Hi all,

I have indeed been deluged with responses, although the majority seem to 
have gone to the whole list. I will type up a nice little summary and send 
it out next week, so no need to keep going for my sake...but don't let 
that stop you if this topic is of interest.

Cheers!

Laura

Laura Ruttum
Manuscripts Specialist,
Manuscripts and Archives Division
New York Public Library
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07/13/2006 03:06 PM
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Have your cake and eat it too [was improving staff morale]






Hey, Mark, there is no right way to cut a cake as far as I'm concerned. 
  The only thing I say is, I hope no one does what I once saw a woman do 
at an office party, lick the frosting off the knife as it accumulated 
-- and then simply continue cutting.   Eeeewwwwww.  I'll have to 
remember to "cut it wrong," as Mark did, next time I do it, sounds like 
a nice way to get out of cutting the cake (why should the B=day person 
be doing all the work, anyway!)

I understand what you're saying, Conni, but haven't most of us been 
saying there's no one size fits approach?  Hey, some of us even like 
junk food, much to our chagrin :-)  And of course, food and social 
events and treating people with respect and providing a quality work 
environment need not be mutually exclusive.

Most of the messages haven't been very prescriptive, at least in my 
view, they seem just a sharing of anecdotes. for the most part.

Hey, by the way, I bet there are guys out there who are better cooks 
than I am, I'm pretty middling.

The best boss I ever had was Fred Graboske, a Vietnam veteran, someone 
with inherently good people skills who did wonders in keeping our 
morale up under trying circumstances at NARA.  Really a cool guy, I 
respect him enormously to this day!  He did it mostly by taking the 
time to talk to AND listen to his subordinates, to consider what they 
told him, etc.  And to assign work fairly, treat people well, etc.   He 
did what is called "management by walking around," which included 
enough non-work related chit chat to get to know his staff.

Come to think of it, while I worked for Fred, we also set up a dart 
board and some of the staff threw darts during lunch time.  And played 
Trivial Pursuit in the lunchroom.  (Now I'm really revealing how old I 
am!)   I hope some of the other guys on the List have sent Laura some 
Off List suggestions about what they do to motivate their subordinates; 
or what they've observed good bosses doing.  Fred doesn't subscribe to 
this List but I'm sure there are some Fred types out there.  Well, 
maybe not exactly like Fred, LOL.

Laura, do let us know if you have enough or if you or others want us to 
keep discussing this on the List.  Although I love the topic (ya 
think?), I'm somewhat leery of the discussion going on for a long time, 
even though it is work related (the list is an open forum so you never 
know when someone is going to shout shut up, enough already, yikes.)

Maarja
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