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This Week's Thank You: The sharer of information



There are people in every office who you are less than excited to work with. People who aren't annoying enough to get fired, but missing just enough common sense, people skills or just plain old manners to make you want to hide their office chair from time to time.

If you work in an open office, please, for the love of Pete, please do not eat hot french fries at your desk. Depending on the diet I'm on at the moment, I cannot guarantee your safety. Do not be that person.

This post is not about those people. This post is about the other types of people. The people who know all the right people to talk to, or the hidden key stroke in the decades-old program that makes magic happen. The people who never make you feel like your stupid question is a stupid question, and take the time to answer it even though they are already incredibly busy.

These are the unsung heroes of any organization. The people who are somewhere on the middle rungs but whose business card should say, "The person you go to when you can't figure it out on your own." And instead of hoarding that knowledge like the last box of Thin Mints, they hand out their well-hidden bits of information without a second thought.

There are a few people like this floating around my office. Melinda is one of them. She works with our new hires to get them on-boarded and ready to talk with clients. She also manages a lot of behind-the-scenes reporting and corrects errors before anyone even knows something was broken. Melinda knows how all the systems talk with each other and who to ask when something needs fixed (or the workaround to fix it yourself). With a new person coming on about every month or two, she is in a constant cycle of teaching, coaching and mentoring.

Which is why when I had a really stupid question last week, I felt terribly guilty bothering her. But I knew she was the only one who knew. As usual, she responded a few minutes later with the answer I needed to cross that project off my to-do list. And she did it with a smile. Or at least a smiley emoji.

People like Melinda are essential parts of any team. It's common knowledge that the office may implode if something ever happened to them, but how often are they recognized for that? Office non-implosion is pretty important, I would think.


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