Hello again, it's Friday and I hope you've been having a good week. Things going well in your workplace? If yes, good for you, glad to hear it. At mine, not so much, unfortunately.

Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face."

I work in construction, for a large dry-walling company, and for the past week our job site has not been a happy place. We've had a small horde of boarders descend upon us from various other sites, young lads, pretty cocky and full of themselves and along with their tool belts, power drills and overinflated opinions about their relative skills they've brought a whole lot of attitude and personality differences.

Take off that gloomy mask of tragedy; it's not your style, You'll look so good that you'll be glad you decided to smile."

Anyway, these boys have been bickering all over the job site. Up on the scaffolding boarding the ceiling, down on the first floor working on the corridor, in the stairwells, in the hallways there's been yelling and whining and pouting and stomping; big grown men throwing hissy fits from one end of the building to another and running to our supervisor practically in tears demanding he 'deal' with so and so 'and I can't work with this guy, and 'he can't work with that guy' and yadda yadda, boo hoo hoo! Needless to say all this hysteria has been liberally and constantly punctuated by enough profanity to make a biker blush.

It's been extremely entertaining.

Pick out a pleasant outlook, stick out that noble chin."

Now mind you, I've been fortunate in that none of this unpleasantness has directly impacted me. I'm not a boarder, so I don't have to work with any of these guys; for the most part I've been tucked away in little corners fire-taping. Happily isolated on the periphery of the chaos I've been able to work away more or less serenely, tuning out the sound and fury and occasionally getting a chuckle from some of the more inventive invective. No doubt about it, these boys can cuss!

Wipe off that full-of-doubt look, slap on a happy grin."

Yeah, I might not have had to deal with it, but as the week has progressed, the effect it's been having on our supervisor has been hard to ignore. He's a really good guy, a true rarity, a boss who cares about what he's doing and the people working for him. I like him; he looks after us and makes our site a really good place to work. When it's not being messed up by a gaggle of kvetching drama dudes. He really gives a crap, and these guys have been giving him nothing but grief for the entire week. Five solid days of non-stop nonsense had him close to tearing out his hair come quitting time today.

And spread sunshine all over the place, just put on a happy face."

He doesn't deserve this, and the squabbling isn't doing the boys much good either. Not to mention how all of this must be being perceived by the other trades, yeah, we're looking pretty professional these day…not!

On the drive home today I was contemplating the situation and my poor, harried boss and it suddenly occurred to me; I was being presented an opportunity to take some of my own advice. Here was a situation being handed to me on the proverbial silver platter to do more than just talk about making a difference.

I had a choice here, I could keep on skating around the scenario and ignoring things, after all, it wasn't really affecting me directly was it or...

I could do something to help.

And if you're feeling cross and bickerish don't sit and whine, Think of banana splits and liquorice and you'll feel fine."

Now, this is not as unlikely an option as you might think. It's a pretty small site, and a small crew, we're talking less than a half a dozen guys here, and I have a wee trump card I can pull out and play. A teeny, tiny slight advantage that might work in my favour towards getting these lads to pay attention to me and possibly listen to a small, sweet voice of reason.

Heh.

You see, I am a female. I realize you may have figured this out already, the picture on the top of my page being a major clue, but yes, I am. Now, ordinarily that doesn't carry a lot of significance but in the case of my current place of employment, it's a double whammy in my favour. Not only am I the only female on our crew, I'm the only female on the entire job site. Which, as you might imagine, gives me a certain 'cachet' about the place.

The guys on the site, and not just our crew, are very nice to me. I comport myself professionally and don't try and trade on my gender, I pull my weight, and they respect me. Nevertheless, I am still aware they are aware I'm a girl.

I knew a girl so gloomy, she'd never laugh or sing."

I'm thinking this could work for me if I try to take a more 'active' and yet still subtle role in the positive motivation department, giving a go at possibly persuading the guys they should try playing nicer with each other. Very low-key of course, but using humour (they're quite used to me being funny and saying outrageous, but amusing things), positive reinforcement and the fact they are guys and they don't like looking foolish in front of females, maybe I can get them to see they're behaving like butt heads and well, stop it already!

Hey, it's worth a shot!

She wouldn't listen to me, now she's a mean old thing."

So, this weekend I'm going to spend some substantial time visualizing our site as a happy, harmonious place with all the guys working together amicably and actually working, I'm gonna bake some cookies and Monday morning I'm going to take them in, pass them around and 'Operation Sunshine' will commence.

Wish me luck! I'll keep you posted!

So spread sunshine all over the place, and put on a happy face!"

Phoenix