¿si quieres destruir mi sueter? November 12, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Observations.Tags: fan, office, snuggie, space heater, thermostat, weezer
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I don't care how cold you are at work; there's NEVER a good reason to wear a Snuggie to the office. (cc-licensed photo by adamgn)
Greener Buildings posted an article about employee dissatisfaction with the temperature of their offices. Here’s some of it:
[T]he study also found that 78 percent of workers said their productivity falls when they feel too cold or too hot at the office — and a whopping 98 percent said their offices are too hot or too cold at some point.
So what do they do? Things that can drive a company’s energy bill higher or stall work, according to the study findings:
* 49 percent said they use a fan when they feel too hot,
* 28 percent said they use a space heater,
* 30 percent said they leave their office building to warm up or cool down by taking a walk.The study also found that 41 percent report their discomfort to an office manager or facilities worker, and 69 percent try to remedy the situation by donning or doffing a layer of clothing.
“Donning or doffing”. I’ll have to remember that.
I’m one of those people who’s always warm. Ever since I got my first real full-time job, I’ve had a fan on my desk. It’s not on all the time, but I’d say at least four hours out of every day it’s blowing air on me. Even in the middle of winter.
Conversely, many of my co-workers are those strange “I’m always cold” people. Some of them are from warmer climes, some of them prefer being warm to being cold, and some of them legitimately can’t get warm no matter how hard they try. Many of them have space heaters under their desks.
Now, I’m not against space heaters in principle — we use one in my daughter’s room because if we increase the temperature everyone else in the house roasts — but they can cause energy problems. Specifically, they pull so much power that they could overload a circuit and knock several employees off-line until someone figures out what caused the problem. But the best option is to adjust the office thermostat so everyone’s happy.
Okay. So most people are happy.
Okay. So the fewest people are unhappy. That’s more likely.
Sometimes it’s completely out of control of everyone except the Facilities Manager. At the office supply store, the air conditioner was controlled by sensors on the roof. Spring and fall in the south are very strange seasons and it was always sweltering during the evenings and never quite cool enough during the day. At my old data-entry job, the building’s a/c was only on from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — and I worked until 8 p.m. every day. Then, before I came upstairs, I was right near the big door — the “refrigerator door” — which was always left open, much to the chagrin of my colleagues. Even I got cold sometimes. Now, at my new desk, I’m always warm, though I think part of that is because the guy on the other side of the wall has the ass end of his computers pointed at my desk, and his Mac has a fan like a jet engine.
There’s really no way around temperature discomfort at work. Do what the weatherman says to do when it’s cold in the morning and warm in the afternoon: dress in layers. Don and doff as needed.
And stop telling the Facilities Manager to make it warmer. It won’t be a pretty sight when I start sweating.
ways to avoid work November 11, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Economic Downturn, Pictures, Seen Elsewhere, Wasting Time.Tags: company policy, dilbert, distasteful task, e-mail, falsehood, forgetfulness, incompetence, lying, task list, vacuuming, work avoidance
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Sometimes I wonder what kind of office Scott Adams used to work in; the people there must have been really forward-thinking in their cubicle insanity, given how accurate nearly every one of his strips is.
Let’s examine the points made by Dilbert here:
Ten Minutes of Explanation. This one is my personal favorite when it comes to doing things I don’t want to do. I’ll often find ways to foist a task back onto the person requesting it by saying I need more information or I don’t have time or my computer is updating. Anything to avoid actually doing a distasteful task, even if it’s a quick one. Yesterday, for example, I had to build a test page on one of our websites. It’s drudgery, it’s annoying to do, and if even one step is missed the entire thing has to be started over. If I do it right, it takes 20 minutes.
I put it off for almost four hours. The person I was doing it for totally accepted my BS explanation.
Incompetence. I’ve always been good at this one. When I worked for an office supply store, one of my tasks was cleaning the floor. I have never, ever been any good at floor-related cleaning tasks (except mopping; I’m good at mopping). Vacuuming the carpet in my area was a nightmare, and I was often asked to vacuum the carpeting in the furniture area as well. My coworkers eventually figured out that I was no good at it, but when I worked in the copy center, I was the only one who could do the job. I actually almost got written up because my vacuuming was so bad.
Company Policy. Whenever I didn’t want to do something before the reorg, I would simply say it was company policy for me not to do it. Most notably when artists and photographers were supposed to write their own copy. I could do it faster, and I could do it better, but it was technically their job to do it. (Still is, I suppose.) The whole point of it was to get them to be better at their jobs by getting more practice, but they just did it half-assed and it became my job to fix it so my work didn’t look crappy. Company policy always comes back to bite you in the ass.
Forgetfulness. I keep a list of everything I have to do. I actually write it on paper. I tried putting it in Outlook, but that was a failure; I never felt like I accomplished anything. Nowadays, with e-mail being the primary form of requesting people to do things, it’s easy to simply say “your e-mail got lost” or “I deleted it by accident” or “it’s in my inbox but I missed it between these other tasks”. You can still forget things; it just takes more work.
Falsehood. This is the one that always made me feel bad when I used it. I only ever used it sparingly, and really only when I was pissed off at a co-worker or customer. The perk of doing the kinds of jobs I do is that, for the most part, people don’t actually know what I’m capable of. I can lie about my time, my skills, software I use, my workload, whatever. I usually get the job done, but a carefully applied lie is a great way to buy some time.
Which of these is the one you use the most?
CIE time: another myth November 10, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Experiences, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: cie, interruption, schedule, utopia, work from home
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LEAN suggests that you schedule “CIE” time — calls, interruptions, and e-mails. From their blog:
* Plan 1/2 hour (morning, lunchtime, late afternoon) 3x’s a day to deal with CIE’s.
* When you have to get into a “work flow zone” (working on presentation, in an interview, etc.), drive your calls to voice mail and shut down email.
* Publish your schedule with your teammates (post outside your cube/office – with a sign over it – – STOP – READ MY SCHEDULE BEFORE ENTERING) so people know when you are in a “work flow zone”.
* Make sure your peers know that just because you’re not on the phone and/or in an interview, it doesn’t mean you are not working and CAN be interrupted. Posting your schedule + discussing this with your peers can help eliminate 80% of the interruptions that you actually can avoid (versus client calls, etc.)
Wow. Talk about workplace utopia. If anyone at my company — or any other company I’ve ever worked for — tried that, they’d be roasted alive. (Except for item 2, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) So you want to basically tell people “you can’t bother me except at these specific times”? Yeah, good luck.
First of all, we live in a “now” culture. If you don’t do the job right now — or at least acknowledge it right away — you’re not doing your job and you’ll be subject to someone showing up to ask you if you got their message. Which brings us to item 3, posting your schedule; what about that sales guy, or that annoying guy who always says “I know you posted that this is your work flow zone but I really need your help”, or the secretary who keeps sending you phone calls from the one annoying customer because everyone else has screamed at her that they have real work to do but you’re too nice? What do you think the likelihood is of your work flow zone ever being uninterrupted? That is, unless you work after business hours.
Yep. Scheduling calls, interruptions, and e-mails is a joke, and in this economic situation, if you try to do anything other than everything right this very second you’ll find yourself out of a job.
I do want to mention item 2, however — route away calls and e-mails when you’re in your work flow zone. People by and large are lazy; if they e-mail or call and you don’t answer, they’re not that likely to walk over unless you’re really needed for something. That’s probably the only useful takeaway from the article.
Really want to get into a work flow zone? Work from home.
rotting from the bottom up November 9, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Management, Observations, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: accountability, double duty, gannett, leadership, respect, rework, slacking, stock options, unpaid overtime, usa today
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A lot of us are pretty pissed off that our companies are doing poorly. We’re seeing our stock options lose what worth they had; we’re not getting raises or actual promotions — just new titles that mean “here’s another responsibility we’re not going to pay you for”; we’re working unpaid overtime because we can’t finish our jobs in the allotted day because we have so many meetings to attend that we can’t get into a groove and finish more than half a task at once.
But it’s not just the corporate office that’s the problem. Some companies are rotting from the bottom up.
Jim Hopkins, formerly of USA Today, used to run a watchdog blog that took USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, to task for its misdeeds. Here’s something that a blog commenter posted a while back that you might be interested in reading:
I can’t help feeling that lots of little stories were missed here. Combined, all the many smaller issues are what really makes or breaks a workplace. Employee spirits and productivity are often broken by bosses who hit the bottle a bit too much or by managers sleeping with the help. I know of one Gannett editor who was emotionally/clinically disturbed to the point where he should have been removed from his job years ago, before he inflicted so much damage on so many careers of people who worked for him. He went undetected because higher-ups refused to open their eyes to realities, a common problem at Gannett properties of all sizes:
* Staffers who have to pull double duty because of a coworker’s incompetence.
* The general lack of accountability for some while others are held to impossibly high standards.
* The huge workloads and all the rework that is necessary because of territorial misbehavior.
* The inability of mid-level editors to truly lead without being either mean or over-the-top friendly (in sort of a fake way).
* The lack of respect that comes in all forms.
Which of those five things have affected you already?
Double duty: I’ve written on several occasions — and in fact just last week — that employees often find themselves covering for the less-skilled workers so that everyone doesn’t get dinged. They do it without getting paid extra or even getting recognized, and if they go to their bosses because someone’s slacking… well, the boss might do something, or the boss might not, but it will trickle back down that you’re the person who tattled. It’s just like grade school except without dodgeball.
Accountability: The only person held accountable is you. Not your co-workers, who keep screwing up. Not your boss, who keeps overloading you and expecting you to continue to perform but doesn’t even thank you for making him look good. Not the CEO, who keeps his job and his expensive car and his two months off a year when you’re barely keeping your head above water.
Rework: The last person to know that the entire focus of the project has been changed is the person who has to do the most work, or the most detail-oriented work at any rate. And that person is always told at the last minute, right after turning in something that he or she thinks is some of his or her best work. And that person is always, always you.
Lack of leadership: Who’s in charge around here? No one! No one wants to take responsibility or make any decisions because that creates an accountability situation. People run around like beheaded chickens until the Big Boss finally tells them what to do, and that doesn’t help much either because the Big Boss just gets grumpy and takes it out on the peons — you again.
Respect: If your boss doesn’t respect you, then you don’t respect your boss. And you don’t respect your boss’s boss because s/he isn’t making sure your boss is respectful of how much work s/he is dropping on your head on a daily basis. Oh, and “employee of the month” doesn’t cut it. Not anymore.
Is your company rotting from the bottom up? Or just from the top down?
The correct answer is probably “both”, and you know it.
ten tips you’ll never use at work November 6, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Lessons Learned, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: cobra, fear, frustration, girl scout cookies, grudge, multitasking, work dreams, worry
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I found this little chunk of bloggy goodness called Ten Tips for a Happier Life, and I suppose they make sense, but if you work in a corporate environment, none of them will ever be applicable to you.
1. Don’t worry. Worry is the least productive of all human activities and thoughts.
Worry. Worry that you’re going to lose your job. Worry that your project won’t get done on time because someone else didn’t bother to finish his or her part. Worry that you won’t see your kids tonight because your boss decided to drop three extra tasks on you at 5:30, and then he jetted off to see his mistress while you sat at your desk, trying to convince the cleaning people you really are supposed to be there this late.
2. Don’t let needless fears preoccupy your life. Most of things we fear never happen!!!
Well, I suppose this is true. I fear paper cuts; I’m careful not to get them. But how about contractors who don’t know if they’ll have a job when their contract is up? How about people on COBRA who can’t figure out how they’re going to pay the $1200 premium when the Obama “help you pay your COBRA” money runs out.
3. Don’t hold grudges. That is one of the biggest and most unnecessary weights we carry through our lives.
You kind of have to when you’re at the office. If you don’t, you’re going to get stomped on again and again as you try to be nice to the people who have wronged you.
4. Take on one problem at a time. It’s the only way to handle things anyway; one by one.
Good luck with that. If you’re not multitasking, your boss won’t think you’re doing enough work… but, worse, if you’re not multitasking, you’ll never finish everything you have on your plate.
5. Don’t take your problems to bed with you. They are bad and unhealthy companions for good natural sleep and rest.
Okay, (a), don’t sleep with people at work no matter how hot they are. And (b), you’re going to have work dreams. Yes, the place that sucks away your soul for nine or more hours a day is going to intrude on the six or seven hours of blissful sleep that you’re supposed to get all to yourself every night. Get used to it.
6. Don’t take on the problems of other people. They are better equipped to handle their own problems than you are.
No, they’re not. Your boss will likely saddle you with someone else’s tasks if that person isn’t getting them done, done right, or done on time. But you don’t want your boss having to do that because it reflects badly upon the entire department. So you take on the tasks of the least-capable person at work so no one gets in trouble.
7. Don’t live in the past. It will always be there in your memories to enjoy. But don’t cling to it. Concentrate on what is happening right now in your life and you will be happy in the present and not just the past.
Companies don’t look toward the future. They look at what they did in the past and try to change one tiny thing in hope that customers will think it’s new and totally awesome. If you try to come up with something new and ground-breaking, you’ll be shot down. Better to live in the past so you’re not disappointed.
8. Be a good listener. It is only when one listens that one gets and learns ideas different from ones own.
Don’t get friendly with anyone who has kids in the Girl Scouts, or you’ll be buying overpriced cookies for the rest of your tenure.
9. Do not let frustration ruin and rule your life. Self pity more than anything interferes with positive actions with moving forward in our lives.
Let me just laugh out loud for a moment. Work is frustration interspersed with tiny bits of satisfaction akin to a child being congratulated for eating broccoli instead of feeding it to the dog.
10. Count your blessings. Don’t even forget the smallest blessings. As many small blessings add up to large ones.
Okay, I can get behind this one. Be thankful you have a job, because so many people don’t. Be thankful you’re getting paid less than you deserve to do a job that sucks because it keeps a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator. Be thankful you have good enough credit to put your kids into private school even though it means you’ll be working until you’re 80 instead of 67 or whatever the mandatory retirement age is these days. Be thankful you get to spend ten hours in the office, two commuting, and two more finishing work at home so you can keep your crappy job.
Count your blessings.
you’re not here to make a difference November 5, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Observations.Tags: butterfly effect, cubicle, haley joel osment, keivn spacey, overheard in the newsroom, pay it forward
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You’d be surprised how many cubicles there are in the media, as evidenced by this post:
“If you want to make a difference, go somewhere else. This is a newspaper.”
I can think of very few cubicle-based jobs that involve making a difference for the better. Doctors save lives; professors and teachers influence the next generation; people who run homeless shelters are turning on a light in the night.
What are you doing? Are you building a website for a company that makes couches? Are you designing the heads-up display for a sportscar that only a small percentage of the world will be able to afford? Are you the accountant for a music label?
You’re not changing the world by sitting in a cubicle. You’re not there to make a difference. You’re there to further your company’s interests and get paid for it. You’ll then go spend all the money you make (and more) to simply keep up with your neighbors and make your parents proud — or, worse, make sure that the parents of your kid’s classmates don’t figure out that you really can’t afford to shop at designer clothing stores.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a job where I thought I was changing the world or making a difference in anyone’s life. I’ve done some media work that helped people by giving them information they might not have otherwise had, but it’s not like their lives were appreciably changed.
Of course, there’s the other side to that, too: what if the small thing you do makes life better for someone, and the butterfly effect takes hold? What if the website you’re making for Couchmasters helps someone get a couch they really want, and they’re happy, so the next day at church they’re in a good mood and they donate extra to the collection plate? You get the idea. It’s like that Kevin Spacey movie where Haley Joel Osment wore that ridiculous tank-top in all the previews.
(Yes, I know what it’s called.)
Okay, fine, so occasionally you make a difference. But don’t delude yourself; that’s not why you have your job. Not if you’re sitting in a cubicle for most of the day.
it sends the wrong message November 4, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Pictures, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: cubicle, dilbert, toy, transformer
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I’m that guy. The one with the tons of toys in the cubicle. Well, not so much anymore after the reorg, but I still have about ten in plain sight including an old-school Transformer that one guy was totally enamored with.
When I first started putting toys at my cubicle, it was to single myself out as the weird guy, the one who has a personality — to, you know, combat the perception that I was just another web geek who did stuff no one understood. It worked brilliantly, let me tell you. At the new cube, since I’m not technically a web guy (the people on the next floor up do most of the actual customer-facing web design), I’m trying to cut back a bit but it’s not really working. Mostly because the people who sit in this area with me are actually weirder than I am.
Who knew?
because it made sense November 4, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Meeting Minutes, Pictures, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: contractor, dilbert, meeting
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Having been a contractor, I can totally identify with this. Contractors are generally brought on to complete projects that “regular” employees don’t have the time for because they have to attend scads of pointless meetings. In fact, my old boss got around this by attending all of the meetings for me — thereby getting me out of the twice-daily, hour-long “here’s what we’re doing” meetings and the two weekly sales meetings. I attended the marketing meetings, but beyond that, I just sat at my desk and did my job.
Which, you know, is what contractors do, because they don’t have to attend stupid meetings.
if your boss is a child November 3, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Did I Hear That Right?, Management, Seen Elsewhere, The Two-Year-Old.Tags: bully, child, pressure, sarcasm
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Is your boss a bully? Or, as my old boss was, a two-year-old? Well, apparently there’s a book about this. Here’s a tip:
Reinforce good behavior. When your 3-year-old does something wonderful, you praise her. Do the same thing when your boss does something praiseworthy. Example: “Thanks for clearly explaining that assignment. Now I understand why we had to push so hard.”
cc-licensed photo by Christine Szeto
What employees need to remember these days is that, just like themselves, bosses are under huge amounts of pressure to make more money for the company while spending less, hiring and paying fewer people who are constantly asked to take on new challenges and new initiatives. And, for the most part, they know their employees are overworked and underpaid and unhappy about it. Some bosses are legitimately pains in the ass, but I’m willing to bet that if you try to see things your boss’s way, you might be a little more forgiving. After all, it’s a lot harder to get a management job than it is to get yours.
you don’t know what you want until you want it November 2, 2009
Posted by That Guy in Observations, Seen Elsewhere.Tags: architect, digital survivors, redesign, web design
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If you haven’t yet seen Digital Survivors’s excellent “If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers”, take a few minutes and read it. Here’s an excerpt:
Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.
The whole thing’s like that. Seriously.
Is this the floorplan you signed off on? Then you're stuck with it... unless your architect is a web designer. (Floorplan mocked up by That Guy.)
Web designers — in fact, all art-focused designers — are in a peculiar place as far as dealing with client desires. The clients tell us what they want, we turn it into what we think they want, and they proceed to tell us how wrong we are. But because we’re not on their staff, we aren’t subject to the whole “let’s tell them politely that this sucks”.
A prime example of this is the redesign I did at my last job. Surveys of the users were done and the results presented to us by the survey company. I took that information and mocked up three different versions of a new website, which the Big Boss promptly shot down and railed against me and four executives for a good 15 minutes.
I came back a week later with three more mockups, and he picked one he liked. Then he handed it to the art department, who made all my sleek lines into big blocky graphics, and I was told “okay, here’s what you’re building now. Go for it.”
By the time the whole project was done (on time, thankfully), I’d redesigned each type of page (homepage, section page, article page, photo gallery page, e-mail form, and so on) at least five times to comply with the requests of five different people. It was a nightmare. But because the only resources we needed were digital — that is, hard drive space and enough time for me to redesign the website — I guess the company thought they could go ahead and keep tweaking things.
Meanwhile, when my parents bought their first (and, so far, only) new house, back in the 80s, they were given a set of basic floor plans to choose from, allowed to make whatever tweaks they wanted — in their case: “garage on the left, no sunken living room, vaulted ceilings, tile throughout except in the bedrooms, wallpaper in the bathrooms, shower stall in the master bath, no pool, circular driveway” — and that was it. The architects submitted the plans; the contractors and subcontractors built the house, and they’re still living there. They’ve made changes since then — added a pool, redid the kitchen, put in hardwood in places, wired it for surround sound — but each time they had to sit down and seriously consider how much time, money, and work it would take to remodel. And once it was done, it was done; their kitchen is a little hard to get around in because of the island, but they wanted a kitchen island and now they have one. It’s going to be a bit of a hard sell, I fear, especially if the new buyer is of the large persuasion, but that’s what they have to live with. Likewise with the pool — they removed the screens when they redid the deck, replacing them with a fairly-decorative fence, but now leaves and other detritus can get in the water. Screens might have been a better option, but again, that was their choice.
Whereas, when designing a website, if the client doesn’t know what he wants until he sees it on someone else’s site, he can call you midway through and force you to make changes, and you have to make them or risk losing the client to someone who will bend over backward to please him.
I should’ve gone into architecture, I think.
