Yesterday I went to a Halloween luncheon at work. Normally I hate to do these things because it’s usually awkward and there’s singing. This time it wasn’t awkward at all and there was only one song and it was The Funny. Then we played Bingo and I won a round, so that was killer. As we were wrapping up we were telling stories about how we used to do this more often before the Doom and Gloom set in. Naturally from that topic the people at my table moved to what they used to do instead of holiday gifts. The idea was hatched that as part of our holiday celebration this year we should complete a community service. I volunteered to organize it (there must have been something in those baked beans) and so we’re now running a food drive to benefit the Central Virginia Food Bank. We have about 27 people in the Richmond area so we’re trying to raise 5-10 pounds per person. I’m sure we’ll do better than that.
My second good deed this week was for a classmate. She is a high-level person in HR at a firm that was severely impacted by the collapse of the mortgage/financial system. She has laid off her team and herself. She was fairly devastated the other night and couldn’t stay for the entire class. She’s exhausted and sad. When I got home, I emailed her and suggested that we meet for lunch or a drink after work and I’d listen to her…I can’t offer any career help since I don’t move in that level or even in private industry (will work on changing that soon) but I can offer my ears and witty conversation.
She responded last night that she’d like to do that. I’m really glad. She and I have had about four classes together and in one of them worked in a team for the entire semester. I didn’t think our team worked especially well even though our outcome was great. She’s a pretty private person and smart as hell. I think we may be an unlikely set of allies for each other, and aside from the professor, I was the only classmate she talked to about her job loss. I think she realizes even though we do very different things for a living we come from a similar place professionally. She’s just much higher up the chain than I am. I’m sure I put too much significance on this, but if I’d chose to stay with the big financial organization and moved to Charlotte, I may be closer in professional status to her by now.
Anyway, two good deeds in the week and the food bank thing makes me really happy. Not only will be doing good for a whole bunch of Central Virginians, but we’ll be doing something that draws our Richmond area staff together.
