Negotiating

I am working with an IT company to put together a proposal of services to help support my church. I had interviewed several companies that are local and small enough to make it affordable to the church. My church has NO IT support and earlier this year, when their email server went down, there was no support and they were without email for over 2 weeks. It’s amazing how many people will email the pastors, rather than call. They had to announce it at every service on the weekends. I know if it was my company that would be completely unacceptable. We go down occasionally but it’s an hour or 2….anything more than that and we’re losing thousands every hour. It’s not an option. But we also have 24/7 monitoring and Service Level Agreements in place that make sure that doesn’t happen. But a small church doesn’t have that luxury.

Until now. The proposal is pretty fair in my eyes. I have a few concerns and I’m willing to put together the “list of demands” from everyone else so I can talk to the company about them and see what our options are. I have to admit that I think this is fun. This is what I do but on a much larger scale for my job. And I think that I may impress some of the people from the church because they really are not tech savvy or even business savvy. Running a business and running a church are 2 different things.

So I’ll be negotiating with the company to determine what concessions they’ll make and what we’re willing to pay. I like playing negotiator and keeping a poker face. I, obviously, cannot make decisions for the church but I do get to talk intelligently to this company about my expectations. I like being an adult sometimes.

Having interviewed and recommended this company, I have a pretty good feel for how they do business. I’m impressed. So impressed, actually, that I’m thinking of selling them my services. I think I would be a great addition to their company. They would be able to offer higher level project management and even vendor relations. I think I would be a good match to the company as it’s small and growing. It would enable me to have smaller projects (with smaller budgets) and I can be more one on one with clients. I honestly think a smaller company would be a better fit for me at this point in my career. I’m getting to be a little bit of a small fish in a big pond in my current company. Not that that is bad but I think I work better when I know I’m out performing others. It’s the competition. And I've been with my company almost 11 years.  I don't think there is much of a career path for me because it's my boss then the CIO of the company.  My boss is new, so not going anywhere and I'll never be the CIO because I don't have anengineering background.  So I'm kind of limited.

Of course, there are negatives to this. I’m not sure they can afford me. I can’t really take a reduction at this point. And insurance and such…all things I have perfectly balanced with my current job. So I would potentially lose some money, which I can’t afford. .

But I’m trying to think of a way to send my resume to the owner and sell him the concept of having me work for him. I think I have it thought out and I can just forward the resume and see what happens….but I don’t want to talk over his head but I also want to sound professional and eager. This will probably not happen; the offer of a job. But I think it’s a good start to doing something about needing change. Otherwise, I’m cashing out my 401K, moving to a MUCH cheaper place, going to school and then starting a new career.

And what career?  I have a few ideas but I think they are ideas because they seem fun but probably not profitable.  I'm getting a little of the Peter Pan syndrome.  I'd like to stop being an adult and just play with my toys.

Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.

If I were to say something here it would come across as complaining and snippy. I have things that I think I do pretty well and I do get a little pissy when I’m not recognized for my efforts but that is probably when I should have been doing it without the thought in mind that I was doing it for the attention.



This one is just the most recent and so one that I’m obsessing about. I have donated my time and talents to my church (which is also a K-8 school) with no recognition. I wanted to do something to give back to the Church that has been so good to me. They didn’t ask me to help; I kept pushing them to do something. I kept asking if there was anything I could do to fix the situation. I just wanted to give back something because they had given so much. But, in reality, I did it because I was absolutely aghast about the fact that they did not have any formal IT support and I felt it was my duty to fix that. Now whether or not they wanted it, it was going to happen. So I went to a few companies, got some idea of what kind of support they would provide and then put a business case together for the recommendation to hire a certain company for on-going support. This took a lot of my personal time to do (not to mention several hours of my work day to interview them) but it was something that I felt needed to happen. The church doesn’t know any better; or even what the hell they have or need.



But they had a burning need. The “IT guy” they were using occasionally had gone shitty and wasn’t working appropriately with them. So they fired him and then the servers went down. A friend of a friend of a friend, etc…was called and he was able to get the server back up but he’s a server guy, not a printer guy or desktop support, so they were not working at optimal level.



So I did a walk through with the company (who are TechGuys in Overland Park; click HERE for their website) and I knew more about what the Church had then anyone that had been with that Church for years. And before we were even done, the Pastor was asking when they could start. They have since come out and did a scan of the issues; even fixing some without an official agreement with the Church; working in good faith that the Church will at least sign them up for some services.



I know one of the teachers at the school and she says that they were able to fix a problem that she has had for months. I think the teachers and office help are ecstatic because TechGuys are professional but also able to interpret the “geek speak” to the teachers and office people; helping them understand what it is they are doing or needing.



I did that…me….and I’ve been trying to stay content in the knowledge that I don’t have to be thanked for something that I should have given without the need to be recognized. And I don’t expect for the Church to hold up banners or even interrupt the service to have me come up and accept an award. I don’t think that they should single me out.



But I totally want them to single me out. I want a little paragraph in the newsletter, telling people what I did. I would like to at least get a Thank You when I go up to the Pastors after the service. It’d be great if they had me come to all the services and had me stand up in the middle of the service; to recognize my efforts. I want all of that…but I won’t get it and that is going to have to be OK because I’m supposed to do those things. That’s part of being in a Church family; just like in your personal family. You do things that you may not get recognition for. I have a friend that says he tries to do one thing a day that is going to help someone else and not get any recognition for it. I’m not that good…I’m pretty selfish I guess.



This all sounds really petty actually. Guess this is something I’m going to have to work on.

I'm a heathen

I have the body of Christ stuck in my teeth.

Tonight, sitting in church, I had to step out to go to the bathroom because I was afraid I was going to be struck down by lightening.  All I could think about was what a bad Christian I am because I made myself laugh out loud when I thought this.

Sorry J.C.

I love my Church.  It's contemporary and I can wear jeans. I tend to go Saturday nights because I don't want to have to compete for seating with all the polished people in Cupcake County that attend the church on Sunday mornings.  

I think that the reason I like my church is that they don't necessarily expect much from me and this works to their advantage because it makes me want to help them more.  

My church does not have any official form of IT support.  That drives me crazy so I, of course, have spent the last month putting together a plan for them and interviewing companies that I would recommend hiring for support.  I am putting together a disaster recovery plan for them so they will be prepared next time their servers go down.  And I just hope to God that they decide to actually do something. 

Kind of makes me feel wanted, that they need someone to help them. But then again, I feel like its an opportunity for me to get involved and bossy.  This is prime example of when I could take advantage of the situation and get it so people really relied on me.  Instead, I want to be able to help when needed (not when I think they need it) and be willing to sit a round out when they decide to do something different.  

It's all about growth...

Except when I get the urge to snort communion wine out my nose.  That's just gross.

For the record, I drink the grape juice...

Guess who's coming to dinner

I spent 2 1/2 hours with some very lovely people this last Saturday.  My  church puts on these dinners for 10.  Couples sign up and for one night a month, you go to a host house and 8 to 10 people converge together for food and fellowship.  The house I was at Saturday had 9 people. I made that the odd number because I'm the single girl.

And they were all so very nice to me. They are people that have bible studies together and their children or grandchildren know everybody. It was casual get together but I never know with these church people. So I wore a little black and white polka dot dress and my purple converse. I thought that was a good compromise.  But I'm "that girl"...I got, Oh, you're the one with the funny/silly/not really a car car...I explained that it is in fact a car. And that it did not have a little opening at the bottom so that I can run with my car...a la Flintstones...and yes, I really did have to say that.

And I got a lot of interesting questions about my tattoos.  Not really questions about the why, where and who...but it was a lot of "oh my, that's a big one there" or the famous "that must have hurt"

So I became "that girl"...not woman but girl.  They got a kick out of my job and my ability to handle computers and so on...and then of course, you have to add that I am the token "single" and I must be so lonely and let's take care of Shannon so she can make it through life...blah blah blah

But, this whole post is about the food. Holy Shit I do not know what the hell was served as the main course. I honestly have never seen it before. It was ground beef, peas, mushrooms and I think barley.  It looked like there were little bugs in the food.  I took one look at it and I knew I wasn't eating any of it.  So I put a VERY small amount on my plate and the hostess said "silly, you need to eat, I bet you haven't eaten all day...pile that up!!!" Crap...and then whoever the genius was that crockpotted green beans, tomatoes an onions about 6 hours before the meal, delivered a glob of mismatched veggies. Couldn't even spoon it out it was like mush.  And then I brought nice loaf of French bread.  That was the only thing I ate and even that was ruined because their butter was off.

I managed to get 3 chewed forkfuls down. And the next 2 were attempts by me to just swallow whole with my drink.  But there was not enough tea/water/coffee/rainwater/radioactive sludge to chock it all down with.  So I moved it around my plate enough that I think I got away with it.

Then dessert was brought out and it actually sounds like a good idea but had a HUGE pucker factor. She had done 2 containers of raspberry yogurt, one box of raspberry jello (you do not make, you simply put the powder in the yogurt) and then a container of Cool Whip.  This thing was NEON pink.  And you took a bite and I instantly felt a surge of sugar go through me and I became so jittery I was acting like I was tweaked on Meth (not that I know what that feels like).  I thought my ADHD was going to make me start punching the walls. 

And these older people were calmly talking about window replacement and how their grandchildren were playing with call phones instead of interacting with family members. They never asked my opinion but if they had I would have told them that my phone's umbilical cord had not been cut yet so I still had to burp it and change it's battery every so often.

I ended the night with a quick Thank You and headed home.  I'm scheduled for the next one to be the 9th of October. I'm going to eat before I go.