Tag Archives: project

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Sequestration. Some are hailing the alleged reduction in furlough days from 22 to 14 as “great” news for Defense employees. While I agree that it is news, that’s pretty much where I’m going to have to stop. It sounds a bit to me like the Pentagon is set to announce the good news that its civilian employees still have a sucking chest wound, but it was delivered form a .40 round instead of from a .45. Neither one of those events would be welcomed as a “good news” story by most people. I guess when it comes to getting screwed with your pants on, I can’t differentiate by degrees of badness.

2. Tortoise Poop. George has been part of the menagerie for about three months now. He’s been a great, non-obtrusive addition who seems to enjoy spending most days alternately sleeping in his flower pot, sitting under his sunlamp, or grazing on mixed greens. The only problem I’ve encountered so far is that tortoise poo reeks – and I don’t mean it’s a little smelly. Think more like condensed cow manure being deposited in your living room. It’s not awful if you are home and can get to it right away, but if you happen to be at work and it festers under the heat lamp all day, well, then God help you. Yankee Candle doesn’t have enough wax to cover that shit up.

3. What is Dead May Never Die. With apologies to House Greyjoy, they ain’t got nothing on the bureaucracy. Surely one of the most agitating features of work is seeing the project that was supposed to be dead and gone three months ago, that you buried, purified by fire, and hoped to never see again, rising from the ashes to again steal time and attention away from other things you’re trying to get finished. No matter how thoroughly an idea has been debunked, disproved, and derided, just wait a while and it’s sure to come back to you. Like the murderer in a horror movie, just when you think it’s long gone, it will rise again to claim at least one more victim.

A change is gonna come…

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I started this alternate blog on February 14th, 2011 mostly in an effort to shed some of the frustration of working in an environment I increasingly found to be intolerable. The good news is that I’m now working in an office that’s much more tolerable, even if it’s still plenty annoying. The bad news, of course, is that regular run of the mill annoying doesn’t necessarily lend itself to great narrative. The worse news is that I’ve made the decision to hang up my spurs for a while and focus on other writing projects I’ve been struggling to find time to take on.

The bottom line is that this will be my last regularly scheduled post here at Apathy is Green

I want to take the time to thank those of you who joined me on this adventure. Thanks for reading and commenting. Thanks for reminding me that no matter how stupid things get, they’re just as bad if not worse somewhere else.
I don’t think this is goodbye forever, because the chances of me shutting up that long are pretty slim. Of course I’ll check in from time to time and whenever something really gets under my skin, I’ll be right back here railing against it with every bit of indignation I can muster.

I’ve still got a few ideas up my sleeve for future projects, so hopefully this won’t be the end, just a start in different direction. Eventually I hope to unify all of these posts under my “official” blog and in my own name. Who knows what the situation will look like in five or ten years, right?

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me. It’s be a gas.

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.

In the files…

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There’s generally a right way and a wrong way to do everything. I’ve found that as a rule, we don’t like to do things the right way until we have exhausted all possible alternative courses of action. In either situation, it’s almost always helpful to know at least a little something about whatever it is you happen to be working on. That’s why I instinctively flinch when I get an email that says something like this:

Jeff,

We have to have a point of contact for XYZ Project. I’m not really sure what it’s all about, but we just need to have a name listed in case anyone comes along and asks who the point of contact is. They’ll probably just put your name on the sheet and stick it in the file.

Thanks,

Bossman

Now I don’t mind wandering out into the tall grass when I need to, but just randomly putting us on the hook for things no one understands doesn’t seem like a best business practice. Maybe it would be a better idea to, you know, actually have someone look into this project a bit. But, hey, I’m not the boss, so that falls deeply into the category of not my problem. At least until someone drops by and starts asking questions.

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.

Friendly advice for the young and ambitious…

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I was once like you. I was young and ambitious. I wanted to streak up the career ladder further and faster than anyone. For those out there who want to climb, you’re eventually going to reach the point where you’ll be required to make a life-altering decision. You’re going to have to reconcile a nominal pay increase with the enormous pain in the ass that is becoming a first line supervisor.

If you’re even hesitating for a second in deciding whether that’s something interesting to you, let me key you into a secret – It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it at twice the pay. Sure, if you’re lucky there are going to be one or two hard chargers in your group, but most of the rest are going to be average at best and you’ll land an unholy sprinkling of dregs, sociopaths, malcontents, and those whose best service would have been to retire a decade or two ago.

Take a bit of advice from someone who was ambitious before you came along. Find yourself a nice mid-level position, gather the reins of a couple of projects, and enjoy a fruitful career concerned with meeting your own deadlines and being limited mostly by only your own capacity to work. Don’t, under any circumstances, allow them to make you a supervisor, team leader, or any other euphemistic term for becoming part of the problem rather than its solution. You’ll end up looking back at what started out as a promising career and wondering when it became a low-budget shitshow.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

This old house… again…

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I don’t know what it is that makes me stand in the center hall of an turn-of-the-century house, knowing the back third of the foundation is currently being held up by jacks, that the back porch is quite literally in danger of falling off, and that the entire second floor joist system needs reinforced, and think… I can fix this.

Sure, the place has 16 foot ceilings on both floors, bedrooms that have more square footage than my apartment, and a room downstairs that screams to have floor-to-ceiling book shelves installed, but it also has a bathroom in what should be the butler’s pantry, walls where doors should be, and a kitchen upstairs in what, apparently was once an apartment…. And then there is the location… on the old maple-lined main street, in a neighborhood that has been placed on the National Register, a block from the town square and it’s hundred and fifty year old courthouse.

The asking price is low, in part because of the work that needs done… not quite a gut-job, but close (kitchen, bathrooms, several walls, etc. need go, second floor needs to be reinforced)… but also because the old lady who now owns the place wants to sell to someone who will bring her childhood home back in line with the rest of the neighborhood. The price is low enough, actually, to probably do $100,000 restoration and still be safely inside the margin if I had to resell within a few years.

I know I can bring the fiduciary resources to bear, but can I bring the time and patience to live in a construction zone, with a microwave, hotplate, and “hand shower,” while the contactor guts the electrical, bathrooms, and kitchen, does the structural work, and gets everything to a point where I can do the finish work?

It’s a hell of a project… and could be a hell of a house. Of course I could buy one of the smaller places in the same neighborhood that have already had the heavy lifting done. They wouldn’t quite be in the same “prominent” place in town, but still in the historic district… and more or less ready to move in.

The handwriting is pretty much on the wall that I will be moving here in the next six months and I think I have settled in on an area that could easily be home. Now I just need to stop looking at home improvement pornography and figure out what I can realistically accomplish.