Tag Archives: employee

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Driver’s Ed. Was I seriously the only person why learned anything from Driver’s Education when I took it way back in caveman days? The way I understand it, when you come to a controlled intersection in which the traffic light is out (not functioning at all), that intersection is treated as a 4-way stop. Given the car behind me that was doing a good job of trying to crawl into the engine through my tailpipe and the guy in the next lane who fishtailed two feet into my lane, apparently I’m the only one who remembers that little tidbit. I’m assuming the rules are the same on a road two lanes in each direction divided by a median as they are for any “normal” four lane intersection. If I’m wrong and the vehicles on said divided highway in fact have uncontested right-of-way, then consider this my apology for being so badly informed. Still, I’m pretty sure I’m right and other people are morons.

2. Sensing sessions. Yeah, look, I’ve sat through at least of dozen of these in a career that’s lasted as many years. The thing about “sensing sessions” is that you bitch and complain to someone who can’t do anything about your problems, they write it up in a nice report and then nothing happens. They might give the barest of illusions that someone is trying to do something but the reality is they’re about as useful as the portholes on a ’77 Continental.

3. The telephone. This month we’re apparently cracking down on unauthorized, unofficial phone calls. There’s a stiffly worded group chastisement email and a spreadsheet and everything to damn our collective useless hides. As usual, instead of singling out the perpetrators, which would be easy enough to do, we prefer the passive aggressive approach of making sweeping general announcements and indicting everyone across the board. Damn me, but doesn’t it feel good to be a trusted professional.

It ain’t Disney…

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I generally get to work about 20 minutes before my day technically starts. Partly it’s because I’m hopelessly committed to arriving everywhere precisely “on time” and partly it’s because I generally need ten minutes to mentally prepare for the long walk across the parking lot and getting the day started. Most days this adds up to ten or fifteen minutes of time just sitting in the truck watching the world around me.

Sure, technically I’m sitting in the parking lot watching people, but I’m not doing it in a creeper-stalky kind of way. I’m really just noticing people pass by and making observations – like who can’t park worth a tinker’s damn, who forgets something on the roof of their car three mornings a week, and who else is just sitting there trying to summon the courage to face the day.

The thing I notice most often, the thing that is so common as to be nearly universal – is that almost no one is smiling. No one has a spring in their step. Nearly everyone looks like their being led to the gallows. They’re plodding their way to the front door like they expect someone to shank their puppy once they get inside.

Clearly this place ain’t Disney World… and I can see plainly why they never bothered to do another “employee viewpoints” survey to see if that morale problem had turned around. There’s really not much need for a survey when the answer is written all over everyone’s face.

Not for me…

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In my long and storied career, I’ve learned one singularly important lesson about leadership and management:

I don’t want to be a supervisor.

Sure, most of these “leadership” lists include many, many wonderful ideas, but mine is simplicity itself. It’s honed by my short stint as a working supervisor and many occasional reminders from being dumped temporarily back into the job in an “acting” capacity. With a third of a career at my back, one of the few things I can say with absolute certainty is that I have no interest in supervising other people’s work. It’s unappealing in an almost visceral level. The way some people react to seeing a snake – that’s basically the way I react to even the suggestion that I should be a supervisor.

There are some very good reasons why people want to get into supervision – helping to set the agenda, mentoring new employees or future leaders, or exercising broader responsibilities. What I know about myself is none of those aspects of the job motivates me. I like getting an assignment, churning through it, and then moving on to the next thing. I’d much rather be turning the proverbial wrench than be the one making sure all the wrenches are being turned.

I’ve got the education and training to do the job. It’s not a lack of technical ability. What it is, however, is a fundamental lack of desire. If there’s any bit of accrued wisdom I would impart to the next generation of line employees, it’s to be damned good and sure being a supervisor is what you want to spend your time doing before you let anyone saddle you with the job. As much as you think you’re going to spend your days leading the office into a brave new world, what you’re really going to be doing is signing leave requests, approving timesheets, soothing ruffled feathers, running interference between your own bosses and the people you supervise, and generally dealing with three hours of administrative minutia for every hour you get to spend doing the “real” job you thought you’d signed on to do.

Some people excel at it. They have a natural affinity for the work. Every time the dark shade of that past life passes over me, I’m reminded of why it’s not for everyone… and especially why it’s not for me.

Value added…

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About six times today I heard the phrase “valued added.” Each and every time I heard it, I wanted to punch a baby in the throat. Look, maybe I should care about “demonstrating value added,” or team building, or joining hands and giving peace a chance, or whatever. All I’ve ever wanted to do anywhere was the best job I could within the confines the job itself placed on me. With those confines growing increasingly tighter week by week and month after month, we’re all going to have to get use to the idea that how we define “doing our best” is going to change for the worse.

Over short periods of surging to meet the unexpected, people have a remarkable capacity to do more than expected. In a pinch, they can even give the illusion of doing more with less. Most people, most of the time, want to contribute and do their part to make sure the trains run on time. Relying on that capacity as a long term “get well” plan, however, generally has consequences that are less than good. Under sustained pressure to perform above optimal levels and with diminishing resources with which to do it, even the best are going to pull up lame eventually. I can’t cite a scientific study that tells me this is true, but I’ve spent more years than I want to admit watching people and seeing how they respond under pressure.

The truth is some people just handle a high stress environment better than others. A few people might thrive on it, but the vast bulk of them are going to hit a wall, burn out, fade away, or otherwise just stop giving a good goddamn. That’s a dangerous place to be for any organization. The slippery slope from actually doing more to getting less is really more like falling off a cliff. One day everything will hum along at top speed and the next it’ll be in free fall towards the jagged rocks below.

I’d never argue that this is a universal truth, but it does reflect my personal observations based on a little more than a decade as a decidedly interested observer of bureaucratic processes. There are always options available and B does not always have to follow A in this case. Preventing this outcome requires someone with enough horsepower to drive a change and make it stick to realize there’s a problem and for them to do something about it. Unfortunately, my best advice is to not hold your breath waiting for that to happen unless you have some kind of weird workplace oxygen deprivation fetish.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The IRS. So apparently no one told the IRS that it’s tax season. I mean that’s all I can assume since they haven’t bothered to publish the form you need to fill out if you’re depreciating rental property. If they’re going to set April 14th as the arbitrary annual celebration of screwing the taxpayer with his pants on, the least they can do is make sure to give you all the proper forms so your paperwork can be in order when they do it. I want my money. Asshats.

2. The men and women of the United States Congress. While our friends in Congress have been enjoying their week long sabbatical for Washington’s Birthday, the two million odd federal employees that aren’t Members, have only gotten a week closer to their furlough notice. The difference, of course, being that the Members were paid for their time back in the home district, where as the poor schlubs who decided federal work as a good idea will be going home without pay once a week for the next six months. You’ve got to love a group of people delusional enough to say that taking a pay cut themselves would diminish the dignity of their office while simultaneously telling the people working for them to take a 20% cut and thank them for the opportunity. Since I want to hang on to my soon to be part-time job for a while longer, I’ll refrain from saying how I’d really like to resolve this fiasco.

3. Editing. I love writing. Editing, the handmaiden of writing, is an evil soulless bitch from which there is no hope of escape. In that moment of ecstasy when you think you’ve written something really, really well, Editing shows up and reminds you with swift fury that no, no you didn’t and that it’s time to get back in your hole and write some more… except this time pay attention to grammar, punctuation, style, and usage.

Redefining irony…

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Most mornings I’m greeted at the office with more than a handful of emails. Usually they’re run of the mill mass notifications that come in overnight, but just occasionally they’re something a little more than that. Like this morning, when the two messages at the top of my inbox were one providing more information on the impending furlough of federal employees and the other inviting me to take an employee satisfaction survey. It’s hard to find a better definition of irony than landing those two topics next to one another.

Let me be real honest here for a minute… no matter how much I may like my job, the people I work with, or how well the building is heated and cooled, when you tell me you’ll be cutting my pay by 20% for the remainder of the year, my employee satisfaction plummets into negative numbers. No amount of ample parking, health fairs, and access to a gym is going to compensate for that. Sorry. There’s being a team player, and then there’s getting screwed with your pants on… and I’ve been around long enough to know the difference when I see it.

In a republic, one makes his displeasure known by registering an opinion with their elected “leaders,” and yes I use that term loosely. Having expressed by disgust to the head of the executive branch, the legislative branch leadership team, and to my own elected representatives, all that’s really left is to register my profound discontent here in my very own marketplace of ideas. Honestly, stoking the fire here is probably more productive than anything I’ve bothered to send to our political masters anyway. At least here, I know someone is going to actually going to get around to reading what ends up on the page… and as a special bonus, I won’t get a form letter in response.

A look behind the curtain…

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As a fresh college graduate back in about 2001, I remember having a series of conversations with a few other newly minted professionals wondering why nothing we learned in college actually prepared us for working in a “real world” professional environment. As I recall, the group consensus was that some kind of handbook for new graduates would have been incredibly helpful in making from the transition from full time student to productive member of society. None of us took up the banner at the time. I think we lumped it into same category of conversations that ended up with us wanting to open a brew pub, build a working trebuchet, and buy a rental cottage on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Of our brilliant ideas, the only one that ever came close to seeing the light of day was building the treb – even though we never did manage to figure out how to attach the sling mechanism to the throwing arm, we managed to put together a respectable first effort at medieval siege weaponry.

Those first random conversations about the idea of a snarky little field guide for new grads has kept popping back into my head from time to time. After going to work for Uncle, there seemed to be a limitless supply of cautionary tales I wish someone would have told me before I showed up for my first day. I don’t know that it’s anything that would have changed my career trajectory, but it’s a stack of information that would have fit well into that “nice to know” category before needing to learn some of those life lessons the hard way. I have a few insights that might be useful for those coming up behind me and I like to think I give it enough misanthropic twist to keep the narrative interesting even if you’re not well on your way to a career as a office drone.

For the last few months, one of the projects I’ve been working on behind the curtain has been a first draft of what I suspect is becoming the handbook we first talked about more than a decade ago. I’ve said it here before, but it’s worth saying again: Serious writing is damned hard work, but it’s some of the most personally rewarding work I’ve ever done. That’s probably because it’s one of the few things I’ve ever written purely for my own purposes. Hard as it is to believe, spitting out well-crafted information papers and memos just doesn’t leave me with the same warm glow of self-satisfaction.

If I had to give it a SWAG, I’d say that at 13,000 words I’m probably halfway to having a very rough first draft. I’m shooting for a 25,000 word first draft with the vague hope of polishing that up to about 30,000 words in its final version. Maybe it’ll be ready by summer, maybe it won’t, but Summer 2013 is where I’m really hoping to land this thing as a well dressed ebook on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I’m feeling pretty good about hitting my “half draft” mark yesterday, so if there’s any interest, maybe I’ll post up a sample chapter so you can see how I’ve been misspending a big chunk of my evenings and weekends.

Hot sweaty death by PowerPoint…

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I’ve never really understood the need of management to convey information by jamming as many people as possible into a room and then throwing PowerPoint charts at them until they want to gouge out their own eyes. These events are even more near and dear to my heart when the information could have been just as easily sent to me by email so I could read it at a convenient time rather than rejiggering my calendar to free up three hours in the middle of the week – a task I accomplished by cancelling my one actual productive meeting this week.

As a rule, 120 slides constitute just a few too many in any presentation. That’s doubly true when 31 of those slides fall into the “org chart/wire diagram” category. 1) Nobody in the room can read the eight point font used to squeeze that graphic onto the slide and 2) After ten or twelve wire diagrams, they all look exactly the same. That’s just an observation from a guy sitting in the back rows, so take it for what it’s worth.

When I’m proclaimed King of the Bureaucrats, my first edict from on high will be a proclamation that no briefing will use more than five slides. Ever. If you can’t distill the essence of what you’re trying to convey into five or fewer slides or (gasp) talk about your idea without the visual aids, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll think you don’t know what you’re talking about and will be sorely tempted to send you to sleep with the fishes. Since I’m somewhere just above the janitorial staff on one of those 31 org charts we saw, I suppose everyone is safe for the time being.

But you’ve all been warned. Oh yes, you’ve all been warned.

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.

Listening in…

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One of the many downsides of life in the cube farm is that it’s impossible not to listen in on conversations at least occasionally. As hard as you try to avoid it, you’re going to pick up way more than you have any interest in knowing about the people you’re sitting in close proximity to for eight hours a day. You’ll come to know everything from health and personal life to bathroom habits and carryout preferences (my personal favorite is when they’re trying to have a quiet argument with their spouse over the phone). Being a bit of a tech head, I always seem to notice when someone brings up the topic.

This morning, I overheard someone ranting quietly about people sending him text messages, as in “I’m 47 years old. People got no business sending me text messages. If they want to talk to me, they need to pick up the phone.” Why hello there 1954, it’s nice to meet you. This kind of attitude is troubling in someone who has access to every modern communication technology, up to and including A/V via satellite. If he’s this resistant to something as basic as a text message, what are the chances he’s going to be open to anything that really changes the way he gets his job done?

This post has served as nothing more than a reminder that flexibility is important in life. It’s no less important as a professional. If text messaging is enough to stress this guy out, I hope I’m not around when a real stressor comes along. I’m pretty sure scrubbing blood out of upholstery is outside the scope of my job description.

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

Telework…

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In theory, telework is a brilliant idea. Disaggregating your workforce to hundreds of different locations means your not necessarily subject to a single point of failure that could shut down operations. Power out at the home office? No problem. Half the workforce can log in from home, Starbucks, Nevis, or really any place with an internet connection. It’s the kind of idea that give planners a warm fuzzy when faced with how to prepare for typhoons, earthquakes, or terrorists bent on leveling your building. It’s one of those things that’s probably more brilliant in concept than in reality. On the whole, I tend to think most people generally want to do the right thing most of the time. But how many of your average employees are going to be able to resist the temptations that face them when they’re working from home or some other location – throw in a quick load of laundry, change the baby’s diaper, or making just a quick trip to the supermarket. I mean after all, no one will know you’re gone and you’ll be right back anyway. No harm no foul, right?

As an employee, I love the idea of telework if for no other reason than the very idea that being tethered to a desk eight hours a day equals a productive work week. The technology available has moved us beyond the need for dedicated office space for a great many kinds of work. Human nature being what it is, though, I suspect most people might just be more productive if they have someone looking over their shoulder from time to time… but personally, I’d rather sit at home in my fuzzy slippers and get eight hours of work done in three and call the rest of the day “research.”

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.