Author Archives: jdtharp

There’s a difference between being friends and being friendly…

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I like the people I work with well enough. By that I mean I don’t generally want to fold, spindle, or mutilate them by the end of the day. After some of the colleagues I’ve had in the past, I consider that a win. We spend eight hours a day with each other and for the most part manage to stay remarkably friendly with one another. That’s where the problem seems to start.

I’m perfectly willing to be friendly with everyone in the office, but I’m not particular interested in being their friend. I don’t want to come over to their homes for dinner. I don’t particularly want to hang out with them in any setting that’s something other than the office. They’re nice enough people mostly, but I’ve got my own friends already thanks. Adding them to the mix seems to blur the line a little too much between business and personal lives and I’m not cool with that at all. Maybe I’m the deviant in the group, but I’m just not interested in hanging out with my boss or the guy I spend 40-hours a week sitting next to. I see enough of them already.

I completely understand that the manager’s handbook says we have to do team building activities, but since it’s building the work team, how about we do it on work time, huh? Picking a random Wednesday and buying pizza for everyone would have been way better for my morale than royally jacking up one of the two days a week I actually get away from the office. Since I don’t detect any malicious intent here, I’m writing this one off as a strong concept hobbled by poor execution… but let’s try not to make the same mistake again.

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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Yeah, I know it’s a day early this week, but after not griping and complaining last week, I was feeling a little edgy. As always, in no particular order, here’s what annoys Jeff this week:

Christmas Carols. There, I said it. I don’t like them. I’ll grudgingly accept them in the week or two before Christmas, but at any time before that, they make me want to punt kittens. Singing them in October? Well, those people are just a special kind of crazy.

Salad. Since January, I’ve been eating salad almost exclusively for lunch, and you know what? I hate salad. There aren’t enough dressings, croutons, cheese, or varieties of chopped meat available to make them appetizing anymore. Sure, real food will probably end up putting me on the fast track to an early death, but that sounds infinitely better than the slow lingering death I’m suffering from boredom and general lack of tastiness.

The five day work week. Who’s the unmitigated jackass that decided 5:2 was a good work to non-work ratio? Don’t take that the wrong way, because I’m still deliriously happy to be bringing home a paycheck and to be doing it in Maryland, but all things considered there are plenty of other things I’d like to spend some time doing.

Proselytizers. I get it, you found Jesus, or Vishnu, or Buddha, or, Zoroaster and you’re really excited about that. Good on you. As a rule, other random people aren’t nearly as interested as you think they are in your discovery. Believe me when I say I have my own notions about what’s what in the hereafter and let’s leave it at that, shall we? That would be fantastic.

Shot in the arm…

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I’m starting to remember why I always think twice about getting the flu shot. Last year’s shot was perfect; a little soreness in the arm, but no troubles. The year before that, I was sick as a dog for three days afterwards. Today I’m not quite feeling like I got hit by a freight train, but I’m a damned far cry from feeling good. I think I spent more time in the can this morning than I did at my desk. I’m sure you all wanted to know that, right? Since I’ve gotten home, I’ve only been off the couch long enough to let the dogs out and make the still obligatory trips to the bathroom.

If nothing else, today solidified my love of ebooks. Leave a reader upstairs in the can, have the iPad on the couch, and an app on your phone when you’re forced outside with the dogs and everything is perfectly synced to where you left off on any of the other devices. It’s not exactly magic, but it beats the hell out of settling in somewhere and finding that the book you’re about to finish is somewhere across the house.

Justice…

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For the most part, I’m a fan of the rule of law. In a civilized world, the dispassionate delivery of justice is just the normal way of things. Libya, for the time being, is most decidedly not part of the civilized world. Being in the midst of a revolution tends to preclude a country from practicing some of the niceties. That’s why I’m a little confused by the talking heads and news readers who seem to think the Libyan revolutionaries should have paused during a running firefight to swear out an arrest warrant for their recently deposed head of state.

Frankly, I’m more than a little surprised he wasn’t more badly mauled than he was. The guy had been torturing his own people for more than four decades. Does anyone really expect them to sit tight and wait for the gendarmerie to take their former dictator into custody? We’re not talking about your run of the mill serial killer here. After you’ve spent a lifetime blowing airliners out of the sky, harboring terrorists, and committing a laundry list of war crimes, I think this is a fine example of someone to whom the usual rules need not apply.

Personally, I haven’t lost any sleep because he will never see the inside of The Hague. Trying a lunatic like Gaddafi for “crimes” makes the atrocities he committed seem entirely too trivial. Being gunned down in the dirt and then left to rot in an underpowered deep freeze seems like an altogether more fitting end for a sadistic madman. The only shame is that they can’t find a way to revive him and do it again. Sic semper tyrannis.

Love what you do…

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I usually let these archive posts stand alone without any additional comment or correction. After reading through this one, well, I knew I had to lead it off with a little commentary. This post was written back in October 2011, when I was still fresh in the new gig… Almost six years later I’ve been through four changes of first line supervisor, four changes of senior supervisor, four changes of command, and watched a metric shitload of water pass under the bridge. You can tell it was written when I was fresh and excited because I mention putting on a tie. I wouldn’t write this post the same way today. And I definitely wouldn’t call it “a little slice of heaven” even in comparison to what came before. The more things change, maybe they really do stay the same.

The original post from October 24th, 2011 follows:

They say that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. It occurs to me that people who say this are probably either a) moron, b) easily amused, or more likely c) easily amused morons. Setting that aside for a moment, it seems the career I’m most interested in would be professional PowerBall winner. Suddenly finding myself heir to a hotel fortune would be ok too, I guess. Having the freedom to work at what you’re really interested in rather than what pays the bills has to be an interesting experience, but even then I’m pretty sure I’d think of it as “work.”

That’s not to take anything away from what I’m doing now. Really. I mean it. I’ve got a perfectly good job and bring home a perfectly good living. Compared to what I was doing a year ago, this places is practically a little slice of heaven. Even so, I’m never going to mistake it for doing something I love. At best, I’m doing something at which I have some degree of comparative advantage and that I don’t find mind-numbingly dull. I don’t have a boss who makes me crazy and I don’t, with a couple of noted exceptions, mind my colleagues. Given the current state of the economy, I’m doing every bit as well as anyone could reasonably expect. In my own warped way, I’m grateful for that.

Still, I don’t love it. Throwing on a tie and coming to the office isn’t something I do in the morning with unbridled glee. I suppose it’s possible that some people do, but I haven’t bumped into them in the parking lot. Maybe they all come in before I do. Regardless, I think the whole idea of loving your job is overblown. Sure, I like it well enough, but if I suddenly hit a $100 million jackpot, I don’t like it well enough to keep showing up when I don’t need it to pay the bills. Frankly I can’t think of anything I love doing enough that I wouldn’t think of it as work if I had to do it for eight hours every day. Even sitting on the beach drinking umbrella drinks would get old after a while… and besides, there’s not much of a market for that kind of employee.

My advice to the next generation isn’t to waste time looking for a job you love. Instead, find a good paying job you can tolerate for a while, make what you can, and then move on to the next thing. If you’re looking for deep personal fulfillment in the eight hours a day you spend whoring your mind and body out to the highest bidder, you’re going to be disappointed. Like every street walker knows, when you’re in the business of selling yourself by the hour you’re way more likely to get screwed than you are to find love.

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.

I learned it from watching you…

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If the story I just saw run across the local news channel is to be believed, apparently one of the most insidious challenges facing young girls this year will be a new Barbie doll that has *gasp* tattoos. Apparently this 7 inch tall bit of plastic is causing an uproar among parents who have nothing better to do with their day than complain about plastic dolls. If you’re worried about her dolly turning your little princess into a pink haired, spike heel wearing skank, here’s some advice from kindly Uncle Jeff: don’t buy your kid the $50 doll with the tattoos. It really is that easy. I mean it’s not like the toy companies are part of an international conspiracy to lure your children into the clutches of the world’s tattoo artists. Or are they?

Take it from me, mom and dad, no amount of parental fretting over tattoos are going to keep your little darling from getting one once they’ve decided to do it. And I’m pretty comfortable in saying they won’t be doing it because of a doll they saw when they were five years old. If they’re like just about every other 18 year old with fresh ink, they’re doing it because they know it will make you crazy. So here’s a thought… try not making such a big deal out of the little stuff and maybe you can head off the worst of that teenaged rebellious streak you’re doing your best to create.

Adjustments…

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After you’ve spent a good portion of your recent life working for a manically dictatorial uberboss, one of the problem you’ll face is not being particularly well adjusted for work in an office where the worst thing that happen are, well, perfectly normal workplace situations. Is it possible that I’d become adjusted to having someone throwing metaphorical rocks at my head five days a week? I’ll confess that part of me now lives on edge because I don’t know if or when the next rock will come flying in my direction. It’s made me surprisingly uneasy lately – Not quite anxious, but definitely a feeling that nothing can be this relatively calm without another shoe dropping at some point.

Admittedly, it’s not something that’s been keeping me up at night. While not losing sleep, I do find that sitting at my desk, I can feel the tension creep into my shoulders and I catch myself glancing back to make sure the specter of bosses past isn’t somehow managing to sneak up on me with an arm full of PowerPoint changes, newsletters, and snide comments.

Is it possible for a cube-dweller to come down with a case of battle fatigue five months after escaping from the influences that were sending him in the direction of a breakdown? Maybe my subconscious is just now accepting how bad things really were and starting to reconcile it with how remarkably good they seem now. If history is any guide, the bottom should be falling out any time now.

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.

Lounge…

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Looking out the kitchen window into the inky blackness of 6AM, while I was waiting for the coffee maker to quit dripping, I got smacked in the head by a memory of a place where I haven’t set foot in over a decade. The old Honors Lounge was a half-subterranean affair stashed just off the boiler room in Guild Center. It had the benefit of not just being secluded, but also of being close to almost all your classes if you happened to be a social science major. Though the furniture was of suspect cleanliness, it was comfortable in that beat to hell kind of way that hand-me-down furniture tends to have. On most days it was a great place to find a conversation or an argument and it beat walking all the day down the hill to Lane Center or Cambridge if you needed to kill an hour between classes. More important than any of that, though, the Honors Lounge had a coffee pot and usually a giant drum of Maxwell House in the fridge. Sure, if you went in too early on a Monday morning there might have been mold growing in the filter or scorched sludge in the pot if someone left it on over the weekend, but the important part was that it was there at all. Fresh, hot coffee on demand. That was living big. As long as you liked your coffee black that is, since your chances of finding creamer or sugar stashed somewhere were nil.

I don’t know what made me think of that this morning. Maybe it was the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting up at me. Maybe it was the last exasperated gurgle the machine made before giving up its piping hot wonderfully caffeinated beverage. Since I’m not a fancy big city psychologist, I’ll probably never know what exactly triggered that particular memory, but for a few seconds this morning, I was standing right there in Frostburg looking out the window towards Old Main waiting to pour a fresh cup before walking down the hall to class.

New Deal Revisited…

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A member of Congress with a famous family name is proposing a simple solution to the bringing down the unemployment rate: Put approximately 15 million people on the federal payroll with a $40,000 a year salary. The proposal would revive concepts that saw a Civilian Conservation Corps plant trees, build dams, and forge roads and a Works Progress Administration that built airports and paid authors and photographers to ply their trade on behalf of the US Government. As fanatical as I am about the proper role of government, even I have to admit that the CCC and WPA probably represent the best instincts of government. Maybe I have a soft spot for the concept because I grew up swimming and camping at a place built by the CCC in the late 30s. Say what you will about it having been a “make work” project, but their efforts have held up pretty well under 80 years of continual use.

Maybe more importantly, the CCC and WPA made constructive work part of the requirement to receive federal assistance. In the 30s, your options were pretty much work or starve. I wonder, though, if those concepts would still hold up. How many people receiving federal assistance would be willing to go to work camps in the wilderness, to sweep their cities streets, or to lift a hand to earn what we now think of as entitlements? As a result of their experiences during the Depression, my grandfather saved soap slivers that he eventually pressed together into a new bar and my grandmother used the same teabag for cup after cup of tea despite the need for them to do these things being long past. When’s the last time any of us even thought about doing something like that?

I never in my life thought I could be convinced to line up with Representative Jesse Jackson Jr on an issue, but I think this one at least has academic merit. I don’t necessarily agree with all his reasoning or the total numbers he’s talking about, but I have to admit I really like the concept. Let’s face it, we’re going to pay unemployment, welfare, and a raft of other “entitlements” anyway, so why not make productivity a requirement for receiving unemployment and other funds from the government?

This is probably the point where someone is going to come to my door to collect my Republican Party membership card.