kestrel

Disciplinarian

Personal entry follows.
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I enjoy it when I go to sleep at night, letting my subconscious mull over a dilemma I currently face. Sleep is likely the best friend I have right now.

I think I've written previously on how I dislike the supervisory position I was appointed to: under duress. So I tried one approach yesterday regarding lateness, sleeping in, etc. that didn't go over so well. I discussed things briefly about this with the institute manager (who was off-site at the time), and he advised me of my approach for next time this particular kind of thing happens again. I woke up at 3:30am or whatever to take a piss this morning, and the below was rolling round in my mind. I face the interns team once again on Monday (along with a new intern whom I pick up from the airport Sunday), and as everyone will be there I'd like to get it as on-point as possible. Here's a draft of what I'm hoping will be the start of the discussion on the topic.
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I'd like to start off today with a brief discussion of what happened this past Friday. In the interest of full disclosure, I shared my approach with [the manager] and he advised me of how to approach the same situation next time. You can see right here... [shows email exchange on our "big screen"]. So here's how I intend to approach this kind of thing next time it occurs. If there's lateness from anyone, you'll just owe an hour of [house work] on Saturday. I'll collect a list of projects from [the manager] and he'll let me know what projects he'll want folks to work on first, and that's where late folks will start. You can report back to me somehow once your hour is done so we can keep track of the tasks and their progress.

I'm stating things this way because no matter what you may think, I'm not responsible for your alarm clock. And no matter what I think, what -you- think of me is none of my business. I can roll in at five minutes to 8 and make a lot of noise, should this kind of thing be a persistent problem. You already heard what this sounds like last week, and yeah it's loud and likely to wake you up at that point. If that's what you need, I can probably deliver.

*turns to manager* So, [manager], how bad is -any- of this?

[then I'll receive feedback, questions, whatever etc. from the rest of the team]
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We have a small team (including the new person arriving Sunday and myself, there will be five of us), so when even one person is out it diminishes a noticeable chunk of our staffing strength. And I personally believe that as we're all grown-ass adults there's no reason for me to gently rouse them from their slumber as part of my day. I'm not even the person who's been here the longest, and I have a dumb-phone - not a smartphone - that has its own share of problems and quirks. I have yet to be late to any meeting or occasion with this team.

There was one guy who had the audacity to suggest something like his phone alarm does that sometimes and if it looks like lateness to me then it's my problem; his intimation that he has a spotless track record of punctuality is authentically laughable. Another guy is an endemic flake, showing up late for nearly every occasion, writing his own schedule, and so on.

I would not choose these folks for our team, yet here we are. The institute isn't in a position for me to say something like, "Were it up to me I'd fire your fuckin' asses because a loser is a loser." The reptilian part of my brain would love to be able to act on that, honestly. I hesitate to mention that these guys are a constant pain in the ass, as my personal feelings on the matter aren't going to change things and if I'm going to be here for the long term, the better course of action involves me adjusting my own attitude towards my coworkers. So it goes.