The Weight is Lifting

I'm trying not to feel guilty. The Principle Broker, the "main man", of our real estate office is being cut back to working half the time that he is right now, which also means he'll now get half the pay, and this is because I finally got tired of him and his work habits and went to a member on the board of directors and spilled.

Now, this man, B, is a wonderful man; he has the most explosive (in a good way) energy of anyone I've ever met. And he's straight forward, in a loving way. He gets you to open up about dark areas of your life (in a good way) and helps you to come to the light about them. He once told me, after I explained a situation I was having with Neil, that I was being an asshole and that I needed to apologize to Neil, and myself, for being such. Now, I love that. I was being an asshole and he called me on it. I feel blessed to have that in my work environment.

What started getting to me, though, was that B wasn't getting to files in a timely manner, which makes me backed up. He was asking me to do legal research. He's asking me to pull statistics together for him for our company. He asks me to try to recruit new agents. He would take files out of the office and I'd have to track him down and go get files from him that needed attention (and, of course, in this business, real estate is often treated as life or death...even though most agents will joke that it's not like they're performing brain surgery) and the list goes on. I don't mind doing the things that he asked me (well, most of the time), but what I started to notice was that he was hardly in the office...he would miss time scheduled for him to review files and he would flake on meetings with me that he requested we have.

Then, I found out that all the things that he's been asking me to do are actually in his job description, not mine, and he kept pawning them off on me (on top of a whole other list of things that I do). But the real kicker for me was that he's getting paid a good salary to do his work but he's not doing it...and to top that off, the board didn't' want to hire a Managing Broker (which would take over a lot of his responsibilities) because they feared that they couldn't afford one and that they wouldn't have enough to do. So, when I heard that (and after he pawned a bunch of work off on me so he could go to his nephew-in-law's birthday party), I finally scheduled a meeting with the board member. And she was close to shocked. She knew that he was flailing but she didn't realize that E, the marketing coordinator, and I were doing a lot of his work, nor did she stop to think of how we are affected by his work habits.

The next day, she took action. She met with the board (B was out of town) and they discussed it. Just like I thought, no one knew what was going on. I was pulled aside by two other board members that day who questioned me about it. Then, two of the board members met with the company's accountant and they have a plan to present to B tomorrow that will, as I said before, cut his work load and pay by half.

So, normally, I would be feeling really guilty. I don't want B to think that we amassed an army behind his back to overthrow him. But, B's actually been wanting to cut back and doesn't mind getting a pay cut (according to the board member that I met with). So, that's why I'm trying not to feel guilty. I am, though, puzzled as to why, if that's so, has it taken so long to take action, which in turn, has made work for E and I quite hectic and overwhelming at times. The latter aspect is in the past, though, and I'm just glad that shifts are happening for the greater good of the company.

The weight is lifting.

Love,
Aislinn