Category Archives: work

Furlough Friday: Take 1…

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And so, the first Furlough Friday of FY13 draws slowly to a close. Some of you might be wondering how it went. Although I didn’t have a to do list for the day, here are some of the highlights:

– Wake up, roll over, and tell the alarm clock to go fuck itself

– Brew and drink at least a pot of coffee

– Send hostile and antagonistic message to local members of Congress

– Write at least 500 words before leaving the house

– Pick up groceries

– Watch four episodes of The Sopranos

– Attempt to write a creative and snarky blog post (mostly unsuccessfully)

– Eat dinner

– Find something on TV that doesn’t make me want to pummel myself into unconsciousness

– Go to bed, wake up, and repeat weekly as required.

As much as I would like to say that Furlough Friday was a endless field of excitement, alas it was not. The good news is that despite the furlough the electricity remains on, the fridge is still cold, and inside it is enough tasty hops flavored beverage to see me through to another Furlough Friday.

A week with no Wednesday…

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Since this is the first of 10 more furlough weeks to come, it should be noted that for purposes of record keeping I’ll be dividing the week as follows:

– Monday and Tuesday will be held as scheduled.

– Thursday replaces Wednesday and is immediately followed, as usual, by Friday, which will take over Thursday’s old time slot.

– Saturday Part I is allocated the space formerly occupied by Friday.

– Saturday Part II is takes the place of the traditional observance of Saturday.

– Sunday remains in its historic place as the day that keeps Saturday (Part II) and Monday from crashing together.

Please note that until further notice, Wednesday will no longer being observed by jeffreytharp.com. While posts will continue to appear as normal, official business will only be transacted on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday as outlined above. Saturday (Part I and II) and Sunday are considered non-working days and will be subject to lying about on the couch watching trashy daytime television, surfing the internet, perfecting a diabetic-friendly rum punch recipe, arguing with the evening news, and otherwise being an unproductive member of society.

We regret that Uncle Sam has made this drastic step necessary and hope that Wednesdays will be restored to service as soon as funding levels allow.

Like a (acting) boss…

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From time to time it’s good to be reminded about what you’re priorities in life are. Today’s reminder was about the complete and total lack of interest that I have in ever being a supervisor Lumburgagain. It’s not that today as chaotic or even busy, it’s more that I just don’t like having the “what if” factor hanging over my head. My historic experience with being “management” has been that 90% of the day is sitting around waiting for things to happen and/or wondering what happened and the other 10% actively trying to unscrew that which has been screwed up – generally to little or no effect.

Some people want to do it. Some of them even have a natural skill for it… and while I might have the skill, I most decidedly lack the interest. Watching the clock, hoping that nothing important explodes before the final whistle of the day blows is no way to spend your life. As for me, I’m perfectly happy heading to the house and not having to give a damn if the phone rings or not. I’m abundantly happy that my 8 hours in the hot seat is mission accomplished. Hopefully it’ll be a good long time before I get another “opportunity to excel.”

Small pleasures…

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One of life’s small pleasures is the feeling you get blowing through the office doors at 4:01 PM on the day leading into an extra-long weekend. It’s a happy moment knowing you’re as far away from your desk as you’re going to get… but being a glass half empty kind of guy, I also have to readily acknowledge that every minute that ticks past after 4:01 is one minute closer to the inevitable let down of being back at my desk when our revels have ended. Happily that’s more a Sunday kind of problem.

To a casual reader I think it must seem like I hate my job. It only seems that way. The work actually tends towards interesting and most of the people fall somewhere along the spectrum of better than average. There are, of course, exceptions but that’s to be expected everywhere as far as I can tell. Like everyone else, the simple fact is there are just other things I’d rather be doing than sitting in a box hammering away at PowerPoint for those eight hours in the middle of the day. For some reason, I don’t think I’d mind working the keys quite so much if I were doing my own writing for those same eight hours. Being a self-published eBook author, though, doesn’t pay the bills. Maybe someday.

This isn’t really a post about work, though. It’s a post about embracing the joy of the time off we do have – about making the most of the time we don’t spend sitting in a box. Whether you’re writing, grilling, boating, swimming, shopping, or just sitting around on your ass not doing a thing, try to enjoy it. The small pleasures are way too few and far between.

Last Friday…

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thumbsdown-gladiator It occurred to me driving in this morning that if everything goes as planned, this will be my last Friday at the office for the rest of fiscal year 2013. Next week, I’ll be celebrating Independence Day by taking Friday off and making a 4-day weekend, but from there on out I am a part time employee of our dear old Uncle Sam.

We all know I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to live in the land of the perpetual three-day weekend, but it’s living in the land of the 80% pay check that seems like something of a problem. I’ve found that most things are never as good or as bad as I anticipate them being, but in this one little case, I’m not holding my breath for it to magically transform into a fantastic opportunity.

Thank God I like to read and write. Those are at least low budget entertainment options I can indulge in to excess in this new found free time. Have I mentioned I’m glad I didn’t get around to buying a boat?

185 emails…

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There’s nothing quite as effective as 185 emails in your inbox to drag you back to reality. Three hours later, at least it’s a relief to know that 10% of them were discussing printer and network-related outages, 80% of them were crap you have no actual interest in, 5% were email from friends, and the remaining 5% are issues you actually need to do something about. It’s possible that I might have sat down and cried if there were actually 185 issues that needed my attention this morning. Even though I was physically present today, clearly my brain is still dragging in from somewhere on the Eastern Shore. Unless something ridiculous happens, it should be a day or two yet before the post-vacation afterglow wears off. I’d like to think that it could last until the 4-day Independence Day weekend, but I think we all know that’s more of a pipe dream than a plan.

Aside from the usual complaints about being back in the saddle, the routine is the routine. That’s probably good and bad. It’s comforting because it’s normal, but it still leaves me with a slightly sick feeling that it’s not what I really want to be doing with the day. Reality. 185 emails. Being a responsible adult is a real bitch.

Sometimes you can’t be too cynical…

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(c) University of Florida

(c) University of Florida

Government work tends to be one of those odd environments where up is down, good is evil, and logic is nonsense. It feels, at times, like a none-too-subtle combination of Groundhog Day and Dante’s Inferno. Maybe that’s an exaggeration… but only a little. I can say that with a degree of certainty because that’s the kind of day it’s been today.

At just after 11:00 this morning I was handed my formal notice that the United States Government plans to furlough me one day a week beginning on July 8th. Exactly 148 minutes later I received an email congratulating me on ten years of service to the government and notifying me that I’d be getting a certificate at the next office awards ceremony. You’d have to work pretty hard at sending two more discordant messages to your employees. Timing, as they say, is everything… even when it comes to giving with one hand and taking away with the other. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not in a rush to agree to parading across the stage, smiling for the photo op, and pretending that I give a good goddamn about another certificate in my three ring binder.

I’m sure at some point in the distant past, a nice suitable for framing certificate was a fine motivational tool… but unless I can barter that certificate for goods and services, under the circumstances, I think you can understand why I don’t think it’s worth the paper it’s printed on. I’m going to improvise, adapt, and overcome… but don’t expect that I’ll be thanking anyone for the opportunity.

And people wonder why I’m cynical about almost everything.

The Rains of Castamere…

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Since there’s only so many times a reasonable blogger can gripe about back-to-back-to-back meetings, I’ll give it a rest tonight. Instead, I’ll simply mention a fun few seconds dashing from one meeting to the next. Admittedly, I have a probably inappropriate habit of whistling to myself if the hallway happens to be empty. Sometimes it’s whatever song is stuck in my head from the drive in, sometimes it’s something I heard at my desk. This morning, it was The Rains of Castamere. Something about it’s bleak overtones seemed to fit the day of meetings without end. Of course it’s even better when a complete stranger coming from around the corner recognizes the tune and makes it a brief duet without saying a word.

A whole lot worse…

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For eighteen months, “furlough” and “hiring freeze” are words that continually show up atop the list of search terms that drag people kicking and screaming to my little slice of the internet. Having spent an outlandish amount of time bitching and complaining about both over the last two years, I guess that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I’d love to tell you all that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and that Uncle Sam’s financial woes are behind him, well, there’s really nothing out there that indicates that’s true at all. From all outward appearances, Uncle has managed to paper over the worst of the problems for the time being. While that seems like a good thing, it probably just means that he’s managed to kick the can further down the road and that when it comes time to settle the tab, it will be even worse than we thought.

By my most recent calculation, I’ve worked under a hiring freeze of one sort or another for about a third of my career. I’m not feeling the pinch at the moment because I’m not actively looking for an eject button, but if I was options would be pretty limited. Having personally experienced the fresh hell of sending out multiple hundreds of resumes to get a handful of interviews, I don’t envy anyone looking for fresh horizons under the latest incarnation of the freeze. Even more unfortunate, I don’t see the market thawing any time soon, either.

Uncle has been warning about employee furloughs for months now. The general public reacted badly to the notion of laying off food inspectors and air traffic controllers, two very visible activities carried out by random, faceless bureaucrats. I have my doubts if there’s going to be the same outcry for defense workers. Working behind the wire, most of the public will never see or know what we do on a daily basis. As a result, us staying home for a week or a month isn’t something they see or experience firsthand. That makes us easy to ignore and therefore an excellent target of opportunity for cost reduction or avoidance.

So far, the department’s official position, at least the one that it’s opted to communicate to the workforce, seems to be ignoring the issue and hoping it goes away… at least that’s what it looks like from the inside. Predictions range from “nothing’s going to happen” to having to take the full 22-day furlough within the last 3 months of the fiscal year. Someone at echelons higher than reality probably has the smattering of a plan, but for the time being the drones are being kept well insulated from anything that resembles official information.

As we grind towards the end of fiscal year 2013, I think we’ll come through with minimal disruptions. What no one is talking about yet, and what I’m convinced is going to bight us all in the ass is that sequestration is a ten year event. Even if we ride out year one with cost savings through attrition and quietly cooking the books, we’ve still got nine years of draconian cost savings to generate…and in my mind that means things are going to get a whole lot worse in the out years before they ever start getting better.