Category: business is business

Expanding My Mind

When I was in graduate school at NMSU, I was required to take an International Management class.

This was the early 90’s in Las Cruces. “International Management” meant discussing NAFTA and the Maquiladoras on the border.

Don’t get me wrong, that was very valuable learning, especially when NAFTA was in its infancy and no one was certain the impact it would create.

In the final analysis, I find that no matter how wonderful the professor or how much I enjoyed the class, the “international” portion of my education class was seriously lacking.

We might have discussed Japan but only very briefly, and mainly it was topic of fear as Japan was kicking our butt in manufacturing (they still are).

But that was it. Conversations about EMEA (and the Euro), the technology boom in India and vast low cost production from China were all still a long way off.

So they taught what they knew at the time and the rest I’ve had to figure out for myself.

Over the past two days, I’ve had telephone meetings with my employees located in Sydney, Sao Paulo and London.

These are three very different countries and cultures. How I speak with and manage my team varies widely. The concerns, the attention to detail, the speed of work is all over the board. I have to figure it out for each person individually so I can be the best and most effective manager possible.

Today after chatting with London, then Sao Paulo, I needed to speak with a supplier representative. I thought he was in the US until I looked at his business card. Nope, Hong Kong.

“What the hell time is it in Hong Kong?!” I wailed aloud as I’d already calculated too many time zones for the day.

For the record, 10:15am is 1:15 tomorrow morning in Hong Kong. So glad I didn’t just ring up his cell phone.

But that one moment of frustration aside, I honestly love it. Every minute of these calls and building the relationships with my team is a learning experience. I’ve worked for companies that touted themselves to be a global company. My current employer truly is.

The other day I walked to the cafeteria and as people walked past me, I heard Italian, Spanish, what I believe was Cantonese (my ear for the various Asian languages is not strong) and many, many central Asia languages spoken amongst my coworkers.

We are truly a multicultural company filled with profoundly intelligent people. I know there are many people who fear the vast influx of people from other countries of the world to the US.

Me, I love it. I feel more a part of the world than I ever did before (heck, my own brother lives in Kuala Lumpur!).

Each day my mind expands and I grow and I love every minute of that.

Last week, when I was in New Mexico, a buddy of mine from back in the day asked me what my job was these days.

I told him about the job and he’d heard of my employer (it’s a biggie).

He shook his head, spit out some Copenhagen, looked me square in the eye and said, “That’s pretty good for a little girl from New Mexico.”

Yeah. Not too bad.

(My phone lines are, indeed, humming)

Oh The Humanity!

Side note:

I’d considered taking the week off from blogging because awkward commentary on awkward things seemed, perhaps, inappropriate after yesterday’s post.

But then I decided…well hell, writing this blog, no matter how trivial the topic, is what keeps me sane. I need to write something, anything, every day. And so, dear readers, despite my ongoing grief and my travel plans that will take me back to New Mexico for a few days, I’m going to try to keep on writing this week. Because it’s who I am.

Thanks to all for your support in comments and via email. Ya’ll rock.

And now, onward……

So I have a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while.

I’ve not brought it up before because, well, I was dealing with all the emotions.

It’s essential that I my footing on this and make peace.

I don’t think it is any secret that I mostly use Apple products for my computing needs.

I had the great fortune to be able to use a Mac for work in my last three jobs, a time frame of almost fifteen years.

I have Macs at home. I have an iPhone.

Yes. I’m a Mac person.

Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use the PC, I just haven’t had a lot of need to. Sure the occasional lookup on the PC at the library. Sometimes using my best friend’s machine to check email.

Not a problem.

Well. A month ago, I came to work on my first day, and into my hands they plopped….

A Dell.

Not just a Dell. A three year old Dell.

A three year old Dell that originally came with Vista but has since been blasted with some corporate approved version of some other member of the Windows family. I’ll be dag blarned if I can remember what it is.

(Because one click on the Apple logo in the upper left corner and it will tell me what OS I’m running, but I can’t find the similar on this machine. Oh wait…start….control panel….system…. Ah ha! Windows XP.)

The Good Man assures me that whatever the OS is on this machine is better than Vista.

Oh? So…ok.

I’m getting used to it, using this machine day by day.

It’s slow. It’s stodgy. It’s….well…it’s Windows.

I’m used to “hey, I wish this thingamabooper was over there instead of over here” and so I drag it over and off it goes, happier than anything, to its new location and it just does what it’s supposed to do.

Not so with my Windows. You have to find the thingamabooper in the right file and ask it nicely, maybe even coax it, to come over and perhaps make the transfer. Like a professional bureaucrat, it wants rubber stamps and approvals and nodding heads to let it know that, yes, it might be ok to be over there.

And it will go over there.

And then, later, it will go back to where it came from, without asking.

So okay. I’m adapting. It’s all just fine.

But I have a confession to make…

(I’m so ashamed.)

I find I really kind of like the ol’ right click. I never thought I needed more than one button on my mouse. It turns out…right click is pretty darn handy.

This whole PC thing is not so bad, really!

Sssh. Don’t tell Steve Jobs. He’d be so disappointed!

That’s a Travesty!

What’s a travesty?

This, this is a travesty!

I know a lot of people really like Coffee-Mate. A lot of people use Coffee-Mate. It’s very popular.

A dear friend’s husband is a self confessed Coffee-Mate hazelnut flavor addict. He stockpiles it in his fridge.

Weirdo.

Look, I’m here to tell you, this isn’t a food product. I don’t know what it is, but it is definitely NOT a food product.

The label says “contains milk ingredients”.

Uh. “Milk ingredients?”

What in the seventeen kinds of sam hell are “milk ingredients?” That doesn’t say “contains milk” or “contains cream” or “contains anything you’d recognize.” No!

Milk ingredients. And oil. And a bunch of other things you can’t pronounce.

There is a big box of these pods of crap-food in our break room.

It’s the only option for lightening a terrible cup of coffee in the late afternoon when you are desperate for a cuppa and the coffee bar downstairs is closed.

Look, I’m inherently suspicious of any sort of dairy product, even a pseudo-dairy product, that doesn’t spoil when you leave it out on the counter for weeks at a time.

Except for real butter…and even real butter has its time limits.

What is the half-life on a pod of Coffee-Mate? A billion years?

I personally enjoy a good splash of half and half in a cup of joe.

Or as I call it, half of the half, which makes The Good Man laugh.

So with no half of the half on hand, I used some of this Coffee-Mate “creamer.” Cuz I ain’t calling it creamer without them thar sarcastic quotes.

It’s gross. It’s oily. It’s chemical-y.

Just. Ew.

So then I poured out the coffee and tried this, also available in the break room:

While sipping at this sort of tangy beverage from a package that does not include an ingredients list, I did a Google search. I didn’t net any ingredients, but I found this image which shows the main box that the packets come in. The box says “contains no apple…” and the rest is blocked by the packet in front of the box.

I assume it says “contains no apple juice.”

Which means…

This is ALSO not food. This is more chemical crap.

Gah!

I’m not any sort of Birkenstock wearing, tree hugging, raw food eating girl. I like as much red dye number whatever as the next guy.

But even I have my limits.

________________________________

***Note to my readers: I actually wrote this yesterday afternoon. Upon a solid reread today, I was struck by just how much I’ve been whining lately about the no-cost beverage choices at my new place of employ. I’m still new, and while I do have some work to do, I am also sitting around a lot.

Leaving me to my own devices is never a good idea.

As I become busier with my job, I suspect the beverage posts will die down.

Hopefully.

And We Haven’t Piped Down Since

Today, August 18, 2010, marks ninety years since the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified.

In case you are a little shy on your constitutional amendments, here is some of the actual text:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

That right. On August 19, 1920, women got the right to vote.

It took Tennessee’s legislature to pass the proposed amendment by one little vote for (the 36th state to ratify) to cause the 19th Amendment to become a part of the United States Constitution.

(I’m pleased to note that California was 18th and New Mexico was 32nd. Nice early adoption from my two home states.)

The 19th Amendment gave women a voice. An official voice.

This meant that a woman didn’t have to defer to a man to make her choices about how this country should be run.

My folks were married almost fifty years. My old man was an old fashioned guy. In their early years, he used to tell his wife how to vote. Many years later, my mom admitted to me that she’d go to the polls and vote the exact opposite way.

The 19th Amendment gave her that right!

Recently, over a family dinner, for no reason I could fathom, my eleven-year-old sister-in-law broke out and asked, “did you vote for Al Gore?”

I replied, “No, I didn’t vote for Al Gore. I also didn’t vote for George Bush. I think I voted for Ralph Nader that year. I believe it’s essential to cast a vote, even if it is a dissenting vote.”

I’m allowed to do that. You know why? The 19th Amendment to the Constitution!

Heck, I can cast my vote willy-nilly all over the place! And I don’t have to have a nilly ol’ willy to do so!

(This juncture is SO ripe for a “pull the lever” pun, but I’ll refrain.)

I’ve voted in every Presidential election since I turned eighteen and I’ve voted in most of the minor elections too.

This November, on behalf of my residency in the State of California and my Suffragette sisters from the past, I will cast a vote for some random person for Governor, because I sure as hell am not voting for either Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman.

But I’m gonna vote.

I’m making my voice heard for Susan B!

Watch me now, heh!

Learning The Language In a Foreign Country

So yeah. The new job. Good job. VERY good job. Great folks. Super team.

Like it. A lot.

However….

(Because you *knew* there was going to be a however)

This is a pretty old school type of company. Because they are so old fashioned, I’ve discovered in my short time here that the straight faced usage of corporate buzz-words is rampant.

Rampant. (just needed to emphasize that)

I would imagine these days that one couldn’t work anywhere and NOT run across the ol’ popular buzzwords, but it’s especially bad here.

“Low hanging fruit,” for example, is one of my all time least favorite expressions. I first heard it back in 1994 in Albuquerque. Yes, I remember the moment I first heard this ridiculous phrase, because I had an immediate “why would you say that” reaction to it.

Guess what I hear just about daily here in the Bay Area in 2010? Yep.

“Think outside the box” still has life.

“Think inside the box” is fairly new, and it’s bandied about a bit. It means, roughly, the old way may not be so bad anymore. (Funny how, in a financial crisis, everyone turns back to the textbooks as a way to bail themselves out.)

“That’s powerful” is one I wish wasn’t taking on life, but it is. Example: “We wrote up the workflow for that process and posted it on line. It’s very powerful.”

Yeah. No.

My super executive boss type guy dropped a “let’s form a Tiger Team” on me two days ago.

Ok. Remember Tiger Teams? I do. It was the year 1997 and I worked for Lockheed. We paid an outside consultant A LOT of money to help us form a Tiger Team to figure out why every meeting we had descended into yelling at each other.

Turns out, we were just a team of very strong personalities from vastly different disciplines (procurement, engineering, marketing, etc) and the only way we could ever get anywhere was by arguing.

So the term “Tiger Team” really makes me twitch.

But by god, I’m on a newly formed Tiger Team here at work.

There is a new bit of jargon that seems to be catching on. I hate it. Oh I hate it. Almost as much as I hate “low hanging fruit.”

Ready for it?

The phrase is….”set it and forget it.”

As in, “With that new reporting software, you can just set it and forget it. It’s so great!”

Or

“Now that we’ve established pricing on that product, we can’t just set it and forget it. We have to keep checking the demand reports.”

So let me just say that while I’m a longtime fan of Ron Popeil and his Ronco commercials, I fully blame him for bringing this atrocity into my life.

Business people are seriously using a phrase from a dagblam infomercial for a @#$%ing chicken roaster!

Why? Why does this show up at my conference table?!?!?!?

The Good Man says he heard this phrase in use a few years back, and I believe him. It’s new to me and I sure as heck don’t want to set it, and now that everyone is using it, there’s no possible way I *can* forget it.

I guess “set it and forget it” is just a new square added to the buzzword bingo playing card.

There’d better be good prizes, because at this job, I’m gonna be winning (or is it losing) every day!