Category Archives: work

Hard and fast rules…

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I came across this post as a stray draft a few days ago. I have no idea if I published it before or if it’s something I wrote that has been sitting in electronic purgatory for months or years. If I have posted it previously, it’s something that bears repeating. If I haven’t, it’s a post that’s deserves its moment in the sun.

In any case, here I present the following few hard and fast rules to live by that I’ve learned while serving as a cog in the vast recesses of the bureaucracy:

1. You can do it all.

2. You can’t do it all at the same time.

3. Timelines are meaningless and largely serve just to take up additional space in a PowerPoint slide deck.

4. Planning is, at best, a work of educated fiction.

5. At that moment when things seem to be working well, the wheels are about to fall off, the engine to catch fire, and the transmission explode, so don’t get cocky, kid.

6. There’s no such thing as “idiot-proof.” The world strives to always produce bigger and better idiots.

7. There’s no good work you can do that a general officer can’t undo with an offhand remark.

8. People rarely get the justice they deserve.

9. All projects can be a combination of fast, cheap, and good… but you can only have two at any given time, so choose wisely.

10. When all else fails, when you think the situation can’t possibly go any further downhill, when not even the third reorganization in eighteen months gets the results you hoped for, look out, because things can always, always get worse.

Flexible and transparent…

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I wish I could tell you that I was about to launch into a sales pitch for the newest cell phone by telling you how it’s improved screen was flexible and transparent, but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to lament that I sat in a meeting today where we were told that things are changing rapidly and that we should smile more because that makes things better. We were also told on three separate occasions that it’s really, really important to “be flexible,” and that the powers at echelons higher than reality want to make the whole experience “transparent” for everyone.

Honest to God I don’t know how anyone is expected to sit through that kind of putting-lipstick-on-a-pig banality without fierce eye rolling. Worse yet I don’t know if it’s what people say because they don’t know what else to say or if they say it because they believe it. Frankly neither option is particularly palatable.

After the 100 minutes of my life sacrificed today that I’ll never be able to get back, I wish I could tell you that I have a warm fuzzy that anyone has some kind of clue what’s going on, but again that would probably induce another massive eye roll. The truth is, I haven’t had a clue what’s happening in six months or more. What I do know is that now “everything we do” has to somehow be tied in to the newest overlord’s three main priorities… Which, of course, addresses a couple of big showy ideas, but does precious little to address the everyday issues of running an organization of 70,000+ people.

I guess as long as we’re ever smiling, flexible, and endlessly transparent, it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference whether we know what the end state is actually supposed to look like… since when you don’t know where you’re going anyplace can be a destination.

Just to be on the safe side, if anyone needs me I’ll just be taking another shot at rearranging these deck chairs, because slamming directly into an iceberg feels every bit (if not more) likely than anything good happening at this point.

The simple things…

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A wise old Prussian told us that “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” Of course every strategist’s favorite general was talking about war, but I’ve found that in application it is a truism in nearly every field of endeavor. I mention it because that’s precisely the kind of week it has been so far. At first blush everything has looked so bloody easy, but has turned out to be harder to get done than anyone could ever imagine.

For the last two months the powers at echelons higher than reality have promised that during the most current reorganization, construction, and office move, everyone would be keeping their old phone numbers. It was the one thing that was supposed to be seamless and allow the other changes to happen without disruption to anyone outside who was unaware of the internal organizational churn. This afternoon, moving those numbers was proclaimed too hard to do and instructions came down from Olympus to turn off all the call forwarding and “fall in” on the phone number already associated with our new desks. That too should have been easy enough, except for the part where some numbers had already been moved – which allows the old “ghost” numbers to exist and continue forwarding calls indefinitely.

The only solution was asking the help desk to open a trouble ticket to have it corrected centrally. Anyone who has ever talked to the help desk knows with that one call, we’ve thrown simple or easy directly out the window. Then of course there’s the “new” number we’ve been assigned, which hasn’t actually been assigned to us… and requires a second call to the helpdesk so they can have someone open a new voicemail box and assign our name to the number.

That’s only supposed to take three work days. Honestly. Three days is the estimate. It takes AT&T about 3 minutes to do it when I upgrade cell phones, but it takes the single largest employer in the world three damned days. It appears there’s nothing about this week that isn’t going to be absolutely exhausting, especially the simple things… because they’re the very hardest things to do.

Torpor…​

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I’m what most people would consider an early riser. I’d be hard pressed to remember the last time I slept past 6:00. More often my days, even the ones at the end of the week, start no later than 5:30. Sometimes they start much earlier. It seems the years of well before dawn alarm ringing have exacted their penalty. I don’t mind it, though. I’ve gotten to like the early morning routine, the quiet, and general lack of people.

Much as it may sound it, this isn’t my ode to the morning. I like to think I’m more subtle than that. Instead, what I’m grappling with now is how it’s possible for me to claw out of bed at 5am on a typical Saturday, Sunday, or holiday Monday, hit the ground running, and keep myself mentally engaged until it’s time to turn the light off that night. I only wonder because on the usual weekday I spend most of that time feeling nearly comatose at worst and merely addled at best. The only discernible difference between those days and today are where I’m spending the hours.

​There’s something telling about that. Now if I didn’t have a shit ton of bills to pay I could ​probably do something about it. The more likely course of action is that I’ll just go ahead and trudge through five days a week in a situationally induced torpor and feeling like a real person on the other days.

Legal opinion…

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Usually I dread the moment when I have to schlep upstairs to the vast wing of the building reserved for the legal office. That long walk almost always results in discussions that end up taking something that should be quick and simple and making it into something drawn out and complicated beyond all reason. Every now and then, though, whatever ill-tempered gods lawyers pray to throw me a bone and let me emerge from their lair more or less unscathed. I went there today fully prepared to fight tooth and nail in the hopes that common sense would prevail. I spent far more time preparing than is strictly reasonable. If I knew how to gird my loins I would have done that too.

Because this is a fair blog and I believe in giving credit where it’s due, I have to admit that today they actually made it easy. Common sense prevailed against the gathered forces of arcane policy and regulatory guidance. I get to do exactly what I want in the way I wanted to do it. I can’t actually point to another instance when I’ve had this experience… and of course that also makes me vaguely nervous because I know all gods tend to be fickle and vengeful if given half an opportunity. Knowing that, I beat a hasty retreat back to my hole as quickly as possible in hopes of escaping any further notice.

People complain that I never have anything positive to say… and I hope this post will serve to clarify that I will, indeed, sing praises… on the rare occasion when something praiseworthy actually happens… in a world that is so often stupid and bad and wrong.

I’m ok with that…

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I’m not a decider. At one time, when I was young and ambitious, I thought that’s what I wanted. It was the career goal I chased for a while.  In my analysis of the game, though, the return on investment just didn’t make it worth the effort. What can I say, I like it when my phone doesn’t ring at 7PM on a Friday because someone, somewhere did something stupid.

The problems start when someone at echelons higher than reality decides that because they have my phone number, I should be empowered to speak on behalf of the entire organization. While it’s flattering for someone to think I have that kind of power and influence, a quick reality check will show that my parameters wherein independent thought is authorized are fairly limited. More importantly, I respect those boundaries – largely because by keeping myself between them I can generally avoid having my ass handed to me. Once on the other side of them, however, it’s only a few slippery steps to getting yourself pummeled.

I’m happy to take you call. I’ll do my best to explain the official position of the organization. If you disagree I’m more than pleased to pass your concern on upwards through the chain of command. Eventually it will arrive in the office of someone who is empowered to make a decision. I’m not saying they will and if they do I’m in no way guaranteeing that it will be the decision you wanted. It’s important to note, however that I’m not now nor will I ever be that person… and I’m more than ok with that.

Actual work (and why it doesn’t happen)…

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There is the occasional rare day when I can sit down and focus on one or two major projects and feel like I’ve mushed the ball forward even if it’s only by a little bit. Today wasn’t that day. The fact is, I don’t remember much of what I worked on today. I try very hard to do a mental dump on my way out the door in an effort to not drag any additional jackassery back across the river with me at the end of the day. Maintaining that massive, immutable, and nearly impenetrable wall between work and “everything else” might just be the most important thing I do on a daily basis. It’s the preserver of my sanity.

I vaguely remember that at one point or another today Outlook tried to trick me into a meeting I didn’t need to go to, and someone wanted me to fix a broken folding table, and there was a very serious discussion about where to store 30 outdoor umbrellas for the winter, and picking 8 people to take a bus ride to DC next week fell squarely on my desk. Those are exactly the kinds of things that end up being the reason actual work ends up being so often late, halfassed, or just completely blown off. You’re just going to have to trust me when I saw it’s almost never intentional.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some of my real work done… but I’m not overly optimistic. Some week’s just go like that. Although past performance is not a guarantee of future results, it’s often a healthy indicator. With this week so far as a guide, the best I’ll likely be able to manage is keeping my head down and trudging on towards the weekend. At least it’s no longer in any way surprising that this is how the “real world” works.

Distractors…

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I’ve always had trouble finding my mental focus in loud environments. I don’t know if that’s what makes the hermit life so appealing to me or if it’s the other way around. It doesn’t really matter which caused what. The end result is the same – sitting at my desk with glazed eyes completely unable to cobble together a single coherent thought. It’s just one of the many joys of existing in cubicle hell.

If I’m honest, I’ll admit that the day to day isn’t as bad as I feared, but with that said the bad moments are absolutely hellish. At one point this afternoon I was an unwilling third party participant to at least six conversations taking place simultaneously within 20 feet of my desk. Keeping track of the thread of my own thoughts proved to be something between challenging and impossible for the better part of two hours today. For the record, that doesn’t lead to good staff work and leaves me feeling just about as annoyed in this particular workplace as I’ve ever been. That’s no mean feat.

When other people leave the office they’re in a rush to meet for dinner, or go shopping, or engage in some other socially acceptable form of human interaction. When I leave I can’t get away from that sort of thing fast enough. Home is far from silent, of course. There’s the clatter of dogs on tile, television or radio humming quietly in the background, HVAC noises, or appliances running. Somehow those things manage to not be distracting. Half a dozen overlapping conversations, on the other hand, leave me tired and more than a bit frustrated with my own inability to focus through the distractors.

Whatever reason, the subdued sounds of home, a good book, and something pressed from the fruit of the arbor feels like exactly what I need to steady myself.

High water…

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A few days ago I said I hope we get a little rain to make up for how dry it has been the last couple of weeks. What I didn’t anticipate was that all of that rain would arrive between 6:00-8:00 this morning. With the average person apparently incapable of driving in any more than a hint of rain and the fact that had to slosh ankle deep through the parking lot to get to the office (seriously, my feet were still soaked when I left for the day), I assumed that getting drenched before work would be the worst of it. As usual, my assumption proved to be horribly wrong.

About fifteen minutes after arriving and wringing out that which could be wrung, I got a note warning me that the building I’m responsible for was taking on water and that it was getting deep fast. It’s not the first time this has happened. A combination of building underground next to a swamp, pump issues, and a poorly sized drain it seems a sizable amount of water came cascading through the back doors and ended up backing up across an essentially brand new floor to an average depth of one or two inches. It’s not enough to break out the hip waders, but it’s damned well enough to be a monumental hassle.

I’m highly trained and competent in many things, but navigating the Byzantine labyrinth of how to get a building de-watered is not one of them. There was the predictable grinding of gears and great gnashing of teeth as that activity expanded to absorb nearly every molecule of available oxygen in my day. I can only hope that Monday set the high water mark for the week, but I’m enough of a bureaucrat to know that there’s always more stupid where the first batch came from.

Out of proportion…

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I like to think that I’ve got a fairly reasonable sense of proportion when it comes to telling what things are important and what things aren’t. That’s true at least in my day-to-day existence where I’m responsible for things like paying the mortgage and keeping myself and three other living creatures from becoming formerly living creatures. By contrast, when I show up at the office, my sense of where things should be on the sliding scale of relative importance seems to be consistently and remarkably out of touch.

The things we choose to take issue with seem, largely, to be those things that I’d brush off as approaching insignificant – things like who sits where (not whether there are enough seats) or whether the slide background is the right shade of gray (not whether the slide conveys the appropriate information). I hope you can forgive me if I seem to have a permanent eye strain from all the rolling they do. I suppose in some universe things like that are important, but I’m not able to wrap my head around why anyone would give a damn about them. Despite years of being beaten about the head and next with this issue, I’m just not wired that way.

Believe me, I wish I could glamour myself into believing that stupid shit somehow matters. It would make being an alleged professional that much easier. As it is, I’ve just grown weary and annoyed of pretending that it does when it doesn’t. Weary an annoyed is almost always a troublesome combination because it often leaves my mouth free to engage and spew words better left as thoughts… and that rarely ends well for anyone involved.