Monthly Archives: December 2013

Because it’s better…

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free-signI’ve heard all my life that it’s better to give than to receive. I’m not sure I’m convinced that’s necessarily true, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Starting right now and running through the end of the year, What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2012 in Review is available as a free download from Smashwords.

All you’ve got to do is click the link, used coupon code DB67P at checkout, and download your very own copy in whatever format you like.

Smashwords is compatible with Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and most other ereaders, so go ahead and give them a try. You know you want to catch up on 2012 before 2013 hits the shelves.

Off to the races…

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Unless something incredibly stupid happens between now and the 31st, I’ve worked my last day for 2013… and that feels incredibly good. Maybe I should modify that statement a bit, though. What I really mean is I’ve finished working for wages this year. I’ll still be doing plenty of work – giving the house a good mid-winter scrub, bringing order to the piles of random junk in the basement, a few days of dashing hither and yon across the state, and finally ending up back where I started from a few days of legitimate R&R and maybe, if I’m lucky, a little bit of writing.

My 12-days of vacation aren’t exactly off to a slow start, having closed on a new mortgage for the Condo de Jeff this afternoon and then promptly dragging Maggie to the vet for half-priced Friday evening vaccinations before even getting to my first official day of vacation. It should get better from here on out, though. If nothing else, the timing will matter less.

Sure, I’ll probably still reflexively wake up before dawn, but I’m going to do my level best to turn off the little voice in my head that’s constantly screaming at me to hurry up, do one more thing, and stop wasting time. That will probably last about three days before I make myself crazy trying to “just relax”… and after that I’ll be off to the races.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Moral outrage. When you give a television show to a bunch of self-identified conservative rednecks and then get bent out of shape when they say something conservative, I’m not sure you’ve got a lot of room for moral outrage. I have a hard time believing A&E didn’t know what they were getting when they hired the cast of Duck Dynasty. While I personally disagree with a lot of Phil’s philosophy, I fully support his decision to answer questions directly and honestly based on his beliefs. I guess maybe I’m just troubled by a world where a man’s thoughts and opinions need to be vetted through a staff of crack lawyers before he can say them out loud. I disagree with people almost every single day. Somehow I manage to do it in a civil manner and without getting my little feelings hurt when someone doesn’t subscribe to my belief system hook, line, and sinker. Life’s just more interesting when you’ve got people who challenge your assumptions about what’s good, bad, right, and wrong.

2. The First Amendment. All day I’ve been listening to people argue that A&E is violating the 1st Amendment by sidelining Phil Robertson in response to his quote in GQ Magazine. Here’s the hitch: The 1st Amendment was written to prevent the government from interfering with freedom of speech. That leaves private businesses largely free to hire, fire, suspend, fold, spindle, and mutilate their employees in any number of ways based on what they say and do both on the job and during non-duty hours. As long as the company acts in accordance with the law and any contracts in force, they’re basically able to do as they please. Now whether those decisions are good or bad from a moral or business perspective, I’m in no place to judge. In any case, timing it right sure can generate a hell of a lot of free publicity for cable’s highest rated non-scripted show. So just remember that while Uncle Sam might not jump up and stop you from putting your foot in your mouth, with your freedom of speech comes the consequences of that speech.

3. Being in charge. Being a supervisor was one of the biggest reasons I left my last job. Plenty of people have that skill set. Some of them even like it. I don’t on both counts. I’m ill suited to it if by no other reason than by temperament. Even when the dark cloud of supervision rears its ugly head even for a few short hours, I’m reminded intensely why I’ll spend the rest of my career struggling mightily to avoid it.

Antisocial…

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If nothing else, you can always say that I didn’t give in to peer pressure. Not that the pressure was all that significant after someone kindly pointed out that it was beginning to feel a little like Official pressure to paste on a happy face, lay your money down, and partake in the Organization Non-Denominational Holiday Luncheon and Party.

Hey, no one appreciates a swinging good time more than me, but that’s not what you’re likely to find in a room full of your coworkers. It tends to be an opportunity for awkward conversation and the passing illusion of actual community. As it turns out, sitting at the bar and staring out the window at the water doesn’t actually qualify as “participating” in one of these events. Since that’s what I invariably end up doing at the location where these activities are held, taking a pass felt like the least bad of all possible scenarios.

Back when I was young and ambitious I worked for a guy who was quick to say that colleagues “can be friendly, but they can’t be friends.” Aside from a slim few friends I made at the dawn of my career, I find his thought process was spot on. Keeping as sturdy a firewall as you can between your personal and professional lives feels like a critical action item, because either one bleeding into the other is never going to end well.

Or maybe I’m just antisocial. That’s also a distinct possibility.

The big one…

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$636 million is a seriously big hunk of cheese. I sit out most lottery drawings these days, but I’m just sucker enough to take a swing at this one. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be thrilled to win “just” a few million bucks, I’ve got my targets set on getting the big, “Fuck You” kind of money. If my numbers come up tonight this old boy is just going to disappear quietly in the dead of night like a Mayflower truck full of football equipment. I’ll turn up eventually in some far flung outpost of humanity looking like Panama Jack, but before I do that, I’ll want to spend a significant amount of time getting to know my giant stack of cash.

It’s all a happy fantasy, of course. Statistically, I know there’s probably a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid, struck by lightning, and run over by a bus simultaneously than there is of winning tonight’s “big one.” Still, for a buck? I’m in. If there’s no post tomorrow, at least you’ll know why.

On tap…

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I know a few weeks ago I promised a new fiction project was in the offing. I haven’t forgotten about that. It’s safe to say the preliminary research and reading have taking a touch longer than I anticipated, but it’s still there on the agenda. I’ll try to make a fresh start of it after the inevitable mayhem and chaos that surrounds the last days of December. I’m not even going to even try putting a date on when that little gem might be ready to see the light of day.

Lest you think I’ve spent the last month dithering about to no good purpose, I do have a touch of good news for what’s on tap in the coming weeks. What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2013 in Review is coming along nicely. With plenty of fresh, snarky commentary, I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking, correcting, and generally updating each post to make it the very best level of vaguely hostile I can manage.

Assuming I don’t fall down and hit my head on something hard or develop the same debilitating sickness that laid me low last Christmas, I expect to deliver up WAJTW:2013IR for your New Year’s Day reading pleasure (plus or minus a few days). My best guess is the final cut will weigh in around 23,000 words and with all of the spelling, grammar, and usage corrections I’ve been making, the whole thing should be downright readable… something that doesn’t matter all that much when you’re blogging, but that paying customers seem to put a premium on for some reason.

All that’s left to do is finish editing October and November, finish writing December, write the intro, design the cover, and then upload everything to the interwebs and hope it all looks good together electronically. Sigh. Maybe I should reconsider that first of the year date.

The new Sunday…

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I had planned on today being the first new post on archive-free Sunday. I guess it’s still the first post, but since I woke up with a sore throat, some kind of strange hacking cough, and zero motivation, I’ll go ahead and say you might find this post a little lacking in the usual level of effort that goes into them. In fact, my first preference at the moment is to tell the internet to bugger, find a blanket to wrap myself in, and spend the morning holding down the couch. Still, since blogs don’t write themselves, here I am banging away at the keyboard since that’s what I’ve done every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember.

The truth is, I still don’t know what’s going to fill this early Sunday time slot – a weekly political rant, a review of some product I fell in love with during the week, the overflow material from What Annoys Jeff this Week. I have no idea. Maybe I need to stop looking for a theme and just go back to my roots, writing about whatever happens to pop into my head when I log in. For the time being, the “whatever pops into my head” option seems the most likely way ahead. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it doesn’t close the door on a recurring topic emerging later… and let me tell you, right now quick and easy sounds just about perfect.

Bare minimum…

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The year was 1994, or approximately the end of the last ice age. I was 16 years old, worked 20 hours a week and McDonald’s, and minimum wage was $4.25 an hour. Flash forward to 1998. I was 20, worked about 16 hours a week as a student dispatcher, and made $5.15 an hour. Jump two years into the future. I was 22, worked 40 hours a week as a first year teacher and made $15.38 an hour. Climb into the Way Back Machine for one more ride to 2008. I was 30 years old, with an undergraduate degree and an MBA, working for Uncle Sam, and making a multiple of $15 an hour.

So what’s my point? Nothing much other than giving you a little background and assuring you that when I say working in fast food and making minimum wage sucks, that it’s a situation I know a little something about. It sucks a lot. As someone who cleaned grease traps, unloaded truckloads of frozen foods, and filtered the fryers, I’m uniquely postured to say that with a degree of authority. Although the job sucks, I can’t bring myself to see that it sucks badly enough to justify paying basically the same wage I made as a first year teacher. After all, that job sucks for a whole different list of reasons… and not just that, it requires a 4-year degree, testing, certification, and a relatively clean criminal background check. Yes, dare I say it, teaching is more important work than flipping burgers and the compensation should be commensurate with that.

There is nothing in my experience of working minimum wage jobs that tells me anyone should make $15 an hour based on the work’s level of difficulty. Of course level of difficulty really isn’t the argument. In all the cases I’ve heard, the reason is simply that they should make $15 an hour because they need more money. I hear ya, brothers and sisters. I need more money too. But you see, I never “just” worked my part time minimum wage job and expected it to be enough to get by. I cut grass in the summers and shoveled snow in the winters. I collected aluminum cans and cashed them in for pennies. That was all side work on top being a pretty successful full time student and on top of my part time job. Even now that I’m outside that $15 an hour range, I’m not above picking up cans from the side of the road, or taking on an occasional side job, or writing a damned book about my experiences and selling it online.

Let’s be brutally honest, there aren’t many of us who are working as hard as our grandparents did. I’ve never come out of deep mine after eight hours underground coated in coal dust. My young life wasn’t put on hold to take four years off to go liberate Europe. I’m not up at 4AM to milk the cows. I’ll bet most of the fast food workers who think they need $15 an hour aren’t any of these things either. And for the record, I’m not saying they should be doing those things. All I’m saying is that what I really want to see is what they’re doing to improve their employment options beyond holding up a sign and demanding more money. Not everyone needs to go to college and get a job wearing a tie, but if you’re strolling around waiting for your CEO to pay you more just because you think it’s what you deserve, well, I hope you’re dressed warm because you’re in for a long wait.

Maybe you can’t put a value on a human life, but the market can damned sure put a value on the work we do with the life we’re given. It’s up to each of us to maximize what our labor is worth… and if you personally find it worth $15 an hour, I’d recommend you set your sights a little higher than grill jockey at the local greasy spoon.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Wasted days. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of snow, but like its liquid counterpart in warm weather, I understand it’s just part of the deal that comes with living in an area that has distinctly different seasons. Snow, however, serves one useful purpose that rain almost never manages to achieve: It can bring the office to a grinding halt as everyone stays off the road in fear of their life. Of course that’s only true when the snow flies on a weekday. When it starts falling before the crack of dawn on a Sunday, well, then it pretty much serves no useful purpose whatsoever. In conclusion, snow should be limited to falling between the hours of 1AM Sunday and noon on Friday. At any other time it’s just a nuisance.

2. Uncle Omar. Last week POTUS took quite a lot of heat in stories involving the White House pulling strings for an uncle who was in the country illegally. At first, I’ll admit that I was part of the chorus. Upon reflection, I put myself in the exalted position of the presidency and one of my own uncles in Omar’s place. In a situation where I wielded supreme executive authority, I’d be hard pressed not to lend a hand where blood is involved. I’m not sure any of the critics are dumb enough to think this is the first president who used the weight of his office to help out friends, family, or significant donors. While I’m not saying it’s “right”, I am saying that it’s human nature. For better or worse, kin is kin.

3. Laying awake. Something has my schedule off… and you can well imagine how happy that makes me. There’s something uniquely unpleasant about lying in bed, staring at the darkness and knowing precious minutes of an already abbreviated night’s sleep are ticking away. Then you read a little. Then you watch some TV. Then suddenly it’s half passed one and your alarm’s going off in three hours. Finally, when sweet, sweet blissful sleep comes, three separate alarm clocks scream to life, dragging you back from your slumber and you spend the rest of the day wanting to punch the world in the face. With a shovel.

Clarity…

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I’ve got my faults, no one knows that better or is more critical of them than I am myself. One thing I hope that no one can ever say about me, though, is that I lack clarity of vision. More often than not I manage to cut through the clutter and see the world around me for what it is. That construct becomes my version of the truth. It doesn’t have to be your version of the truth any more than your version has to be mine. The world gets a lot less complicated when you give up trying to convince yourself and everyone around you that you’re all right and everyone else is all wrong. Conveniently, right and wrong generally speak for themselves – but they speak to each of us in different ways.

The trouble comes when we try to deal in absolutes. Maybe there is a universal black and a universal white, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the universe is a bit too complex for that. Don’t bother trying to hide from the complexity. It’s what keeps things interesting, so just go ahead and embrace it.

I’ll never claim to have all the answers. I won’t even delude myself into thinking I have the majority of the answers. What I do have as often as not is a reasonable sightline from Point A to Point B so I don’t get caught flatfooted by too many “I don’t know what to do” moments these days. I’m never 100% confident about a decision – any decision – but since I’m not generally stuck on an absolute right and an absolute wrong, things generally turn out somewhere in the OK range.

If I were in the business of dispensing unsolicited advice, I’d tell you that when in doubt, for God’s sake do something. Any action, even the wrong one is probably better than standing around with your thumb up your ass not doing anything at all. At least if you do screw the pooch, you’ll know what not to do in the future. And that was my moment of clarity for the day.