It pays to be nice.

I have been asking my boss for months, literally, for additional memory for my computer at work. It is a laptop and the standard laptop configuration, when I received this computer back in August of 2002, contained only 256 MB of memory. They told me I could not upgrade the memory. If I wanted more memory I would need to get a desktop computer instead of a laptop. Now I did not want to give up the flexibility of my laptop so I stuck with the 256MB-o-memory.

Since that time PC applications are getting larger and larger and more and more of my everyday work flow has moved from server based UNIX applications to PC based application. Add those programs to the Microsoft suite of atrocities... er... applications (Internet Explorer and MS Exchange are the worst memory hogs) and I have to constantly shut down one application order to bring up another.

At work it is, for the most part manageable. I have learned what combination of applications etc that would fit in memory without bringing the computer to its knees.

At home it is a different story. When accessing work from home I have special security software that I have to run, and a PC based telephone application that I need to run to be able to communicate with not only nortel folks but the customers, which can be almost anywhere in the world. I use the PC phone application so I don't incur long distance charges, ultimately saving Nortel $$. Anyway. I cannot run those applications on top of the other every day applications. I am on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and except for out of town vacations I am on call 52 weeks of the year. I get paged all hours of the day and night and often work from home. Most of the time the issues are critical to our customers.... It is difficult to operate in rush mode and be dealing with "Memory Critically Low" messages popping up.

Like I said, I have been asking my manager for months to allow me to add memory to my computer. He is, rightfully so, reluctant spend extra bucks in these hard times, but honestly I think it is more that he just did not want to go to his boss and ask for the money. Today, our directorship group had a potluck lunch. Who sits down across the table from me but my director (my boss's boss). I could not resist. I asked HIM if I could order some more memory, without so much as a blink He said "Sure, if you need it to do your job the order it.

I get back to my desk and compose an e-mail to our Administrator with the part number etc. so she could order the memory from Dell. Not 10 minutes after I hit "send" did an IS technician walks up to my cube with a stick of memory. Pretty impressive huh?

Well, it was not because I talked to my director. What happened was, Monday, I had some issues with my computer. So when the IS tech was fixing it I mentioned my need and asked that if he happened to see a laptop being sent back to Dell due to layoff or refresh that had an extra memory stick in it to keep me in mind.

Low and behold, I now have 512 MB of memory. Still barely enough but a heck of a lot better than I had!

It pays to be nice to folks around you. Be it the guy who cleans the bathrooms who knows me from my daily exchange of chit-chat who found my cell phone in one of the stalls and made a special effort to find me and return it. Or be it the IT guy who took 5 hours to return my call but fixed my computer efficiently once he did contact me and now brought me a stick of memory.

Now I just have to call my Director, after basically going over my bosses' head and tell him thank you but no thanks....