Variations on a theme…

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The week to date has been all about variations on a theme. Unfortunately, the theme of the week has been “everything is going to turn to a giant steaming pile of shit in your hands.” Today’s example comes in the form of a not inconsequential event in the life of a typical big government organization. It’s not uncommon to start planning for something like this many months in advance. HellBy the time you get down to the few days before the thing actually kicks off, you should mostly be down to making sure the details are covered.

What you shouldn’t be doing three days before the big show is deciding that while the plan to do everything indoors has been well and good for the last two months, what we really should do is throw most of those plans over the side and instead plan on doing it outside, open to the weather, and subject to whatever nature decides to throw at you that day. That’s a fine enough approach if you’ve had months to do all the extra planning that goes into having an outdoor event, but it rarely leads to good things when it’s sprung on you with way, way less than a week to go. What you end up with under those circumstances is a Frankenstein’s monster tossed together with whatever parts and pieces you’re able to get your hands on without prior notice. Those pieces are generally not ideal.

So, we spent most of the day today inventing Plan B as we implemented it, making up details up as we went along, and having a vague hope that it all might hold together just long enough to get through the next few days. If history is any guide, the wheels will come flying off sometime late Friday afternoon, so there’s that on the horizon. It would certainly be in keeping with the week’s theme.

The only up side that I can see is that by this time next week it’s all going to be over no matter how badly we botch the implementation. Many years ago, one of my fellow teachers was fond of saying “the important part is setting your goals low and achieving them.” If his advice doesn’t apply here, it doesn’t apply anywhere.

Should have known…

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I should have known what kind of day it was going to be when I woke up 20 minutes before the 5AM alarm – too early to be awake, even by my standards, but not nearly enough time to make going back to sleep a worthwhile endeavor. I should have known then that it was a sign to pick up the phone, make a call, and burn off a sick day. But instead I pressed on with the morning routine.

The day fired one last warning shot across my bow when I got to the office and was met with a message that someone had sent me what they thought was a very important email and they needed to talk to me about its contents immediately (or when they got in at 8:30, whichever came first). Of course the problem there was they might have sent the email, but as we all know communication only happens when information is transferred between the sender and the receiver. Whatever it was their very important email said, it had been lost in transition from their mailbox to mine. As a rule I try not to comment on documents I haven’t had a chance to read, so the 8:30 phone call was, shall we say, a bit brief. I really, really should have pulled the plug at that point and called it a day.

Instead, in the middle of trying to prepare for a meeting (with the person whose email finally showed up around 9:00), I was then shanghaied into seat filler duty for 75 minutes. That led into a 30 minute pause before the next hour long meeting, which led to 20 minutes of frantic post-meeting emailing, which begat the next 75 minute long meeting. By now it’s 2:30 and that’s when I finally sat down to shove a sandwich and a few handfuls of crackers into my face today. That may be perfectly reasonable for some people, but tends to be a little late when your official day started at 7:30 and you’re legally obligated to leave the premises at 4:00.

I at least got to leave on time this afternoon. As I understand it “on time” was just a few minutes ahead of the last violent shitstorm of the day. I missed getting covered in that one by the skin of my teeth. Unfortunately, now I know what’s sitting there waiting for me when I wander in tomorrow. I was definitely a happier human being before I knew what to expect, but I’ve been at this game long enough that I should have known better than to have any expectations at all.

Expectations. That’s where the day really started skidding off the rails. Yeah, I really should have known better.

Reaction…

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I consider myself lucky to rarely be afflicted with the trouble some people seem to have when it comes to making decisions. I might not always make the “right” decision, but I’ll make one on the fly if for no other reason than even a wrong decision feels more productive than dithering back and forth about what to do. I’m a great many things (some of them even good), but a ditherer I am not.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t see that as a weakness, but the problem comes when I find myself in a position of having too many moving parts demanding attention at once. That leads me to making reactionary decisions about everything. Jumping from one issue to the next with no real rhyme or reason behind it is not exactly the recipe for great decision making. It is, however, the recipe for making a metric shitload of otherwise easily avoidable mistakes. Easily avoidable mistakes make me sad.

I’m not asking for an endless buffet of free time, but a few minutes now and then to evaluate, plan, and analyze would go a long way towards letting me churn out a product that’s not halfway embarrassing. Absent the time to do the required leg work, I’d advise everyone to go ahead and get ready for a lot of checking off whatever box needs checked without giving any actual thought to how any of it relates to the bigger picture. Look, I’m fine playing it that way, as long as we’re all willing to concede that running half blind from reaction to reaction is a piss poor way of getting anything done. Really, I just want to make sure I’m on the record as having said that here in print.

The draft…

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SSSI was scrolling through Twitter last night when I ran across a tweet from someone I follow commenting on watching the draft on television… Which my brain immediately processed as The Draft. The one in which numbers are assigned and men between 18-26 are inducted into the military. The draft that was never part of my personal life experience as it ended years before I was born. Rather than look for a some kind of draft that a normal person might be expected to watch in 2014, my brain rolled low def news footage from the early 1970s.

Apparently, the tweet in question had something to do with the National Football League. Who knew?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Last minute. It’s safe to say that we all know my feelings about almost every meeting I’ve ever sat through. For those who don’t, I generally find them to be enormous time-sucks from which there is no hope of escape. They’re the black hole of the “professional work environment” and I’m all for canceling them as often as possible. All that I ask is that when they are cancelled, the meeting organizer should probably give a fellow enough notice so that he doesn’t walk halfway across the county to find himself turned away at the door. Giving sufficient notice of changed plans is just good form, really. Although I’m glad to have the unscheduled free time in the middle of my calendar and all, a few minutes’ notice would by me have been appreciated.

2. Contempt of Congress. The fact that the House of Representatives has the unmitigated audacity to hold anyone in Contempt of Congress for any reason whatsoever is simply stunning. Now I think Lois Lerner and the IRS were probably up to some dirty tricks – one doesn’t tend to invoke the 5th Amendment when there are no skeletons lurking about – but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t consider Congress a particularly honest broker when it comes to issues of fact. The truth is, they’d probably have to level charges at most of the country if they wanted to root out everyone who currently holds Congress in contempt. God knows I find them the most contemptible band of thieves and charlatans currently not serving time in prison.

3. Tradition. The older I get, the worse “because it’s tradition” sounds as a justification for doing anything. I was always under the impression that most people become more traditional as they get older. I seem to be veering in the opposite direction. I’m never going to be a sandal-wearing hippy, but I do seem to take increasing amounts of joy from rousing rabble as often as possible. Maybe it’s just my inner cynic finding his voice and preparing for a long career as a grumpy old sonofabitch… but if you can’t give me a better reason to do something that “it’s tradition,” I’m afraid I’m probably going to invite you to bugger off at the first available opportunity.

A conference by any other name…

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Given the “constrained fiscal environment” and fuss made over the excesses at any number of government sponsored conferences over the last four years, the very word “Conference” has been formally stricken from official usage. No matter what you’re doing, no matter how much it smells, looks, and acts like a conference you can never, ever call it that for fear of bringing down the wrath of the anointed – and even worse, the attention of the Washington Post.

Despite the official prohibition against staging (and largely against even attending) conferences, there sure are a hell of a lot of people fully engaged in planning for and attending workshops, councils, boards, reviews, forums, and very large group meetings. Under other circumstances, they’d be called conferences and no one would bat an eyelash, but great pains are taken to make sure they’re called anything but what they are.

Now, I’m just a cog in this great machine, but when I see our most senior leaders sitting before Congress begging for permission to cut pay and benefits while they’re still allowing grip and grin sessions and a hundred other boondoggles to happen with a nod and a wink, well, you can rack up mine as a vote of no confidence. There’s plenty of waste in this vast bureaucracy… and most of those on the inside would be happy to point it out if anyone were going to take a serious swing at eliminating it. But while we’re still in the business of wasting time and money on conferences by any other name, citing payroll as a major cost driver just doesn’t pass the common sense test.

Thank God we apparently never grade that test.

Editorial blues…

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I’m editing. That is all. As essential as I know it is to putting out a good, readable product, it’s the part that I hate the most. I know it’s at the very center of the creative process, but there’s something about recovering the same ground two, five, a dozen times that, to me, makes it feel like the most non-productive thing I could spend my time doing.

Add to my generalized hatred of editing the fact that at the moment, I’m trying to do it on a beautiful, blue-skyed, spring day and I hope you can start to see why at this very moment, my heart just isn’t in it. Not to take anything away from the work in progress, but on days like this sitting inside and doing the work is damned hard. I know it’s only going to get harder as the weather gets nicer, though. It’s going to get harder right up to the point I realize it’s 93 degrees and I’m sweating my balls off. Then there’s no place I’ll rather be than in front of the air conditioner getting some long overdue work done.

In this part of the country there isn’t always a long time between frozen tundra and baking asphalt. I’m doing my best to keep the momentum up, but I’m giving up all promises not to get distracted for these few weeks while the weather is nice enough to enjoy.

I have no idea…

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Most days I muddle through with one eye on the news, social media, and a few choice blogs just to keep a grip on what’s going on in the world. The news makes me crazy, but the only thing worse is not having a clue what’s happening in the world. On days like today, though, I emerge at the close of business like a mole – eyes squinted, vaguely confused look on my face, and a general confusion about the world that everyone else has been inhabiting. The days when I’m tethered to PowerPoint, email, and God help me, to meetings are really the bane of life in Cube City. I’m not saying I expect vast swaths of free time in the middle of the day, but a few minutes now and then to come up for air might be nice.

Worst of all, of course, is that blogging on near-daily basis means I burn through a lot of ideas in a very small amount of time. I rely on the news of the day and unfortunate dealings with other people as a primary source. When neither of those two things happens, it means the well runs dry pretty damned quick. That’s how you end up getting a post about not having any idea what’s going on in the world instead of one about what is actually happening. It’s a small matter of semantics, but it makes a big difference.

So there you have it. The Russians could have overrun all of Ukraine and we could have made first contact with an alien species all at the same time and I’d not have a single clue any of it was happening. In some ways I’m probably better off for it… but posts complaining about not having anything to post about will only cary me so far. Eventually, I suspect someone is going to want some actual fresh commentary and content around here. Or maybe not. The interwebs are a fickle place.

For the grads…

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With graduation just around the corner, I’m going to take this Sunday morning opportunity to plug what I think is the essential gift for each and every one of them. And what better gift could you give the graduate in your life than their very own copy of Nobody Told Me: The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees? It’s the gift that says “I care about your future.”

Sure, I know this probably seems self serving, but do you really want your graduate to walk out into the professional world starry-eyed and unsuspecting of the sheer volume of ridiculous shit that’s awaiting them at every turn? Yeah. I didn’t think so. This is the field guide that you and I didn’t receive. We had to learn these little life lessons the hard way. Why not let the next generation benefit from our hard won lessons learned?

So that’s my pitch this morning. Click over to Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords and show that special person in your life that you really do care about their future. You do care, don’t you?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Business Hours. If your posted hours of operation are 10AM-5PM and I pull into your parking lot at 4:30 on a beautiful sunny Thursday afternoon and find your lights off and door locked, there’s a fair chance that I’m going to drive down the street to the next best alternative and give them my money. I totally understand that you’re a small business and sometimes things come up, but at least once in every four stops, I pull in to find you’re not open. I like you. I like doing business in the community when I can. But my ability to do that depends largely on it being convenient. No matter how much I like you, I’m not making three trips to your shop when I can order from a major online retailer and just have the damned item sitting on my doorstep tomorrow. You might be the only game in this two stoplight town, but you’re not the only game on the planet. You’d have at least one more satisfied customer if you behaved accordingly.

2. Imaginary Saturday. I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off this morning. In the fog between being asleep and being awake, I managed to convince myself that today was actually Saturday. As many of you may have notice, it wasn’t. Now that I think back on it that didn’t so much annoy me as it pissed me off beyond the level that could be strictly considered reasonable.

3. Heroes of Labour. This week, the president of the Russian Federation handed out Soviet era awards during a revived May Day rally in Red Square. I’m as big a fan of the “good old days” as anyone, but I’m starting to wonder if anyone in the wheelhouse is paying any damned attention to what’s actually happening in Russia. Look, I know raising a generation of Middle East experts has left us a little thin on Cold War know how, but surely there are a few crusty old guys in the belly of the Pentagon who we can dust off to give us a read on the situation. I’m not saying it’s time to re-garrison Germany, but I do wish we were paying just a bit more attention to what’s banging around that part of the world.