Tag Archives: event

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Keeping the calendar. Among other things, I am keeper of the calendar for what my annual self-assessment only slightly mockingly calls “the premier large meeting and event venue” on the installation. Unfortunately, that means every time someone wants to have a meeting in our fancy 750 seat auditorium, they have to come through me. It should be easy enough. It’s all automated. Except everyone consistently jacks up the automation, or schedules the wrong rooms, or the wrong times, or the wrong days, and generally has no idea what they’re doing or what they actually want. And then I have to unsort them. Repeatedly. You’d think if someone can schedule an Outlook meeting they could use a nice simple reservation website. You would, however, be wrong in thinking that. I suspect these are also people who struggle to make Outlook work.

2. Panic buying. The news and social media are filled with clips of people panic buying toilet paper because of the ongoing east coast dockworker’s strike. Here’s the thing… TP for your bunghole is almost entirely produced domestically right here in the US of A. It doesn’t arrive by ship. The port strike will have no effect on being able to get a package of Charmin extra soft. Still, it’s disappearing from shelves because people are fucking stupid. I take no comfort that people learned nothing from the opening days of the Great Plague and they are the same “average Americans” we’re expecting to exercise good judgement in picking a president next month.

3. “Where’s the government?” Having been seconded over to FEMA for several hurricane seasons back in the early 00’s, I have at least an educated opinion about what the basic response process to a large-scale natural disaster should look like. What is impossible for me to miss, of course, is the army of online experts who are demanding to know “where’s the government” practically before a storm hits. It’s obvious they don’t know the processes or procedures or the sheer complexity of spinning up a massive and complex inter-agency operation… even one you’ve practiced and exercised often. The fact is, for the first 3 to 5 days of a disaster (at a minimum), you’re on your own. There’s no easy way to say it. In those early days you have to be prepared to look out for your own health, safety, and hygiene requirements. After that you’ll start seeing local, state, and federal responders in that order as roads and other critical infrastructure items are brought back online and/or made accessible. There’s no magic wand the federal government can waive and make a “FEMA guy” appear in all the places where the roads are otherwise impassible instantaneously. It’s not the answer anyone wants to hear, of course… be we collectively don’t react well to anything that calls for dealing with complexity and abstractions, so here we are.

This is how it ends for me (probably)…

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I’ve managed to avoid the Great Plague for the last three years. Staying home and avoiding crowded places wasn’t exactly a radical departure from my normal lifestyle. Still, I’m sure that was the secret to my success at entirely missing a dread virus that ripped around the world leaving millions dead in its wake.

If I’m going to at long last be brought low by whatever COVID variant is now quietly circulating out there, I’m entirely sure I’m now deeply ensconced in the petri dish that will give it to me. I’m sitting here with up to 700 assholes who just couldn’t wait to show up and hang out in an auditorium breathing stagnant air while some other bunch of assholes reads them slides word for word for 8 hours a day across three successive days.

What reptilian brain fuckery drives people to want to show up and sit around when the information could be entirely available on a basic website or, gods forbid, through an online meeting, I will never, ever understand. As far as I’m concerned, the “human element” is entirely overrated.

This is the classic meeting that could have been an email writ extraordinarily large.

Two week warning…

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We’re two weeks out. It’s the time of year when I should be approaching caffeine poisoning or have my blood pressure trending towards stroke territory. And yet as I sit here, I’m feeling mostly swaddled in a calm indifference.

By the time this week ends, I’ll have done 80% of everything that’s doable within my span of control to attempt pulling this circus off without too many problems. By the time next week ends, I’ll have spooled out 90% of my effort. The final 10% will burn off across three days from the 25th through the 27th. Very little of what happens during those three days will have anything at all to do with me.

By that point, I’ve given you the stage, gotten people ticketed, fought with dozens of people about getting their presentations delivered in something like a timely manner, and attended to all manner of details both petty and large. What I can’t do, though, is make everyone happy. Attendees will be mad that they’re not getting coffee and cookies, briefers will be mad that we don’t have the mic they really like, senior leaders of every stripe will be visited by the good idea fairy a few hours before show time and want to change everything.

But next week, this ponderous beast begins taking on a life of its own. As the clock runs down, the series of events begins that we’re all individually unable to stop. By then the best we can do is attempt to nudge events back towards the right path and let them flow through to their illogical end.

At this point, stepping out one more time to the edge of the precipice, all I know for certain is that in two weeks the circus will be in town. Some of it will go well. Some of it will not. And then it will be over. After that we’ll all spend six months forgetting that we have to do it all again for 2024.

It’s dog and pony season…

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I spent most of my productive time today working on details of two separate events. I use the word “events” here purposefully instead of “projects.” It’s intentional, because these two items are absolutely events – occasions if you will. So, break out the floral arrangements and reserve your best rented tux, because it’s dog and pony season.

The first, a three-day series of informational briefings to contractors about how we plan on spending our cut of the defense budget over the next two years, is, as ever, the bane of my existence. This will be my 9th year though this particular wicket. For a while I had a series of supervisors who’d always promise that “next year we’ll get someone else on this.” Nine years on, my various supervisors don’t even bother saying the words. Death, resignation, or retirement seem to be the only path away from this particular bit of fuckery.

The other, decidedly less labor intensive event, is what amounts to an overgrown trade show hosted in northern Alabama every spring. Laying out who should attend, if we want to nominate some special bit of equipment or process for a demonstration, and reminding everyone to get their hotel rooms booked early or they’ll be staying in 50 miles away from the conference center is the regular drumbeat of my life in January and February.

I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating, that none of this is especially hard work. Like most of my projects, I’m more a facilitator than a doer. I try to make sure the right people have the right conversations and nudge them back into alignment when they wander too far afield. None of it is hard, but every bit of it is a time consuming pain in the ass.

Almost every day, I ponder what one must be thinking to decide that I am the one who should be draped in the glory of planning conferences, events, and all manner of dog and pony related activities. My well-noted misanthropic opinions alone should make me uniquely unsuited for any assignment in which the goal is to engage and entertain large groups of people. But here we are. Again.

I’ll do it. Everything will exceed the baseline standard of “good enough.” If, however, you think I won’t bitch and complain about the process, the attendees, the inability of our own bosses to get documentation approved on time, and my general disdain for in person boondoggles and the utterly unnecessary logistics tail that accompanies them, you must not know me at all.

My own personal hell…

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The only sure things in life, it’s said, are death and taxes. Those do seem to come with alarming regularity while most other aspects of getting by are a bit more sporadic.

There are, though, other truisms of life in the bureaucracy that feel as if they are just as certain. Unsurprisingly, the one I’m most focused on today relates directly to events… because no bureaucracy worth its salt can seem to resist the temptation to throw itself big, showy parties for no discernable reason whatsoever.

In terms of bang for the buck, I’d be hard pressed to give you any real return on investment for these adventures. I’m sure it makes someone, somewhere, probably those managerial gods on high Olympus, feel good. For the rest of us, it’s nothing so much as a good old-fashioned pain in the ass. One more thing to do on a list that never, ever gets any shorter regardless of how many items a day you manage to strike down.

The only thing consistent across the universe of these parties and events is that they start more or less on time, some bits in the middle go well, some others slide off the rails, and then they end slightly earlier than scheduled. Everything else is details and by the time the next week starts, no one remembers any of those as they race off to do the next Very Important Thing and try to scratch out a modicum of credit from whatever bosses they serve.

My career is well into its back half now. Mercifully the days of feeling the need to get every attaboy or head pat are long gone. Now, my only love language comes in the form of a time off. I’ve already got a box full of certificates and general officer notes that will never see the light of day again. Cash awards end up being taxed away before you even know you’ve gotten one. There’s no appetite for time off awards at echelons higher than reality, though. They mean for some fixed amount of time there’s some other Very Important Thing you’re not working on… and the bosses hate that.

I’ve reached a stage of bureaucratic enlightenment beyond the trivialities of cash, certificates, or time off awards. All I really want is for this thing to start so that it can eventually end and we can all forget the part in the middle. With this agonizing exercise in organizational self-gratification wrapped up, so I can think about something – anything – else for the next six months before the planning cycle starts for the 2023 version of my own personal hell.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Failure to plan. I’ve rented you the hall. I’ve provided the stage. I’ve laid on the cameras and the furniture. I’ve blocked off all the time in the world for people to rehearse, dry run, and generally get to feel comfortable with their part. What I can’t make people do, of course, is actually show up and do any of those things. Mostly I put in the effort because I want people to be successful – or at least I want to set the conditions for their success. What I’ll be intensely intolerant of, however, is when those same people who have displayed conspicuous indifference in planning find themselves in a panic five minutes before things go live next week… Because that’s almost inevitable while also being nearly 100% avoidable.

2. Work clothes. Having spent the majority of the last two years working from home, it hasn’t been necessary to keep much in the way of a “work” wardrobe. I mean mine almost exclusively consists of khakis and polos, anyway, but that’s all stuff I’d wear day-to-day in my real life. After two years of little exposure to the general public some, perhaps most of it, is starting to look a little tatty around the edges. That’s an issue I hadn’t noticed until I realized I needed something more or less presentable for five days this week instead of my normal one or two. If you think the idea of needing to buy clothes specifically so I can drive 40 minutes to sit in a cubicle isn’t grinding my gears, you must be new here.

3. The end of April. The back half of April is my hardest two weeks of the year. The only thing holding my temper just barely in check is not wanting to be unemployed. Stress is up because I’m supposed to be delivering a product that no one else gives a shit about until the day it goes live. My blood pressure is through the roof. I can track it year over year and it consistently spikes during these two weeks. I’m eating like shit, tossing and turning through the night, and generally just not taking the time to do the normal things that more or less keep me on an even keel the rest of the year. All in all, it’s not a great time when your general outlook is often described in such glowing terms as “bleak” and “kind of dark” on the good days.

Twelve chairs…

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One of the many exciting “other duties as assigned” I enjoy during this, the worst month of the year, is that of circus roustabout. It’s toting, hauling, setting up, shifting, tearing down, followed by more hauling and toting. This time of year, my position description might as well read “Laborer, General” as opposed to anything that has “analyst” in its title.

Today’s major project was retrieving a dozen “VIP chairs” from one auditorium, loading them onto pickup trucks, driving them a thousand yards, and then unloading them into another auditorium so there could be a nice matching set on stage. I was reminded with every bit of toting and hauling why furniture moving is the kind of thing I happily pay someone else to do these days.

Believe me when I tell you I don’t in any way presume that moving furniture is beneath my dignity. I’ve had far worse jobs for far less pay… but then that’s kind of the point, I suppose. By the time you add up the hourly rate of all the people involved in shifting these twelve chairs and account for their individual overhead rates (to account for non-salary payroll costs), it would be far more cost effective to outfit each auditorium with twelve matching chairs instead of paying people to shuffle them from building to building as needed. If you assume a fifteen year life cycle for a chair that’s only used a few times a month, it’s an investment that would pay for itself in the first five years. That’s before you even look at lost productive time or basic opportunity cost of having a bunch of analysts move furniture around instead of working more “high value” tasks.

I’m sure there’s a parable about the nature of bureaucracy here. I try not to dwell on it too much.

Jeffrey Tharp and the Zombie Conference from Hell…

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For the last six years I’ve found myself saddled with one project that I haven’t been able to shake. Reorganizations and realignments have come and gone and yet this project hangs on grimly, like Marley’s suffering in spectral chains for a life misspent. It’s the classic example of creating a massive boondoggle where having a simple website would be sufficient. Circus tents, cigar bars, catered lunches, live bands, and evening socials… for some reason, the Gods on Olympus have pegged me as they guy you want running your social extravaganzas. Yeah, the guy whose idea of a good time is getting home early and tucking in with a good book and avoiding people as much as possible. That’s exactly who you want to plan your biggest party of the year. 

You’ll never convince me that the universe doesn’t have a particularly fucked up sense of humor. 

It’s really only on my mind today because, in the era before the Great Plague, today would have been opening day for this particular event… and I’d have been two wake ups away from getting the shitshow over for another year.

Other, more reasonable organizations, have decided this isn’t the time to do big productions. They’re being cancelled left and right, being pushed into the fall or into 2021. We’ve gone with a different option of kicking the can down the road a scant five weeks and “reimagining” the whole thing as an online event. That’s fine. I’m sure there won’t be any problems at all with scrapping nine months of planning and collapsing three days of material into a single day using a webcast platform that none of us has ever used while coordinating with 30-40 key players via email and phone because we’re mostly home hiding out from the Great Plague. Seriously, I mean what could possibly go wrong with this plan that’s been too-quickly conceived, barely coordinated, and will be almost completely unrehearsed?

Even in the face of mayhem, chaos, plague, supply disruption, fear, anguish, loathing, and common goddamned sense, we will drive this project forward. For reasons that defy any mere human logic, it’s the unkillable zombie conference from hell and the absolute bane of my existence.

I’m sure it will be the best doggone conference ever. 

When the help isn’t…

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It’s the third day back from vacation. The restive and restorative effects of having a long and happy break have long since worn off. Frankly they didn’t make it past Tuesday morning.

I’ve spent most of this week trying desperately to uncluster a Special High Interest (SHIt) event that, not unexpectedly, spent the last two weeks teetering dangerously on the verge of flying off the rails. It’s the kind of thing that happens when too many people who don’t know all the background information try to give things a little extra help.

I’m sure it was all well intentioned, but I could have done without the added mess in need of fixing this week. Easing back into the routine and building up a slow head of steam for the haul through the next four months doesn’t feel like it should have been too big an ask… and yet here we are, with me looking for the nearest load bearing structure to repeatedly bang my head against.

People will tell you that it’s good to feel needed. All things considered, I think I’d probably enjoy sitting in the corner being ignored far more than I do being the guy who gets tapped when the next SHIt event is in dire need of fixing.

Sigh. Some boys have all the luck. It’s me. I’m some boys. And all the luck is bad.

Personally…

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I think it’s adorable when someone calls me sounding apologetic and forlorn because they need to make a major change to one of the events managed by Tharp Parties and Events Ltd. (A division of Big Bureaucracy Productions).

Look, chief, we all work for someone. You answer to your bosses. I answer to mine. If yours and mine provide conflicting guidance and we can’t sort it out together, I have absolutely no problem pushing it up the chain for resolution somewhere at echelons higher than reality. Your bosses and mine are allegedly professional adults who should be more than capable of decision making when their staff can’t come to agreement.

Believe me when I tell you that if you come to me saying “I know this is going to blow a hole in the schedule, but my bosses don’t want to do A, B, or C,” I’m just going to shrug, pass the word to the next level up, and move on with the day. The chance of my taking it personally is precisely zero-point-zero.

You see, there are a limited number of hours in the day and I’ve only got so much energy to apply to whatever batshit crazy things happen during any given 24-hour period. I do my level best to wast as little of that time and energy on anything that is absolutely beyond my ability to control or even to exert influence upon.

So, you see, if you ever find yourself in a position of delivering me “bad news,” and I take it with what might generously be called ambivalence, know that it’s not exactly because I don’t care, but rather because even as you were speaking, I assessed the situation as being something well outside my scope and I’ve already made the decision to refer it to higher for further evaluation and action.

I’m nothing if not a man who recognizes his own professional limitations.