pixie at 6 02 pm 6 comments saturday december 28 2013 so uh yeah so it s been awhile and with good reason turns out my burnout was deeper than originally thought it was depression it became clear after a wonderful vacation with guy that i was constantly irritated and angry and felt like everything was stupid and pointless it became clear during the big design associates partner associate retreat when we were talking about the future of the firm for the next ten years and all i could think was that this whole thing was a pointless fart sniffing exercise in stupid futility it became clear when i said i hated my job and i d wasted my life at design associates but when anyone asked what i d rather do instead my response was nothing or it doesn t matter it s gonna suck anyway i called my dear pal the antique dealer turned psychologist vinnie and after a long chat at the oxford hotel s cruise room he observed that this looked like agitated depression and i needed to talk with my doctor about some medication stat now a couple of months later i m feeling better i m not out of this and i m not done but i m better i think i could stand to go up on my meds a bit i m still pretty cranky and easily set off by the slightest thing but i m starting to be able to dissect when my irritation is work related versus depression related i ve also had a couple of successes at work including a few professional speaking gigs involving a research project that i started working on in the late summer i don t know if it s the depression or just where i am in life but i find that i m less and less willing to pull my punches w...