Category Archives: work

It counts for a lot…

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It’s that time of year again when officially sanctioned near-mandatory fun events lurk around every corner. The annual office Non-Denominational Holiday Luncheon, a team building pot luck lunch, the rush to decorate the door in a manner to acknowledge the holiday season but also ensure that there’s no way anyone might accidentally be offended by anything on it. They’re all on my mind as we rush headlong into December. There isn’t one of these things that sounds like either a good idea or something I’d enjoy. Those two categories are not mutually exclusive, of course, knowing full well that there are plenty of things that are a bad idea, but that I find perfectly delightful.

That being said, I know I can’t stop anyone from making me attend town hall meetings or award ceremonies. I know full well that I can’t waive off just because of my fundamental distrust of anyone who calls a meeting that isn’t absolutely necessary. I also know that there’s no requirement that I cook or otherwise prepare food for my colleagues. I can’t be mandated to attend the Non-Denominational Holiday Luncheon and pretend to be rapt by small talk with strangers and feigning an interest in the ugly sweater contest. As a former boss of mine so eloquently put it on so many occasions, “Look Jeff, I can be friendly, but that doesn’t mean I have to be your friend.”

Some people would surely find that offensive. I found it refreshing. Maybe some people come to the office to get their social fix. Maybe their life outside cube farm walls is devoid of other human interaction. Me? Well, I’ve got a Facebook, a blog, and unlimited text messages so there’s 90% of whatever interaction I’m looking for most days. There’s also the same bunch of friends I’ve had largely for the last 15 or 20 years… and they never ask me to pay $20 to pretend to enjoy a lukewarm lunch while surrounded by people I don’t know… and that counts for a lot.

The laughing of a dead Prussian…

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Watching the news this morning, I was glad to not be one of the thousands sitting bumper to bumper on the Baltimore Beltway. Or last night on I-70. Or later today on I-95 in either direction. I’ll roll the dice at some point, of course, and hope to slip through the migrating herd before most of them get a start on their day.

The rabid instance on having a weekly Wednesday staff meeting today, however, forced me to rethink if sitting in a nice warm truck with the radio on inching down the interstate would really have been the worst of the two possibilities. A good leader might not acknowledge it in so many words, but he would certainly have known that although there are plenty of seats being filled today, those filling them are present in body, but long gone in spirit. To a person, we’ve all have our faces set in that far away, somewhere else I’d rather be look – eyes glazed over, lips slightly parted, the occasional deep sigh or eye roll. It’s a look I know well if only because I have worn it so very often.

Still, we dutifully held this middle-of-the-day meeting. Because it’s Wednesday, if not because there was any actual important information to share. Despite any application of reason to the contrary we clung to the battle rhythm on this day before Thanksgiving… and I can’t shake the feeling that somewhere there is a dead Prussian staff officer laughing at us.

Slow week…

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With Thanksgiving coming up on Thursday, it’s bound to be a slow week. Even the people who are in the office are generally not going out of their way to find new projects to get jammed up with. I won’t say there’s an effort to run out the clock on the week, but damned few are out roaming the halls looking for trouble.

All of that means I’m basically tinkering around at my desk tending to odds and ends that never make it to the top of the to do list at any other time of the year. Basically I’ve got plenty of time to work on whatever comes along and to be honest, I don’t mind any distraction that might help the day move along.

When that distraction lands on my desk at 3:49 and has to be wrapped up by “close of business”, however, I’m mostly going to look at it, mutter WTF, and wonder what I can to to push that paper down the line as quickly as humanly possible. I’m sure whatever it was is very, very important, but not so important than anyone started worrying about it until everyone was headed home for the day.

There were 7 hours and 49 previous minutes in the day when this little project could have found its way to me. At any point on that spectrum it would likely have been treated as a serious activity. Arriving as it did, though, it was just the one major inconvenience standing between me and a quiet evening with the dogs… and even in a slow week that’s a bad place to be.

One Day Only…

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The niceties of Veteran’s Day aside, it’s placement this year smack in the middle of the week is just bloody inconvenient. Just as I found myself getting settled in for the evening I remembered that this isn’t the weekend and there are still two more days to slog through between us and Saturday. That’s hardly the end of the world, but it still doesn’t do much to improve my opinion of these “floating” holidays that are tied to a date instead of attached in lockstep to a weekend.

Now, please don’t take that as any criticism of the holiday itself. Anyone who knows me will tell you that my absolute favorite kind of time is time off and that I’ll take it wherever I can find it. If I had a little more leave in the bank this year, I would have proactively resolved the issue on my own. Alas, the home buying and repair have eaten up way more vacation time than I would have spent in any normal year.

Today was an anomaly, an irregularity, a one day only special. I’ll take it. Gladly. But don’t for a minute think that’ll keep me from bitching about it.

Things not do do…

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So let’s say you’re the boss. You’re going to be out of the office for a few days and you have to pick between your underlings to tag someone to be the “responsible adult” in your absence. There are any number of ways you can go about making the selection – by seniority, but lack of seniority, by drawing lots, or even by throwing a dart at a list of names. All are sort of a pot luck approach to section that all but guarantees someone who doesn’t want to be in charge ends up, albeit temporarily, making the decisions.

If I can offer up a pro tip to those of you who ever find yourself needing to designate your own temporary replacement, the guy not to pick is the one who has been eyeball deep on a single project for the last three weeks and who has no earthly idea what anyone else is doing, what their project status is, or really anything beyond how many emails have piled into their inbox since the last time they were at their desk. When you do that, all you’re really going to accomplish is to leave everyone even more confused than when they started the day.

Sometimes the vagaries of staffing and coverage mean you can’t avoid the unprepared leading the unwilling towards the unforeseen, but it’s not going to be what you might call a best practice. If history has taught me nothing it’s that I’ll gladly make decisions regardless of how ill-informed I happen to be on the subject. As always, in the absence of clear guidance, I will create my own… and that course of action has nothing if not a truly mixed bag of results.

Early starts…

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I’ve got a couple of ridiculously early start times coming this week. Not by choice, but of necessity. I know I’m supposed to look on the bright side and think this year’s Big Group of People Who are Going to Want All Sorts of Stupid Shit Done at The Last Minute is going to be the best one yet – but in all seriousness, my inner introvert is already exhausted before anyone even sets foot through the door tomorrow.

The very best thing I can say about this event is that by Thursday night it will be over… and remind myself that no matter how bad it gets, at least I’m not the guy who lost the blimp. He’s going to be having a far worse week then I am. 

I’m going to try to keep the posts coming, because jackassery in the face of a thousand “guests” is nearly inevitable. If I miss a day, I hope you’ll all understand that nothing coming out of my mouth in the moment is in any way fit for print.

Adventures of a half assed event planner (Part 3 of ?)…

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Just down the road from my office, two government-owned aerostats (we’ll call them blimps for simplicity from here on out), were tethered as part of air defense test program. I say “were” because around mid-day, there was only one… mostly because the other one slipped it’s leash and was rushing due north with the prevailing wind and trailing 6,500 feet of inch-thick kevlar tail behind it.

CmdsJlens1How does this relate to the further adventures of a half assed event planner, you may ask? Well, in all honesty it really doesn’t. Not directly anyway… Except that when a $175 million, 7,000 pound, 242 foot long unmanned airship jumps out of harness to threaten air traffic and the electrical grid in the northeast corridor, every ounce of available attention is radically shifted away from your little party and violently focused elsewhere.

Usually I’d feel bad for the poor bastard who lost his radar platform, but that noble fool bought me some breathing room today. He will know far worse suffering than could be mustered against me, no matter how badly bungled my event becomes. In fact, I’d probably half to walk naked into the middle of a packed house and then proceed to set the building on fire to even garner a fraction of the angst and gnashing of teeth those unfortunates are enduring tonight.

The lesson here tonight is that sometimes bad things happen… and when those bad things are happening to someone else you should always be prepared to use them to your advantage while everyone is looking the other way.

Lest anyone grow suspicious, I have a room full of people who can vouch for my whereabouts from 10:00-12:00 today, so I’m fully alibied.

Adventures of a half assed event planner (Part 2 of ?)…

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Fifty weeks our of the year the right high and right mighty redoubtable right noble lords of our realm don’t know I exist. I like it that way. In fact I sought out anonymity and willingly stepped away from a track likely bound for leadership. If I ever wanted that life for myself it’s a notion I lost quickly, much preferring a role as simply one of Eye-of-Sauron_612x380_0many.

Two weeks out of the year, usually sometime between October and November, those mighty lords turn their eyes upon me… and it’s a terrible thing to behold. It’s a little like having the Eye of Sauron taking a good long look at you. That eye. That unwavering, soul crushing eye turns on you. God help you then. “Leadership” and helpful “recommendations” will fall from the sky like hammer blows. You’ll get executive level “assistance” until it’s oozing our your ears.

When you’re a half assed event planner the very first thing you learn is that nothing you’re doing is important to anyone above your immediate boss until about a week before whatever it is you’re planning is supposed to happen. Guidance, intent, guests, and outcomes are all helpful things that could be given well in advance, but they won’t be. You don’t have a prayer of getting those until it’s too late to matter – so you muddle through making up your own guidance for lack of any better until someone tells you to stop.

Under the circumstances, the very best outcome you can hope for is to avoid having a heart attack, a stroke, or saying something to get yourself fired. Beyond that, your two weeks basking in the withering glare of Sauron’s unblinking eye are simply something to be endured. You can’t measure success or failure in conventional terms. Just surviving is all that matters.

There’s always tomorrow…

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Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have a philosophical compunction with working past my scheduled end-of-tour time. That is I don’t have a compunction about it as long as it meets several criteria, such as the situation being such that the intervening overnight hours would cause serious harm to a project or program, an action or inaction on my part is going to have a negative consequence for some far flung Joe sitting at the pointy end of the spear, or immediate action is required in defense of life or property. In a situation failing to meet one or more of those criteria, 999 time out of 1,000, it’s going to be utterly irrelevant to the universe whether I take action at 4PM or 7AM.

But you see, the thing is when you run a meeting right up to the end of the day, there’s no way to ever know why the little light is flashing on my phone or what catastrophic messages are waiting in my inbox. They’re simply a mystery to be revealed the next day. Over a decade of experience has taught me that the subject of both is going to be the need for a new PowerPoint chart, adding someone to the guest list, or making sure a temporary smoking area gets designated. None of those things rises to the level of my three criteria – Jeff’s Three Justifications for Staying Late; like the three laws of robotics, only currently applicable to your day to day life.

Once I got it through my thick skull that in almost every case imaginable, there’s always tomorrow, I started to sleep a lot better at night. And when that day arrives when I’ve run out of tomorrows, well, then it will be someone else’s hot mess to worry over. In either case, I’m out. There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere.