Category: make it work

Propagation of the Species

I work across the street from a public park that borders on marshlands, very near the actual Bay. The proximity of water and the tasty grasses in the marsh entice lots of birds to come visit and stay.

Among others, we have egrets, herons, spoonbills and sandpipers. All so elegant and beautiful.

Here’s a rather grainy shot of a snowy egret, one of my favorite birds. This one usually keeps a beady eye on everyone walking by:

Many of the birds that we get in our beautiful marshes are on the endangered or near endangered species lists.

So it’s good we have a nice habitat here for them.

That said, ya wanna know what bird isn’t on any endangered list and is pretty much in zero danger of extinction?

Geese.

@#$%ing Canada Geese.

Or, as I like to call them, feathered poop factories.

Taken with my iPhone, this is by a walking trail:

That’s not even a small portion of the inventory.

Here’s a wider shot:

Again, to the left and right of this frame there are at least this same number if not more geese.

The one in the center of that photo charged at me, hissing, so I didn’t take any more photos.

The geese eat grass, lots and lots of grass, then they process it internally and drop the leftovers right in the middle of the walking trails.

Their drop offs equal the size of the leavings of a large dog. Only a whole lot greener.

Just. Ew.

This morning coming into work, there was a goose right in the middle of the driveway (which is a long narrow single car path). The goose moved neither right nor left, but strutted right down the center of the lane. I counted ten cars in line behind while Mr. Goose waddled his way into the day.

I was in car number eleven.

These cranky birds have certainly figured out how to continue the prosperity of their species. In a big way.

My elderly uncle, unfortunately now deceased, used to shoot bottle rockets at the Canada geese that befouled the walkway in front of his house in Indiana.

They sort of frown on that here in California, don’t they?

All photos by Karen Fayeth. Click on any photo to see a larger size.

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!

Daily Agenda

Sleep.

Wake to alarm.

Curse.

Rise. Eat. Dress. Leave.

Work.

Meeting.

Work.

Meeting.

Meeting.

“Karen, take the action to…”

Meeting.

Work.

Email. Lots of email.

Work.

Late Lunch (if lucky).

Manage someone’s complaint.

Work.

Meeting.

Deal with someone’s mess up.

Work.

Sleepy. Yawn.

Two hours left.

Email.

Meeting.

Work.

Leave work.

Home. Food. Scritch chins of boy and Feline.

Sleep.

And then…..

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

These are the days they never told you about when you were twelve and wanted nothing more than to be a grownup.

Sometimes These Things Happen

As the world continues to turn, I sometimes find it necessary to put out updates to recently published posts.

Things change, you know how it goes.

So let’s recall my post giving love to the label makers.

We turn now to the first week of my new gig. On day one, I was informed of the “corporate culture of cost savings.”

Once fully briefed on how much cheap is appreciated, I was directed to the office supply cabinet to see what I could dredge up. I had to “make it work” before any new orders would be approved.

Well, that’s fine by me. I’m a big fan of office supplies, even used office supplies, so I dove right in.

I found a very usable Swingline stapler, a tape dispenser, a new box of binder clips and though I had to dig around a bit, but I also found a staple puller.

So far so good!

There, in the back of the drawer, piled under a stack of notebooks and used binders, I found this fella:

It’s a…a…*gasp*…LABEL MACHINE!

Right there. In the supply drawer. An orphan! Just waiting for a nice girl like me to take it and clean it up and love it like a good label making machine deserves to be loved!

I snagged it up, clutched it to my heart and spirited it away to my office.

There was even a half-full label tape cartridge in there! Yes!

I plugged it in and gave it a test drive.

But this is where the story gets sad.

It would appear that this ol’ soldier has seen better days.

Despite the flashy “black on gold” label tape in there (how disco!), it seems that the little turn wheels that push the tape through the printer are busted.

In short, he cannot make any more labels.

I tried to fix it. Even busted down office supplies deserve their due!

No luck.

We just have to let him go gently into that good night. He can now go and rest easy where the old and broken office equipment goes to die. Some call it office recycling, I call it a final resting place.

Goodbye big fella! I know once you made labels that shined like the sun. It’s time to hang up the ol’ cartridge and call it a day.

*sniff* He was a hero to manila files everywhere.

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So…do you think this means I can order a new one…….?

That is SO Old School!

My sister likes to give me hell about my inability to get rid of stuff.

She *might* be right, but I’m not admitting to it here.

I do, however, have a very strong “cheap” streak running through me.

I can’t help it, roots of my raising.

So this cheap streak means that when I have a possession that has served me well and works easily, I tend to keep it. And use it. Use it WELL past its prime.

Behold, one such object for which I feel great affection.

My old school adding machine.

This item was procured for me back in the year of nineteen and ninety-seven.

It was a purchase made by the admin assistant to the Director of Procurement at the Lockheed facility where I was employed.

I had to prove to the admin assistant that the adding machine on my desk was truly broken.

She didn’t believe me.

It was quite a negotiation.

Finally, my wit and charm prevailed, and this little baby was ordered, fresh from our office supply vendor.

A brand new out of the box adding machine was unheard of at that Lockheed location!

My new possession featured typical ten key navigation. The choice of accountants and those who wear eye shades alike.

Oh yes.

I love this adding machine.

It’s been with me, my trusted friend, for THIRTEEN YEARS!

I loffs it.

I used to work at a hip, hot IT company. One of my employees who is cooler in her pinky toe than I’ll ever be in my whole rig used to give me an endless stream of grief about my “old school” adding machine.

“Your iPhone has a calculator!” she’d remind me about once a day.

Yes, it does. But it’s not the same.

The tactile pleasure from the machine and that little raised nub on the 5 button, so you know where you are without looking? Delicious!

And look! If I want to, I can even print out my column of numbers!!! Check and double check!

I choose to keep the tape roll off the machine. Why waste the paper, right?

Oh my sweet glorious adding machine. It’s now found a new home, a place of honor, on my new desk at my new hip, hot IT employer.

As I drew the beast out of my backpack and lovingly cleaned it up with alcohol wipes, my new boss declared “what is that?!?!”

But then one of my new employees said, “oh, I love adding machines. I still have mine too. I love using the tape to check my number input.”

I almost wept.

We may have found a home here…me and my not-so-sleek, not-so-luxurious adding machine.

In case you were wondering, yes…I took my adding machine with me when I left Lockheed. They considered it my going away present. It was so thoughtful!