Tag Archives: Surprise

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Failing to read for comprehension. When I send you a four sentence email it’s not like reading the entire thing is going to monopolize your day, especially when one of those sentences tells you exactly how to do what you’re trying to do. No, the answer isn’t to send me more “follow up” emails. The answer, as I will tell you over and over and over again as needed, is right there starting on line two of the original response, which you obviously didn’t stop long enough to read. You can feel free to “follow up” all you want, but damned if I’m doing it for you. Your inability to read and comprehend simple English is not so much my responsibility.

2. The value of time. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know the value of my time. It’s the most limited commodity I have and it doesn’t come cheap. Unless you’re on the friends and family plan, it never, ever comes free. Whatever it is that’s so critical, unless it’s an immediate threat to life or property, really isn’t so critical and certainly doesn’t give rise to the need to give anyone a freebie. I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s always a tomorrow… and on the off chance there isn’t a tomorrow none of it is really going to matter at that point anyway.

3. Non-surprise surprises. For the love of Pete, when I’ve been telling you for weeks that X is going to happen on Y date how in seven hells are you surprised on Y-4 that Y is going to happen next week. It’s been on the damned calendar for 5 months. We’ve had at least 30 meetings about it, but whoa, every-damn-body but me seems to be taken by surprise. Look, I know we always try to kill the gator closest to the boat first, but there’s no way I’m letting anyone get away with the “Uh, I didn’t know” excuse on this one. I find it interesting that all the things we didn’t have time to do three months ago, we now suddenly want to cram into a day and a half. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t wrap myself in knots trying to do that which is inherently illogical if not downright impossible given the limitations of available time and manpower.

Third time’s the charm…

Posted on by

So far today I’ve sat down with every intention of blogging three times now. The first two obviously didn’t take. Hopefully the third time’s the charm. I’m not expecting much… and maybe that is, or at least should be the them for the post. Or the week. Or possibly even the month. In reality it’s probably been the theme for a lot longer than that.

The only times in my life I’ve ever really been let down where when I let expectations get the better of me. The best things have always come when I didn’t expect much at all, or more specifically when I was expecting the worst possible outcome. Surely that informs my approach to getting through the day. If you walk in expecting everything to be on its way to hell in a hand basket, often enough it is in fact heading that direction. Other times, though, it’s not and those moments come as a pleasant surprise.

If I can attribute my own warped sense of pessimism to anything, knowing where expectations most often lead is probably somewhere near the root cause. If only from the point of view of keeping my blood pressure more or less in check, the occasional pleasant surprise feels like a better idea than daily consistent disappointments. I seriously don’t know how anyone walks into a day full of optimism knowing that the its ration of shit is never more than a few minutes from hitting the fan. It seems like you’d be setting yourself up for a whole lot of unnecessary disappointment.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Surprise meetings. Some things happen without any warning – earthquakes, tornados, someone punching you in the throat for being stupid – all things that could theoretically happen out of nowhere. What shouldn’t happen out of nowhere is calling someone out of the blue after sitting on the material they gave you a month ago to tell them they have four hours to make a shit ton of changes and present that information to the Grand High Host of the Everlasting Knowitall. If you’ve had something for a month and just getting around to telling someone you’re going to need it completely changed later that day, it’s not a “no notice event,” you’re just a douchebag.

2. Fast food strikes. I flipped burgers for $4.15 an hour. When I see on the news that the “me” of today think they deserve $15 an hour for doing that job, I mostly just roll my eyes. When I hear they’re going to take the day to picket their employer demanding $15 and hour and a union, well, I nearly fall down laughing. In the 5 years I was associated with the burger flipping segment of the economy, I never once contemplated the value of my efforts being worth anything close to $15 an hour. The idea of signing up for Burger Flippers and Fry Cooks Local #209 never even crossed my mind. Unless you’re looking at a management track or life in corporate, I’d not recommend considering McDonald’s or its ilk as a long term career opportunity. We should be incentivizing people to move up and out of minimum wage jobs as quickly as possible, not raising the wage so it’s considered just another “lifestyle choice.”

3. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. I’m almost 36 years old and just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of sugar free kool-aid for dinner. There are rare occasions when I really think I suck at being an adult. This would be one of those occasions.

Staying put…

Posted on by

If you’d have asked me back around June 19th what I’d be doing this Spring, I’d have give you one of two possible answers: 1) Finding a house to rent that didn’t break every third day or 2) Having successfully picked the all six numbers for the PowerBall jackpot, I am withdrawing from public life to a small, sparsely populated island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. As it turns out, neither one of those two things is going to be on my agenda for Spring 2012.

It’s not so much that I’ve made a conscious decision to stay put as much as I’ve slowly come to terms with house. After nine months it’s getting that lived in look that comes from finally having boxes unpacked. Cutting out the property manager from hell and dealing directly with the owner has gone a long way towards resolving the upkeep and maintenance issues that plagued the first month or two. The truth is, it’s taken the better part of a year, but I’m starting to feel settled. Just the idea of throwing everything back into boxes at this point and doing it all again so soon makes me a bit twitchy. Besides, I’d always hoped that the next move would be back into a house that Bank of America and I owned together and since that’s not going to happen in the next three months, sticking with the enemy I know seems like the next best option.

So yeah, if the first year was about settling in and getting my footing. This year is going to be all about fixing some of the things that have bugged me, but I didn’t want to tackle because I figured I’d be moving on before being there long enough for them to matter much. Now that I’ve made up my mind to stick around, it’s time to start hacking at those annoyances. In a few weeks when the weather finally turns for good that means a concerted effort to bring the yard into a better state than “eh, good enough for a rental.” If I’m going to be here for a while, it’s time to start putting my own stamp on the place – or at least as much of a stamp as one can place without spending much money. Once the outside is up to standard, maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally get around to turning the basement into something other than a place to store canned goods and cast off furniture.

Or I could just go ahead and get that PowerBall win. That would be fine too.

Not what I expected…

Posted on by

I’m back in Memphis after a short road stand this past week. In the end the weekend class was well worth attending and the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday was enlightening. It was the first time I have been in a room with so many senior leaders all speaking relatively candidly about the major issues and challenges that we are facing as an organization. I am not going to go into specifics or quotes because I don’t think that is appropriate in this forum, but I will say that I came away deeply impressed by the thoughtfulness and obvious concern that our highest ranking leaders have for the organization and for the people who make everything come together.

I’m sure more will follow when I have sorted through my notes, but in the meantime, stay tuned because I could be heading back to the District at the end of next week. The fun never stops.