This is a continuation of a post I made back in May…wow, I really haven’t been blogging…
Step 11: The longest hour. That hour right after you return from lunch has got to be the longest hour of your entire life. See, each day it gets longer and longer, thus becoming the longest hour of your life - with the exception of that hour you sat next to the big, smelly guy on the plane that kept looking for the flight attendant to order his next round of drinks as a continuation of his layover hangover busting romp in the airport bar. So now you are back at work, calls are waiting, your stomach is turning after eating something that appeared to be a chicken sandwich but you are now thinking it was fried rubber, because, hey, everything tastes like chicken. Anyway, your all too brief respite is soon forgotten as the work piles up and your co-workers have all gone off on yet another birthday luncheon for someone you aren’t even sure works in your office. As your body begins to make noises and hemorrhages that alerts seismometers of subterranean movement and you think you might just spontaneously implode you look at the clock and it has only be 15 minutes since you returned.
Step 12: Afternoon “nap.” At this point you have survived the morning obstacles to the shower, the nascar race they call a morning commute, the co-worker arrival gauntlet to your desk, the over-caffeinated callers and their fix-my-problem-now user incompetence issues, and the after lunch, steel cage match, bare-fisted bout your stomach had with your large and small intestines. Now it is time for that caffeine induced afternoon crash. That blissful, quiet time of the day when you shut out the world, stare off into space as if you had blinders on. Calls go unanswered but you don’t care. Paper work blows away with the wind like leaves in autumn. Drifting, drifting away. Reality and daydreams meld together and you lose track which is which. You call your male co-worker Alice and the e-mail notification sound is like seagulls chirping just outside your beach front home. The hand on your computer screen that signifies a link can be clicked looks like one of those foam hands saying your team is #1 as your team wins the big game. Whammm. Back to reality, some server went down and the place has gone to ludicrous speed with people all up in a frenzy.
Step 13: Final countdown. Waiting, watching the clock, its 4 o’clock, its got to stop….I know, I know, too many unrelated musical references there but you get the point. Those last few agonizing minutes when you are doing everything possible to make the time go by faster…even by doing work, actual work. Amazing, never thought I would see the day when you would actually do work because the alternative is you being so bored that time has completely stopped. Now fellow disgruntled employee, hang in there for it is almost time to go, almost time to leave all of this behind, relax, sleep, then start all over again in a few hours. What a fun life we have.
Step 14: Closing time. So the clock has struck that time, you know that time, the one that releases the 300 pound weight that you’ve been supporting on your head for the past 6+ hours, that time of the day that if you work in a factory back in the 19th century or a query in Bedrock would be accompanied with a steam whistle or a really loud prehistoric bird screaming. Now it is time for the escape. Imagine that scene in Indiana Jones, no, not the one when everyone melts away for looking at the arc, you know, the one at the beginning, where Indy is stealing the golden skull looking thing. He weighs the bag of sand trying to judge to right weight, then makes the switch. All is clear right? No booty traps this time, you mean booby traps, that’s what I said, booby traps. But we all know better. And like a big ass perfectly round rock chasing after us, we take off. Throwing caution to the wind we dodge poison darts flying, jumping bottomless caverns, get chased by unruly natives with bad haircuts only to end up in a plane, sitting on a snake…there are motherf$%king snakes on the motherf$%king plane! But hey, you got out of there. Your prize? A stress-filled drive home that includes red lights at every traffic light, a bottle neck at another road repair site, and some guy on a Moped. Then you get stuck in a major traffic jam and that guy on the Moped goes tooting by with that annoying little motor like the turtle beating the hare.
Step 15: Home life. Finally you arrive home. Now what? Dinner. Maybe a little ranting to a loved one or loved ones, real or virtual (present company included). A hot shower to rid yourself of the filth that you accumulated on your body, mind, and soul over the course of the day. How ‘bout some mindless TV watching? Or a movie? Are you just wasting time until it is time to go off to dreamland? Are we all just working for the weekend? (you can never get enough ‘80s references) Well, it is now up to you to take this 15 step program and flip it on its end, heels over head, and shake things up because this daily minutia should always be avoided at all possible opportunities.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Monday, July 2, 2007
Catch-up
Wow, I hadn’t really realized how long it has been, if anyone actually reads this blog I bet they would be pissed. Fortunately, it is only used for a squeezing of the cognitive sponge and I can return to my regular scheduled ranting knowing that no one really missed a drops. But let me catch you up on the happenings in the sundrenced world:
Golf Trip – It is truly amazing how the performance-to-inebriation ratio is conversely correlated, moving in opposite directions. But I blame it on sleep deprivation and exhaustion, hard to play well when you are tired from 3 rounds of golf previously. I’ll call it the time-performance diffusion half-life. Regardless, by all accounts good times were had, and keeping with a disturbing trend, only one person to the hospital this year to match last year's totals. For future note, golf is neither football nor nascar - it makes so much more sense sober. If only I had been sober enough to point out that fact in stead of laughing my ass off. Hey, at least I was sober enough to transport the patients to the emergency room. Must be getting wise in my elder age…speaking of which…
Birthday – That’s right, I turned another year older on the 23rd of June and my body is reminding me each time I finish a run. I may look younger than my age (as my middle school track team runners inquired if I was a senior in High School or I could pass for Prince William) but my mother insures that I was born on this day so many years ago and my joints concur. But I’m still young and nagging aches and pains come with running and I was fortunate enough to avoid major injuries in my running career so I can’t complain, at least I can still run and walk around without a limp, which is more than I can say for a few of my golf trip mates.
Boston – That ability to walk certainly helped for getting around the town of Boston. (These transitions make me feel like I am the emcee for the Price is Right’s showcase showdown). I was in Boston for my birthday and let me tell you, what a cool town. Probably helped that it was in the mid-70s and sunny, and a Saturday, and it was my birthday, and we weren’t rushed to do anything except wonder. We picked up the freedom trail around the city off and on, took a bunch of pictures, saw the façade of ‘Cheers’ and relaxed on the Charles River, which was bustling with runners, bikers, walkers, and pedestrians. I will have to hand it to Boston for incorporated large chain stores into the aesthetic of the city. A very historic city, like Richmond is to the Civil War, Boston is to the Revolutionary period. It felt familiar, although Richmond just can’t get the commercial foot traffic downtown, maybe we should get a “freedom trail” if we could only accept the fact that the south lost the war. Maybe we can call it the ‘walk of shame’ or to put a positive spin on it, ‘path of progress’ or something. Anyway, I will be curious to see how my opinion will change when I head up there anytime between November and April. See, we southern folk rarely see a river freeze over (a river!). As the cabbie told us, they have wagers on when the first person will fall through the ice trying to cross from Cambridge to Downtown over the Charles. Another talked about speed skating up river near Waltham. Umm…I think I’ll take the surface streets. Oh, and an additional word of caution for anyone moving for school up in that area (and there’s only about 100 of them, quite literally) watch out for the 10’ bridge clearance along the Memorial Drive – as our friendly local pointed out, don’t want to turn that moving truck into a convertible.
School – Well, I don’t have to move for school, I’ve been at it for some time already, but I see the light and I am closing in on completion, and the beginning of the end starts this summer. I am officially a graduate student (although I have taken a few grad school classes already). This next year will set the course for the next few years and shed some light on if this sacrifice was worth the time, money, and frustrations. To be honest, it hasn’t been that bad, school isn’t really all that difficult and there is no way I was going to keep doing what I was doing, too bad being a student doesn’t pay…can you believe you actually have to pay them? That’s crazy. So we’ll see how that turns out.
Work – Yes, I am reminded every day why I am changing my career. It is almost like they keep trying to make things more difficult when they think they are making it better. So, you remember that scene in Star Wars, the trash compacter walls squeezing in from both sides? Yeah, kind of like that except I don’t have R2-D2 to communicate with the computer system because our network is never working like it should be, firewalls up and down, passwords getting locked, - and R2 is down for maintenance anyway. So, I should get back to it, at least for about 5 minutes. That, too, has a time-performance decay half-life and is highly dependent on amount of sleep I get during the week. Hopefully I will get a chance to return to my regularly schedule updates over the next few weeks. Enjoy the 4th if I don’t post before then!
Golf Trip – It is truly amazing how the performance-to-inebriation ratio is conversely correlated, moving in opposite directions. But I blame it on sleep deprivation and exhaustion, hard to play well when you are tired from 3 rounds of golf previously. I’ll call it the time-performance diffusion half-life. Regardless, by all accounts good times were had, and keeping with a disturbing trend, only one person to the hospital this year to match last year's totals. For future note, golf is neither football nor nascar - it makes so much more sense sober. If only I had been sober enough to point out that fact in stead of laughing my ass off. Hey, at least I was sober enough to transport the patients to the emergency room. Must be getting wise in my elder age…speaking of which…
Birthday – That’s right, I turned another year older on the 23rd of June and my body is reminding me each time I finish a run. I may look younger than my age (as my middle school track team runners inquired if I was a senior in High School or I could pass for Prince William) but my mother insures that I was born on this day so many years ago and my joints concur. But I’m still young and nagging aches and pains come with running and I was fortunate enough to avoid major injuries in my running career so I can’t complain, at least I can still run and walk around without a limp, which is more than I can say for a few of my golf trip mates.
Boston – That ability to walk certainly helped for getting around the town of Boston. (These transitions make me feel like I am the emcee for the Price is Right’s showcase showdown). I was in Boston for my birthday and let me tell you, what a cool town. Probably helped that it was in the mid-70s and sunny, and a Saturday, and it was my birthday, and we weren’t rushed to do anything except wonder. We picked up the freedom trail around the city off and on, took a bunch of pictures, saw the façade of ‘Cheers’ and relaxed on the Charles River, which was bustling with runners, bikers, walkers, and pedestrians. I will have to hand it to Boston for incorporated large chain stores into the aesthetic of the city. A very historic city, like Richmond is to the Civil War, Boston is to the Revolutionary period. It felt familiar, although Richmond just can’t get the commercial foot traffic downtown, maybe we should get a “freedom trail” if we could only accept the fact that the south lost the war. Maybe we can call it the ‘walk of shame’ or to put a positive spin on it, ‘path of progress’ or something. Anyway, I will be curious to see how my opinion will change when I head up there anytime between November and April. See, we southern folk rarely see a river freeze over (a river!). As the cabbie told us, they have wagers on when the first person will fall through the ice trying to cross from Cambridge to Downtown over the Charles. Another talked about speed skating up river near Waltham. Umm…I think I’ll take the surface streets. Oh, and an additional word of caution for anyone moving for school up in that area (and there’s only about 100 of them, quite literally) watch out for the 10’ bridge clearance along the Memorial Drive – as our friendly local pointed out, don’t want to turn that moving truck into a convertible.
School – Well, I don’t have to move for school, I’ve been at it for some time already, but I see the light and I am closing in on completion, and the beginning of the end starts this summer. I am officially a graduate student (although I have taken a few grad school classes already). This next year will set the course for the next few years and shed some light on if this sacrifice was worth the time, money, and frustrations. To be honest, it hasn’t been that bad, school isn’t really all that difficult and there is no way I was going to keep doing what I was doing, too bad being a student doesn’t pay…can you believe you actually have to pay them? That’s crazy. So we’ll see how that turns out.
Work – Yes, I am reminded every day why I am changing my career. It is almost like they keep trying to make things more difficult when they think they are making it better. So, you remember that scene in Star Wars, the trash compacter walls squeezing in from both sides? Yeah, kind of like that except I don’t have R2-D2 to communicate with the computer system because our network is never working like it should be, firewalls up and down, passwords getting locked, - and R2 is down for maintenance anyway. So, I should get back to it, at least for about 5 minutes. That, too, has a time-performance decay half-life and is highly dependent on amount of sleep I get during the week. Hopefully I will get a chance to return to my regularly schedule updates over the next few weeks. Enjoy the 4th if I don’t post before then!
Friday, May 11, 2007
Can't Make a Sound
Why I hate my job and other things that put me in the mood to listen to Elliott Smith. In a vain attempt to make myself the new dooce.com, sans the humorous literary commentary and edgy, put-it-all-on-the-table openness, let me just try relay to you the absurdity of my job. I am sure many of you can relate unless you work from home and never, ever, have to deal with stupid people. Right. So, now please join me in a collective scream at the top of your lungs to put you in the appropriate mood for the following diatribe on the fake plastic cubical life. Now let me preempt this by mentioning that I work at a technology helpdesk and I am happy to have a job that allows me to do many things other corporate type jobs do not allow, like access the internet [although that is kind of essential for this job], use a cell phone if need be, listen to music, and have flexible hours. But the pay is crappy so I guess it all works out. At least I have a job, albeit temporarily, but this is more a commentary for people who are stuck in jobs they would rather not be in…which I know is actually a smaller fraction than many people would believe. See, in America we have the fortunate opportunity to seek other employment if we are unhappy with our current one, given the right skill set and desire. I just happen to be in one of those transitional periods where I am trying to acquire the necessary skill set to move on to something I prefer better than this current situation…which is just about any other job.
Any given day begins with the blaring, earlier-than-the-Devil-wakes-up ungodly hour alarm that varies between pitch black and blinding sunlight throughout the course of the four seasons on Earth.
Step 1: Sleep walk to the shower while avoiding serious toe stubbing or forehead rapping, always a craps shoot on hot water availability, and stare blankly at the man you have become in the mirror wondering where the years went and why evolution hasn’t stopped your beard from growing so that you don’t have to shave at least once a week.
Step 2: Clothes. Inevitably whatever you wear will not be appropriate for whatever occasion or weather that will have to be faced that day. “I swear the weather said it would be sunny and 85 today.” And as you attempt to run in between the downpour raindrops to your car, you remember you have a meeting with the boss’ boss’ boss today: performance review. You know, the one after the one you got the comments about dressing more appropriately for work. And on that day you thought it was “wear your favorite character’s costume from Pirates of the Caribbean day” at work.
Step 3: The commute. For whatever reason, no matter what time you head to work, EVERYONE in your city/town is also heading to work at that time, and all of them are late for work. No matter how fast you drive, it is never fast enough so cars weave around you like you are one of those cones on the stunt driving courses you see in the car commercials because the late employee commuter is exactly the target market they envisioned when engineering that car.
Step 4: Find a parking spot. This may not pertain to everyone but anyone who works in a city or for a large university knows what I’m talking about. That fun musical chairs game like they have in that new VW, Kia, or Volvo commercial, except involving more fender-benders – not a very safe game to play kids. Don’t try it at home. Or your other option is to pay what amounts to higher rent to park your car than to live in your first apartment…and still have to walk a half mile to your desk.
Step 5: Get to your desk. Imagine it is the Middle Ages and you have been stripped naked, forced to run a gauntlet of whips and spits, mud and crud, and chains and rains. Except in the modern office it is each and every co-worker making a comment about getting caught in the rain, or something about the weather, or “how was your weekend?”, “Its Friday!” or “I can’t wait until the weekend, the week is going by sooooo slow”, that ridiculous minutiae that excels in wasting that precious life minutes at a time. It regurgitates that vomit you had been repressing since that Friday night binge you went on just to forget all that tedious bullshit in the first place.
Step 6: Start it up. Oh, flashbacks to corporate retreats and team building exercises to the Rolling Stones…the head’s still pounding, like a bad brain freeze. OK, now go through your mental checklist: caffeine – check, writing utensils – check, paper – check, phone login – check, deafening volume emitting headphones – check. Now, if the stars align just right, the planets make a straight line from the sun outward, and comet dust is sprinkled just in the right places then your computer will turn on, have internet connection, and the e-mail servers will be actually delivering messages.
Step 7: Work? Probably the high point of the day comes just before you start doing actual work, for a few short, brief minutes you check your personal e-mail, catch up on the late sports results, check your fantasy sports squads, get updates on world and local news events, and read those daily comics. Then it is all down hill from there - for the entire rest of your work day. And by the end, you finish lower than when you started, kind of like the stock market during a recession.
Step 8: Work. Don’t get too excited now. I know you are in your 8’ x 8’ cubicle surrounded by people who might actually want to do less work than you and the only windows you get to look at are provided by Bill Gates and expand to a whopping 19” at best, but please hold the enthusiasm – serious work needs to be accomplished. Alright, time to start taking a few calls…forgot your password? OK, no problem. Why? How am I supposed to know why you forgot your password? Maybe you should take out that stupid rod that’s impaled through your skull. Yes, that very thick skull. There, now isn’t that better? Oh, watch out! Oh no, I think you might have just been stabbed by the idiot stick. Yes, you need to use a number in your new password, see, exactly how it tells you there in the instructions on the screen in front of you. Thank you for call, look forward to talking to you in about 5 minutes when you forget what you set it to. Bu bye.
Step 9: Avoid work. Now is the time you seek out any and all possible avenues to avoid doing actual work. Use the bathroom, take a smoke break (even if you don’t smoke), walk around with papers in your hand and look really frustrated like you are trying to accomplish something really important or looking for someone to help you, this will send any and all running in the opposite direction. Check work e-mail even if you have read it all already, gives you a good excuse not to be answering phone calls. One hour later, answer another call just to keep a good appearance. Hello. Your computer’s not working you say? OK, what seems to be the problem? It is not working, hmm. You tried turning the monitor on and off? That’s good, that probably should have worked, yeah, definitely, good work. Now how about we actually try restarting the computer. Yes, that box looking thing on the floor. Yeah, it sure does take a while to load. What can be done to fix it? Besides removing the 18 IM applications that all load at start up? Yes, I understand, you gots to stay in touch with your peeps. Yeah. No, you probably should be trying to open that application while the computer is still booting, most likely why it takes even longer to open it. Oh, it is working now? Yeah, pretty amazing. Yes, it must be because you called the helpdesk, haha, never heard that one before, it always seems to work when you are talking to us, yes. Murphy’s law, yep, uhmm, yep. OK, bu bye.
Step 10: Lunch. Yes, that’s right, it is only lunch time.
Speaking of which, time for me to take a break. I should finish this on Monday and post the rest then. Appropriately on a Monday. You might see a different mood in that post, should be fun.
Any given day begins with the blaring, earlier-than-the-Devil-wakes-up ungodly hour alarm that varies between pitch black and blinding sunlight throughout the course of the four seasons on Earth.
Step 1: Sleep walk to the shower while avoiding serious toe stubbing or forehead rapping, always a craps shoot on hot water availability, and stare blankly at the man you have become in the mirror wondering where the years went and why evolution hasn’t stopped your beard from growing so that you don’t have to shave at least once a week.
Step 2: Clothes. Inevitably whatever you wear will not be appropriate for whatever occasion or weather that will have to be faced that day. “I swear the weather said it would be sunny and 85 today.” And as you attempt to run in between the downpour raindrops to your car, you remember you have a meeting with the boss’ boss’ boss today: performance review. You know, the one after the one you got the comments about dressing more appropriately for work. And on that day you thought it was “wear your favorite character’s costume from Pirates of the Caribbean day” at work.
Step 3: The commute. For whatever reason, no matter what time you head to work, EVERYONE in your city/town is also heading to work at that time, and all of them are late for work. No matter how fast you drive, it is never fast enough so cars weave around you like you are one of those cones on the stunt driving courses you see in the car commercials because the late employee commuter is exactly the target market they envisioned when engineering that car.
Step 4: Find a parking spot. This may not pertain to everyone but anyone who works in a city or for a large university knows what I’m talking about. That fun musical chairs game like they have in that new VW, Kia, or Volvo commercial, except involving more fender-benders – not a very safe game to play kids. Don’t try it at home. Or your other option is to pay what amounts to higher rent to park your car than to live in your first apartment…and still have to walk a half mile to your desk.
Step 5: Get to your desk. Imagine it is the Middle Ages and you have been stripped naked, forced to run a gauntlet of whips and spits, mud and crud, and chains and rains. Except in the modern office it is each and every co-worker making a comment about getting caught in the rain, or something about the weather, or “how was your weekend?”, “Its Friday!” or “I can’t wait until the weekend, the week is going by sooooo slow”, that ridiculous minutiae that excels in wasting that precious life minutes at a time. It regurgitates that vomit you had been repressing since that Friday night binge you went on just to forget all that tedious bullshit in the first place.
Step 6: Start it up. Oh, flashbacks to corporate retreats and team building exercises to the Rolling Stones…the head’s still pounding, like a bad brain freeze. OK, now go through your mental checklist: caffeine – check, writing utensils – check, paper – check, phone login – check, deafening volume emitting headphones – check. Now, if the stars align just right, the planets make a straight line from the sun outward, and comet dust is sprinkled just in the right places then your computer will turn on, have internet connection, and the e-mail servers will be actually delivering messages.
Step 7: Work? Probably the high point of the day comes just before you start doing actual work, for a few short, brief minutes you check your personal e-mail, catch up on the late sports results, check your fantasy sports squads, get updates on world and local news events, and read those daily comics. Then it is all down hill from there - for the entire rest of your work day. And by the end, you finish lower than when you started, kind of like the stock market during a recession.
Step 8: Work. Don’t get too excited now. I know you are in your 8’ x 8’ cubicle surrounded by people who might actually want to do less work than you and the only windows you get to look at are provided by Bill Gates and expand to a whopping 19” at best, but please hold the enthusiasm – serious work needs to be accomplished. Alright, time to start taking a few calls…forgot your password? OK, no problem. Why? How am I supposed to know why you forgot your password? Maybe you should take out that stupid rod that’s impaled through your skull. Yes, that very thick skull. There, now isn’t that better? Oh, watch out! Oh no, I think you might have just been stabbed by the idiot stick. Yes, you need to use a number in your new password, see, exactly how it tells you there in the instructions on the screen in front of you. Thank you for call, look forward to talking to you in about 5 minutes when you forget what you set it to. Bu bye.
Step 9: Avoid work. Now is the time you seek out any and all possible avenues to avoid doing actual work. Use the bathroom, take a smoke break (even if you don’t smoke), walk around with papers in your hand and look really frustrated like you are trying to accomplish something really important or looking for someone to help you, this will send any and all running in the opposite direction. Check work e-mail even if you have read it all already, gives you a good excuse not to be answering phone calls. One hour later, answer another call just to keep a good appearance. Hello. Your computer’s not working you say? OK, what seems to be the problem? It is not working, hmm. You tried turning the monitor on and off? That’s good, that probably should have worked, yeah, definitely, good work. Now how about we actually try restarting the computer. Yes, that box looking thing on the floor. Yeah, it sure does take a while to load. What can be done to fix it? Besides removing the 18 IM applications that all load at start up? Yes, I understand, you gots to stay in touch with your peeps. Yeah. No, you probably should be trying to open that application while the computer is still booting, most likely why it takes even longer to open it. Oh, it is working now? Yeah, pretty amazing. Yes, it must be because you called the helpdesk, haha, never heard that one before, it always seems to work when you are talking to us, yes. Murphy’s law, yep, uhmm, yep. OK, bu bye.
Step 10: Lunch. Yes, that’s right, it is only lunch time.
Speaking of which, time for me to take a break. I should finish this on Monday and post the rest then. Appropriately on a Monday. You might see a different mood in that post, should be fun.
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