Office Party and a Challenge

Tomorrow is the annual office fall cook-out/party and I’ve been slaving away in the kitchen since around six this evening and am just now done. I made enough lap kai (one of my favourite Thai recipes: savory minced chicken salad) for about twenty and since the consensus of my staff was for me to make it as authentic as possible, it’s rather hot and spicy. But it’s still not quite as authentic as it could be since I ran out of fish sauce! (I am ashamed. What self respecting cook runs out of fish sauce??) Nonetheless, the dish seems to have turned out exceptionally well. I may scout out a local grocery store for fish sauce tomorrow morning and tweak the dish ever so slightly, but it’s not absolutely essential that I do.

Tomorrow’s big challenge at the office will be a second attempt at retaining a top lab employee hired by another agency. Over the last week I put together a justification packet as to why we need to retain this person and the proposal was soundly defeated by human resources today on salary issues. The penny-pinching analysts at HR are being just that: penny-pinchers. No real case beyond what I feel to be a secondary issue. I know my budget; I know what I have to work with. This the my first defeat at work, the first time I’ve been overruled and I don’t like the feeling at all. So tomorrow I will pull out all the stops, make a last ditch attempt at employee retention.

While it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t succeed, it does deal a terrible blow to my long-term organizational vision as the employee I’ve groomed to be my “second,” my backup when away (remember, I don’t have an official assistant) goes elsewhere. Besides, they’re the most talented of all my staff and talent is so hard to come by. But this just seems to be the natural progression of things: you hire talent and they move up and on. The employees who are little more than chair warmers…well, they’re not going anywhere.