Manager refuses to order more M.U.G. awards (recognition pins for partners to give other partners, stands for “Moves of Uncommon Greatness”) after I asked her about it several times. Says, “I read in the Partner Resource Manual—it’s for UNCOMMON stuff, like, if you sold a hundred dollars in coffee [beans] in a day or got our store to win the holiday gingerbread loaf contest.” (Justifying why she wasn’t going to order any to have on hand.)

What do I do? At home, on my day off: get the ladder, climb into the attic, search through boxes of pre-college memorabilia, finally give up temporarily, scour the unlikely places in my room, and finally come upon my old hat with all its M.U.G. awards tightly pinned in place, shoved at the back of my winter-clothes drawer…

Remove pins from old hat, add to new hat, take pictures on webcam…

And then wonder, do I really dare walk in to work with all my old pins? I could even give them away to the partners I’ve been wanting to thank, appreciate, or otherwise encourage for so long. I’d love to share—but I don’t think such honesty would go down well with the higher-up.

There was a time when partners gave each other M.U.G. awards freely (but didn’t, actually, abuse the system) and everyone appreciated the teamwork of running a business successfully.  

I love that feeling.  It fosters high efficiency and staff contentedness, which is essential to success in the long run. We used to give each other these when we did something particularly thoughtful or selfless for the store.  For example, I got one because I came in on my day off, even though I was working on homework, to help close the store for a few hours, because someone had no-call-no-showed and it ended up being really busy.  

It was much more casual than how my manager describes it now.  Maybe things have changed in the policy, but I doubt it.  Honestly, I’m starting to imagine there’s another reason why she won’t order them.  And my imagination is pretty mean when I’m dissatisfied. Sigh. Negative thinking never helps. 

How passive-aggressive am I willing to be, exactly? I’m going to think about it. I don’t really like conflict. But it kills me to have to think up a good idea and then subsequently abandon it in the dark to die a slow and painful death.