Author Archives: jdtharp

The bad touch…

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In the last 40 hours of work, slightly more than four of those hours have been dedicated to reeducating us on constitutes appropriate versus inappropriate comments, innuendo, and/or touching. That’s more than one tenth of the last work week focused on this stuff. In my years working for this Big Government Agency, I haven’t yet run across anyone who actually thinks sexual harassment is a good idea, so I’m forced to wonder if this latest round of training is maybe a little off the mark. I mean did anyone wake up this morning thinking that they were going to come to the office and start talking about the rack size of dime piece piece sitting next to them? Even if they’re thinking it, most people have a sufficient instinct for self preservation to know that they shouldn’t say it out loud… or at least within earshot.

Look, I’m not naïve enough to think that it doesn’t happen, but I don’t think the key to solving the problem lies in more training. The response to every leadership issue for the last decade has been “obviously that happened because we’re not doing enough training.” But seriously, how much training do we need to make the point that rape, pillage, and plunder are not acceptable workplace activities? The thing is, plenty of people get the training and just don’t care. Telling people that X, Y, and Z are bad doesn’t change the way they feel even if it manages to change the way they act when they think people are watching.

From my ant’s eye view of the bureaucracy, a spike in harassment complaints isn’t a failure of training. It’s a failure of management and dare I say leadership. When management doesn’t respond to a validated complaint with swift and furious action, it establishes a climate of permissiveness and that climate says far more about how the organization feels about “inappropriate” actions than a ream of policy memos and endless hours of training. If leadership were serious about it being an issue, heads would roll every time they find out something happened, but it’s obvious to even a working schmo like me that if they keep doing what they’re doing, they’ll keep getting what they got.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Me and my big mouth…

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You know, not more than three days ago I was talking to someone about the rediculously long-lasting sickness that everyone seems to be passing around this winter. I distinctly remember the conversation because I mentioned it took me a full month before the scratchy throat finally went away. Sadly, my proclamation of health may have been a bit premature as I started hacking and wheezing all over again at approximately 7:00 this morning. I know the time because that corresponds almost exactly on the time I pull into the parking lot at the office. Not that I’m alleging that it’s a case of post hoc ergo proptor hoc. Work tends to make me sick to my stomach, not so much the ear, nose, and throat region, but I digress. Still, somehow I feel that a month of feeling less than optimal followed by less than a week of feeling “normal” and then going right back into the old hack-and-wheeze doesn’t sound particularly fair. Perhaps if I just redefine having a nagging cough and mild sinus drainage as the new “normal,” all will be well. Bugger me.

Proper punctuation prevents poor performance…

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Some things we do are important and can have a real impact on real people scattered around the world. Those are the kinds of things you don’t mind spending hours working to perfect. Ensuring that there are the correct number of spaces following the various kinds of punctuation doesn’t generally fall into that category. Sure, formatting and general “prettiness” of a document are important insofar as you want it to be put together enough that people take your product seriously, but somehow I don’t think it’s important enough that we need to spend 20 or 30 man-hours making sure that everything in a 75 page document that no one outside these four walls will ever lay eyes on is “just so.” Then again, I have been wrong, or perhaps only misguided, before.

Look, I’m all for providing the best product possible, but I’m also a believer in the law of diminishing returns. There comes a point where it just isn’t cost effective to keep tweaking something around the margins. We all have personal pet peeves and certain ways we like to do things, but we’ve now officially letting perfection stand in the way of good enough to its illogical extreme. But hey, I’m not the guy signing the checks or deciding who works on what and for how long, so as long as the direct deposit doesn’t start bouncing, I’ll sit here plugging away at whatever someone tells me is the day’s priority. Today, like yesterday, it seems that that priority is word spacing and paragraph alignment. Don’t ask me why that is, but I’ll keep plugging away at it until someone tells me to shuffle on to something else.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Turned to mush…

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Hard as I’ve been trying to write today, I think it’s time to confess that my brain turned to mush before I even managed to leave the house this morning. Sure, it was firing well enough to do some editing and crank out a couple of emails, but it just wasn’t in a place today to do any heavy lifting. If you spend enough time writing, you’re going to have days like that now and then. It’s always good when they show up on days that don’t require that much editorial horsepower, though, since needing to write and not being able to squeeze anything out ranks right up there with any other kind of constipation on the ol’ Annoy-O-Meter. Since the week looks like it’s going to be more about exerting editorial influence than actually creating anything new or interesting, it might just be a good idea that it’s getting a period of pronounced mush out of the way now instead of showing up later when I really have something to say.

As a reader, I’m sure these occasional bouts of brain cramping are even less interesting for your as they are for me, but since there’s no real solution other than slogging through them, I’ll just keep plugging away until I hit on something that resonates. In the meantime, I think the best course of action is to find some mindless drivel on television and let the gray matter get some rest.

Ah, Saturday…

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I look forward to your coming all week, Saturday and yet somehow when you get here you’re never as awesome as I expected you to be. You always seem to turn into me sitting here paying bills, cleaning the bathroom, and going to the dump. That isn’t the glorious day off I had in mind when I yearned for you back on Wednesday. I could spend another half hour spelling out all the ways you’ve disappointed me this morning, but I need to go get a few more things done so I can at least salvage the afternoon.

Don’t go there…

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There are few things that generate a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as fast as when a coworker randomly decides to pick my phone up off the desk and start poking around. Sure, there’s nothing technically illegal on there, but you’re just going to have to believe me when I say that there are images, files, bookmarks, and texts that would probably make their overly-sensitive eyes bug out of their heads. I’m not particularly easy to embarrass, but there are most assuredly some conversations that I don’t particularly want to have with my colleagues. That’s more to save them from mortification than anything else.

Unfortunately, some people just aren’t as good at picking up on subtlety as they are at picking things up off your desk… Which means you have to look them directly in the eye and tell them to be careful because they are going to end up seeing way more than they bargained for. It’s always fun to see the light slowly flicker on as it dawns on them what you’re talking about. It’s like suddenly your phone heated up to 300 degrees and they can’t get rid of it fast enough. For a minute, I actually thought the nosy coworker in question was actually going to drop it on the spot.

It would probably cost me a new phone at least, but maybe I’ll just let the next one get a good look at the ol’ photo archive. It might just be worth the replacement price and the week long trip to sensitivity training it would be sure to cause.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The Maryland Transportation Authority. Dear Asshats, if you’re going to chance what lane collects which kind of toll it might be a good idea to go ahead and let people know that in advance instead of surprising everyone with the new and improved layout during afternoon rush hour. That would have saved you from receiving many of spontaneous hand gestures and it would have saved us from sitting on the bridge banging our heads against the steering wheel while everyone at the front of the line tried wrapping their tiny little minds around what was happening.

2. Retirement. If I had to figure out the most talked about issue I’ve heard discussed since joining the workforce it would be retirement without question. It’s possible that it’s a national obsession. I’m looking forward to that happy day when I can tell The Man to shove it just like everyone else, but I don’t have an overwhelming need to talk about it at every opportunity. Maybe it’s because even after eight years I’m still usually the youngest guy in most rooms, but I don’t get the obsession these old codgers have with agonizing over every detail of the how’s and what’s. Check back with me in about 27 years and 332 days and maybe I’ll be singing a different tune, but for now, I think just quietly disappearing one day may be the best approach.

3. Donald Trump. Does this really require an explanation?

4. Thursday. For no other reason than it’s so close to the weekend yet still not Friday. It use to be passable back when Thursday was thirsty, but now that it’s just laundry night most of its allure has worn off. Now it’s just a second helping of Wednesday and there’s nothing cool about that at all.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Maryland…

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One of the last discussions about taxes I remember hearing in Tennessee was the need for an amendment to the state constitution that would permanently bar the government from levying a state income tax. Lord knows the state, county, and city still got their cut of your income through use fees, car registration fees, sales taxes, and property taxes so it wasn’t exactly like Tennessee was some kind of bizarre tax-free never-never land. Now that I’m back in my beloved Maryland and starting to pay attention to things again, I’ve seen a governor that has already increased tolls across the state and now wants to increase the state income tax and gas tax as well as increasing just about any fee he can think of.

Now I had my share of issues with Tennessee, but the tax thing is one that they were addressing pretty well. If I would have rented an apartment instead of becoming a property owner, by tax footprint there would have been almost negligible. Here in Maryland I’m already seeing a ridiculous percentage of my pay getting sucked up my direct taxes and by a laundry list of special fees and excise taxes… and that’s before I get around to buying a house and paying yet more taxes. Still, the governor says he needs more, but hey, he was able to slow the rate of spending growth to only 2% this year so we should all be congratulating him. That’s not a 2% decrease in spending, people… It’s “only” growing spending at 2%. If my income were growing at the same 2%, I’d be happy to kick in a little extra every month, but since it’s been frozen for two years it’s hard to be very sympathetic.

Maybe the General Assembly will stave off some of the more wild-eyed increases, but I suspect that most of the governor’s agenda will pass in some form or another. It may not be a mortal lock, but it’s a safe bet that come July 1st, we’re all going to have more bills to pay. Thank Governor O’Malley, kids.

Viva la Capitalism!

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I’ve really been sitting here metaphorically bashing my head against the desk trying to figure out what was worth writing about tonight. The solution, as usual, was right in front of me. Usually, I don’t pay that much attention to the internet. It’s basically transparent to the user… I mean I don’t sit down at the keyboard and say I’m going to use the internet to access WordPress or my bank. I just point in the direction of what I want to do, and it gets me there. The wonder if the internet really isn’t what got me thinking tonight, though. It’s the sites like eBay and Amazon, Etsy and Cafepress that let any schmo create an account, log in, and start selling products to a whole world of consumers that they wouldn’t have access to from the kind of businesses that people started from home five or ten years ago. Maybe I’m coming late to this party, but damnit, that’s a big deal. It’s huge! Someone with an idea that’s good enough can sit in the comfort of their on home and make money from nothing more than their ideas and a willingness to put in the time to identify and reach an audience.

Your chances of becoming an internet millionaire are probably about the same as hitting tonight’s MegaMillions jackpot, but still, in this case it seems to be a function of the harder you work, they luckier you get. The beauty of this new wave of micro-capitalism is that it takes so much of the hugh startup costs out of the equation and lets people focus on delivering a quality product while someone with the technical expertise deals with the “back office” stuff. With a few good ideas and a high speed internet connection, we can all be in business. Talk about a radical departure from all of human history.

Viva la Capitalism!

Feeling guilty…

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Occasionally, when the veneer of my being a civilized member of society is especially thin, I find myself sitting in traffic thinking “the only reason that justifies this foolishness is someone being mangled up there.” It’s usually followed by a quiet prayer that they broke something so the holdup isn’t just them being a particularly bad driver. Ninety-nine percent of the time, traffic is just jacked up because everyone wants to slow down and look at the guy changing his tire on the side of the road or because someone was texting and missed the guy in front of them laying on the breaks. The other 1% of the time, some schlep seriously misjudges the speed of oncoming traffic and ends up getting thrown 60 yards across a divided highway and plugging himself head first into a tree. I’d guess I missed that excitement by less than a minute. For a while tonight, I felt bad about wishing ill on the poor driver. Then I read a news report that he was a suspect in a robbery a few minutes earlier at a nearby store. I should probably still feel bad about another person’s suffering, buy all I can really think of at the moment is that sometimes karma doesn’t waste any time in getting even. Suddenly I find myself feeling less guilty.