Given the volume of jobs I’ve applied for in the last eight months, I was under the impression that I’d come across very little that would surprise me. That was until the fine people at TSA invited me to schedule an appointment this weekend at a third party computer center to come in and take their skills assessment. Seriously, TSA? You want me to take a two-hour test just to get through to the part where an actual person reads my resume? Yeah, as interesting as that sounds, I think I’ll be taking my chances that one of my other 360 resumes out there is going to find its way onto the right desk. I wouldn’t object to the process if I were, you know, applying for an entry level job somewhere in a field office, but since I’m angling for a senior analyst slot at your headquarters, I would think that you’d be able to sus out the key information you need from the dozen or so pages of resume, undergrad and graduate transcripts, and personnel records that I sent you. So, yeah, TSA… I appreciate you getting back to me, but I don’t think your agency is the right fit for my skill sets. Thanks now.
Category Archives: work
Clock watching…
Some supervisors live and die by the clock. I’m not one of them. If you get your job done, why should I care if it takes you five hours or eight? Of course if I know it takes you five, I’m going to find something else for you to do, but if you’re quiet about it and don’t draw attention to yourself, what’s it to me if you check in on Facebook or look up the afternoon’s scores on ESPN?
I’ve never understood the people who live to catch someone taking a long lunch or coming in a handful of minutes after their scheduled start time. If the work is getting done, who’s being hurt? Seriously, if you have nothing better to do than run a stopwatch on your colleagues, maybe it’s time to take a look at your own workload and see if you’re doing all you can. More importantly, if you want to continue keeping the official shot clock for the office, remember that it’s very likely someone just might start watching you and waiting for an excuse to follow your example.
Payback is what it is, so don’t be surprised when you get got.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Early riser…
I’ve had your sorry ass locked out of the office every morning for three weeks, told you five times that shift starts and 6:30, and still you’re already here when I pull in to the parking lot at 6:15. The hood of your car is cool so I know you’ve been here for a while.
The real question, of course, is why? You’re going to have to take my word for it that wanting to eat breakfast at your desk isn’t a good enough reason for me to want to get sued later because you worked 30 minutes a day longer than you were supposed to and didn’t get paid for it. So seriously, shift starts at 6:30. I’ll unlock at 6:25. If you want to keep coming in and standing in the hall for 30 minutes like a dipshit, that’s all on you.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Progress…
If anyone is following along at home, tonight’s update is just a brief note to say that this morning’s interview went well. That is to say as well as an interview can go when the prospect of the interviewer being able to make an offer anytime in the near future is completely unknown. Like all my other sit downs with selecting officials from across the Mid-Atlantic, this office is also subject to my nemesis the hiring freeze. That unfortunate circumstance notwithstanding, I’m comfortable that I delivered the best pitch possible… and now we’re back to the waiting game. That’s progress.
Stupid questions…
From our earliest days as students, we’re told that there is no such thing as a stupid question. People trying to become better informed is something I encourage. Generally. There are exceptions, of course, when a question buggers the imagination.
Sitting at my desk, I was just part of this exchange earlier today…
Employee: Is Steve here today?
Jeff: I don’t know, I haven’t seen him.
Employee: I just got an email from him so I was wondering.
Jeff: *blinking slowly* Yeah. Why don’t you hit reply and ask him?
Employee: Oh yeah. Good idea.
Jeff: *sigh*
It might be possible that there are no stupid questions, but there are certainly plenty of stupid people.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Day 75…
We are now at day 75 of the thirty-day hiring freeze. Surely we’ve attritted off some of those overhires by now, right? Seriously, we even have a budget for the rest of the fiscal year now. So, come on already Overlord of Personnel. Let’s get the hiring process thawed out.
I haven’t racked and stacked my list lately, but the total number of resumes released into the wild stands at 335. I’d estimate that about a third of those are still in the “open” category. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 are sitting on the desk of a real human being. I’ve had two interviews for positions that are “frozen” and have another one coming up later this week. I didn’t particularly want to go outside of DoD, but they’re making it very hard to show the love right about now… so Treasury, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Coast Guard, FEMA, and a host of others are being fed into the mix as of about two weeks ago.
My search grid now extends from Philadelphia down to Richmond and from the Shenandoah Valley east to Norfolk. Like Grant contemplating a similar piece of real estate, “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
Such is the ferocity of my desire to catch the last train out of Crazyville.
Happy birthday: or Here’s your letter of depreciation…
My birthday is right around the corner and there’s no way I’d rather celebrate than by receiving a condescending form letter from the executive suite telling me how great an opportunity it is for me to be a part of the team. Seriously? I’m sure that someone at echelons above reality thought that this sounded like a good idea. A real morale booster for the Uberboss to “recognize” the line employees’ ability to stay alive and employed for another year while reminding them “how good they have it.” Yep. That’s the ticket!
When you combine the condescension with the truly monumental management failures we’ve see on a daily basis, it’s really more like a letter of depreciation than anything else. If you really want to congratulate me, how about a “59 minutes” and letting me head home early to celebrate my “big day” in the company of people who actually give a rat’s ass. That I’d appreciate.
But your letter? You can go ahead stuff that in your inbox.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Broken…
I get to the office early most mornings. It’s usually a good chance to catch up before everyone else starts wandering in. One of the challenges is that pretty much no one with any passing relationship to authority is around in the event an employee is feeling lonely and wants to talk. So more often than not, I’m the lucky manager who gets the early morning conversations. This morning was one of those times.
Jeff: Good Morning *seeing “employee” walking over to my desk*
Employee: My computer works now, but none of my files are there. I think it’s broken. *looking at me plaintively*
Jeff: Ummm… Did you call IT?
Employee: Uh. No. I thought you’d know how to fix it. They got it working yesterday but now my files are gone.
Jeff: So you want me to fix something they broke yesterday?
Employee: *looking at me blankly*
Jeff: You’d better call IT since they know what they did to it yesterday.
Employee: They won’t be in for another 20 minutes.
Jeff: Patience is a virtue, I’m told.
I’m not the friggin’ laptop whisperer over here. Put in your help request and wait like everyone else does. My using illicit passwords to go in and tinker around with your settings is pretty much guaranteed to only cause more trouble. If not more trouble for you, then certainly more trouble for me… and that’s a no go at this station.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
It’s not a ditto machine…
Those members of the workforce in a certain age bracket will remember the vaguely chemical smell of the still warm purple inked pages that use to define the phrase “homework assignment.” I can say with relative certainty that the $35,000 copier you are currently trying to crank start is not a “ditto machine” no matter what you say.
And since we’re in the general area of on the topic of printing, you don’t really have to stand there and manually insert the “funny” legal sized paper, while asking someone else to hit the print button on your computer. There’s a whole tray of it already there in the machine for you. If you really want to be fancy, you could even click the little checkbox on the print settings popup and print “duplex” copies rather than standing there and trying to print front and back manually.
Look, this is the sort of thing that might be fun to watch the first time, but after that, it’s hard to watch the same fail happening over, and over, and over… and over. You’re going to have to take my word on this, but learning how to use the big scary copier, is going to be good for you in the long run. Face your fear and do it anyway!
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Draft…
In my line of work, the written word is pretty much our stock-in-trade. Now there are always going to be good writers and bad writers, but all I really expect from anyone is the ability to be an average writer. It’s technical documentation and policy, I don’t need James Michener or Stephen King here. 100 times out of 100, what I’m looking for is a solid draft of whatever document I asked requested. What I don’t need is someone asking every 30 seconds if this or that sentence structure was better or if “and” was preferable to “or”. You’re asking these things without giving me context… and that makes the questions seem random and chaotic rather than just annoying.
I’m trying to go easy because I fully understand that it takes a bit of time to really get how things are supposed to flow. That’s fine. But when I ask for a draft, that’s really all I need. I’ll make the editorial decisions and rearrange sentence structure on the fly. That’s why they pay me the not-as-big-bucks as I’d make in the private sector.
Editorial Note: This is the first in a series of previously unpublished blog’s appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
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