Tag Archives: work

The great leveler…

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Email, like death, is one of life’s great levelers. From the high and the mighty down to the lowest of the low, we all get entirely too much email. Shoving electrons through the network make it so easy to moving information from here to there that most of us never stop to ask if the people on the receiving end actually need the information we’re pushing at them. Because the most important thing the average bureaucrat does on a daily basis is cover his or her ass, we end up in a seemingly endless do-loop of email and instant messages.

The ability to generate an instant distribution list is possibly the worst thing to ever happen to the average office drone… because let’s face it, if the email is addressed “To” more than one or two people, no one is going to take on the individual responsibility of answering it. If you address it to 20 people, no one is even going to bother reading it at all. The only thing four pages of addressees gets you is the merciless ridicule of your colleagues and the tears of a God disappointed that you’ve used your free will for such douchebaggery.

I wish I was making this up, but four pages of recipients for a message that needs to go to three people is, politely put, a bit much. I’m the first to say that if something’s worth killing, it’s probably worth overkilling, but sheesh, even I have limits. I’m not saying an email addressed to +/-700 people makes you look like an asshat; I’m saying that by actually sending that email out into the world you are, in fact, an asshat. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one… kind of like the distinction between covering your ass and becoming an object of loathsome contempt.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Like so many others in recent memory, this week could be a laundry list of annoyances from the great to the petty. As always, I tried to drill into the beating heart of the three that annoyed me most this week… but ask me again in five minutes and the list could have easily changed again.

1) Hiring freeze. One of the fun aspects about a hiring freeze is that although people go away and are not replaced, the things that they were doing while they were working never go away. They just get shifted around until they find someone who can do a half-assed job of getting them done. It’s the old standard philosophy of “doing more with less.” It’s a perfectly find concept when applied as a stopgap measure lasting for a relatively short duration. As a permanent part of the business model, it’s somewhat more problematic. At some point the system comes collapsing down under the weight of its own absurdity and the lords of creation have to accept one of four options: 1) Call in reinforcements; 2) Accept that sometimes they’ll just have to do fewer things with the reduced number of resources; 3) Fire everyone and hope a new crew can do it better; or 4) Continue to do everything as usual with a consequently lower level of quality. What you can’t do over the long term is keep taking on additional work while keeping up with business as usual.

2) 216 miles. Having driven or flown across most of the country at some point over the last ten years, I’ve never given much thought at to distance. It’s always just been ground to cover. Lately, though, I’ve been thoroughly, thoroughly annoyed by 216 miles. I guess perspective, and motivation, change everything.

3) The Pinterest-ing of Facebook. I like Facebook. Or I like the concept of Facebook. I’m not sure I’m a fan of how it’s evolving, but that’s another post. I like Facebook as a tool for delivering pithy updates, comic pictures of cats, and generally keeping up with friends and family. What I‘m not so much a fan of is how recently my newsfeed has been taken over by recipes, chain posts, and all manner of corporate ads. I can’t do anything about the ads and I’m not going to de-friend anyone, but you can bet your sweet ass I’m exerting extreme editorial control over the “Change What Updates You Get” function.

Over the horizon…

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Some days you just have nothing to show for getting out of bed. As far as I can tell, this is one of those days. For the record, that’s not a complaint. It’s a simple acknowledgment of fact. It’s one of those days where the best thing you can say is that you’ve managed to do no harm – neither advancing the cause or making it substantively worse in any way. It’s a draw… and if you’re a smart bureaucrat, you’ve survived long enough to know that a draw is effectively a win, because the scales are almost always weighted in the direction of making things worse off than they were before you touched something.

I should really put a more positive spin on the day. To paraphrase what a wise man told me this morning, “Look on the bright side, it’s Tuesday. That means were as far away from next Monday as it’s possible to get.” It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic. After all, it’s Tuesday night now. If you strain your eyes hard enough you can start to see the first signs of the weekend coming on, even though it’s still out there somewhere over the horizon. That’s as cup-half-full as I’m likely to get, so make of it what you will.

And people say I never post anything positive. This’ll show ‘em.

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.

Meetup…

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I’ve got an entire chapter of Nobody Told Me… The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees devoted to the nature, causes, and avoidance of meetings. Sadly, being forewarned only lets you know what you’re in for, it doesn’t automatically get you a Get-Out-of-Meeting-Free pass. It seems that no power on earth can shove a meeting off course once it has built up a sufficient degree of its own bureaucratic inertia.

Under those circumstances, you get what we’ve had here this week – which is a meeting schedule that looks something like this:

Friday Morning: Pre-Pre-Prep Meeting (1 hour)

Friday Afternoon: Pre-Prep Meeting (90 minutes)

Monday Morning: Prep Meeting Part 1 (1 hour)

Tuesday Morning: Prep Meeting Part 2 (90 minutes)

Wednesday Afternoon: Meeting (90 minutes)

Thursday Morning: Post-Meeting Meeting (90 minutes)

This is not a particularly extreme example of what takes place to in advance and following what I’ll commonly refer to as a Very Important Meeting (VIM). In this case, VIM preparation, the VIM itself, and its aftermath sucked up about 480 minutes, or eight hours. That’s one-fifth of the workweek lost to a single meeting (or one-fourth of the proposed furlough work week in case anyone at home is keeping track). I don’t even want to admit how much time gets spent scheduling, preparing slides, making sure video lines are available, and mastering the actual subject material for one of these sessions. How much time is spent preparing for and attending meetings would make the average person’s eyes water.

Look, I’m not saying that every meeting is an enormous waste of time and effort, but maybe if we could just have one or two of them instead of six, we might all be able to get a little more accomplished. Maybe I should go ahead and schedule a meeting to discuss this new and innovative concept.

You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes.

Nothing to show…

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Ever have one of those days where sit down at quarter after seven and then suddenly look up and realize it’s half past three? Yeah. The kind of day that feels like it’s over before it ever got started. I hate days like that. I want to know where my time is going instead of just having it lost into the ether. Maybe if I had something to show for it, I wouldn’t be quite so bothered. At a minimum I’d like to be able to at least tick off one or two of the things on the day’s list of things to do. Some days you don’t even get that small pleasure. Today was one of those days. I know I got “stuff” done, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m standing around, looking vaguely confused, and wondering WTF just happened.

That old, unpleasant “off” feeling…

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I’m a guy. I don’t do “sick” well. It’s just one of the charming aspects of the gender that I know all the women-folk out there enjoy. In keeping with that theme, one of the things we guys like to do is complain loudly and at length about how bad we feel. Since this is my megaphone of choice, that means you all are along for the ride.

Let me say for the record that I don’t feel awful, just not as good as I think I should. Not achy and full of snot. Not shivering and covered in blankets. Not sneezing and yacking up lunch. It’s just a more generalized “blah” kind of feeling that lets you know something in your system is minimally off. Since there’s no real symptoms besides this generalized blah, there’s really nothing to be done other than load up on fluids and vitamin c, try getting to bed early, and hope to wake up feeling ok in the morning. Even if I wake up feeling less than ok, this isn’t a good week for it. Tempting as it might be to spend the whole day on the couch watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my go-to sick on the couch activity of choice), I’ve done a far too successful job of hoarding information this week and have, unfortunately, made showing up at work tomorrow not an optional activity. That one part of my conscience that isn’t dead or numbed out by life won’t let me throw someone under the bus if I can avoid it.

Since tomorrow is a work day whether good or ill, I’m going to go heavy on the hope that this is a passing funk that will clear the system overnight so I have some kind of chance of being at least a marginally productive employee. In case you’re wondering, that’s about as selfless a statement as you’re every going to drag out of me, so go ahead and enjoy it.

A face in the crowd (and better off for it)…

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The best part of just being a face in the crowd is that you get to spend a lot of time watching people in power, whether that be the legitimate power of elected office or the almost completely fictitious power that resides in a fancy sounding title. The most common denominator that I’ve observed so far is simple – the more powerful the individual being observed, the less control they have over their own lives. The ones with real power, the ones who are minor princes of the universe, seem to have their days scripted, their movements controlled, and have barely a spare minute to do so much as scratch their own arse.

It’s hard to believe, but a younger, more ambitious version of me once thought that sounded like an ideal way to spend a career… long flights, clamoring between meetings, and generally being indispensible. With a third of my career in the rear view, I can honestly say that the shine is well off that idea. These days, the last place I want to find myself is at the center of the hive. The older I get, the less inclined I am to let other people dictate my schedule or to cede control over any portion of my life. My one concession is the 40-hours a week that I spend working for wages… and that’s only grudgingly because I like eating and having a roof over my head.

I’m sure it’s a fine way to live and all, but for me, having the maximum amount of personal control over who I interact with, what I do, and when I do it is pretty damned important. On balance, short of being named absolute monarch of a small tropical island, I’m not sure that’s something I’d want to give up – especially not for something as temporal as a spiffy sounding title and not much else.

Saved this space (for no apparent reason)…

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We had a “surprise” town hall meeting at work today and I was saving this space for some sharp and scathing commentary on what I assumed would be breaking the official silence on sequestration, fiscal uncertainty, and the impending budget cuts to our little slice of paradise here at the top of the Bay. Instead we got the typical once a quarter, “you’re doing great work” speech and a few other pearls of wisdom. In the absence of crippling financial news, I find that I don’t really have anything to say.

Waiting to find out what the world will look like a month from now every time someone calls a meeting is a tough way to live… especially in a place that loves meetings as much as we do. So yeah, this space stayed blank for no apparent reason today… but there other shoe is out there somewhere. It’s lurking, and waiting. Waiting to fall out of the sky to pummel some poor dumb group of unsuspecting employees that had the misfortune of thinking that going to work for their Uncle seemed like a good idea at the time. Boy are they gonna be surprised.

I’m glad that for today at least it wasn’t me… but since every silver lining has a dark cloud around it, it’s pretty much left me with nothing interesting to say tonight.

One bad mother (shut your mouth)…

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I generally make a point to avoid using this as a venue to talk about work. For one thing, it’s just bad form to grouse too much about the people who sign your check. For another, work is hard enough without everyone looking around wondering what embarrassing story you’re going to tell next. Finally, work is usually the last thing I want to talk about when I’m not, you know, at work, so most of those stories never get written, let alone see the light of day.

This post isn’t going to break that mold in any meaningful way, but I don’t think I’m talking out of school when I say that other the last week and a half has been a real mother. It’s been seriously busy. And I mean busier in the last ten days than any other tend day stretch in the last 17 months. It’s not that the work is any harder, just that there seems to be more of it… and between flu, random sickness, planned time off, meetings, uncertainty about the budget, impending sequestration, no raise for 3 years, and a host of other things, I think it’s safe to say the whole place is just in a mood.

I don’t know what the remedy is, but for the time being the best course of action is probably just keeping my head down and doing my best not to draw unnecessary fire. I’m not wishing my life away, but 4:00 Friday afternoon can’t get here fast enough.