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