Category Archives: work

Any way the wind blows…

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I haven’t chased a hurricane since Dean in 2007, but there’s something about seeing the storm warnings go up that still gets in my head. It’s a twitchy feeling that I should pack a bag, clear my schedule, and track down an overtime request form.

Emergency managers usually get a bad name for being unprepared, unresponsive, or just plain out of their depth in planning how to respond to something like a hurricane or an earthquake. The truth is that even though I’m sitting here looking at a forecast track that is eerily similar to Katrina’s, Isaac will behave completely differently. Even when they hit the same place, no two natural disasters are exactly the same… and no amount of pre-planning will overcome the natural tendency of large groups of people to do exactly the wrong thing in an emergency (like staying in a city that’s only kept dry when the levees work and the pumps keep running).

I could tell you stories of horrifyingly bad judgment from everyone from FEMA Administrators, to state governors, to local elected leaders, to average schleps on the ground working under the misguided assumption that they were doing the right things. When you have a bird’s eye view of the event, it’s surprisingly easy to see where things are going wrong. It’s incredibly frustrating and harder than hell to get them going in the right direction, though. In all likelihood I’ll never work another day in emergency management, but after a five year absence, I can honestly say that I’d do it again in a heartbeat if the circumstances every presented themselves.

For now I suppose I’ll follow along on TV like everyone else and just be glad it’s not me on the hook to find millions of gallons of water, tons of ice, and wheels to put under all of it.

August and everything after…

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I was a teacher once, so I understand the generalized feeling of dread that accompanies the end of the summer. The sense of loss in the closing days of August is almost physically painful. Which is why every time I see one of my teacher friends lament the end of summer on Facebook, I smile just a little bit on the inside. Sure, that’s not the empathetic, caring response, but if you came here looking for caring and empathy, boy did you show up at the wrong place on the internet.

I smile mostly because I think of the pain of August as the universe evening the score for those of us who spent the last two months at our desks, while our teaching friends were posting pictures from the beach. While they were in Florida or Myrtle Beach, we’ve been here banging away at our keyboards like so many galley rowers lashed to our oars. Sure, I could have stayed in teaching and enjoyed the single greatest employment benefit ever invented, but that wouldn’t have been good for me or for anyone else really, except maybe people who read blogs. I think if I would have had one back when I was teaching, the posts would have been epic… and would have possibly gotten me fired, since a way with words and an almost boundless forum for your grievances are terrible things to waste.

My point is, I hope all the teachers out there enjoyed their summer vacation, because in between federal holidays and annual leave, I’ve still got about a month’s worth of days off that I have to burn before the clock strikes 2013. I know I’m certainly going to enjoy my time when I get around to taking it. Just knowing that it’s banked and sitting there when I’m ready for it makes missing out on the summer vacation a little easier… because I’m looking forward to the end of August and everything after.

Limited (dis)agreement…

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So let me get this straight. You want me to sign a “limited telework agreement” that basically says management can tell me to work from home any time it’s convenient for them (i.e. whenever the office is closed due to some outside condition like snow, hurricane, or wildfire). In return, they may possibly consider allowing me to work from home a few days a year on days when I would usually take some kind of leave (i.e. dthe cable guy coming to fix the TV). I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump at the opportunity to sign on for something that’s a whole lot of upside for management, but that gives me pretty much nothing in return.

Oh, and just in case you were considering signing up for the program, you’re signed agreement will give your employer the right to come into your home to inspect for “safety”. Sure that will probably never happen, but even knowing it’s possible is more than a little creepy; a creep factor that I’d be willing to deal with if it were for a regularly scheduled day where I’d get to read memos and build PowerPoint decks while wearing my fuzzy slippers and sitting at my kitchen table. It’s not a creep factor I’m willing to get onboard with just to have the privilege of working the next time we get snow deep enough to make the roads too hazardous to get to the office. Honestly, if it’s so bad that I consider coming to work a hazard to life or limb, I’ll go ahead and exercise the unscheduled leave option if the powers that be are too hardheaded to close up shop for the day.

For me, it’s a simple fact of living in the 21st century: Telework is either a good program or it’s not. It’s something worth doing right or it’s not. For an organization that does business in 100+ countries to say that individual productivity depends on sitting in a cube so people have physical access to them is farcical… or it would be farcical if they weren’t so serious when they said it. I’ve been at it long enough to know that you don’t gain a damned thing from swimming against the tide. I’m not going to wage war for the sanctity of telework and I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword for it, but the chance of my signing a “limited” agreement are somewhere between slim and none.

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.

Banker’s hours…

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I thought that one of the perks of not being a supervisor would be qualifying for some kind of alternative work schedule… you know, the deal where you work nine hour days and get every other Friday off kind of thing. Years ago at the start of my career I worked at a site that ran ten hour days Monday through Thursday. Every week was a three day weekend. I have to admit that there’s something to be said for that schedule. Yesterday, though, I took a pass on the chance to get on board with the every other Friday off schedule. I always figured I’d jump on the opportunity for “free” days off, but I didn’t and here’s my rational:

1. I’ve become a morning person by default. I’m more productive between the hours of 8-11 AM than I am the rest of the day. My least productive time of the day tends to be between 2-4 PM. Tacking on another hour after that doesn’t seem to be a value proposition for anyone. Now if they’d let me start the day around 6AM, we might be on to something, but that doesn’t seem likely.

2. If I leave on time, even in the depths of winter, I get 30-45 minutes of daylight in the evenings. It doesn’t sound like much, but for my money there’s little worse than driving to work in the dark and arriving home in the dark. In December, those few minutes of light every day are worth more to me than extra days off (seriously).

3. The only “alternative” I’m really interested in is telework. I had a good run with telework back in the day and found working from the kitchen table, five feet from the coffee pot to be probably my most productive day of each week. That probably has something to do with being out of sight and out of mind. It’s a great way to sit down once a week and focus on something without that cacophonous roar of people yelling over the top of cubicles at each other.

4. Being a single father, there’s only so many hours I can stay away before something bad happens… like the kids staging a jail break, eating the couch, and turning the floor into an open sewer. Since they’re pretty well trained at keeping themselves entertained for 10 hours, trying to change up a system that works seems like a bad idea. That’s just a layer of additional stress that I don’t need to inject into the environment.

So yeah, I’m going to take a pass on the alternative work schedule for the time being and just be happy keeping banker’s hours.

In style…

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As I reach back into the dark corners of my mind, I vaguely remember something from one of my “How to Be a Teacher in Two Semesters or Less” classes about there being different learning styles and preferences. Some people are audio learners, some visual, others are hands on, and some do best in groups while others are better working alone. Personally, I did reasonably well following the standard college learning model – let’s call it 15 hours of weekly lecture followed by independent study and reading time. In my worst semester, on my worst day, I never had more than four hours of lectures scheduled on any 24 hour period. Even those four hour days were punctuated with breaks, lunch, and assorted other gaps. I would have gouged out my eyes with a #2 pencil if I had needed to sit through 4 hours of uninterrupted talking.

Of all the dry, dull, and occasionally pointless classes you take as part of a major in the humanities, I never recall sitting in any classroom for eight hours at a stretch going blind on hundreds of PowerPoint slides. The reason for that is most likely because it’s a really shitty methodology for almost everyone involved, up to and including the instructor(s). No matter how engaging the material, there’s a very real limit to how much the average human brain is going to absorb in any one sitting. Everything else is runoff, or more diplomatically it’s simply “exposure” rather than actual learning. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with exposure, of course, as long as you admit that’s what you’re doing up front and don’t expect to much return on investment in the end.

Priorities…

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I’m a simple man. All I need for a day’s work is an Internet connection and a bottomless supply of coffee. Take one of those things away and the day is suspect at best. Take away both and there’s really not much of a reason to get out of bed. Hey, I’m perfectly happy to sit in class all day, but scheduling the class in a room where the No Food or Drink Police monitor the place like a stalag, borders somewhere between foolish and evil. If you expect people to actually stay awake and at least attempt to focus, a coffee friendly zone is pretty much a necessity. As it is, I’ll probably just spend the rest of the week in an un-caffeinated haze. Please disregard my nodding head and puddle of drool on the floor.

Getting finished-ish

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Today was one of those days when all you can do when it’s over is sit back, shake your head, and wonder if it all really happened or if you’re mind finally slipped of the tracks and made it all up. I have a nervous feeling that the alarm is going to go off at 5:00 tomorrow morning and prove that it was the former. If you’ve never spent three days putting together a three inch binder literally jammed to overflowing with facts, figures, and the administrative minutia of an expedition that apparently rivals the exploits of Marco Polo, well, let’s just say that it’s not something I recommend… If for no other reason than because no matter how many times you tell people you’re not adding anything after a specific time, someone is going to hand you a shit ton of things to add well after what was supposed to be last call. It’s even better when you’ve already proclaimed the product “finished” and still have bits of it dibbling in in drips and drabs.

Facts being the obnoxious things that they are, at some point you’re going to have to accept that when you’re working against the clock, eventually the clock is going to win. Sometimes that means you get a 50% solution, other times it’s 90%. If you’re some combination of both lucky and good, you might hit 100% from time to time. More often, you should be happy to land somewhere in the sweet spot between 75-85%. Hit that and you’re doing twice as good as the best power hitters in professional baseball. As soon as you realize that sometimes good enough really is good enough you’re life gets a whole lot easier. The real kicker is trying to convince everyone around you to buy into the idea at the same time. Good luck with that.

Burdens of leadership…

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There are a number of reasons I’m not likely to ever be drug kicking and screaming into a position of leadership. Aside from the fact that it just plain doesn’t interest me from anything other than an academic standpoint, I loathe putting on a jacket and tie just to sit at a desk all day, small talk and glad handing make me want to poke myself in the eye with a pointy stick, and really, the only screw ups I want to be responsible for in life are the ones I make myself. With all of that being said, should the worst ever happen and I get stuck in one of these positions, I hope that I remember the little things; like knowing how to get from Point A to Point B without six other people managing the arrangements for me, or being able to have a conversation with my contemporaries without needing hundreds of slides and a stack of memos to decide what I want to say. I’d especially want to remember that normal people tend to have interests and obligations that aren’t work related so keeping them standing around early in the morning and well after close of business should be avoided.

I’m not even going to get into how bloody obnoxious it would be to basically have no control over my own schedule. Being shuffled around from place to place and meeting to meeting with just a few notes jammed in my hand at the last minute would drive me right up to the edge of wanting to beat people with my shoe. I’m glad there are people who welcome that level of pain in the ass, but frankly I’m ecstatic that I’m not cut out to be one of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stick my nose in a book about the Danish invasion of England. That’s way more interesting than a three ring binder chuck full of information about the fun things to see, do, and talk about at Fort Pignuckle, Louisiana.

No surprises…

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In the two and a half years that I’ve been writing here at WordPress, I’d hate to guess how many times I’ve “admitted” to being a creature of habit. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t at least once a month. Maybe that in itself has gotten to be a bit of a habit, but that’s not really the point. Because I’m a creature of habit, I like having a schedule. I like knowing that the alarm clock is going to ring at the same time every day, that lunch is going to happen at more or less the same time every morning, and that I’m going to walk out the door at more or less the same time every afternoon. When some unforeseen circumstance throws that schedule out of whack, I tend to get vicerally annoyed by it, even when it doesn’t show. I’m sure there’s some deep seated psychological reason for it, but I’ve never been curious enough to try figuring it out. Making sure things go according to plan always seemed like a better use of time to me.

Of course when you’re a simple cog in the machine, most of your schedule ends up really being decided by someone or something well beyond your own sphere of control. When that happens, there’s really not much more to to but grin and bear it no matter how much you’re seething in the inside. Not that I would ever seethe over some minor detail like that, of course. I’m a pretty simple guy to motivate. Keep me fed, watered, and on schedule and all is right with the world. Start dinking with any one of the three and I can get downright surly. I should be enjoying what’s left of this Sunday afternoon, but in the back of my mind I’m already vaguely annoyed by tomorrow’s schedule being shot to hell before I ever leave the house. Around 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to need someone to remind me that snarky comments and senior staff rarely go well together. I should probably just consider myself lucky that this kind of blown schedule is a rarity… but I’ll leave that for the glass-half-full types. Putting things in perspective seems to make them feel better. Strangely enough, bitching about it online seems to have the same effect on me.

Brain fry…

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Fifty or a hundred years ago, an average man came home from work physically exhausted and filthy. There are days I almost envy that kind of work. At the end of the shift, you can point out a stack of steel beams or twenty truckloads of coal and see that you actually did something with your day. By contrast, I got home tonight exhausted, but only from the neck up. Jumping from one thing to another, answering phone calls and questions, and occasionally making things up as I went along just plain wore me out today. If I bothered to starch my collar, though, you wouldn’t know I spent the day at work. I’m trying not to remind myself that it’s only Monday, because my brain is well and truly fried. That doesn’t bode particularly well for the rest of the week.

Still, the part of me whose grandfathers dug coal, stamped tires, and spent their lives doing hard physical labor doesn’t feel quite right complaining about how mentally draining it is to sit in front of a computer screen, answer the phone, and beg, cajole, and threaten people to get the job done is. It seems somewhat less daunting when laid against the kind of physically demanding jobs that they had. Knowing that doesn’t make my gray matter any less shot on days like this, though.

I’ve heard that some extroverts thrive on fast paced, loud, raucous environments. Unfortunately, I’m not an extrovert by nature. To make good decisions I need time to think, reflect, and process and time was the one thing in short supply today. Sure, I’ll keep making decisions, under those conditions, but they won’t be my best. I suppose they don’t always need to be. All I really need now is a nice quiet room, a good book, and possibly a dog or two and I should be back in fighting trim before the sun comes up tomorrow. How it goes after that is still way, way up in the air.