温馨夜读II PART2 9.The Priorities of Life

[00:00.74]9.The Priorities of Life [00:04.22]Friday afternoon, when I was worrying about my pregnancy and the future conflicts between work and family, [00:11.62]Dan’s assistant dropped a memo at my desk. [00:15.01]We were supposed to run a new set of numbers on our report. [00:18.81]“Have them sent to me by Monday,” Dan, my work-obsessed boss, wrote. [00:23.72]It was near leaving time. [00:26.00]The mainframe computer was already shut down for the weekend, which meant doing them by hand on Saturday. [00:31.88]Working extra hours always made me doubt if I would have time with my family. [00:37.33]I had to talk to Mike, my team leader. [00:41.26]“We don’t need to,” Mike said, “I’ll run a program first thing Monday when the computer comes back up. [00:47.68]And I’ll explain things to Dan on Tuesday. [00:50.40]The extra day means there won’t be any mistakes.” [00:53.67]I had a terrible weekend. [00:56.40]After this, how would Dan view my maternity leave? [01:00.11]Monday, Mike finished running the program before I came in. [01:04.24]I checked the information for my division. [01:07.23]Tuesday, Dan asked me into his office. [01:10.27]“I wanted those reports yesterday so I could get my notes ready. [01:14.41]If that meant working on a Saturday, that is normal at your level of responsibility. [01:19.42]Instead, you deliberately disobeyed me.” [01:22.47]I struggled to hold back my tears. [01:25.84]That was when Mike breezed in, plopping the new report on his desk. [01:30.09]“Here we go, Dan,” he said, “Guaranteed accuracy down to the decimal. To me that was worth taking an extra day.” [01:38.04]“Why didn’t you work on Saturday to finish this?” [01:41.42]“It seemed like a huge waste when we could just use the computer and get it right,” [01:46.64]Mike said, “so we waited until Monday.” [01:49.36]Dan stared at the top page for a long while, then nodded. [01:53.28]At that moment the tension went out of the room like air going out of a balloon. [01:58.08]He even cracked a smile. [02:00.25]Later, finally on my way to talk to Dan about my pregnancy, I stopped by Mike’s cubicle. [02:07.01]There he was, working as hard as ever, surrounded by the photos of his boys, [02:11.36]the football team he coached, his family on Easter Sunday. [02:14.86]That’s why he didn’t make time wasting decisions or worry about office politics. [02:21.43]He had his priorities right: faith, family, then work. [02:27.00]And because of that he was good at all three. [02:30.18]“Thanks, Mike.” I said. “I learned to get my priorities straight. [02:35.86]Now I’m ready to tell my boss the good news.”

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