Tag Archives: office

How you know it’s important…

Posted on by

Sitting in our weekly staff meeting it occurred to me just what a self-important and inflated bunch we really are. Each week we get together and run through the litany of X, Y, and Z projects that we’re working on. Everyone looks pensive and serious as one after another of us drones on about things that no one seems to care about; a memo, an agreement, a PowerPoint presentation, or the old man’s travel plans. I know this stuff must be important because we’re all wearing ties.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m feeling at moments like this. It’s probably some combination of disbelief tempered with an appreciation of farce. I just have so many issues with the “so what” of it all. Maybe my misanthropic tendencies have finally gotten the better of me because I’m having a hard time finding a reason to do more than just what it takes to get by.

Lately, good enough is good enough. I don’t want it to be though. I want to do work I’m proud of. I want to do work that matters more than moving papers from one desk to another. Look, I’m not going to run away from the job, the pay, or the benefits. I’m annoyed, but not crazy. Some people are passionate about this stuff. Even though I’m good at it, I just happen to not be one of them.

At least I’m wearing a tie… so I know it’s important.

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.

Gettin’ Down on Friday…

Posted on by

I don’t know that I’ve ever had what would be considered a “good” Friday in government service. Fridays are the day when everyone wants to extend their weekend. On any typical Friday you can expect at least a third of the staff to be somewhere other than in the office. It’s easily double that on a Friday before a scheduled 3-day weekend. This is bad for two reasons. First, in the event that something actually needs to get done, finding someone to do it is a challenge at best. It’s even more problematic if you want to find the right someone or even just a random body who has the actual skill sets you need. Good luck with that. In the event that there is no Friday crisis, you’re probably going to discover more common situation of there being absolutely nothing to do. Usually that will set in a few minutes after lunch.

You can only refresh cnn.com so many times before realizing you’ve already red all the articles. I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad if the IT guys didn’t block most of the really interesting sites. Alternately, you could listen to the guy next door tell the same old stories he’s been telling since the first time you met. If you’re really lucky, some of your equally bored colleagues might be up for a game of Words with Friends. Otherwise, you’re doomed to spend the next three hours trying to look like you’re busy enough that it keeps the boss from creating work for you to do… because really, if there’s anything worse than being bored, it’s getting saddled with random busywork.

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.

The secret, little discussed 10th level of Hell…

Posted on by

There’s a special level of hell reserved for the bureaucrats. Conveniently, you don’t have to die to get there. All you have to do is show up, day after day for 40 years and suddenly somewhere along the way you realize you’re already there. You find yourself sitting in meetings that have been held every Tuesday since before anyone in the room was even an employee. You’ll find yourself updating a PowerPoint slide that you updated two months before, and two months before that and backwards in time to the dawn of the electronic age and into the land of acetate view graphs and overhead projectors before that.

Maybe somewhere in the mists of time there was a legitimate need to do these things, but so many of the time killing tasks we face day to day seem like they’re on autopilot that it’s near impossible to tell the important from the other stuff. Want to free up millions of dollars in resources? Cancel every repeating meeting on everyone’s calendar and only schedule meetings that are actually needed. Meetings shouldn’t be a weekly excuse for coffeecake and social time. Poof. Suddenly you’ve saved yourself a million man hours a month. Want to save more money? Never prepare PowerPoint charts unless they are absolutely necessary to express a complex concept. Our caveman ancestors used their words to spread ideas. Surely we can manage to do the same.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be toiling on the next series of charts in the 10th level of hell… my half-walled cubicle. Now if I can just figure out where they’ve put my stapler.

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.

They’re never here to help…

Posted on by

No matter what they say, people from the Inspector General’s office are never here to help you. I’m not saying they’re necessarily the goon squad, but having them lurk around the office is a little like having a couple of buzzards circling over your house. Sure, maybe there isn’t a dead body buried in the back yard, but something sure smells rotten back there. Even if you’re not the one who caused it, life is going to get mighty uncomfortable for a while. My best advice is seek cover and make yourself unobtrusive as they shit all over everything.

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.

There’s a difference between being friends and being friendly…

Posted on by

I like the people I work with well enough. By that I mean I don’t generally want to fold, spindle, or mutilate them by the end of the day. After some of the colleagues I’ve had in the past, I consider that a win. We spend eight hours a day with each other and for the most part manage to stay remarkably friendly with one another. That’s where the problem seems to start.

I’m perfectly willing to be friendly with everyone in the office, but I’m not particular interested in being their friend. I don’t want to come over to their homes for dinner. I don’t particularly want to hang out with them in any setting that’s something other than the office. They’re nice enough people mostly, but I’ve got my own friends already thanks. Adding them to the mix seems to blur the line a little too much between business and personal lives and I’m not cool with that at all. Maybe I’m the deviant in the group, but I’m just not interested in hanging out with my boss or the guy I spend 40-hours a week sitting next to. I see enough of them already.

I completely understand that the manager’s handbook says we have to do team building activities, but since it’s building the work team, how about we do it on work time, huh? Picking a random Wednesday and buying pizza for everyone would have been way better for my morale than royally jacking up one of the two days a week I actually get away from the office. Since I don’t detect any malicious intent here, I’m writing this one off as a strong concept hobbled by poor execution… but let’s try not to make the same mistake again.

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.

Adjustments…

Posted on by

After you’ve spent a good portion of your recent life working for a manically dictatorial uberboss, one of the problem you’ll face is not being particularly well adjusted for work in an office where the worst thing that happen are, well, perfectly normal workplace situations. Is it possible that I’d become adjusted to having someone throwing metaphorical rocks at my head five days a week? I’ll confess that part of me now lives on edge because I don’t know if or when the next rock will come flying in my direction. It’s made me surprisingly uneasy lately – Not quite anxious, but definitely a feeling that nothing can be this relatively calm without another shoe dropping at some point.

Admittedly, it’s not something that’s been keeping me up at night. While not losing sleep, I do find that sitting at my desk, I can feel the tension creep into my shoulders and I catch myself glancing back to make sure the specter of bosses past isn’t somehow managing to sneak up on me with an arm full of PowerPoint changes, newsletters, and snide comments.

Is it possible for a cube-dweller to come down with a case of battle fatigue five months after escaping from the influences that were sending him in the direction of a breakdown? Maybe my subconscious is just now accepting how bad things really were and starting to reconcile it with how remarkably good they seem now. If history is any guide, the bottom should be falling out any time now.

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.

Logic doesn’t live here…

Posted on by

I’ve been doing this long enough now that I’m always a little surprised when something is ridiculous enough to shock me. That’s why I could only smirk when someone came by and asked me if I was going to training this morning. After explaining that I had just taken that training last month, my esteemed colleague looked around nervously before explaining that last month’s training covered me only for last fiscal year. This month’s training was required to cover me for the current fiscal year. By some fluke of scheduling it was just pure chance that the exact same class happened to get scheduled in back to back months.

Some people would find this odd, perhaps, but I’ve been a cog in Uncle’s machine long enough to know when I won’t get ahead by asking any more questions. This morning was one of those times and I dutifully went to the auditorium so they could update my now 42 day old certification. The snores coming from the guy beside me and the one two rows over fed into my hunch that I wasn’t the only one sitting here for the second time in as many months. Like the good troopers we are, we checked the box and hopefully won’t see this class for another 13 months.

So much for a productive morning.

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.

Overkill…

Posted on by

Everyone likes to feel like they are an important part of what’s going on around them. Even though most people wouldn’t be missed much if they spun off into oblivion, organizations everywhere help mollify their workforce by engaging in the ridiculous pantomime of holding “town hall” meetings where everyone troops into the auditorium and tries not to look too bored as executives click through several dozen slides that someone made for them. Then they open the floor for a handful of delusory questions, give the shiny happy answer, and close the meeting because 99 times out of 100 no one in the room wants to ask what’s really on their mind. Most of us leave with no more information than we had when we showed up, but at least marched an hour or two closer to the end of the day. That’s a mercy at least.

Of course it’s only a small mercy if it’s not a two hour town hall scheduled to start an hour before most of your employees are supposed to be heading home. There’s also a good chance that if it’s the third “mandatory” meeting in the last four weeks to cover the same general set of topics and it’s just being presented by a different talking head, it could be overkill. As good an idea as these meetings were when they were held by our sainted forefathers in New England, they’ve lost a little of their zip. Maybe it’s time to get out the ol’ thinking cap and come up with a better way to engage the people.

Of course if you’re not actually looking for input from anyone, then feel free to disregard this idea in its entirety.

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.

Type…

Posted on by

As a technology organization, there are a few things that should pretty much always work. I’m past belaboring the importance of keeping the network up and running, though. The things that you need to focus on are apparently more basic. Like a keyboard that doesn’t drop every fourth or fifth letter while you’re typing.

Without this pretty standard piece of kit, you end up with sentences like “Norma people souldn’t be expected to wrk under thse conditions.” Which is all well and good until you actually start working on something, you know, that needs to get done in a reasonable amount of time. So now instead of actually being productive, I get to put on the editor hat and spend the day correcting everything that I’ve written. I shudder to think what tidbits got past me before someone bothered to point out that I was writing like a small retarded child.

I don’t know why I still hold out hope that someday basic office equipment issued by my employer will actually works as specified. Personally, I’d rather pony up my own equipment and have something I knew would work than continue to bend my spear on the underpowered and ill-repaired hand-me-downs we subsist on. Honest to God, this isn’t work, it’s just the vague illusion of being busy.

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.

Office food…

Posted on by

The top dog around here wandered into our office this afternoon and announced that he had descended from the 5th floor because he’d heard that we had pizza. Not only did we not have pizza, but we also didn’t have a clue what would make him think we did. As it turns out, the pizza was for an office on the other side of the building, but hey sir, it was nice seeing you. Realistically, I can understand his confusion. Our office eats. A lot. There’s always a pie or a cake or, strangely, a ham sitting in a conference room somewhere. I’ve never worked in an office that wasn’t run by some arm of the government, so I have no idea if it’s this way everywhere. For purposes of discussion, I’m going to assume that it is.

Maybe it’s just my own proclivity, but most of office food makes me nervous. I’m ok with the bagels and donuts that come from the nice shop down the street. It’s the stuff that people bring in from home that worries me. I mean how well do you really know that cranky old battleax that sits down the hall? Want to tell me the last time her kitchen counters got a good scrub? How many cats did she say she had again? You get the point. Let’s be brutally honest here, there’s a pretty good chance your coworkers can’t even make a good cup of coffee. I can’t think of any legitimately good reason I’d trust most of them to make lunch.

Sure, you say, but most restaurant kitchens are filthy too. But what I have with the restaurant that I don’t have with my coworkers is plausible deniability. Plausible deniability and a certificate from some local government inspector that says yeah it’s dirty, but not dirty enough to kill you. Probably. But come on, you’ve met the people you work with. What are the chances they’re not going to try to kill you?

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.