I Need a Resolution

Somebody in Cube City recently told me that she has two resolutions for the New Year. They are to:

1. Work out more
2. Get along with her nemesis at work, even if it kills her

I really like her resolutions, as she seems to have one that is focused on her personal life and one that is focused on her work life. I think that the first one might help her achieve the second one. I haven't really thought about any resolutions for myself. I'm willing to work out more. However, I have more than one nemesis at work, and I guess I'm just not ambitious enough to get along with any of them. Somehow, I think that's okay.

I need a resolution of my own, but I'm at a loss right now. Burnout can do that to a person.

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2009, no matter how you choose to resolve it.

There's An Echo (Echo...Echo...) In Here

Hello? Is anybody here?

There's a lonely feel in the office when it's quiet and a high volume of people are out of the office. I don't miss the people or their demands, of course, but I find it hard to get motivated to do the work. Mostly, I don't understand why there's so much work to do when nobody is here. This is crazy.

I'm just going through the motions of showing up to Cube City until next year, when everybody will return from their holiday vacations. I could be off work right now, I suppose, as I have the vacation time. However, I'm maximizing my PTO. You really can't blame me. It's a long haul until our next paid holiday off, so I'll save my time for a desperate need.

In the meantime, please share the secret of how to make a long, lonely day go faster in Cube City. The secret isn't codka. It's too cold for that. I know, I know, I really thought I had the answer.

I'm Afraid of My Inbox

I used to work with a guy in Cube City who refused to take time off because everything blew up while he was away. People would change the rules, and he'd have a huge mess to clean up. It wasn't worth his time to go on vacation.

I have been away from Cube City for five days. It took three of those days to come down from the chaos. I spent quality time with my loved ones, scored ridiculous holiday deals at the mall, and refused to check my work email...though it was always in the back of my mind, looming there with an appropriate amount of dread. I definitely didn't drink enough.

It's time to log in. It's time to see what blew up while I was out of the office, despite everybody supposedly being off work. I'm afraid of my inbox. I really don't want to log in. Do I have to?

Oh, Fudge. It's Come Un-done.

Okay, who brought the undercooked fudge to Cube City last Friday? SHOW YOURSELF.

More importantly, who is desperate enough to eat mushy and potentially health-hazardous fudge that was obviously a sorry baker's botched batch?

It's interesting to me that people will bring their cooking mistakes to work because they know Cube City is where all food will go into somebody's belly instead of the trash. Can't you just hear the baker's thought process upon realizing that the fudge didn't turn out right? It probably went something like this:

Oh, FUDGE! My first batch of fudge didn't harden! I followed the recipe from Wikipedia and everything! Waaahhhh! But now that I read it again, I don't think I used corn syrup. Hmmm.

Well, it was an experiment. Not bad for my first batch EVER. The next batch will be better. But...oh, dear...what do I do with the first batch? I can't give this to somebody I care about, and I definitely can't eat it. It looks scary, and it definitely isn't done.

Wait, I know!!! I'll just sneak it into the office and leave it on the kitchen counter. Nobody will know that I totally suck at baking, and my experiment will not go to complete waste. SOMEBODY will eat it.

And the baker would be right. The fudge was almost gone by the time I left work on Friday. I never saw anybody take a piece of that fudge. I think its consumers were as sneaky as its baker. That's just fudged up.

Not-So-Happy Holidaze

There are only two days in this holiday work week for most of us in Cube City. I think there are only two of us here to do everybody else's work too.

Showing up to work during a holiday week is what stupidity looks like in Cube City. I'm sure the next two days will be frantic and furious. It's basically what every day looks like here, except for the ghost-town atmosphere. It's so quiet that you can hear me sweating the work out of my pores.

I hope to be smarter in evaluating my holiday time off next year. But since I'm what stupid looks like this week, could somebody please write a reminder on their calendar to reach out to me next year, say on November 1st, to let me know that it's time to get smart and plan for massive holiday time off?

Happy Holidaze!

It's All About Scrambling

It seems to be a similar scene in Cube City each week:

• Mondays are manageable.
• Tuesdays are trying.
• Wednesdays are whacked.
• Thursdays are when people really start working.
• Fridays are frantic because of Thursdays.
• Weekends suck because you're making up for manageable Mondays.

I asked a cube dweller, why? Why this vicious cycle? He broke it down for me:

• Mondays are quiet until 2:00 PM, when the client starts to feel like working and sends us some feedback.
• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are for scrambling as we try to determine how to react and respond to the client's feedback.
• Thursdays and Fridays are for the hard work we do based on our scrambling earlier in the week.
• Weekends are for tying up any loose ends based on two days of scrambling through our reactions and two days of scrambling through the work.

Then it's time for Monday, when we get to rest for a few hours before the vicious cycle begins again.

Anybody got any pain meds to make it stop?

The Unpleasantries of Staffing Meetings

I'm not sure how I got roped into staffing meetings in Cube City, but something's gotta give.

I go to these weekly staffing meetings to address the tasks assigned to each person on my team and check on their scheduled hours for the week.

It's always the same story:

• We don't have enough people.
• We have too much work.
• We don't have enough people to handle too much work.

So the game begins. We sit around for an hour and postulate about who we can shove the work onto if their original work schedule happens to shift unexpectedly. It's mind numbing.

For the past several weeks, I've handled a ridiculous amount of scheduled hours due to total lack of resolve in the weekly staffing meeting. I think my work hours last week totalled 102. But does anybody care about my hours? Of course not. What do you do about that extra 62 hours that should be split among two people that you don't have? Hiring more people is out of the question right now, so I'm sucking it up.

I have to go to the staffing meeting today. I'd rather stab forks in my eyes, but we don't even have real forks in Cube City. So I guess I'll be taking a stab at the work instead. It's what I do.

Cube Q&A: Reality TV

Q: Is it just me, or does Cube City sometimes feel like a drama-filled reality TV show that will never end?
A: If you feel like the biggest loser who's a survivor in the amazing race with Big Brother, you're not alone, dear cube dweller.

X, Y, and Z

One of the cube dwellers in Cube City recently said that she's been dinged on performance reviews for procrastinating. In her opinion, she's not procrastinating. She just isn't finding the creative inspiration in time to meet a deadline.

I feel her.

It really infuriates me that we're tied to timelines instead of the best work we can possibly create. Writers compose websites in two or three days, and that's if they're lucky enough to be allotted that kind of time. Designers have a week to create the look and feel of a website that needs major eye candy love. It's insane.

This is where the creative process clashes with account services. We have to crank X amount of work out per day, per week, per month, per quarter to meet X dollars so that we can all work harder to keep up with timelines that do not support the creative process.

It seems like we eventually get to a good place with the creative process. But it takes X rounds of client reviews and feeling or looking sub par before we can be halfway impressed with what we've done.

Y? Y does X have to be this complicated? I wish it didn't have to be this way. We're all supposed to be on the same team, but we all have very different goals. So we'll hurry the creative process along to meet X dollars.

All I know is that it takes a lot of money to Xpress ourselves in Cube City.

I Worked the Weekend

I worked the weekend in Cube City. I've done it before, and I'm sure I'll do it again.

But it just makes Monday that much harder.

Pardon me while I stab myself with my scissors for being a total pushover who said, "Sure, I'll work the weekend!" So much for just saying no.

Ice Day

I'm ready for an ice day in Cube City -- not to be confused with Ice Cube City.

You see, in Texas, we get ice days instead of snow days. The city gets covered in a sheet of ice, and everything shuts down. You don't go to work unless you're new to the South, insane, or stupid. All you'll do is end up in a ditch with a very big car insurance bill and more resentment towards Cube City.

We've had some cold weather and traces of sleet this week, but some recent warm weather has made an ice day impossible. So I'll keep holding out and waiting for one. It's really all I have to look forward to in Cube City during the winter.

Have an ice day.

Professional Suicide

I used to work in a very conservative Cube City where the conservative leaders tried to act like cool "A-list" people during the holiday season. They tried to have a very cool holiday party, but they usually fell flat with their robotic delivery.

One of the conservative cube dwellers, who would've bought anything that the robots tried to sell, was asking people what they were going to wear to the holiday party. When she got to me, I told her that I wouldn't be going to the holiday party.

Her loud, horrified gasping noise made everyone in Cube City stop what they were doing. As she tried to collect herself, I found myself really bored and ready for her to go away. Then she exclaimed, "You can't miss the holiday party! It's professional suicide!"

Right then and there, I knew I'd never attend another holiday party in Cube City...not that I had attended many in my lifetime before then. I just thought, "Wow. This lady takes herself and her career waaaaay too seriously."

It's been nine years since she made that remark about professional suicide. That particular Cube City has long since been out of business, but here I am, still working and still dissing the holiday party scene. I just figure I'm not getting paid to hang with cube dwellers, so why would I go to a party on a Saturday night with them? I wouldn't know them if we weren't spending the majority of our days totally miserable with each other as we try to earn a few beans.

So anyway, to my knowledge, I haven't yet committed professional suicide but have seen the death of many Cube Cities. I guess that's something to celebrate. Cheers.

Deck the Holiday Haul

It's a long haul in Cube City until the holidays, and then we get only a few paid days off, at which time we'll feel like we didn't have time off at all due to our dysfunctional family drama and holiday obligations, and then it will be an even longer haul until our next paid holiday in May, which is Memorial Day and isn't supposed to be something to celebrate with glee, you know?

Whew. That was a long sentence to demonstrate the long haul. I'm exhausted just blogging about it all.

The Yawner

There's somebody in Cube City who isn't getting enough oxygen these days. Let's just call her The Yawner.

The Yawner covers the full spectrum of yawns:

• Loud, "I have never yawned before and have to get it all out now, in the most annoying way possible, and you could throw your whole cubicle into my big mouth right now if you wanted to" yawns
• Short, "I need to just squeak this one out quickly" yawns
• Long, "I am trying to beat the Guinness Book of World Records" yawns
• Bored, "I am out of ideas, so I'm just going to yawn for a while" yawns

I'm sure that there are a lot of silent yawns (the ones that are non-yawns, or half-yawns, or otherwise unsatisfying yawns) that we can't hear from The Yawner, but I have to wonder what makes somebody think that being vocal with yawning is an acceptable thing at work.

All I know is that it's contagious, and I can't stop yawning. Are you yawning?

The Clock Watcher

I used to work in a Cube City where one of the overpaid suits spent way too much time being concerned about when you left work for the day. His office was positioned near the exit, and his door was always open so that he could see you come and go. He was The Clock Watcher.

It was the type of job that drained you pretty easily. You had little interaction with others all day and got a lot of work done. You basically spent the day inside your head. To maintain my sanity, I kept very regular hours. I would come in at 7:00 AM and leave promptly at 4:00 PM. I rarely went out to lunch and usually ate at my desk while working. I was extremely productive at that job.

However, none of this seemed to matter to The Clock Watcher. He wasn't my manager but wanted me to know that he didn't appreciate how I left consistently at 4:00 every day. Were there issues with my performance? No. In fact, I was very well-respected at this job and was known for cranking the work out. I didn't get it.

I tried in a nice (or perhaps stupid) way to point out to The Clock Watcher that he didn't come to work until 9:00 AM, often took two-hour lunches, and left by 6:00 PM. (There were some occasions when I was on a deadline and stayed later, and there was never a sign of life in the office after 6:00.) One could argue that he didn't work as hard as I did, and he certainly got paid a lot more.

But this is how it happens in Cube City. There are conservative weirdo types who think you aren't dedicated to your job if you leave at 4:00 PM. They can't see past their conservative views of what a work day should look like. It's like those two hours that you work in the morning while they're still trying to get out of bed don't count.

I think there was a part of The Clock Watcher who was envious of my schedule and my discipline. I left work at 4:00 so that I could exercise, cook a healthy dinner, and still feel like I had an evening to unwind. But all The Clock Watcher ever did was to come to work, go to lunch, come back to work, and go out to dinner with his spouse. He was unhealthy, he was about ten years older than me, and he didn't have a healthy work-life balance figured out yet. Surely his comments about my work schedule stemmed from his own insecurities about the need to get a life.

Nonetheless, The Clock Watcher had a voice in my career path and pay. He was the bean counter. So I had to eventually leave that Cube City because I wasn't getting raises and knew that I deserved them. It's hard when you won't play the game by somebody else's rules in Cube City. The minority can't win if they're outnumbered by losers.

The "No" Nazi

I've been saying "No" a lot lately in Cube City.

Just realized you are a totally unorganized project manager who needs a writer for a few hours? NO. NO WRITER FOR YOU.

Want to look like you're on top of your game but can only do that if I work nights and weekends for you? NO. NO TOP OF GAME FOR YOU.

Want to go behind my back and try to find a sucker who is willing to work nights and weekends for you? NO. I REPEAT, NO TOP OF GAME FOR YOU.

People will push the limits as far as they can in Cube City. They have NO regard for you or what they put you through. You have to just say no, or they'll take advantage of you forever. NO. NO HOW. NO WAY.

Evaluating the Evaluators

I recently attended a meeting in Cube City about performance reviews and how they will change. I sat through a presentation, acutely self aware of my horror and trying very hard not to wear it on my face, about all the great problems we'll solve and time we'll save with this new way of evaluating a person's performance.

I respect that people had to sit down and try to figure out what was wrong with the current evaluation system. I respect that people had to sit through lots of painful meetings to decide how to tackle this problem and improve it. I know it can't be easy.

What I don't respect is having to sit through an hour-long meeting, only to ask questions that receive an elaborate tap dance instead of an answer. I wanted to stand up and say, "Congratulations. You just spent six months improving performance evaluation plans that will do nothing to improve performance evaluations."

The worst part is that so many people seemed confused by the time the meeting ended. There were so many questions and no real answers. It was like the people presenting the plans knew nothing about them.

Does anybody know where the new performance evaluation forms are located? I need to evaluate the performance evaluation committee on their delivery of the performance evaluation plans.

My Love-Hate Relationships

There are people that I love in Cube City. There are also people that I hate. And then there are people that I sometimes love and sometimes hate.

It's the love-hate relationships that keep cubicle life interesting, though the hate seems to live longer than the love. Yesterday, I hated a co-worker and everything that person stood for. Today, I love that co-worker and am thrilled that we work together. We're a good team.

Yeah, it's totally fucked up.

I think part of it is that none of us really know what the hell we're doing most of the time. We take a bunch of stabs in the dark and blame each other for our failures on the inside while smiling and nodding like team players on the outside. Sometimes it just builds up and we've got to beat the shit out of each other. That's the hate. It's not really hate towards a person. It's hate towards the system. People aren't trained to do their jobs correctly, and you really can't blame them for that. The system has failed them. But the system doesn't care, so you have to take it out on a person who has feelings. That's what makes you feel better. Make somebody with feelings cry, and then you're cleansed.

There are times like today, when things pull together and we've moved past crying, that we can feel the love and sense of accomplishment. We can realize why we do this for a living (besides for the money, of course). But don't fool yourself. We'll have a client meeting soon that will remind us that we really don't love each other because we don't know what we're doing. It's back to the drawing board. The cycle will soon move back to hate, but today I will feel the love.

Help Me, Help Your Desk

Why does the Cube City helpdesk totally suck rocks?

Sometimes I just hate the helpdesk. I recently had a problem with my wireless network connection, so I asked the helpdesk for...you know...help.

A really snooty helpdesk guy responded to my request from the comfort of his desk. He wrote, "You won't be able to see wireless networks in range because we don't broadcast them. Are you having trouble connecting to the wireless network?"

No, pal, I like disconnecting from one wireless network just so I can connect to another one with a name that I like better. This is what I do for fun. OF COURSE I CAN'T CONNECT, OR I WOULDN'T BE BOTHERING YOU. Oh, and you have no idea what you're talking about because I've always been able to see the networks and select them if my wireless network isn't connecting.

Sometimes I just wish that the helpers would get up from their desks and take an interest in solving problems. It seems like they'd rather shoot a bunch of blanks from their guns before getting serious with their ammunition. Why can't helpdesk people be more helpful?

Then and Now

Here we are, back to the grind with piles of work so ridiculously high that we wonder, with great regret, why we took a few days off.

Sure, I know the answer: I was going insane. I needed a few days off from Cube City. But that was then, and this is now. I wish it was then, not now.