Kids These Days - Again

Allan Gardens Snowman: commemorating the so far only major snowfall of the year in my part of Toronto, about ten feet from the scene of the unpleasantness recounted in an earlier post.

I have mentioned before the predominantly young demographic at the Ministry of Energy Etc. 

Both managers on my team are under forty; one is barely above thirty. They are older than most of the people on their teams. 

I enjoy working with young people. They are smart and idealistic and have lots of energy. 

They are also ambitious and anxious about their careers. 

This last part was made clear most recently by way of a presentation given to the management team recounting discussions held with staff about the annual Ontario Public Service employee engagement survey.

The young ones complained that the promises of advancement opportunities made to lure them into the OPS had not been kept. They seemed genuinely surprised, and bitterly disappointed, that the process was neither automatic nor swift.

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Many of the youngsters in our division are unmarried. Some of them seem preoccupied with their appearance. Most of them apply one or more scented products to their person. The resulting cloud of solvents, surfactants, scents and airborne particulate gets into the air vents. Since I started at the Ministry, I have gone from having maybe one or two migraine headaches a year to having one a week. 

The challenge my migraines present me, along with the pain, is they mess with my short-term memory and impair my cognitive functioning. When I am in the midst of a migraine, I avoid making presentations or other tasks where I need to think on my feet. 

But, you can't hide forever. 

In a perfect migraine storm this past week, I already had a headache when some of the youngest members of my team and I entered a just-vacated meeting room, the air so heavy with scent even the young ones commented on it. My headache immediately got worse.

We were joining in on a government-wide teleconference about the new environment plan. Custom dictates that Directors introduce themselves and their staff when the teleconference chair asks them to. When my turn came, my headache made me make two mistakes. 

The first was that I tried to do it all myself. It is OK for staff to say their own names and that would have been an appropriate "I have a headache" workaround. But I didn't do it.

The second mistake, and you could see this coming, was that I effortlessly breezed through the first and last names of two of the people in the room with me, and froze like a moron on the last name of the third.

Dammit.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen