Tag Archives: office

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Antwerpen Chrysler Jeep Dodge. Antwerpen is apparently the outfit that bought my Jeep after the nice people at Land Rover sent it to auction. They, in turn, sold it to someone named Kok Loeng. But somehow as far as the dealership and the MVA are concerned it’s still my email and physical mail address associated with the Jeep. I regularly get letters both electronic and physical. I guess it’s only a little absurd that they can’t sort it out. I advised them once but now they’re on their own. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but it feels pretty much in character for both a car dealership and the state government.

2. Smell. I was walking the halls at the office on Tuesday and was struck by a distinct smell that I always identify with hotel rooms at the beach. I think it’s some combination of a space being overly air conditioned, high humidity, and cleaning products. If I hadn’t known better, I could have said I was walking the halls at the Carousel thirty odd years ago. It’s a damned dirty trick for your mind to play when you’re standing in the dumb office being a trusted professional. 

3. Here we are on Thursday, trying to slip back into the week after a random holiday on Wednesday. I’m not a big fan of these floating holidays. Where they fall on most other points in the calendar, I fill in the blanks with some of my own vacation time to build out a nice long weekend. Since I’ve already done that in early June and will do it again in early July, burning off more vacation time between the two feels excessive. So, what we’re left with was basically a week that feels very much like it’s had two Mondays. If that’s not the sign of a having a bad time, I don’t know what would be. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Portion size. For most of my life, I’ve ignored the “recommended serving size” listed on most products. All it ever told me is that I identify as a family of four for purposes of meal prep. The reality is the serving size listed for most things is honestly absurd. Have you ever really measured out a single ounce of peanuts? It’s way, way less than an adult male hand full. An ounce of cheese? That’s something like a 1×1 inch cube. A serving size apparently isn’t half a package of bacon. Want a sandwich? Yeah, that’s “one serving” for each slice of bread. Utter bullshit that in the year of our lord two thousand twenty four, we haven’t come up with a consequence free way to eat the tasty food.

2. Never being satisfied. Sitting in the office doing stuff that I plainly have the capability of doing while sitting in the comfort of my sunroom remains pretty much infuriating. Look, I know that being in the office once or twice a week – in comparison to the five days a week that was the norm in the olden days – is a huge step in the right direction. Yet on those days when I have to put on pants and drive the 40 minutes to sit in fluorescent splendor, it all feels completely ridiculous. I don’t expect to see another revolution in office affairs in my lifetime, but having seen what could have been – what should have been – how we’re forced to operate “just because” feels entirely absurd.

3. Trash Tech. At one time Trash Tech was a reasonably well-respected trash company. Their cans were thick in the neighborhood on trash day. When I sold the truck and opted to hire a service, they were the top of the list. It was a horrible mistake. In the one month I maintained service with them there wasn’t a single day when pickup happened on its scheduled day. For two out of four weeks there was no pickup at all. Our business relationship was terminated for cause pretty quickly and that’s where the drama really started. Because I was “under contract” for three months of service, they wouldn’t come retrieve their containers until the end of that period – which would have been the end of March. For the last two and a half months, their cans continued to sit here. Finally tired of calling their customer service number, I opted for the far more humorous option of invoicing them for two months of storage and advising of the administrative fee that would be imposed at the end of June if I had to arrange alternative removal and disposal of their equipment. Sometime this morning, their cans finally disappeared. Sadly, the invoice remains unpaid. 

At work (but not really)…

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Look, I am nominally “at work” this week. There are a couple of days where I’ll even schlep into our very own version of fluorescent-lit cubicle hell to prove that I’m doing my job for the man. With that said, I think it’s only fair to point out that while I may be physically present, my brain is already deeply plugged in to the vacation time that I’ll be taking next week. 

As I cast my thoughts back to 2023, I seem to remember every time I took some time off leading to some new and unpleasant medical issue popping up. As we approach leave taking season 2024, I very much would like to believe that trend can’t possibly continue. I’d like to not spend the lion’s share of this year’s vacation time not sprawled on the couch or hanging out with new doctors. 

After whetting my whistle for down time this past Friday, I’m honestly checked out.

This week is already off to a stupid start, with something I thought I put nicely to bed last Thursday before I logged off for the long weekend raising its ugly head while I was otherwise occupied. I suppose I shouldn’t be in any way surprised that it’s only after something should have been done, finished, and over that the great and the good have decided to start paying attention to it. Ass backwards seems to be the only way we ever really do anything.

I know this is just another work week, but I’m absolutely going to need people to ratchet back their expectations to the absolutely bare minimum – and then maybe go just a little bit lower. Short of someone walking over to my desk and literally setting me on fire, I’m going to have a hell of a hard time finding the motivation this week. All I’m saying is that if there’s something you need from me – and you want it done with any level of attention to detail – maybe wait until we get into June. Otherwise, you’re going to get what you get and I’ll make no apologies. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Morale building activities. Our office seems determined that it’s going to lick the morale problem by doubling down on potluck lunches and after-hours team building events. I invite you to piss directly off with that nonsense. If you want me to be part of a team activity, schedule that mess while you’re paying me for it. And damned well don’t expect me to cook (or inflict my colleagues cooking on me) in order to participate. Why the hell we can’t just take an hour or two, get out of the office, and patronize a local restaurant like normal people is completely beyond me. It’s all a hard pass for me. If that reinforces my rep as a non-joiner or problematic player of team ball, so be it.

2. Late night interruptions. The number of times each week I wake up at two in the morning to take a piss, spend an hour flopping around not sleeping, and then drifting off for an hour or so of absolutely ridiculous dreams before waking up to start the day bleary eyed and disgruntled is something of a too regular occurrence. It’s not every night, which would drive me batshit crazy, but it’s easily once every week or two and that makes it more than regular enough to be obnoxious. There’s a whole level of frustration knowing you can’t hold your water or fall back asleep on command the way you used to. Most other nights I still manage to sleep like a baby, but not knowing whether the night will be restful or ridiculous is just short of infuriating.

3. Protests. I’ve always looked slightly askance at protestors as a group. Clogging up sidewalks, roadways, or parks and making a spectacle / nuisance of yourself never seemed like a good way to make any kind of point. Once I started working in DC, I developed an even lower opinion of the average “protestor.” Inconveniencing me as I’m just trying to go about my daily activities is, I promise you, no way to ever convince me of the virtue of your cause. In any case, any time I see news of protestors getting all froggy – whether it’s on city streets or on college campuses – I just get preemptively annoyed and assume they’re chanting and occupying whatever for some cause I’ll inevitably think is foolish. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Every year around September I opine that there isn’t anything more useless that a formal performance evaluation. Every spring, though, I’m reminded that I’m wrong, because truly it’s impossible to imagine a more pointless “management tool” than the yearly midpoint assessment. It’s all the aggravation of spending time putting paperwork together and none of the remunitative reward of getting a performance bonus. Midpoints are a 100% paperwork drill out of which there’s no significant accomplishment. If I’ve been a turd for the last six months and management hasn’t said anything, they obviously don’t care. If I’ve been an all star for six months and don’t know it, than that’s 100% my own problem. All the midpoint process does is ensure my copy, paste, and update skills are just as sharp as they were a year ago.

2. Last week included new computer day at work. This week has involved a pretty extensive amount of trying to figure out how my own personal workflows will function in a Windows 11 environment. After two days of hunting and hoping and yelling at this computer, I’m absolutely not loving it. In fact nothing is currently working as seamlessly with this new system as it did with the old one. I’m not saying new tech is necessarily bad, just that when the powers at echelons higher than reality decide it’s time to roll it out, they very rarely consider much beyond “ohhh, new and shiny.” I’m sure this will all be functional at some point in the future, but currently it’s causing no end to aggravation. Truly it’s a death by a thousand cuts.

3. Breakfast. This morning breakfast was a “lower carb” everything bagel and precisely two tablespoons of reduced fat cream cheese. Breakfast used to be a proper bagel, slathered on regular cream cheese, a couple of eggs, cheese, and maybe a bowl of cereal. Sure, that’s the diet that has probably killed me, but for starting the day satiated and relatively happy. Look, I know I can’t go back to eating that way, but it doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be fully satisfied with this “reasonably healthful” approach to food.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Stalled. My quest for more weight loss has been stalled for almost two weeks. I haven’t made any changes from what has worked consistently for the last nine months, but I’ve spent the last 14 days losing and gaining the same pound and a half. I’m trying to be a good sport and going after the 200-pound goal the docs seem to want me to hit… But I’m already sitting at an 1800 calorie a day hard limit and frankly I like eating too much to go restricting that much further. I should also note that I’m prepared to garrote the first person who chimes in and says “you just need to exercise more.” Bugger directly off.

2. New computer day. Wednesday was new computer day at the office. Under most circumstances I’d say that was great. Except the new computer they’ve decided on is a desktop that will live permanently at the office while we take out laptops to live permanently at home. Instead of two work computers it means I now am signed for three separate pieces of equipment. It also means that in order to work between home and the office, I’ll be relying on “the cloud” properly being able to host two decades worth of work product instead of it living on my local drive and simply being backed up to the cloud. I’m not a fan of this for a lot of reasons. Color me curious to see what the response is going to be when our elderly laptops start dying off and someone has to be on the hook for machines that live at home being out of sight and out of mind.

3. Some weeks are busier than others. This one has felt like every time I knock something off my list of things to do, two or three more rise up to take its place. It hasn’t been debilitating, but it has certainly been obnoxious as this trend managed to cross all lines between work and home. It’s the first April in a very long time that hasn’t been entirely consumed by working as an advanced party and event planner. It seems that finally having chucked that one large thing over the side, maybe it’s just a natural effect that 57 small things have come along to eat up that white space on my calendar. 

And we’re back…

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After Christmas I took a little break. I was feeling legitimately good for the first time in months, there was a lot going on. Honestly, I just didn’t have the normal burning desire to sit down and get anything off my chest.

Today, however, I spent my first day back at work working in the actual office. Rest assured after eight hours as a standard office drone, I’m cured of not having anything to say. I won’t say it’s a great routine, but it is a routine and I appreciate it for that if nothing else.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve all been led to believe that the purpose of vacation is to enjoy some downtime and come back rejuvenated. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, as I don’t think I’ve ever come back from a vacation re-energized and excited to be back to work. At this stage it’s safe to say that’s just not who I’m ever going to be as a person.

But back I am. Because the animals are expensive and I’d well and truly suck at living under a bridge or sleeping on the nearest park bench. There are, if nothing else, standards to be maintained.

I won’t say the day was entirely unproductive, though. I did spend an unreasonable amount of time today plugging in all the federal holidays for 2024 into Outlook and starting to plot how to maximize my days off for this new year. So I’ve got that going for me.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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In the best spirit of the Christmas season, I feel like I should throw out something that doesn’t annoy me this week first. That’s the fact that today marks the Winter solstice for 2023. We’ll now begin seeing incrementally more daylight each day. If that’s not cause for celebration, I don’t know what is.

However, it wouldn’t be Thursday if there weren’t at least a few items to call out as annoyances for the week. As my ultra-long Christmas weekend is now underway, though, I’ve shaved it down to two instead of the normal three and present them to you in no particular order.

1. Calculations. I usually do a reasonably good job at calculating how much leave I have to “use or lose” at the end of the calendar year. I base all of my other leave planning around needing 64 hours to cover the week of Christmas and the week of New Year. The fancy pants automated leave tracker, though, is telling me I’ve unexpectedly miscalculated by approximately 10 and one half hours. If it’s right, it means I could be leaving more than a day’s vacation on the table. If I’m right, it means my use or lose balance for next year will be 10+ hours short. I think I’m right… but not with enough conviction to take a risk of losing vacation time. So I guess my vacation is starting mid-afternoon Thursday instead of at close of business Friday. That part isn’t actually annoying, but having such a large variance in my normally precise end-of-year calculation is, at a minimum, perplexing.

2. One more thing. I’ll never understand the mad rush of some people at this time of year to get just one more thing done before turning out the lights for the year. As I’m plodding through the week, I couldn’t help but notice that there are at least seven separate actions sitting in our tracking database with deadlines between Christmas and New Years. Someone at echelons higher than reality actually looked at those things and thought, “Yup, we absolutely have to have an answer on these absolute nothings before the dawn of 2024.” That’s just the stuff that people have bothered putting in the “official” tracker. The week will be replete with unofficial asks as well. Look, if it’s something involving a hazard to life and property, sure, the holidays are just another few days of the year… but if it’s just standard requests for information, maybe stow it for a week or two until someone might actually give a shit. Otherwise you’ll get what you get… and I promise you it won’t be much.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Plumbing. My well’s pressure tank has had a slow drip for 18 months now. It’s one of those projects that I knew needed to be taken care of, but there was always something more pressing. Every couple of weeks I’d go down and empty the coffee can that was sufficient to contain the waters. A couple of times recently I found my coffee can full to running over after just a week. Since it’s the kind of thing that feels like it would inevitably let go during Christmas and facilitate a real crisis, I finally called out my usual plumbing outfit to make the fix – the ones who are good and fast, but absolutely not cheap. The thing about home ownership that no one tells you is that it feels like 90% spending money on stuff that’s entirely essential, but in no way is a joy to purchase. Anyway, I’ve got a brand new obscenely expensive pressure tank and associated couplings installed now so I guess that’s my Christmas present to myself.

2. Slack time. It’s not that I hate having slack time. Not really. Slack time through the week is very welcome, mostly. On telework days, there’s always more than enough alternatives to keep my attention until the next Thing To Do shows up in my inbox. When it falls on an “in office” day, though, it does make the time stuck in fluorescent hell drag on indefinitely. I suppose slack is just an occupational hazard this time of year… and with only two office days between now and the end of the year, the annual hazard will fix itself before long. Until then, I suppose the trick remains to look busy enough to avoid falling victim to anyone walking around with end-of-the-calendar-year good ideas.

3. Slowly unwinding. I know I should be happy it seems to be working, but I’m absolutely tired of the pace at which the anxiety causing metformin is slowly working its way out of my system. Six full days from my last dose and I continue to feel slightly less prone to panic as each of those days slips past. That’s not to say that there aren’t still a few bad minutes and hours in the mix. Still, we seem to have crossed some kind of threshold where there’s more good than bad… and that hasn’t been true in a number of weeks. You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I’m just a bit put out that it wasn’t the instantaneous relief I really would have liked to receive.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Meds. One of the fun parts of being on the new blood pressure meds is that it puts most common decongestants on the embargoed list. If there was ever a motivation to get my weight down and off the prescription medication, it’s 100% so I can take a goddamned Sudafed and a shot of NyQuil instead of just raw dogging cold and flu season with hot beverages and an occasional spoonful of honey.

2. Covid. There’s been a time or two I’ve felt worse, but my week with Covid is definitely ranked. From the raging sore throat, to rivers of sinus drainage, to sleep no longer being a thing I do in any appreciable block of time, it’s just unpleasant. Add in the 36 hour saga of trying to get some antiviral meds and this third week of October is going in the books as a shit week of what has already been a shit year.

3. Protestant guilt. I’ve hoarded sick leave since the day I started working for our wealthy uncle. Last time I looked I’m sure I had something like 1800 or more hours of it on the books. So far this week I’ve taken 23 hours from that total. So why the good old fashioned Protestant guilt? Despite having more than enough in the bank, I know that my being out this week means there’s mostly been one guy doing what three of us were doing a month ago. I hate knowing he’s getting dicked over because I finally walked into the viral buzz saw. Admittedly, even if I were there I wouldn’t be capable of doing more than warming a seat while trying not to hack up my left lung. I hate that when I get my feet back under me there’s going to be a hellacious backlog of whatever came pouring into my mailbox this week. I feel badly about all of it… but I’m keeping in mind that sick leave is one of the more valuable components of my total compensation package and I’d feel even worse for not using it.