Tag Archives: comprehension

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Management. I spent the better part of a year beating on AFGE 1904 when they were standing between me and a perfectly acceptable new telework agreement. Don’t think for a minute that I won’t give management the same treatment now that they’re the ones dragging their feet. The new policy was signed and went into force on August 4th. We waited while management called a huddle on the 8th and then dropped our updated packets that afternoon… to be told to wait, hold up, management still has some details to work out. Here we are two weeks later with no word on when or if our little office might decide to comply with the approved organization-wide policy… or any explanation for what’s actually holding up the works this time. Management had almost a year of knowing 95% of what was going to be in this new and improved policy, but from where I’m sitting, it appears to have taken them entirely by surprise and without any plan for how it might work when they were told to execute. File that under disappointing, but not in any way surprising. Until they get around to doing the right thing, I’ll continue to take this and every other opportunity to poke the bear.

2. Rice cooker. I’ve been a long time fan of what is commonly called whole grain – white rice, brown rice, barley, oats. It features on the menu a fair number of times a month – even if only to serve as a bed to sop up whatever sauce comes along with the meal. It’s become more prevalent recently… and I finally gave in and purchased a dedicated rice cooker after many years of grousing that a stand alone machine for rice was just an appliance on the kitchen counter that I didn’t need because doing things on the stove top was perfectly fine. It turns out I was absolutely wrong. That stupid rice cooker is a game changer. I’m both annoyed that I was wrong and that it took me literal years to find that out.

3. Failure to read and comprehend. For the last five or so years, whenever I have been in the office, one of my “key duties” has been to push the button to open the door into our office area. To date, I’ve pushed the button approximately 770 times. The damned bell that rings when someone wants into the area is the kind of obnoxious that you end up occasionally hearing it in your sleep. The good news is that (sometimes) procedures change. For instance, we’re no longer supposed to push the button when people want into the room. Now there’s a much more convoluted procedure they need to go through that doesn’t involve a bell in any way. We sent out a memo… and even put up a large sign, neither of which anyone seems to have read, because now we just have a vestibule full of people grousing about not being allowed inside. Expecting anyone to read and follow directions is probably a bridge too far, so I expect we’ll be back to being glorified doormen before long at all. Whatever. It would just be nice, though, if people occasionally did a little reading for comprehension.

Editorial Note: We were, in fact, back to being glorified doormen less than 24 hours after I wrote up this week’s third annoyance. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 28 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 28 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Reading. Hey, it’s fundamental! I don’t mean that people need to sit down and read 1000-page doorstops (though I suspect life would be altogether better if they did). There are very few things that agitate the living shit out of me more, especially this time of year, than people who have been given all the pertinent information – via email, or slides, or instant messenger – but who come back a day or a week later and ask the same goddamned question. Asked and answered, your honor. Read the SITREP. Read the briefing. Read the email. I promise the answers you seek are already in there. It has the added benefit of not swamping me in endless discussions of things that should already be common knowledge.

3. Leakers. The press likes to call them “leakers.” It’s polite. It’s inoffensive. By contrast, I prefer to think of them as weak-minded, cowardly treason dogs. Delivering up classified documents to the media or the internet or your very best friend in the world is an act of treason. Full stop. They took an oath, the same one I did, to “support and defend.” If there are issues, there are certainly avenues we can all avail ourselves of to bring them to light. In the last extreme, we are entitled to resign in protest and ring public alarm bells. What a leaker, a traitorous bastard, does, is substitute his or her wisdom for that of everyone else – taking it upon themselves to be the arbiter of what should and shouldn’t be in the public domain. In doing so they betray their nation and worse, they betray their oath. They’re worthy of nothing but our scorn and the deepest, darkest hole the US Bureau of Prisons or United States Disciplinary Barracks has to offer.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The White House Press Office. I’ve never been a public affairs officer. I haven’t even pretended to be on at the behest of our wealthy uncle. Still, in my bones I know that setting up my principle with over a dozen phone interviews with a journalist who hates his living guts is probably not going to end well even if my guy is the most articulate bastard to ever give on the record remarks. You can make what you will of the president’s recorded statements, but whatever staff puke from the press office decided an interview series with Bob Woodward was a good idea gives staff officers a bad name… and that’s saying something.

2. Questions. Look, if there’s a point of contact listed and it’s not me, there’s really absolutely nothing I’m going to be able to tell you about whatever topic is on your mind. Maybe you should just go ahead and read to the end of the message and send your question to the person who’s actually running that program. You still might not get a good answer but it will be miles better than anything I’ll send you… and even if it wasn’t, going direct to that person would have kept you from making me take the time to drop you back in the proper lane. We all win, when you read the goddamned memo.

3. Risk. People, as a group, do a really shitty job of assessing risk. The way we respond to natural disasters like fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes seem to bear that out. For as long as I can remember, summer in the west has been “fire season.” It’s also “hurricane season” along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In the long history of humanity, fire has scorched the western sections of the North American continent. Water has always run downhill, occasionally turning normally babbling brooks in the valley bottom into torrential rivers sweeping all before them. Every time a fire or a flood or a hurricane hit, we collectively look around shocked that such a thing could happen. Except none of us should be shocked at all. We built our communities in dry areas historically prone to fire, or we built them along the coasts or in bucolic valleys that are prone to flooding. We built there because the scenery was nice or because there were local jobs – but almost never because the area represented a relatively low risk to life, health, and safety. As soon as the smoke clears or the water recedes, we’ll go right back to building up the same areas and then being “surprised” the next time the worst happens… because we do an amazingly shity job of assessing risk.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Things I already did. If it’s three weeks after you asked me to do something and you’re feeling the temptation to ask where it is and why it’s late, that’s probably a good place to slow down and check yourself. Sort your inbox by name. Find mine. Then look very closely through the ones that are unread. Based on my observation, that will constitute most of them. Somewhere in that stack of unread messages, perhaps time stamped 37 minutes after your original request to me, you will find the information you seek. The lesson here is you’ve asked me for something, told me when you need it, and I’m not suffering from a debilitating illness of some sort, you’ll have it on time and to standard. The fact that you just can’t find it feels like less of my problem.

2. Surprise. The fact that any of the gods on Olympus are surprised that they can’t seem to find anyone interested in started their day at 10am and sticking around the office until 6PM or later is just staggering. There’s just no amount of cajoling that will ever make me think that’s a cherry schedule. Most of the rest of us just want to get the day started and ended as quickly as possible. I know for those who have climbed the heights there’s no greater calling than whatever petty bullshit is going on inside the office walls at 6:30 at night, but for the rest of us that’s the part of the day where actual life happens.

3. Safe spaces. As best I can tell, we’re really only entitled to one “safe space.” That space would be our own home. See, once I’m outside the kingdom that I am able to rule with an iron fist, I’m stuck with observing most of the social niceties, not telling people what idiots they are, and more or less accepting that there are ideas other than my own which may be valid. Home, my safe space, however, is where I keep my books and my writing and my fuzzy (and scaled) critters. It’s a space protected by lights and alarms and powder and lead. It’s where I can emote to my heart’s content without expecting my employer, school, or local businesses to accommodate my “need” to sit down and have a good cry.