Tag Archives: work

Trauma…

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Going back to work today was every bit as traumatic as I thought it was going to be… and I’m trying hard to resist the temptation to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend that the who experience was a bad dream. That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea right up to the point where rent needs paid at the end of the month. Such is life for a cog in the machine.

While I’m bitching, I should note that my nose has been bleeding off and on since around 2:00 this afternoon. I’m officially over winter and the cold, dry weather that comes with it. You can only spend so much time sitting at your desk with the better part of a tissue jammed up your nose as a makeshift pressure dressing so you can do something other than stare at the ceiling until the bleeding stops. Fortunately, I think it’s slowed to a trickle. Hopefully I can make it through dinner without feeling like a stuck pig.

Happy Monday.

Feels like Sunday…

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So this is the last weekday of my extended winter vacation. Since I didn’t take much of a summer vacation this year, I had plenty of days saved up and taking them sounded infinitely better than letting them disappear. Sure, I could have donated them to an allegedly worthy cause, but let’s be honest, does that sound like something I’d really do unless I was backed into a corner?

Make no mistake, when you’re use to being at your desk four or five days a week, every week, month after month, two unspoken for weeks are a real think of beauty. I had some minor concern that boredom would set in sometime around the end of week one when the mayhem and chaos of Christmas cleared, but that really wasn’t a problem. Honestly, the thought of being bored never occurred to me. Since I’ve been back here at the rental casa, I’ve done some reading, some writing, some cooking, some general running around, and caught up on a lot of quality television I’ve missed over the last few months. When any one of those things has started showing the least sign of being boring, I just change up the order and do them all again. Honestly, it’s probably a snapshot of what my life would look like as a lottery winner. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to more or less keep myself entertained. When you’re an only child as a kid, you learn the value of not relying too heavily on anyone else to make things interesting.

But yeah, today feels a lot like Sunday… or specifically that general feeling of “Eff this I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow” feeling that always seems to show up sometime during the day on Sunday. That feeling has been held blissfully at bay for the last two weeks and I wasn’t quite ready for it to show up already. Intellectually, I can accept that I’ve got to go back to work at some point… but emotionally, my inner lottery winner wants to keep this party rolling. There’s so much reading, writing, and cooking that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I guess that means I’ve got to cram a whole bunch of stuff into the next to days, because Sunday is coming on fast.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Self-Inflicted Crisis. It’s hackneyed because it’s true: A failure to adequately plan on the part of someone else, does not in any way constitute a crisis on my part. Screwing around Boomwith something all week and then dropping it in someone else’s lap at the last minute hoping they’re going to drop everything and fix it over the weekend does not constitute a plan. At best it constitutes hope… and hope, as we all know, is not generally considered a sound planning methodology.

2. Sharing the “wealth”. If you’re hacking up a lung and sound more or less like you could drop dead at any moment, do the world a favor and take a sick day. I don’t care if you’re saving sick days for little Scotty’s tonsillectomy or planning to take a few mental health days later in the month, show a little consideration for the people forced to sit within ten feet of you for eight hours a day and go the hell home. Trust me, you’re not showing anyone how dedicated you are. Even if you’re perfectly willing to drop dead in harness at your desk, no one breathing the same air is interested in your misguided sacrifice on the altar of the workday.

3. Christmas Shopping. Sure, 95% of my Christmas gifts are going to be given in the form of small rectangular plastic cards, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that it’s getting to the point where I can no longer blissfully ignore the impending arrival of the holiday. At some point, probably this weekend, I’m going to have to break down and do what passes for my version of Christmas shopping. Loosely translated, that means picking up a few quality bottles of hooch at the local liquor store and then hitting up a few other places to pick up gift cards. Come to think of it, there may yet be time to order all the gift cards online and have them sent to the house… then all I need to do for the weekend is stop at the liquor store. That’s a Christmas task that even I can get behind.

Socialization…

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PartyThe concept of a Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Office Party is a lesson in contradictions. First, fill the room full of people that you really only know passingly well. Add a DJ who can’t play any good music for fear of offending someone. Add a healthy dose of forced conviviality and Christmas joy. And finally open the bar in the middle of the afternoon. It amazes me year after year that office Christmas parties don’t result in drunken shouting matches between people who generally don’t want to be in the same room with one another when it can be avoided. It’s one of the biggest reasons I know mankind can do anything that we collectively set our minds to.

As office parties go, I have to admit that this year’s was pretty well laid on. I’m never going to be super happy in a large crowded room, but the food was plentiful, the adult beverages were cold, and no one tried dragging me onto the dance floor. Under the circumstances, that’s pretty much how I define success. Now if anyone needs me I’ll be hiding out in the basement trying to recover from an afternoon of actual socialization.

Ignorant bliss…

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If you stick around any place long enough, you’re going to see history repeat itself over… and over… and over. After almost a decade of professional service to the United States, I can honestly tell you that there’s not much left that really surprises me or makes me nervous. There is one thing, though, that to this day makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and fills me with the ominous feeling that something ridiculous is about to happen. It’s not a warning light that flashes “launch detected” or even the thought of getting handed my walking papers if Congress doesn’t get its act together. Those are realities you just sort of things you learn to live with along the way.

The thing that strikes fear into my very heart is the sound of a phone ringing at 3:55 on a Friday afternoon. Nothing, absolutely nothing, good happens at 3:55 on Friday afternoons. Like a call in the middle of the night, it is never, ever good news. More often than not it’s someone who has made a bad decision somewhere along the line and is flailing desperately in an effort to find someone else to share their misery. Make no mistake, if you’re foolish enough to pick up that ringing phone, you’re going to become the someone in question. And your life is going to get very stupid, very quickly.

Sure, I know everyone is a selfless and dedicated employee who doesn’t mind having the first moments of their weekend spent trying to unravel someone else’s problem, but look, take it from me, the best thing you can do when you hear the phone ring at 3:55 on a Friday afternoon is just hum a happy tune and walk away. By the time you know what the problem really is, whoever you need to talk to in order to get it fixed will have gone home for the weekend anyway. Rest assured, whatever was stupid and broken on Friday afternoon will be waiting for you on Monday morning. It will still be broken and stupid, but at least you’ve bought yourself a full weekend of ignorant bliss.

Achieving work-life balance…

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Reaching the end of the year with every hour of “use-or-lose” leave accounted for is something of an obsession around this time of year. After some quick back of the napkin math, it looks like I’ll be opening the new leave year with 232 hours in the bank. Since we can only carry 240 hours from year to year, I’m on the correct side of the allowable amount of carryover time. I’m sure there are plenty of people who “give back” time at the end of the year, but that violates one of the most sacred principles of my professional philosophy – “Gather unto yourself all the benefits to which you are entitled and guard them jealously.”

If my calculations are correct (and I assure you they are), there are 13 work weeks left in 2012. Of those 13 weeks, I’ll work a full five days during only five of them, with three of those weeks being the ones immediately preceding the week and a half I’m taking off at Christmas. Put another way, of the 77 days between now and the start of my Christmas vacation, I’ll only be at the office for 59.7% of them after accounting for weekends, federal holidays, and random days off.

After a few more mathematical gymnastics and allowing for time at the office only being a third of each 24-hour work day it really breaks down to me only being at work for 19.91% of the next three months. Suddenly even the most batshit crazy day doesn’t seem quite so bad. Apparently the secret is looking at time in aggregate and not at individual hours and days. Hopefully someone will remind me about this the next time I’m tempted run away and join the circus.

Limited (dis)agreement…

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So let me get this straight. You want me to sign a “limited telework agreement” that basically says management can tell me to work from home any time it’s convenient for them (i.e. whenever the office is closed due to some outside condition like snow, hurricane, or wildfire). In return, they may possibly consider allowing me to work from home a few days a year on days when I would usually take some kind of leave (i.e. dthe cable guy coming to fix the TV). I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump at the opportunity to sign on for something that’s a whole lot of upside for management, but that gives me pretty much nothing in return.

Oh, and just in case you were considering signing up for the program, you’re signed agreement will give your employer the right to come into your home to inspect for “safety”. Sure that will probably never happen, but even knowing it’s possible is more than a little creepy; a creep factor that I’d be willing to deal with if it were for a regularly scheduled day where I’d get to read memos and build PowerPoint decks while wearing my fuzzy slippers and sitting at my kitchen table. It’s not a creep factor I’m willing to get onboard with just to have the privilege of working the next time we get snow deep enough to make the roads too hazardous to get to the office. Honestly, if it’s so bad that I consider coming to work a hazard to life or limb, I’ll go ahead and exercise the unscheduled leave option if the powers that be are too hardheaded to close up shop for the day.

For me, it’s a simple fact of living in the 21st century: Telework is either a good program or it’s not. It’s something worth doing right or it’s not. For an organization that does business in 100+ countries to say that individual productivity depends on sitting in a cube so people have physical access to them is farcical… or it would be farcical if they weren’t so serious when they said it. I’ve been at it long enough to know that you don’t gain a damned thing from swimming against the tide. I’m not going to wage war for the sanctity of telework and I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword for it, but the chance of my signing a “limited” agreement are somewhere between slim and none.

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.

I am the 99%… and I’m ok with that…

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A few months ago the world was making a big stink about the 99% versus the 1%. A quick run of the numbers told me that I was very safely part of the larger group and in no practical danger of ever reaching into the ranks of the smaller. It might shock you to know that I’m actually ok with that. Not as happy as I might be as a Powerball winner, mind you, but mostly content to live the life of a white collar working stiff, even if that means I’m going to have to do my best to stay employed for the next 30-ish years.

Look, no one wants to “work.” I’m fairly sure that all of us have some happy place that in our heads we’d all rather be on a daily basis. It’s no secret that mine is some out of the way beach with a slightly dilapidated tiki hut rum bar on some backwater tropical island. In this particular fantasy land, I don’t do much other than read and write and sample the fruits of the local distillery. Maybe I’d finally get around to learning to dive or be more than a passenger on a boat, but that’s not strictly necessary. OK, so I basically want to be Hemingway minus the unfortunate run in with the business end of a shotgun there at the end. As cool as I think that life would be, I also like eating on a regular basis here in the real world. Since civilization basically collapses when we all decide to stop being productive and follow our dreams instead, I think I’ll stick with a job that actually pays the bills for the time being.

So there’s the rub. I don’t particularly want to work, but I definitely like getting paid. That’s the devil’s bargain we all make when our parents decide that it’s time for them to stop supporting our bad habits and questionable decision-making skills. That’s the price we pay for being a legal adult and more or less controlling our own destiny. I can still see a few life paths that may well lead me to that little bar, on that little beach, on some little slice of heaven in the Caribbean. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to remember that I’ve got a job that isn’t 1/10th as batshit crazy as the last one, because honest to God, that never fails to bring a smile to my face.

No surprises…

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In the two and a half years that I’ve been writing here at WordPress, I’d hate to guess how many times I’ve “admitted” to being a creature of habit. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t at least once a month. Maybe that in itself has gotten to be a bit of a habit, but that’s not really the point. Because I’m a creature of habit, I like having a schedule. I like knowing that the alarm clock is going to ring at the same time every day, that lunch is going to happen at more or less the same time every morning, and that I’m going to walk out the door at more or less the same time every afternoon. When some unforeseen circumstance throws that schedule out of whack, I tend to get vicerally annoyed by it, even when it doesn’t show. I’m sure there’s some deep seated psychological reason for it, but I’ve never been curious enough to try figuring it out. Making sure things go according to plan always seemed like a better use of time to me.

Of course when you’re a simple cog in the machine, most of your schedule ends up really being decided by someone or something well beyond your own sphere of control. When that happens, there’s really not much more to to but grin and bear it no matter how much you’re seething in the inside. Not that I would ever seethe over some minor detail like that, of course. I’m a pretty simple guy to motivate. Keep me fed, watered, and on schedule and all is right with the world. Start dinking with any one of the three and I can get downright surly. I should be enjoying what’s left of this Sunday afternoon, but in the back of my mind I’m already vaguely annoyed by tomorrow’s schedule being shot to hell before I ever leave the house. Around 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to need someone to remind me that snarky comments and senior staff rarely go well together. I should probably just consider myself lucky that this kind of blown schedule is a rarity… but I’ll leave that for the glass-half-full types. Putting things in perspective seems to make them feel better. Strangely enough, bitching about it online seems to have the same effect on me.

Brain fry…

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Fifty or a hundred years ago, an average man came home from work physically exhausted and filthy. There are days I almost envy that kind of work. At the end of the shift, you can point out a stack of steel beams or twenty truckloads of coal and see that you actually did something with your day. By contrast, I got home tonight exhausted, but only from the neck up. Jumping from one thing to another, answering phone calls and questions, and occasionally making things up as I went along just plain wore me out today. If I bothered to starch my collar, though, you wouldn’t know I spent the day at work. I’m trying not to remind myself that it’s only Monday, because my brain is well and truly fried. That doesn’t bode particularly well for the rest of the week.

Still, the part of me whose grandfathers dug coal, stamped tires, and spent their lives doing hard physical labor doesn’t feel quite right complaining about how mentally draining it is to sit in front of a computer screen, answer the phone, and beg, cajole, and threaten people to get the job done is. It seems somewhat less daunting when laid against the kind of physically demanding jobs that they had. Knowing that doesn’t make my gray matter any less shot on days like this, though.

I’ve heard that some extroverts thrive on fast paced, loud, raucous environments. Unfortunately, I’m not an extrovert by nature. To make good decisions I need time to think, reflect, and process and time was the one thing in short supply today. Sure, I’ll keep making decisions, under those conditions, but they won’t be my best. I suppose they don’t always need to be. All I really need now is a nice quiet room, a good book, and possibly a dog or two and I should be back in fighting trim before the sun comes up tomorrow. How it goes after that is still way, way up in the air.