Tag Archives: office

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Grown adults. I’m totally on board with kids being excited to see the snow. I’ll even forgive students who are excited at getting the day off. What I don’t think I will ever come to grips with are grown ass adults who crowd around the window eyes agog whispering and tee-heeing. Yes, it’s snowing. No, it’s not all that exciting. If you don’t stare askance out the window on a typical rainy day, there’s not much call to do it just because the temperature happens to be below 32 degrees. I know not everyone has gainful work to do on the day before a Thanksgiving, but I’m over here madly trying to get something wrapped up and off my desk before everyone makes a break for it so if you could at least pretend to be productively engaged that would be great.

2. Internet legal experts. You know, I’d have a lot more respect for the deluge of legal “opinions” smothering the country if I had any sense at all that the people behind those opinions had any sense of the purpose of a grand jury or the basic concepts of how the legal system works. Although I taught basic civics, I’d never have the audacity to claim undisputed knowledge about the intricacies and vagaries of the American judicial system. I do however know enough to be certain I’m not expert. That’s why I’ve not made many comments on the particular case du jure. While I haven;t hidden my opinion, I opted not to take to the interwebs to dazzle the world with it. I’d far rather stay quiet and be thought a fool than open my mouth and remove all doubt. It’s a shame the average American internet poster isn’t as circumspect.

3. Email. I was away from my desk most of last week, so when I stumbled in to the office on Monday I had approximately 900 emails waiting for me. Of those, I reduced 600 that were either overcome by events, spam, messages I was copied on for no apparent reason, or otherwise emails that didn’t require an action on my part besides hitting delete. Of the 300 remaining messages, 2/3 were of minor importance directly to me, were confirmations, status updates, or otherwise information that required little more than a “yes,” “no,” or “acknowledged” in way of response. That left approximately 100 messages that legitimately needed my attention, that required substantial thought, or that I needed to farm out to others in an effort to generate a response. We all could have saved a lot of time this week if the first 600 “so what” emails had never been sent. We could have saved a little more time if we collectively stopped to consider if we really needed to send any one of the next 200 messages. More importantly, I wouldn’t be scrambling around at the end of the 3rd day of mailbox clearing trying to respond to the 100 that really mean something if I hadn’t needed to wade through the other 800 emails to find those little gems. My point? Email is a tool, but you don’t have to be. Please use your distribution lists and the reply all button for good instead of evil.

What Jeff Likes this Week

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It’s harder than you might thing to pinpoint what I like this week. I’m going to attribute that to the fact that the last seven days were brutal even in the face of my already pessimistic expectations. It’s tempting to say that the only thing I really like about the past week is the fact that it’s now over. That would be the easy answer. It would also have the benefit of being a statement of fact. It’s a happy coincidence when those two fall into line together.

Although it would be the easy and truthful answer, there’s something slightly more tangible that should come at the top of this week’s list – the fact that this past Monday saw the total number of people working in my office increase by 66%. That’s an impressive figure at first blush, though it loses some of its luster when you realize that even with those additional hands we’re still only staffed at 56% of the total number of people we had when I started working there.

Still, I’m glad to see two more bodies available to throw into the fight. It buys a little more breathing room. It means there might be a chance to actually be a little thoughtful and do a little analysis before recommending a course of action. It means there’s the ghost of a chance of doing more than hoping for the best from week after week of responding to situations with little more than knee jerk reactions.

So, if anyone asks, what Jeff likes this week is the simple fact that two people showed up. Now of course how long they stick around is another matter entirely. I’m happy enough leaving that for a different post at a different time.

Note: This is the 1st in a six-part series appearing on jeffreytharp.com by request.

Blurred…

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So we’re officially back in the mode of operation where it helps to just turn off the ol’ brain box and try not to dwell too much on any one thing. The first three days of the week have blurred into what feels like one very long day. I don’t see that changing between now and Friday. In fact my forecast is for it to get appreciably worse the closer we get to the weekend – just another in the long line of weekly reminders that Friday is no longer to be trusted as a bringer of good things.

I’ve gotten better than I care to admit at just grinding out the work. I’d like to say it doesn’t get under my skin, but it does. At it’s heart my job is fundamentally about compiling large amounts of information in insanely short amounts of time, facilitating the flow of that information vertically and laterally through the bureaucracy, and and trying to make sure the decision makers have the right information at the right time. Basically, I’m a problem solver who’s expected to either know how to do something or figure it our pretty damned quick.

At nearly every turn this week I’ve run into my mirror image – the ones who say, I don’t know how to do that, or I haven’t had any training, or it’s too hard. Once they proclaim something too hard too do, these bastards look at you blankly, like an infinitely patient and utterly stupid dairy cow waiting for you to offer to do their job for them.

I don’t know how I seem to always find the jobs in every organization that requires miracle working as a principle skill set, but next time I switch offices I’d damned sure like to land in one where it’s ok to walk through the day being only slightly more intelligent and productive than the three week old sandwich slowly molding in the break room fridge.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The last minute. Look, when you suddenly realize that we now have a day and a half to do something I’ve been warning you about for six weeks, I hope you don’t mind if my giveashitometer stays somewhere in the “normal” range. Are bad things going to happen if this doesn’t get done in the next 12 working hours? Yes. Is is something that could have been avoided by taking action when I raised the alarm earlier? Yes. Will it result in death or dismemberment of anyone as it goes careening wildly off the rails? No. So is it something that I’m going to lose any sleep over? Not a bloody chance.

2. Gay. Did you see that Tim Cook is gay? Yeah. So what? Straight, gay, bi, undecided, whatever… I just don’t care. Are you a decent human being? Do you pay your taxes and contribute to society? If yes, then I say God bless and have a good life. Who you love or how you get your jollies doesn’t make a lick of difference to me. I don’t want to live your life any more than I want you to live mine, so as long as you’re not a douchecanoe we’ll probably get along ok.

3. Mutual exclusivity. I ate lunch at 2:00 yesterday afternoon. That’s only 150 minutes later than usual and mostly because many people decided that mid-day on Wednesday was a good time to stack meetings and a fire off a half dozen pesky questions that need answers right-the-hell-now. What you shouldn’t do after a day like that is show up asking about some random ass other thing that I was notionally working on before three kinds of hell broke loose. No. I did not get to it. I don’t have that answer. And the likelihood of my getting it in a timely manner (i.e. yesterday) is between slim and none. We’ve had this conversation before, but it’s worth repeating that I can either sit in meetings listening to other people talk or I can sit at my desk and actually get work done. The two options, however, continue to be mutually exclusive. It’s very simple, really. If you want 16 hours worth of work done in an 8 hours period, you can either hire another body or open up the overtime spigot. Failing those options, and given my slacker-like inability to be in two places at once, your courses of action are otherwise fairly limited.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Meeting prep. My feelings about meetings are fairly well known and not at all surprising. As wonderful as the average meeting is, the time wasted just sitting in them isn’t the only thing that fuels my discontent. The real problem is everyone – and I mean everyone – seems to look for excuses to have a call a meeting. It’s like what alleged professions do to kill time when they’re bored or lonely. Add to that people’s natural tendency to take Mondays and Fridays off and most meetings stack up like cordwood on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The issue then becomes the inordinate amount of time a poor simple soul then needs to spend just to find and reserve an empty room that has all the required audio/visual bells and whistles. Getting that process done from start to finish usually takes two or three times as long as the meeting itself. To add insult to injury about 30% of the time once you’ve wasted half the day just getting the room itself, the crazy bastards that set up the meeting in the first place cancel it – or worse – they change the time, which leads directly into an endless cycle of wash, rinse, and repeat. The whole thing is maddening.

2. It could be worse. People who comment “it could be worse” as a response when situations go bad clearly miss the point. Of course it could be worse. You can always hit rock bottom and then start digging. Just because you can, however, doesn’t mean you should. Just because it’s not as bad as the worst possible scenario doesn’t mean it’s good and it sure as hell not something to be chipper about. Asshat.

3. Bad investments. I bought a house in December 2007. A month later the bottom fell out of the real estate market… and then proceeded to keep falling for the next four years before leveling off. You might have heard something about it on the news for the better part of the last decade. It’s only been in the last year that there’s been any progress towards clawing back a little of that value. It’s too little, too late. Even with the barking dog neighbors on one side and the regularly evicted neighbors on the other, I liked my house. I wish I could have boxed it up and moved it north with me. Instead it’s just sitting down there being a bad investment, bleeding me a few hundred dollars at a time. As much as I hate to admit the mistake – and making permanent the loss incurred – I’m ready to call it what it is, take my lumps, and move on expeditiously. What I lose in cash flow surely will be offset by the removal of the damed albatross from around my neck.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Standards. As a matter of principle, I never hold anyone to a higher standard than I hold myself. By the same token I don’t hold them to a lower one either. I’m many things but I do my best to avoid having hypocrite show up on that list – especially when it’s no harder a matter than maintaining just a little bit of consistency. Jaded as I am, though, I still find I can be surprised when people seem to behave with no sense of personal standards at all. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure whether it bothers me more that they do it or that I care.

2. Low Expectations. The high point of this week at the office was the arrival and unboxing of a new industrial strength shredder. I’m not even making that up. Given the volume of paper we push a heavy duty shredder isn’t a luxury item. It’s damned near an essential. An essential that we haven’t had for the last quarter of a year. It makes me a little sad to find my expectations of what constitutes a “good day” have been lowered so far that being able to turn PowerPoints into confetti now falls near the very top of the list.

3. Apple. I found myself reading through the initial reports from this afternoon’s Apple product rollout and rather than finding myself in need of selling a kidney for some new tech, I found myself mostly shrugging with something that approximated indifference. The latest iteration of iPad lacked something of the wow factor of a truly new product. The new iMac looks well enough kitted up, but not nearly enough to get me to drop $3K+ on on a desktop computer. There was nothing there that will find me leaping from bed at 3AM to make sure my pre-order is in. I know that every new product update can’t be a show stopper, but I’d have appreciated a little bit of “wow” when it comes time to deliver what should be iconic product offerings.

Should’ve learned to weld…

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Monday evening. Milepost One in the long march towards the three-day weekend. One of my go to responses to many events at the office these days is an exasperated reminder to the world that I could have learned to weld, apprenticed to be a plumber, or picked up any number of practical skills that ensured my long term employability. I’m told that at least one of my high school teachers recommended that amidst my perpetual struggle to grasp the basic concepts of algebra. Perhaps the old crank was on to something after all.

Instead of doing something productive like learning carpentry, I went to college and promptly put the thought of alternatives out of my head. I do wonder sometimes at what kind of difference it would have made had I found myself practicing an occupation where the end result is something to physically show for your efforts at the end of a day’s work. At least part of me thinks that’s got to be personally fulfilling on some level. Or maybe from where I sit it just seems more fulfilling than being the guy who churns out the memo with the fewest spelling and punctuation errors.

At the rate my bits and pieces seem to be grinding down, I’m not under any delusions of transforming myself into a tradesman at this late date. Between the shoulder problems, lower back pain, clicking knee, and the occasional bit of foot trouble behind a desk is probably the most reasonable place in the world for me to stay. While I’m there, though, I’m going to spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking that I should’ve learned to weld. With all the wisdom of hindsight I think a career that results in something less ephemeral than a voluminous stack of PowerPoint slides would have suited me.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Decisions. I’m theoretically leading a project right now. I say theoretically because every time we get together to discuss it, we revisit and rehash decisions that I was under the impression were made a month or two ago. But no, instead of actually trying to move the ball forward, we want to spend our time going over and over and over and over and over the same damned material. I have to wonder if the weekly outcome would be any different if organizations didn’t send a different representative to this exercise in futility each week. Then maybe we could get a little institutional memory going and I could wrap up a Thursday without without my blood pressure treading dangerously close to stroke territory. All for the want of decisions that actually stick once they’re made.

2. Thursday Dinner. I try to cook a big meal every Sunday – enough so there are two or three days of leftovers and I don’t have to do any heavy cooking after work. By Thursday night, though, even the biggest of meals has either disappeared into my gullet or is just no longer appetizing. As much as a creature of habit as I am, eating the same dinner four days in a row is a touch too far for me. That’s generally how you end up having scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast for dinner on Thursday night. Not that I dislike either of those things, but after a long stupid day something more substantial would have been nice. Sadly, something more substantial would have also required far more effort than I was willing to put in.

3. Guilt. Most nights, especially now that it’s getting dark earlier, Maggie and Winston are happy to snooze peacefully under the kitchen table while I try to combine words into sentences and sentences into complete thoughts. On other nights, Winston tries to be a 40 pound lap bulldog and Maggie somehow manages to wedge herself between my elbow and the keyboard. They’ve been in “needy” mode all week… and while I couldn’t do without them, it would be nice if I’d have bothered to raise more independent children.

Three shall be the number of the counting…

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When I started in the current gig way back in ye olde 2010, there were 8 people doing the job in my little corner of Uncle’s vast universe. I won’t tell you that we were always busy, but we had our moments of mayhem and chaos even when all hands were on deck. That number ebbed and flowed – up one, down one – over time, but was remarkably steady until about six months ago when people started racing for the exits. From there, it’s been a foot race to get out of Dodge.

By this time next week, the number of the counting will be reduced to three. By all outward appearances, we’re just going to reallocate the workload and drive on as usual. That strategy might be ok when you drop from 8 to 7, but by the time you go to three there simply isn’t enough time in the day to keep up. You reach a point where doing more with less isn’t just impossible, but it becomes detrimental to an office. It reminds me of an vintage Dilbert strip where Pointy Haired Boss tells Dilbert to pick up someone’s functions. Dilbert’s response? “I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don’t mind that my quality approaches zero.” I wish I could tell you that was farce, but it bears too much resemblance to reality. With every position left vacant, the quality of the work is diminished. Getting the job done just to that “good enough” standard is something that makes me just a little bit crazy.

I’ve worked in places that were more toxic, but the older I get the less tolerance I seem to have for the asshattery of it all. The only reason I’ve let it ride as long as I have is I happen to enjoy the particular piece of geography we occupy. I supposed even that’s not really enough to hold me if a change needs to come. As much as I don’t want to dive back into the land of the three hours commute, it’s time, past time, to put all the options on the table.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Neighbors. Tuesday night, one of the strong storms passing through the area cleaved several large branches off a tree in the neighbor’s yard. Two of those large limbs landed squarely in my yard, so after work I got out the saw, cut them up and piled them neatly for burning once they’ve hand a few weeks to dry out. The third of the limbs to come down fell in the neighbor’s yard, but landed in such a way that it snapped one of my fence posts and buckled several rails. Two days later, I’m still looking at that downed limb lying across a crumpled fence from my kitchen window. The neighbors have been home. I’ve seen the kids playing in the yard and I’ve seen their vehicles come and go, but neither of them has broached the subject of the limb, or the fence. We’re now engaged in a great game of seeing how long it takes the neighbor takes to do some basic yard work and if they’ve got the personal integrity to at least offer to take care of the repairs. Given my observation over the last four years, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for either of those things to happen. If the shoe were on the other foot, I’d have addressed the issue already… and therein clearly lies the problem of holding others to the standards to which I hold myself.

2. Standing corrected. I hereby retract that mean things I said about my credit union yesterday. I discovered today that the fault was all mine for making a boneheaded mistake writing out the damned check. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.

3. Attempted guilting. Since the office is now officially down to four, there’s apparently going to be a self-appointed chief of attempting to make everyone feel guilty about taking time off, “because then everyone else is sooooooo busy.” Maybe if I were a better person, I would feel guilty. Then I remember that I didn’t create the staff shortage and that I’ve earned every hour of leave I’ve banked over the last eleven years, so I’m going to go ahead and schedule it when I need it rather than when it’s convenient for someone else. I’ve got problems enough of my own without giving in to attempted guilting. Nice try, though.