Category: General

Posted on

I’ve never handled no-win situations well

But I’m nonetheless sitting here feeling pretty proud of myself about the current no-win situation I find myself in.

I recently got reassigned to a new boss. I’d heard rumor and innuendo about him. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m glad I did, but he proved himself to be exactly what the rumors said he was.

No real surprise there.

He doesn’t like me much, again no big deal. I can work for someone dutifully and still wish to see them disembowelled slowly with one of those inquisition torture thingys. I wouldn’t actively cause someone like that harm, unless they messed with me first. But as long as we managed to have mutual respect for each other things would be fine.

However, once that line is crossed… all bets are off.

Well, the new boss has been working very hard at crossing that line.

Thus far I’ve been pretty mellow.

The other day he hauled me into an office and told me that my work wasn’t up to par. I thought, “OK, perhaps that’s true,” I also thought “Of course, had you bothered to tell me what your expectations were then perhaps we’d be further along here.”

Anyway, he blathered on and on, I sort of tuned him out… Until he said something about a personal improvement plan.  In the corporate world such plans are shorthand for You’re SCREWED bucko.

Now, he had my complete attention.

What he was talking about is that I’ve been doing my job. But he’s of the philosophy that I should be answer only one question per phone call then moving on to the next phone call. I was of the impression that we were supposed to actually Help.

Apparently, I was incorrect.

As I listened to the remainder of his blathering, deep inside me there was a stirring. My rage monster shifted and started to wake up. “Uh Oh,” I thought. “Gotta stop that from happening.”  To maintain my calm I thought about the fact that less than 24 hours earlier I’d signed a lease on the apartment. 

“That’s gonna cost a pretty penny to break,” I realized. I also thought about the fact that twenty four hours earlier, and I’d simply have stood up and said, “FUCK YOU With broken glass” then left the building. I’d have given notice at my apartment and allowed my rage to burn itself out loading a U-Haul and returned to the mountains and my home, calmed down and turned the job search into a full time job.

I found out today, that a similar event happened on Monday. Another person was in a similar situation, like me, he thought he was doing a good job, helping people. But the management was displeased that he wasn’t blowing our clients off and making them call back multiple times in a day for the same problem.

In his case, he told the management, ” This meeting is over.” 

He got up over their objections and threats, then gathered his stuff and walked out.

Oh if only I hadn’t signed that lease, it would have made one hell of a statement to have two people walk out at the same time for the same reasons. 

The impending Exodus might be amusing to watch while I’m waiting for my ship to come in.

I’m smart enough to play the game, I’m enough of a chameleon to pull it off, and I’m amoral enough to not feel guilty about being disingenuous. 

I can do this… For a while longer.

Posted on

Well, the Circus has left the apartment downstairs

They were gone on Wednesday.

I slept super deep Wednesday night and discovered that I may have a new problem.

I slept super deep!

I’ll have to set a redundant alarm to make sure I don’t oversleep.

I’ll adapt!

The apartment complex itself was a lot more quiet Wednesday night. I suspect that is because there were people coming to that apartment at all hours of the day and night. I noticed almost immediately. There wasn’t nearly the number of cars stopping with their engines running directly under my bedroom window. No more doors slamming, or tapping on the windows.

The other thing that is notably missing is an organic stench. Imagine the scent of skunk and campfire wafting up through the floor or open windows. That is a relief as well, I have no idea what that smell was but I’m glad it’s gone.

As an aside, absolutely NOTHING will eliminate that smell. But I can tell you which air fresheners, short of electrostatic aircleaners come close.

I was looking online for surplus NASA or Submarine airscrubbers. Thankfully I can now stopp that search. Unless I want to continue building my fallout shelter, ahem…

So now I get to sleep at night, I wonder what that is going to be like.

I’m looking forward to finding out.

Posted on

Happy Mother’s Day

For all the Mom’s out there kissing Boo Boos and bandaging scraped knees.

Thank You

I hope all of you are taken out to breakfasts and treated to the trash being taken out without you asking, and that you have the whole day spent with your feet up enjoying your families.

Posted on

Weekends are too damn short!

Or I spend too much time driving…

Probably a bit of both.

It takes until my “Sunday” to recharge enough to have my brain actually start to fire on all cylinders again.

Just in time to shut my head down again to deal with the demands of work.

By my “Friday” my head is tapioca. I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Typically I’m in bed by 6:00 PM. I’ll sleep until 6:00 AM then wake up, and still be bone tired.

I’ll have a cup of coffee, some breakfast, then clean up the apartment, and get on the road to my house… It’s a tough drive.

When I get to the house, I start laundry, and decide if the yard work has to be done. Often I’ll vaccum, but lately I’ve been so tired it’s all I can do to get up the freeway. The past two weeks I’ve been physically hurting. The aching doesn’t stop until the afternoon of my “Sunday”. Just in time for me to hop back on the freeway and slug my way down the freeway again.

Then the grind starts all over again.

I’m on a hamster wheel, so that annoying squeeking you’re hearing is me running in place.

The alternative however is less enticing than this, so I’ve been applying the philosophy,

“Close your eyes, and think of England.”

Hey, whatever works!

Posted on

I’ve written about Zero Tolernace policies before… 

This morning as I was sitting in nightmarish traffic caused by an accident, I had a bit of an epiphany.

As the minutes ticked by I realized I was going to be late to work. I would be dinged a half point because I was late, even though it was through no fault of my own. (The folks in the fatality accident were having a much worse morning than I so I couldn’t bring myself to be upset about my issue.)

The thoughts that went through my head are these; I’m going to be late, I’m going to be punished for being late, the company’s rules will see to that. If I’m going to be dinged a half point for being late, and still have to sit through 8 hours of annoyance why shouldn’t I take a whole point hit, and take the day off?

After all, if I’m going to be beaten either way why not take some time for myself?

So I called out of work and the company was short handed by me, and whoever else may have come to the same conclusion.

In less enlightened times, I’d have called my boss and told them I was on my way but stuck in traffic and would be in as soon as possible. My boss would have said, “Sure no problem, I’ll see you when you get here.”  

That was back in the Stone Age when people could actually be people, and human stuff wasn’t frowned upon. Obviously if you were chronically late that was another matter, but occasionally being late was simply a fact of life.

With the advent of Zero Tolerance policies… that civility is gone. We’ve moved closer to the mechanized society of Orwells “1984”, Star Trek’s Borg, and well beyond the fear even the most ardent of Luddite followers ever ginned up.

The Luddites were a group of English textile workers and weavers in the 19th century who destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest. The group was protesting the use of machinery in a “fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labour practices.[1] Luddites feared that the time spent learning the skills of their craft would go to waste as machines would replace their role in the industry.[2] It is a misconception that the Luddites protested against the machinery itself in an attempt to halt progress of technology. However, the term has come to mean one opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.[3] The Luddite movement began in Nottingham and culminated in a region-wide rebellion that lasted from 1811 to 1816. Mill owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was brutally suppressed with military force.

As I was sitting there in traffic It occurred to me that in machines and machining, you absolutely can’t have Zero Tolerance. If there is no tolerance for the pieces to move, then the machine won’t work. There has to be some tolerance, even if it’s a micron or less, otherwise you’ve just built a very complex and expensive brick.

Sitting there, trying to figure out how best to get back home so I could go back to bed, I wondered how it is that we’ve come to expect humans to act like an imaginary “Perfect” machine.

Humans are about as random and variably toleranced as it gets. Attempting to force people to meet impossible expectations is bound to fail, on it’s face. No further evaluation is needed. Yet all over the country we have corporations and institutions touting Zero Tolerance policies. 

Ironically, the authors of these policies often have “Tolerance and CoExist” bumper stickers plastered on their vehicles.

I think it’s another case of unintended consequences. I just got a text from a friend at work saying it’s insanely busy there. Perhaps I’m not the only person who ran the same equation and came up with the same answer.

Ahh Well, not my problem today. Off to have some fun!