Mood:  celebratory

Apparently I get this new job and the power just runs to my head. What on Earth was I thinking trying to be helpful.

I didn’t get any sleep last night because I was furious with and incident that happened yesterday. I know it seems lately like I have done a lot of bitching on here. Sorry about that but sometimes it helps me calm down if I write out my concerns.

If you read Monday’s post you read that we had a change in regulations and that no one had bothered to tall any of us. I spent most of the morning on the phone with finance just furious that we were blindsided by this. The finance department in TN said that the information was sent to the Districts to hand out to the staff. Armed with that knowledge I called around our District Office to see who was responsible for getting this information out. I wanted to get them to alert the rest of the staff. No one seemed to have a clue who was supposed to get the word out so I decided I would be nice and share the info I learned with everyone in the District.

I wrote a lengthy email and attached the page from the manual with the new regulations. When I was done I hit distribution D which sends it out to EVERYONE in the District. I felt a sense of accomplishment and felt good that I may have helped save someone the headache of having to redo their work to follow the new regs. The feeling was short lived.

My boss called me into his office yesterday and said that he was instructed to have a talk with me about proper channels of communication. WHAT!?! Apparently when the email hit, the head of finance in our District ran down the hall to my boss’s boss’s boss (we will call him Mr. S) and asked him who authorized a lowly park ranger to disseminate policy. That in fact no one had the right to disseminate this information except for him and that Mr. S needed to have a talk with his employees about the ramifications of going outside your job. He then stated that it makes his department look bad.  Luckily Mr. S came to my defense and said that he has known me for awhile and is positive I sent the email out just to be helpful. That in fact if finance had done their job I wouldn’t have had to send out an email (I am sure Mr. S said it with much more finesse). But he said he would make sure that in fur future I only send out those notices to just the Operations Department. So hence the talk I had yesterday with my boss.

Although I am not in trouble with my boss or Mr. S I am still upset. I feel it all just makes me look bad. I am angry that I was trying to do the right things and I get scolded for it by the man who should have gotten me the information in the first place. The new regs came out in Jan and here it is May and we still got nothing from him. So I spent an hour on the phone scolding this poor woman when we in fact had the info. It just makes me look bad and that is not something I tolerate well. I pride myself on having high standards of work and there is nothing I hate more than to have to take time out of my day to go back and correct something.

So what has this incident taught me? Only look out for yourself. In the future if I discover any information I am going to keep it to myself. Screw everyone else. I can be just as petty as they can be. I hate being like that but I won’t risk getting others and myself into trouble.