Influence.

I've often mentioned my inability to talk to new people, but that I'm unstoppable if I am comfortable.

Case in point: a few months ago, in a departmental meeting, I challenged some company/HR policy with our CEO. Without going into detail, I suggested that if he wanted the mentality of the company to change as he claimed, he needed to kickstart it and I suggested a few things that I thought might help.

Roll on to today, and an email came out from HR that announced that one of my ideas was being implemented. I wasn't named, of course, but everyone who was at the meeting with the CEO sent messages, semi-jokingly congratulating me.

I'm not going to claim that it was a life changing idea. It wasn't and neither is it a big change, but it will be seen that way by the employees. However, without my intervention and subsequent badgering of my management hierarchy to follow up with the CEO, I firmly believe that the policy change would not have happened.

When I suggest that to my managers, they look blankly back at me.

Idiots.

This is about the fourth time that I've done something like that that has had a company-wide impact with no reward from anyone. It's about time I blew my own trumpet.

A knock on effect from this is that it becomes easier (in my head anyway) to walk to and/or from work. If the gym thing doesn't pan out with CC, my place of work is around 2.5 miles away or roughly an hour's walk.