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Who's Got the Monkey

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Submitted By fafigirl
Words 1040
Pages 5
Summary of Article
The main concept of this article is to bring awareness to people (no matter if bosses or subordinates) about managing time. Also, I feel as if the article touches on realizing your own responsibilities and not relying on your boss to do all of the work for you. The article is aimed at those certain types of bosses who respond to their subordinates by saying things like “Leave me a memo on that. I’ll get back to you. Don’t you worry about that.” With these responses, the article explains that subordinates are handing off their own problems to the backs of their supervisors. This is a vicious never ending cycle for the manager because he then finds himself over working and trying to catch up on the weekends while the subordinates are waiting on the boss’ response while enjoying their own weekend. This is kind of ironic because you find yourself questioning who’s actually working for whom. The article refers to these jobs or tasks as “monkeys”. The author uses the metaphor on how a monkey jumps from one back to another symbolizing the task (or monkey) jumping from the subordinate’s responsibility on to the boss’. One thing I learned from the article is how to manage time in general and never hand my problems to somebody else. I also learned how to avoid dealing with other peoples tasks and making sure I am not providing these types of answers which welcome the monkeys open armed.

Three of My Monkeys
Three monkeys which I currently have are school, work and bills. The way I deal with school is by making sure I attend everyday and staying on top of the workload. With 7 classes this semester it is easy to fall behind but it is my responsibility and nobody else’s to attend and do all of my homework. At work, it is similar in the sense that I have to attend whenever I am scheduled and make sure I am on time. I have many tasks at work and often, me and

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