I just wanted to let you know out there I haven’t forgotten about the site unfortunately there has been a lot going on around the office and I’ve been sitting in HR meetings for the most of last week and catching up this week. I am planning on writing about this experience in the coming week along with a few extra things I’m working on such as free office stuff I have been compiling over the past few weeks.
Keep an eye out for next week – a lot of great things coming your way!
Consider this rant more than anything because as I sit in front of the computer screen as the beautiful sun shines through the windows. I think back to yesterday to when it all happened and still can’t believe I agreed (let alone came in) on a Saturday to work. Something about working on the weekend that sucks everything out of your weekend.
It was a great Friday and was looking forward to enjoying some rather warm weather that night and following day (today). I was in the best mood – just finished a huge project yesterday and was looking to kick back and relax. Then my manager rolls around to my desk around 3:30 with an unhealthy smile, a devilish grin more. He then decides to go into detail about a “new” project that needed special attention that just “rolled out”. I could feel my high spirits quickly diminishing as he kept talking about the specifics of the project.
It was then at that moment I knew what was going to happen. “So, can I count on you coming in tomorrow to get a jump on this?”
Some responses I thought of in a split second:
- Uh, no – I have a life outside of this hell hole
- Better find someone else before I smack that grin off your face
- So, let me get this straight you want me to come in tomorrow while you sleep-in? HA!
- Do you want my honest answer or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?
- How about I come in on Monday and forget we even had this conversation?
- I should expect you in tomorrow too, right? No? Then what makes you think I’ll be here?
Now, did any one of those come out of my mouth as he stood there leaning on my cubicle with his evilish grin and nodding excitidetly like a dog. What do you think as I sit here for the past few hours starring into the glowing abyss of my computer screen?
I hope you have a great weekend as I spend the new few hours looking over spreadsheets and checking numbers and praying this week doesn’t get any worse.
People are getting laid off daily during the recession and I’ve mentioned some tips on How To Stay Invisible. Now over at Wired they broke down the top 4 contents of how to lay off someone – or tell tall signs that you might be getting fired.
While most are pretty standard:
1) Predictability
2) Understanding
3) Empowerment
4) Compassion
Those are 4 ‘okay’ ideas but I’d like to add my personal top 4:
What? There’s nothing funny about being fired…well, there is if you make it. Why not make have fun with it (especially if its someone you don’t like).
Seriously?! Yep, that’s right. Have a surprise party for the firee. Let them know with cake and friends (co-workers).
I’m pretty sure hallmark makes these cards – find one – fill it out and put on an empty box for their personal items so it’s the first thing they see in the morning.
If you have to do massive lay-offs why not time them and the winner gets a surprise like a stapler or a roll of tape.
Any other suggestions?
In life we go from Elementary – Junior High – High School – College and then into the work force. It would ‘seem’ that when you go through these periods in our life we would keep going yet when we our job we find everything returns to high school level. Everything from the cliques, jocks and nerds.
You see them everywhere and you know it’s true. They can range from managment – sales – operations – women – men – etc. What is amazing though is that the same traits of trying to ‘look’ good by their crew
This can be really depressing in the workplace specially when you have jocks in multible cliques. An example would be a jock in the management who should have stopped trying to playing with the 26 year old’s about 10 years ago.
Two words: IT Department. You hate them and love ‘em and no matter what you need ‘em. Those “nerds” that you tried to make fun in high school now have access to all your files. Funny how things are reversed…huh?
Have you found more or noticed these cliques? Let me know, always interested to hear from you.
I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. Specially recently with the country heavy into recession. We work hard – or at least some of us. We do our job and we do it well – again at least some of us. So, when I was posed by my family about possible vacations to take this year I had to pass due to the possibility of coming back and not having a job.
Do I think it could happen? YES!
That is why I, personally, try to do everything humanly possible to show my supervisor I am a valuable employee. Going from that thought though I went on to that I spend more time with my co-workers than I do my own family.
That’s pretty sad isn’t it?
It’s true though. Think about it. You work on average 8 hours a day = 40 hours a week. You come home by 5 and get to spend time with your family for a good 4 hours, if that depending on your commute.
We are spending not just way too much time at our cubicles but we are seeing our co-workers more than own family and yet we don’t even know them. I remember at an old job I worked for a firm that I did their accounting for. I was probably there for a good 4 years and there were employees there that I didn’t even know if they were married/single/kids/etc – and the firm only had 20 people at that location.
It was absolutely amazing. I worked with these people day in and day out and knew nothing about them. I would go out to lunch with them and joke and laugh but knew really nothing about them.
At my current job though I’ve changed that. I’ve made every effort to make sure that I do know them and even if I don’t really like them (hey, it happens) I know I’ve made an attempt to know them better.
In all reality our jobs our co-workers are our second family. Their highly disfunctional and sometimes chaotic and you don’t want to be around them sometimes but you have no choice. How is that not like a family?
Over at Gizmodo they posted a great image of co-workers desk getting pranked with the introduction:
One day late last summer, Flickr member jpegsrock returned to work from his vacation to find his cubicle just a little different, courtesy of his loving coworkers.
They say images speak louder than words:
Very similar to the top 10 things to do a co-workers desk. A great job nonetheless.
Thanks for those that sent this my way!
If you have anything office related please feel free to send it my way.
I mentioned the ‘talking co-worker’ previously but feel the need to write about the infamous ‘chicken little co-worker’. I KNOW you have one of these types in your office because just about every business I’ve worked with I’ve had to deal with these type of individuals. They are NEVER fun to work with and you can just about guarantee that if you’re working on a project with them that it will not get done on time and correctly.
However, I have come up with a few ways to identify these type of people and make sure you don’t get sucked into what I have deemed, “The Sky Is Falling Syndrome”.
The Problem: This has to be the MOST annoying thing possible. It can range from an email from other co-workers to superiors. What chicken little’s will do is go around complaining about it and then the result being them asking if you want them forward the email, as if you didn’t believe them.
The Solution: Fake it – Fake it – Fake it. You seem interested for 2 minutes and once you realize it’s not a fire you can help put out make a comment along the lines of, “Sorry to hear that…they should forget about it by the end of this week.”
Now it is imperative that you go from eye-contact to looking at your monitor. You don’t want to come across looking like an a**hole but you were interested…at first – you offered a (quick) solution – you moved on. Do not try to engage and get sucked in even more.
The Problem: The little boy who cried wolf. We all know the story so the same principle applies here however in the work place we need to be careful because it could be true so we have to tread lightly.
The Solution: Again you have to make sure you give yourself 2 minutes. I know it might be seem short to some and a long time to others but this is proven (by my standards of course) to show to a ‘chicken little’ that they are important – remember their attention span is near non-existing.
Once those two minutes are over and its not a fire – go about your day but make a note of the subject matter because it will come up later in the week. Keep yourself abreast of the wolf cries.
The Problem: You are to help ‘chicken little’ on a situation but per their time line (please see above) everything needs to be done yesterday. We know it’s not a huge deal and not to mention your supervisor might have you on something else that you know their going to need soon.
So, ‘chicken little’ runs to your supervisor like a 4th grader complaining about your lack of help on the situation.
The Solution: Working with a ‘chicken little’ can really exhaust you but in the end you will come out victorious. The best way out of this situation is to keep notes. Your boss asked you on Monday to work on something for him. Wednesday rolled around and you got paired up with ‘chicken little’ to check out something. Thursday afternoon you’re being called into your supervisors office with ‘chicken little’ there with a grin on face.
You knew this was coming so when your boss ask you why you aren’t helping ‘chicken little’ out as much as you “should be” – you let him know about the project you are finishing up for him with a nice status report and what you have done on the ‘chicken little’ project. Then you end it with a, “I can switch projects if you would like – I guess I need to know which one is more important.”
Now 9x’s out of 10 your boss will side with you. So, don’t worry about that 1x – its a fluke.
Those are my top three for handling ‘chicken little’ co-workers – have you worked with one before and know the feeling? Let me know.
When I wrote the introduction to my boss I mentioned the spreadsheet of doom. Allow me to go into detail a little bit about it. What my boss has done has put down each employee’s name, the date and how many minutes late. My boss’s office makes sure that each employee comes by his office so he can time them.
Every morning it’s the same thing. He says, “Hi,” looks up and then enters numbers on the computer. Everyone knows what he’s doing but he tries to play it off. Nonetheless the amusing thing is that sometimes co-workers will go into the back entrance to get to their office just to confuse him. When he notices that you didn’t come in the ‘right’ way to the building he gets blustered and visibly upset and huffs back to the office.
We try not to do that too much.
So, the question that arises is – how do you know he keeps this spreadsheet. It’s actually pretty funny. Apparently I know my way around Microsoft Office products because he had me take a look at a “spreadsheet” which he wanted me to come up with equiations to add up weekly numbers to show a graph.
What’s even funnier from all this a few people around the office and come together to put a spreadsheet of doom on him. To track his tardiness and sick/vacation days. I’ll be giving updates as the year goes on but I will say that when a few people tried this last year it looked like this supervisor had taken at least 3 months off from work over the course of a year. That is above and beyond his sick and vacation days.
Pretty amazing huh? Do you have a boss/manager/supervisor like this?
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Monday. Do I really need to go even further? Now Monday night is great just for the fact that Monday is over.
Tuesday. Not too bad you start going on projects for the week and look forward to tomorrow.
Wednesday. Half-way done and you can’t stop thinking about the weekend.
Thursday. Just a stopping point and cannot WAIT till its over so you can move on to Friday.
Friday. It.Has.Arrived! You stroll into the office for the first time with a smile on your face. Pour your cup of coffee and talk about weekend plans with your co-workers and stroll to your desk eager to check email and surf the internet for the day.
So, why exactly is Friday labeled as the best day of all? I could make something up that back in 1800′s people would work 16 hour days and after 5 days of doing this straight they would literally pass out at work. Can you imagine millions of workers around the states passing out between 5-6 p.m. on Friday’s? They would be taken to hospitals and put on observation for 24 hours. Yet in 16 they were back to normal but needed time to relax. This was when the infamous “weekend” was born. There were cries of joy – people danced in the streets – there was peace in the world.
Okay, maybe it didn’t go down like that but it could have.
It’s always funny working with our sales staff because they have some type of ‘credo’ that states, “Work everyday like its Friday.” Which, personally I never got because well have you looked around the office on a Friday mid-morning? People are playing solitare – talking about whose playing this weekend – where to go for happy hour. I don’t really see any work being done. Of course I’m doing the same but I’ll never admit it publicly.
I’ll never understand the sales staff though.
Back to the point at hand – Friday’s are the high point in a 5 day work week and frankly I can’t get enough.
I know, I know. It’s called Meet My Co-Workers not Meet My Boss but I felt the need to talk about about managers since I reference them quite often. So allow me to introduce to you to my personal manager. We have quite a bit in our office – in charge of different things. Why? I have yet to figure that out especially since they all report to the same person.
If you’re involved in one project you have a project manager. If you’re involved in a report you have another report manager. The manager’s are endless in reality.
Getting back to my favorite – my boss. Oh and yes that IS sarcasm.
Allow me to paint you a picture. One of my personal ‘pet projects’ was last year was to time his lunch breaks. To see exactly how much time he actually takes. In the year 2008 he took a total of 5 months time. What does that include? That is going beyond the couple of weeks we have for vacation and the week for sick days. This is the 3 hours spent at a sports bar minus the 1 hour ‘allotted’ for lunch. That is 5 months of calling in for a ‘personal day’ after all ‘personal days’ were taken.
Wait that’s not the funny part.
What he likes to do is make sure everyone arrives on time and everyone in the office has called the Spreadsheet of Dome, more on that later. Basically if you’re 5-10 minutes late he marks it down and compiles it only to review it with employee.
I just wanted this to be a brief introduction to my boss because trust me there is more coming on this interesting individual.
