It’s been my experience that sometimes the best products are the ones you smash together on a tight deadline with people breathing down your neck. Unfortunately, these rush jobs are usually thrown at you as part of an outlandishly large assignment and when even a few extra minutes can make the difference between something that looks like crap and something that looks like the PowerPoint equivalent of a work of art. Occasionally you end up with all the time in the world and manage to finesse something just so in the first day or so… and spend the rest of the available time tweaking, adding, massaging, and generally cluttering up the white space until the actual point of the exercise has been lost in the gee whiz of “look what I can do.” Sure, it’s one badass looking slide, but after two days of messing with it, I can barely remember what the original subject was… Thank God that’s very rarely actually important when putting these things together.
Tag Archives: job
I am the 99%… and I’m ok with that…
A few months ago the world was making a big stink about the 99% versus the 1%. A quick run of the numbers told me that I was very safely part of the larger group and in no practical danger of ever reaching into the ranks of the smaller. It might shock you to know that I’m actually ok with that. Not as happy as I might be as a Powerball winner, mind you, but mostly content to live the life of a white collar working stiff, even if that means I’m going to have to do my best to stay employed for the next 30-ish years.
Look, no one wants to “work.” I’m fairly sure that all of us have some happy place that in our heads we’d all rather be on a daily basis. It’s no secret that mine is some out of the way beach with a slightly dilapidated tiki hut rum bar on some backwater tropical island. In this particular fantasy land, I don’t do much other than read and write and sample the fruits of the local distillery. Maybe I’d finally get around to learning to dive or be more than a passenger on a boat, but that’s not strictly necessary. OK, so I basically want to be Hemingway minus the unfortunate run in with the business end of a shotgun there at the end. As cool as I think that life would be, I also like eating on a regular basis here in the real world. Since civilization basically collapses when we all decide to stop being productive and follow our dreams instead, I think I’ll stick with a job that actually pays the bills for the time being.
So there’s the rub. I don’t particularly want to work, but I definitely like getting paid. That’s the devil’s bargain we all make when our parents decide that it’s time for them to stop supporting our bad habits and questionable decision-making skills. That’s the price we pay for being a legal adult and more or less controlling our own destiny. I can still see a few life paths that may well lead me to that little bar, on that little beach, on some little slice of heaven in the Caribbean. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to remember that I’ve got a job that isn’t 1/10th as batshit crazy as the last one, because honest to God, that never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Is this you?
I find it hard to believe that a global news organization could only round up eight things that make for an annoying coworker. I mean I could rattle off a couple of dozen off the top of my head.
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.
Endless days…
Some days are busy and you spend them haplessly dashing between floors and buildings just to make sure you’re not late for the next round of meetings. Other days have the distinct feeling that you’re working in a funeral home and that someone will yell at you if you make a noise louder than scratching pen against paper. The thing that these two distinctly different types of day have in common: They both suck. And strangely enough they both suck for more or less the same reason.
On one hand, meetings blur together leaving you in a hopeless, glaze-eyed torpor incapable of doing much more than maintaining respiration. On the other, the day crawls by at something approximating the average groundspeed of road kill. In both cases, the result is suck. Suck and days that drag impossibly slowly. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light, but I’m fairly certain I’ve actually watched clocks run backwards under both sets of circumstances.
No one knows that work is just another dirty four letter word better than I do, but really, all I’m looking for is a couple of days a week that don’t feel like they’re running in slow motion. That’s probably more than I can realistically hope to see any time soon. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my cube adjusting the time circuits.
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.
What are we doing here?
Once every few months I catch a wild hare and start obsessively backing up everything on my work computer. At last count, I’m working on saving 2GB of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents for posterity. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood if 1500 individual files generated over the last eight months. By most standards it’s not a particularly obscene amount of storage or an abnormally large number of files. As I’m sitting here watching the “% complete” bar click higher, I’m struck with the fact that although I’m relentlessly backing this stuff up, keeping a copy for myself, and sending a copy into deep storage, I’m probably the only person on the planet who will ever actually see any of this stuff again. In a post-atomic or -biological apocalypse world, it seems unlikely that any of the survivors are going to be particularly interested in whatever brilliant PowerPoint slides I’ve managed to come up with.
All of that begs the question, what the hell are we really doing here? I think we all have some conception that we’re “adding value” somehow by performing whatever task has been set for us. We like to think that what we’re doing is good and important work; that someone, somewhere will be better off because we sat behind our monitors and smashed our fingers repeatedly against the keyboard. Since I don’t have a little laminated card telling me where to go and what to do when the warheads start landing, I think it’s safe to assume that whatever I’m doing isn’t all that critical to the preservation of civilization as we know it. Apparently I’m not a national treasure. That realization stings a little.
Look, I’m not saying I want to give up the pay and bennies and head off into the woods to start a commune or anything. I don’t think the situation is all that hopeless. Still, it’s a smack in the head about priorities and deciding what’s important and what doesn’t mean a damned thing. In the course of a career and a life, I’ve made some good decisions and some bad ones. If this serves as nothing more than a gentle smack in the back of the head reminding me to make better decisions in the future, well, then the day has been more productive than most.
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.
Letting stupid slide…
In the last week I’ve been assigned three different projects that at least one or more other offices have thought they had the lead in developing. I’m not saying communication between offices around here is piss poor or anything, but as a staff puke who’s main mission in life is to put out whatever fire springs up that day, I can tell you that there’s nothing more aggravating than finding out you just spent a day working on something that someone else two floors up was also doing. All that means is one of you just wasted the better part of a day that could have been spent doing something more productive. Of course spending the day building a paper air force would be more productive than creating reports that never make it beyond your own hard drive. I’m not bitter, though. That’s just the way of things.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person who sees things like this. I seem to be the only one who every points them out as enormous wastes of time. Or maybe everyone else sees it and just accepts it as standard procedure. Maybe they’ve got the right idea. My career is full of moments I would have been better served to keep my mouth shut and head down. Letting stupid slide isn’t in my nature, but after a long, hard slog I’m starting to think it’s a skill I need to develop more fully.
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.
Hung…
There’s a long list of perks when it comes to not being the boss. One of the big ones is that you’re not the guy running interference and providing cover for a bunch of other people when things don’t go exactly according to plan. Keeping your people out of hot water comes with the territory; even when that means you have to take the body blows yourself. At least that’s how it was when I was a boss.
Look, I’ve been around this man’s Big Government Agency a long time and I know that occasionally a few shots are going to get through. It happens. But when it happens more often than not, I start getting nervous… and that’s when my very strong tendency towards self preservation kicks in because I’m not in the habit of letting myself get hung out to dry for anyone.
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.
Putting the fried in Friday…
This is one of those weeks where the best thing you can say about it is simply “it’s over.” Some weeks are bound to be like that. It’s unavoidable. That doesn’t make me any less happy to see them slide by under the stern. Not that the weekends are any less frantic, but they’re frantic in a different way… You know, full of doing things that I’m actually interested in. Not that churning out 100-page reports, briefing slides, and spreadsheets isn’t fun and all, but I’m more than ready to let my eyes uncross for a few days. A week or two would be better, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to try staying away from the monitor this weekend, so we’ll pick this up again Monday… Unless something really gets on my nerves between now and then, in which case you know I can’t resist the temptation to post right away.
What Annoys Jeff this Week?
Yeah, I know it’s a day early this week, but after not griping and complaining last week, I was feeling a little edgy. As always, in no particular order, here’s what annoys Jeff this week:
Christmas Carols. There, I said it. I don’t like them. I’ll grudgingly accept them in the week or two before Christmas, but at any time before that, they make me want to punt kittens. Singing them in October? Well, those people are just a special kind of crazy.
Salad. Since January, I’ve been eating salad almost exclusively for lunch, and you know what? I hate salad. There aren’t enough dressings, croutons, cheese, or varieties of chopped meat available to make them appetizing anymore. Sure, real food will probably end up putting me on the fast track to an early death, but that sounds infinitely better than the slow lingering death I’m suffering from boredom and general lack of tastiness.
The five day work week. Who’s the unmitigated jackass that decided 5:2 was a good work to non-work ratio? Don’t take that the wrong way, because I’m still deliriously happy to be bringing home a paycheck and to be doing it in Maryland, but all things considered there are plenty of other things I’d like to spend some time doing.
Proselytizers. I get it, you found Jesus, or Vishnu, or Buddha, or, Zoroaster and you’re really excited about that. Good on you. As a rule, other random people aren’t nearly as interested as you think they are in your discovery. Believe me when I say I have my own notions about what’s what in the hereafter and let’s leave it at that, shall we? That would be fantastic.
What Annoys Jeff This Week?
1. Fall. It’s not fall specifically, but I do hate that by 2:30 this afternoon there wasn’t even a hint of sun shining in the courtyard at work. I am so not ready for it to be dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home. And fall only serves as reminder of this upcoming unpleasantness.
2. Apple. Again. This week you officially announced that next week you’ll be making an official announcement about the next iPhone. You guys are killing me. Just let me plunk down my money and order the damned thing already. And for the love of God, will you please bring back pre-ordering? I’ll get up hours before the ass crack of dawn to drive 60 miles to the Apple Store if I have to, but please don’t make me.
3. The Federal Hiring Process. I got an email this afternoon letting me know I’d be was in the running for a position I applied for in February. Seriously? It took you seven months to get around to putting the list together, FEMA?
4. Facebook. Your new changes have crushed the number of clicks I’m getting from Facebook to my blog. I hate you for that, but since I’m way too cheap to pay for ads, I’ll eventually figure out a way around you.
5. People who ask for a read receipt on every email. You know who you are and you suck. That is all.
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