Category: work

Not the sharpest tool in the shed

You know, I’ve been working here in the Imperial Tower of Doom for just under a year.

And about two weeks ago, I realized something.

Something you think I would have caught onto sooner, but didn’t.

Here’s my revelation:

I work in a trapezoid.

For those geometrically challenged like me, this is a trapezoid:

Or, to be very geometric and correct, this is an isosceles trapezoid, which is what my building is.

Isosceles. And a trapezoid.

I don’t know why, but I think that’s weird.

Weirder still is that it took me this long to figure it out. I always wondered why the conference rooms were so oddly shaped with lots of narrow, unusable space.

And yet, from the outside, you wouldn’t immediately “get” that it’s a trapezoid.

(note, this photo was taken on a rare clear day. One would think the weather is actually *nice* here with no swirling gray clouds. One would be wrong.)

It was only recently while waiting on the impossibly slow elevators that I got to inspecting the fire escape route sign (properly posted by the elevators) and as I followed the little red line, I really internalized the outline of the building and thought, “hey…trapezoid!”

This can’t be good for my chi, right?

Office Archeology: An Update

Each blogger, in the course of their writing and rambling, has one post that they might call their favorite. It may or may not be a fan favorite, but it’s one that sticks out the most in the blogger’s mind.

I have one of those.

Waaaay back, lo’ these many…uh..months ago, I prepared and posted what has become my favorite blog post ever.

Yes, my explorations of this Officine Era, this epoch in my history, the importance of documenting my findings!

And, it can become a living record, because there are some changes…some *updates* to the research and analysis!

My travels have taken me past those relics discussed time and again, and I feel, in the interest of scientific accuracy, it is vital to update the records.

So here we go, the latest understanding of the artifacts, as we know them.

First, recall the lonely and homeless set of keys? Those which secure a laptop from theft, but these, cast mercilessly aside?

Well. They are gone now. Extinct. Disappeared without a forwarding address.

What might have become of these sad, homeless keys? We may never know….

Folks, let’s have a moment in remembrance…

However, all is not bad news! Remember the lowly and lonely industrial strength stapler?

There he was, far from any stapling opportunities. Lost and alone. Unused. Unloved.

But look! He found friends!

Hi Mister Highlighter! Hey Miss Piece of Paper! Welcome to my expanse of file cabinets right outside the conference room. Wanna play flag football?

I’m so happy the stapler was able to make friends. His story doesn’t end tragically, like those keys…

And how about this? Remember that bit o’ Heath bar wrapper that was careless dropped and left abandoned on the stairs for some months?

It’s STILL there! And has adapted camouflage capabilities! It has moved over to the side and has flipped over….behold!

We are seeing evolution in progress, people! Amazing, fascinating stuff.

And, I saved the best for last! We have a new artifact to introduce to the world. It’s amazing. Phenomenal! Fantasmagorical!

Ladies and Gents, I introduce you to…Big Ass Box Of Binder Clips!

This box of clips, located near the broken copy machine that no one uses, and is *SO* important that someone named Jon has demanded we not remove it!

I don’t even know who Jon is or why I would obey him, and yet, I do!

The exclamation mark on his sign coerces me to abide! And so, I don’t remove. Not a one. And neither does anyone else! No one uses these binder clips. So there they sit! Useless and unused! Shiny, taunting, but out of reach.

Damn that Jon and his demanding posted sign!

Ok, well, this is all good stuff. Much to consider. I encourage all to go out and explore their own Officine Surroundings. What you find might surprise you!

Things that they don’t teach in manager training

I’ve been a manager at my job for quite some time now. I think seven years at last count. So I’ve been through a lot. And yet, sometimes, I’m still a bit thrown by the curveballs lobbed by the folks who have the grand misfortune to report to me.

On Friday, one of my employees, a very hardworking and rather quiet girl came tearing into my office. I swear, if she was a car, she would have left black marks on my industrial carpet.

The employee looked at me with wide eyes.

“Is it ok if I go home?” she said, and paused…then tacked on…”I don’t want to barf here at work.”

I happen to know she’s three months pregnant and having a rough time of it, so I said, quickly, “Go. Now.”

She turned and peeled out of the building.

This got me thinking about back when I was first made a manager, and the anemic training course they sent me to.

They discussed “things you shouldn’t say” and “things you should say” and “what to do if you have to fire someone.” But never, never did they discuss “when it’s ok to let someone go home early because they are gonna blow chunks.”

I guess that’s where you have to rely on that ol’ manager gut instinct, hey?

Other oddball things I have experienced and was never properly prepared for:

Male employee spent all of our one-on-one session telling me, in detail, that he and his wife were trying to get pregnant and, to their dismay, had ended up having to resort to IVF. TMI. But wait, there’s more. We haven’t begun to TMI yet.

About a week later, he comes running into my office…”My wife just called, she’s at the doctor, she’s fertile right now, so I have to go give a…um….sample. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

Ugh.

“Just go!” I said, and to his retreating back, tacked on, “If this happens again, please just tell me you have to go to the dentist!”

Or the really, really good employee, like top notch worker, who felt the need to tell me that the only way she could deal with the stress of her job was that she and her husband would smoke a bowl as they commuted home from work every day.

“I’m thinking about smoking one at lunch too, this job is crazy.”

Well. Ok. *Technically* she’s doing this on her own time and off company property. And my employer at the time was pretty lenient about such things.

But still. Things I don’t need to know. Especially as the manager!

Also important to mention that managing isn’t just about direct reports, it’s about managing your own manager too.

So, in that same vein, at that same employer, I had a boss who delighted in telling me how much cocaine she did at her wedding. “It was the only way to get through it, I never really loved my husband. Still don’t.”

Oooohkaaaay. She only lasted a year at the job. Freak.

And the best was, not long after starting this newest gig, one of the ladies on my team had been out sick for a few days. I assumed the flu, a migraine, tummy upset. Whatever. I didn’t need to know. Upon her return, I simply inquired, “hey, are you feeling better?”

What followed was a long, detailed and gory description. Let’s just say…you can have a colon polyp burst and leave it there, mmkay?

You can’t unhear something, no matter how hard you try.

But, when all is said and done, I haven’t had to have the granddaddy of all uncomfortable manager situations. My dear brother-in-law has been subjected to this more than once. Poor guy.

We call it…the Stinky Conversation.

The one where you have to ask your employee to please shower…and use soap…because their coworkers are complaining.

Double ugh!

I’m telling ya, those fancy politically correct manager’s training classes do nuthin’ to prepare you for the real world!

Today: A Fable

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess…we’ll call her…Karenita. This lovely princess was married to the most handsomest prince in the whole land.

But unfortunately for our lovely princess, every weekday, she was required to go and toil away the hours at the Imperial Tower of Doom. Gray clouds swirled overhead while poor Karenita was tormented by her oppressors.

There was one oppressor who was particularly a thorn in the side of our beautiful princess.

See, our lovely girl arrives to work in the morning tired and in need of something for breakfast. The princess keeps some food in the Imperial Tower office ‘fridge, and also likes a spot of hot tea on the cold gray swirly cloud mornings.

Unfortunately for the princess, there lived in the break room a mean and nasty troll.

No really, this lady is like five foot nothing with a bad attitude and a chip the size of Texas on her shoulder.

For some reason, the Evil Break Room Lady can always sense when Karenita the Princess needs to have breakfast, and makes sure to hustle in there first, blocking the egress for our lovely girl to reach the ‘fridge.

While Karenita is there heating up her food, Evil Break Room Lady makes nasty comments about how people don’t clean up after themselves (despite the fact that Karenita scrupulously cleans up after herself) and self-importantly restocks the paper coffee cups (it’s not her job, by the way, she’s a very high paid executive admin) while dropping hairy eyeballs on the princess the whole time.

And then Evil Break Room Lady takes paper towels and cleans the countertops, sometimes pushing Karenita’s bowl out of the way while she does. Karenita finds this to be very rude.

It’s clear that Evil Break Room Lady doesn’t like Karenita, but Karenita doesn’t know why. The princess was raised to be kind and cordial and always says hello and thank you and excuse me.

Karenita believes that Evil Break Room Lady must be very unhappy with her menopausal lot in life, and all the hot flashes must make her cranky. Karenita thinks Evil Break Room Lady envies her still productive ovaries and plentiful estrogen.

The princess tries to be understanding, but it’s kind of hard when someone gives you the equivalent of the finger with her face every morning. Karenita is just trying to make it through the day.

The princess has tried to be nice, to make conversation, to say “yeah, it’s really bad when people leave water everywhere” but none of this works. Evil Break Room Lady has just determined that the princess is a lesser form of life.

And this doesn’t make Karenita feel very nice as she starts each day.

In other news, the nicest person to Karenita in all the Imperial Tower of Doom is the janitor. The janitor thinks Karenita rocks and will make it a point to wave vigorously from across the room and say hi.

Karenita likes Mr. Janitor. He’s a good man with a sucky job and he does it with life and verve and kindness.

So there’s hope. Maybe Karenita knows she’s not such a bad person after all.

And they all lived crankily every after.

How do you do what you do?

A couple days ago, I mentioned that part of my daily work is to manage a helpdesk team. They are a great, hardworking team of ten.

Sometimes, I’m not sure how they do what they do. Especially since most all of these folks are contract employees. They work that hard and they aren’t even getting all of the benefits of being employed by the company.

This morning, I’m sitting in my office working on mid-year performance reviews for my other six full time (not contract) employees. I’m trying to find a “business” way to write “he’s a great worker when he bothers to show up to work on time.”

I’m fiddling, I’m delaying, I’m reading updates on Twitter instead of actually working.

All the while, I can hear my best contract employee, who has the honor of having her cube located just outside my office door, on the phone with our end users.

In the time it took me to check the current stock market performance (down a skosh this morning), she has answered three calls.

One from an outside supplier wanting to do business with the company. “I’m sorry sir, I’m just a call agent, but I can pass on your message. No, I can’t give you their phone number. Because I’m not authorized, I’m very sorry. Yes, I understand. I will gladly pass on your message and they’ll call you if there is a fit. I understand. I understand. I understand. But that’s unfortunately all I can do. Yes. I understand. Ok, thank you.”

Another call from a supplier wanting to get paid, “I show your invoice was received on Monday. It’s set up to pay Friday. Yes, ok, unh huh. It looks like it was stuck in approvals. Sure, I get that. I can see what I can do to expedite, but I know for sure the check will run Friday. Ok, yes, I’ll see if we can overnight the check.”

And then a call from an inside end user who can’t use our *very* simple online purchasing system. So she walked them through step-by-step, “Do you see the box with the little magnifying glass? Click that, then scroll down to the fifth one down, yes, that’s it, click that, then click ok. See the next box that says ‘description’? Ok, click there, then type in what you want to buy. Well, what is it you need? Ok, so let’s see, type in widget, blue, two and a half inches. Did you do that? Then click ok.”

Meanwhile, between calls, she’s answering email, typing in tickets for the calls she’s just taken, and giving relationship advice to the guy who shares her cube.

This woman is a force of nature.

This is just a small sample of her days, and this is a “quiet” day!

As I listened to her working so hard while I idled the morning hours, I started to feel bad. I realized…I can’t do what she does. Well, I could, I just don’t want to.

I’m pretty glad I get to sit here in my office being managerial and probably overpaid, searching the thesaurus to find new ways to say “efficient” and “process”.

I feel grateful that my parents were able to send me to college, because, really, it’s my MBA that has me sitting in the office with the door and not the open-air cube shared with another employee.

I think about that amazing lady out there, the force of nature, who is age 24 trying to go to school at night and holding down this contract job and taking care of her mom and grieving her recently deceased grandmother and being the leader for the team and training our end users and generally doing it all while looking good and being pretty gall damn calm.

I think about how it’s unfair, how hard she works and how I have to be honest and admit I don’t work as hard as she does every day. I do have days where I work that hard, but not as consistently.

Then I laughed. Because then I remembered a recent conversation I had with this force of nature woman. She was in my office and I was grilling her for information. I was working on a major presentation to our senior leadership team.

I was spending *hours* on a PowerPoint deck of slides, tweaking bullet points, fiddling with fonts, jimmying the graphics.

She looked at my computer monitor, shook her head, sighed, and said, “I’m so glad I don’t have to mess with things like that.”

I think she’s pretty grateful she doesn’t have to do my job, either.

Perhaps the grass isn’t always greener.