She shrugged. “I think we could tie the case managers into the employment work since they help with that. It’s worth a shot. The worst case scenario is they say no. But if they were to approve it, you could just supervise the case management supervisor and cut down some of your work.”
“Yeah, I like that idea. Thanks.”
My phone beeped again. “Gotta go. I’ll message you later.”
Chris was still sitting at the table when I hurried away and headed for the bus stop.
For some reason our meeting was on my mind for the rest of the day. After some consideration of my calendar, I messaged my teams that I was going to cancel one of their two check-ins for the upcoming two weeks while I was working on the grant.
After clearing up some time on my calendar that way and moving a couple of non-essential meetings, I scheduled a work at home day the next week to finalize the writing. I rarely worked at home, but every once in a while when I really needed to focus and be free from interruptions I left one of the team leads in charge and worked remotely.
Then I pinged Chris on Teams, our internal messaging system.
Julia:I’ve got blocks of time to work together program design on this Thursday morning and all day Friday. Does that work for you?
Chris:Yes, Thursday morning works, and Friday afternoon. Do you have a place to meet at the Shelter?
Julia:God no, it’s impossible to do anything here with the constant interruptions from staff and clients. I can come to your building, or we can meet at the main office if we can get a room.
Chris:Let’s go to the main office, our conference room is small and always smells like cleaning supplies.
Julia:Why?
Chris:It’s right next to the space where they do the janitorial training classes.
Julia:Problem. I just checked the room calendar at HQ. It looks like there’s a room available on Thursday but there’s a boardmeeting on Friday and all the rooms are blocked off.
Chris:Okay well let’s meet on Thursday and figure out where we can work on Friday. There has to be somewhere that’ll work.
Julia:Sounds good. In the meantime I’ll send you anything I get pulled together in the next two days.
Chris:Great, I’ll do the same.
Chris
Working with Julia was interesting. In some ways, we were totally in sync, but in others… well, let’s just say we were arguing as much as we were agreeing. Well, maybe argue was a little strong. Debating was more like it. And I had to admit, I was enjoying my debates with Julia. More than I would have expected.
“Where are we going to meet tomorrow afternoon?” I asked as we finished up our planning meeting just before noon on Thursday.
“I feel like we need to be somewhere away from any of our offices,” she said.
We’d been interrupted in this conference room at least three times by people wanting to say hello or asking us a question, andmost people who walked by looked in through the window and waved at one of us. Our coworkers were a friendly group, but it made it hard to concentrate.
“I would suggest a coffee shop or something, but we need to be able to write stuff on the wall,” I replied.
Julia gave me a considering look. “How would you feel about working at my house tomorrow?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a room in the basement that’s got chalkboard paint on the wall,” she continued. “We could use that. There’s crappy cell phone coverage down there since the cement walls are so thick, so we’ll have total privacy.”
I felt a flash of surprise, followed by fear, followed by excitement, though I couldn’t say why.
“You have a chalkboard wall in your house?” I parroted.
“Yeah. My grandma left me her house when she died and basically the basement is still the playroom she set up for me when I was a kid. I’ve been too sentimental to do much with it.”
That was kind of sweet.
