Category Archives: work

Doing it on webcam…

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I work for a guy who likes to think his time as a system administrator in the late 1990s qualifies him as an authority on issues of office technology. If those of us with a passing awareness of tech, this is a very bad situation. It means we’re in a position of being forced to agree with ideas and recommendations that are not only expensive, but also doomed to sink into the befuddled mire of advanced middle-age angst over technology that is one of the defining characteristics of our “leadership cadre.”

Two years ago, we were instructed to buy two dozen webcams and run a test with our agency’s behind-the-firewall proprietary knockoff version of Skype. The test was, as I described it at the time, less than successful and we recommended shelving the project. Most of our test bunnies couldn’t figure out how to plug in their cameras and of the ones that did, only a handful managed to actually use them. I’m pretty sure they just ate the microphones we sent them. To be fair, I should point out that this failure wasn’t completely the fault of the doddering soon-to-be retirees. The network infrastructure in our building was something less than robust enough to handle the “load” of several simultaneous streaming audio/video connections. It was sort of fun to say something, run to the office across the hall and see yourself “in real time,” but we decided that wasn’t going to be a real plus-up to our collective productivity. After the abysmal initial test, I assumed the idea was left to die quietly in desk drawers and file cabinets around the country. As is so often the case, I was wrong.

I discovered last week that we ordered 50 more webcams to be issued to all of our field offices to “improve communication” and “facilitate meeting online,” since the organization doesn’t have money for our traditional cross-country boondoggles these days. Now, if I had even the slightest notion that any of these devices was actually going to be used, I’m all for outfitting every computer in the office. It would be great to have one official feature on my work computer that I’ve been using for free from Google for years. My concern is only that we already find it nearly impossible to get our “leaders” to pick up the 100 year old pice of tech that’s already on their desk and talk to one another or call in for a teleconference. I have no idea what makes us think we’ll be able to get them to use “magic” to talk across the intertubes?

Then again, it might be fun to watch them try.

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.

Master of PowerPoint…

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In my agency, if you can open a PowerPoint presentation, change the master background, and really do anything more than straight bulleted text, you’re designated a PowerPoint Ranger and subject to 24-hour on call status for emergency slide making. Like today. When the boss realized an hour before a meeting that’s been on the schedule for six weeks that he hadn’t made any slides. Of course it’s not an official meeting if there are no slides, so slides we must have.

Here’s a snippet of conversation the followed the boss’ panicked rush to my desk:

A COLLEAGUE *sarcastically*: Did he just ask you for a batch of slides from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and our agency’s role in the invasion of Normandy?

ME: Pretty much, yes.

It’s PowerPoint. We’re not building nuclear-effing-weapons here (seriously, we’re not). Tell me, please, please tell me that I’m not the only person in the building who can consolidate 40 slides built for six different meetings over a period of 18 months into a 10 slide set, set them on a light blue background, add animation, embed video, and link documents that are available on our archive drive to open when you click the key word? Oh. Wait. Apparently I am.

I earned my undergraduate degree with honors. I made a 3.6 in my MBA program while working full time. I can’t tell you how glad to see six years of college education, ten years of professional experience and generous pay and benefits package being put to good use.

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.

Reading is Fundamental…

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In theory, I work with responsible adults who have the ability to both read and understand the English language. The majority have an undergraduate degree and many have at least one master’s degree. Therefore, you’d think it would be easy enough to follow a set of directions that said simply:

Review the attached documents and provide your written feedback via email to Mr. Random Bureaucrat at random.bureaucrat@bigagency.gov not later than 10:00 AM.

Of course, what actually happens is you get flooded with messages that say things like “I didn’t like the way things were formatted, so I changed the layout and increased the font because I can’t see so good. Oh, and I changed some of the numbers because I don’t think they were right.” Or someone wanders to your cube wanting you to take dictation about the 37.25 things they want to change. Or someone sends in their changes at 4:32 PM and is then offended when you don’t drop everything, immediately recall the data that had been sent up the chain of command at noon and make their “critical” changes.

Look jerkwater, we spent three months crunching the numbers you sent us. Don’t blame the analysis because you don’t like how things turned out. And definitely don’t blame the analyst when you want to send in “updated” data six hours after the absolute last deadline for changes has passed.

For the love of God and all things good, right, and holy, spare us all the embarrassment of how badly it must suck to be you and read the instructions next time.

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.

Brave new world…

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In countless briefings, charts, and memos, my agency uses the standard “traffic light” metric to express whether a particular project was operating within tolerance. Green was good to go. Amber signals that there is a problem. Red, the most dreaded status, indicates that the project has come off the rails. The phrase “apathy is green” began as an offhand remark to a colleague that my level of disinterest had maxed out for the day. As my career progressed, that simple phrase came to identify more and more closely with how I feel every day pulling into the parking lot in the dark hours of the morning. My level apathy is most assuredly green – top of the scale. My cup-o-apathy runneth over, as it were.

I’ve been blogging for a long time now and I noticed that over time the posts came back to the issues I was dealing with at the office. I’d write out a diatribe only to realize that while posting it would be cathartic, I wasn’t quite willing to commit career suicide to get things off my chest. Many of those old posts got deleted before I ever finished writing them, a few of them got saved, and the ones that did get published were so cut down and vague that they bore little resemblance to the facts of the matter. Launching this new blog, removed from personal connections, gives me a fresh opportunity to approach these topics

In the tradition of Office Space and Dilbert, I intend to use this space as a forum to tell tales from the workplace. For those, like me, who dwell day to day in a cubicle, I can only assume that many of the people and situations I intend to describe will sound familiar to you. For the happy few who live beyond the cube farm, perhaps all I can offer is an insight into life as a cog in the great bureaucracy. Like any writer, I welcome your feedback, your criticism, and your participation.

I am a bureaucrat. These are my experiences. Thanks for reading along.

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.

Mr. Freeze…

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It snowed in West Tennessee today, but that’s not exactly the freeze that is troubling me at the moment. It seems that news of my imminent departure for Pennsylvania was broken prematurely. Though not quite ready to retract the story, I’m moving it from the “cautiously optimistic” column to the “possible” category. It seems that in the interests of driving down operating expenses, Uncle has imposed a 30-day hiring freeze for civilian positions with the Department of the Army. Tacking that 30 days onto the 20 I had already waited to get the official offer and I can’t in good conscience rely on seeing a positive outcome. I suspect the human resources policy geniuses deep in the bowels of the Pentagon are using this 30-day hiring holiday to devise even more diabolical procedures that will make hiring and transfers even more complicated, cumbersome, and time consuming than they already are. None of this bodes well for a speedy exodus from the current unpleasantness. My expectations of enjoying springtime in Pennsylvania are fading rapidly.

This is why I’m generally happier when I’m in full pessimist mode – disappointments there don’t come as a surprise. They’re just the normal state of affairs and when things did go right, it’s an occasional pleasant surprise. I don’t know that I could ever be a real optimist. I couldn’t tolerate being so regularly disappointed when things go to hell in a handcart. At this point I’m driving on purely because I trust absolutely in my own abilities and the simple fact another six months of uncertainty is better than the absolute certainty of being stuck where I am. Just call me Mr. Freeze.

Terms…

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It’s possible that I’m starting to come to terms with living in a state of perpetual uncertainty. Maybe there’s a two week maximum on anxiety of this sort. After taking counsel in a dear friend last night, I’m reminded that getting things done the Army way can take much, much longer than should be reasonably expected. It’s not so much that I don’t care as it is that I’ve seemed to move beyond the point where fretting about it is worth the effort. It’s really an occasion where all there is to be done is lie back and think of England. The alternative is to pick up the phone and start ranting like a lunatic at the guy I’m hoping to work for at some point in the near future. That would probably be the operative definition of a situation other than good at this point. So, until further notice, I wait… and wait… and wait. At some point even the bureaucracy has to grind its way into an actual decision, right?

And holding…

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Tuesday will make two weeks that I’ve been sitting on the edge of my seat. No one knows that the gears of the bureaucracy grind slowly better than I do, but seriously all I’m waiting for is one simple phone call. I get that there is a laundry list of things that has to get done before making that call, but two weeks doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of time to get those widgets lined up. If I weren’t so stoked at the idea of bringing an end to my long mid-southern exile, I’d probably have more patience with the process. As it is, I’m feeling a bit like a 16 year old girl waiting to get asked to the prom. Honest. I sit at my desk waiting for the little blue light to flash. Or more often, obsess over why it’s not flashing.

I’m really, really ready to get this waiting part of the exercise over with. Every day, I wake up and grab on to the idea that today will be the day. I have to. Hope in getting that call is just about the only thing keeping me from climbing a nice belltower somewhere.

Purgatory…

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No question about it, I’ve been slacking when it comes to posting. It’s been a bit of a week. I know that I have a formal job offer from a command in Pennsylvania that will remain nameless for now, but at the moment, I’m stuck in a state of suspended animation… somewhere between leaving the old job and arriving at the new one. Since I haven’t gotten the “official” offer yet, there’s really not much to do besides the pre-pre-planning kind of things; looking at the big picture what’s and hows of a cross-continental move. It’s too early yet to even start thinking about specifics like dates or the mechanics behind the move would work. That’s basically the long version of saying I’m effectively in a state of human resource-induced purgatory.

I’ve done this a few times now and know that when the clock starts running, things are going to start happening very quickly. Lots of decisions are going to be made in haste and things won’t slow down for 45-60 days. So yeah, there’s a pretty narrow lane of things I can do now to try getting ready. I’ve basically stopped buying groceries and started burning through whatever I have stocked in the freezer and pantry. Making good progress there. This morning I packed up the guest bedroom and bathroom. Basically everything in those two rooms is ready to be put on a truck. Maybe most important, I’ve started filling a Rubbermaid tub with the wires, cables, and accessories I’ll need to set up a TV and a wireless network whenever I get where I’m going. I figure as long as I have those, I can work out the rest on the other end.

The next step is to strip off, wrap, and pack all the nicknacks in the living room and office. Then there’s the great boxing of the books. That one always takes a while. Once that’s finished, we’re down to the kitchen and bedroom. Those I’ll hold off on until the last minute. Having one room that isn’t piled to the rafters with boxes seems to help preserve at least a touch of sanity. The truth is, I have no idea how long it’s going to take to to get the formal offer in hand and it’s entirely possible that I’m jumping the gun by a factor of weeks here – but the boxes strewn around the house and an email from Pennsylvania are currently the only real, tangible sign that I’m escaping from Memphis and the slow motion train wreck that is the office here. If it sounds like I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to paranoid, there’s probably a good reason for that. This is the government and until the ink is dry on the paperwork, nearly anything can happen… and I’m terrified that if I breath wrong, the wheels could fall off. Sure, the probability of success is well over 99%, but the 99% is never what keeps you up at night. I’m ready to get this show on the road and every day that does by makes me a little more jumpy, even though I know it’s perfectly normal. Fun stuff, right?

Interview with a Logistician…

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To date, I’ve cast 119 resumes into the great wind that is the Army’s civilian personnel system. When you’re dealing with that kind of volume, it’s impossible to tailor each one to a specific job opening. Your best hope is that if you through enough of them against the wall, maybe, somehow, some of them will start to stick. It seems that I’m at least starting to fall into that category now – where at least a few of those resumes have found their way in front of people who are actually doing the hiring.

Yesterday was the first job I’ve interviewed for since 2002. In the interest of not jinxing myself too badly, I’m won’t get into specifics about what or where, other than to say that I’m cautiously optimistic and seem to have passed through the first round enroute to a follow-on discussion with the potential uberboss. In theory, that should take place sometime before the end of this week. After that, it takes however long it takes for the selection and notification process to work its way through to the end. It’s not generally something that happens with great rapidity.

Assuming for a moment that I actually get an offer, a whole series of questions then immediately come into play – Am I willing to sacrifice grade for more favorable geography and will doing so irreparably damage my career? Can I sustain financing a condo in Maryland, a house in Tennessee, and another place to call home all at the same time? Maybe more troubling is the nagging fear that if I jump at the first offer, I’m closing the door on a more lucrative offer at some point in the future or the even more nagging fear that the next offer could be another six months in coming. It’s the kind of decision that’s easy in theory, but in practice, well, becomes fraught with any number of potential issues.

There’s no call to worry about any of those just yet, though. For now, I’ll be happy that I at least got one opportunity to make my case. What happens next is, mostly, out of my hands – but you can bet I’ll be looking to send out resume number 120 first thing tomorrow morning.

The new normal…

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Today was the first day back at the office after a long break. Nothing abnormal about that. Happens the first week of every year. What caught me unprepared was how that little part of the world changed while I was paying attention to other things.

The last of my old school mentors retired. My right arm has moved on to learn how to tend a flock. Another is taking the long way around to chase a dream in Colorado. Add that to the ones who have made their escape already and I look around and barely recognize the place. These were the people who made a bad situation tolerable… And sometimes even fun. Lord knows I can’t begrudge them their good fortune, but Millington is going to be a much less interesting place in 2011.

I guess that’s the new normal. Damned nostalgia.