Playing Office

A lot of people come to Cube City dressed up like business people -- not necessarily in their clothing style, but definitely in the fantasy land of their own minds.

These are people who run amok, making uninformed decisions about people's lives and careers. I don't understand how a lot of these people make their way into really high-profile positions and become the voice of reason. I mean, they don't know what the hell they are doing -- and if they do know, they don't care that they're doing it wrong. How do they manage to survive when the people around them see how incompetent they are? Whose trust have they earned? Do they have naked pictures of important people or something?

Perhaps it is as simple as putting on their shoes every morning, Mr. Rogers style, and saying, "Today I am going to play office, boys and girls."

At times, I almost feel like I'm looking down at a chess game, with a bunch of plastic pawns jumping from their own territory into that of their competitors. That's when I reach for the codka, as there is no other way to win the game.

I wish we would stop playing around in Cube City and hire the right people to make the right decisions. I'm serious. I'm not playing.

The Reorgs

You've heard about them.

You've probably experienced a number of them.

Perhaps you've even survived a few.

You know what I'm talking about: REORGS.

I don't get reorgs. Whenever a company announces plans for a restructuring of the organization, I think, "Okay, we have learned nothing about how to do business here." On my less optimistic days, I change that thought to, "Okay, we have not learned from our mistakes." On my we-are-doomed mood days, I simply think, "Okay, we have learning NOTHING at all about anything or anyone."

I can't count the number of reorgs I've seen, but I know they are a fact of life in Cube City. We've heard rumblings about a reorg since our last round of layoffs but haven't really seen the full results yet. We're all just waiting to see what we haven't learned.

What we have learned is this: Our reorg will teach us nothing except that we will continue to have reorgs.

Friending the Superhero

I think you're all aware of my personal struggles with Facebook, but it gets worse.

I was minding my own business when it happened. The Superhero found me on Facebook and requested to add me as a Friend.

I didn't know what to do, as I never really considered him a friend when I worked for him. I watched his company die a slow and painful death while he sexually harassed everything that moved.

So I decided to ask my friend Gene for advice. He had worked for the Superhero. He would know what to do.

Instead, all Gene said was, "You know you'll Friend him. You have to."

It's true. When you work for a trainwreck, you really can't pull yourself away. And as much as I hate to admit it, I learned a great deal at the Superhero's company and reached a lot of personal and professional milestones in my career because that jackass gave me a chance.

So I am now friends with the Superhero -- on Facebook, anyway.

The Superhero

At my very first job in Cube City, I worked for a total character. He was:

• A former quarterback at Duke
• A former lawyer
• Married to a beautiful and highly intelligent psychologist that he'd met at Duke
• The son of a self-made millionaire
• A major sexual harassment case waiting to happen
• The most obnoxious CEO I've ever met

A year or so into the job, I learned that a journalist would be coming to Cube City to interview the CEO for a popular entrepreneurial magazine. The journalist came and went, and we eventually received several copies of the magazine in the mail when it went to print.

The day that issue of the magazine arrived in the mail, my manager walked up to my cubicle looking pale, with very wide eyes. She dropped the magazine on my desk, sat down in my guest chair, and put her head in her hands. She feverishly said, "We are DONE FOR."

I picked up the magazine and read the article, which portrayed our fearless leader as an animated superhero whose super power was lying to get the sale. The tragic part of the situation was that the superhero CEO loved the article. He was very proud of it and had no idea that he'd been portrayed as a jackass who had a big mouth instead of a big product. I'm not sure he was able to get past his awe of what he looked like as a caricature in a six-page spread.

My manager and I started applying for other jobs that day. We didn't want to see our superhero's biggest fall.

The Wordsmith

Once upon a time, I was the only writer in Cube City. I wrote manuals, marketing materials, ads, websites -- even sales letters for our salespeople who didn't know how to put a sentence together. If it had to do with the written word, it had to do with me.

During my time there, I somehow became known as the resident expert in Microsoft Word. If people couldn't get their margins right, they'd call me. If they couldn't figure out how to format bulleted lists correctly, I was their source. If they royally messed up their documents while trying to add columns to their tables, they'd call me for help.

I'm not sure how people confuse experts of the written word with experts of Microsoft Word, but I know it happens. You writers out there know what I'm talking about. All we can do is continue to perform our magic tricks for our captive audiences. I know I'll keep writing whatever my fellow cube dwellers need as well as solving their word-processing software problems. It just perpetuates that ever-valuable optical illusion of worth in Cube City. Word.

Slam!

I used to work for a passive-aggressive boss in Cube City who had an interesting way of dealing with things. Her office was next door to that of a really noisy guy whose purpose in the company was a mystery to most everyone. One annoying thing he did was to slam the overhead doors of his metal storage bins shut. The sound was startling and made you jump in your seat.

When I attended meetings in my passive-aggressive boss's office and we heard the startling sound next door, she would open her own metal storage bin and slam it shut. She had really good reflexes and never missed a beat. It was obvious to just about everyone, except perhaps her clueless noisy neighbor, that she was seeking revenge and trying to get him to realize that he was being loud and rude. My boss was relentless in her revenge, but her neighbor just never seemed to get the message.

I have to wonder what makes somebody seek revenge in a passive-aggressive manner. Wouldn't it be easier and more effective to just tell somebody that they make a scary sound with their storage bins and that they need to stop?

I guess it's one thing to slam a storage bin and quite another to slam a person.

New Year, New You

Well, here we are...back in Cube City for another year. I like to think of it as a year closer to retirement. Okay, so I'm feeling more optimistic this year. Or maybe just today.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just wake up in a new year and be a new person? Somebody who likes meetings, doesn't dread Mondays or working late, and doesn't remember all the bad things or bad people from previous working years? A truly clean slate?

I wish I could be a new person in a new year, but unfortunately I woke up this morning with a really sharp memory. It's Monday Mourning.