The Revenge of Mondays

I think I've said I don't like Mondays once too often. Mondays are getting their own back.

Today was...very Monday. It started out with my worrying: Sookie had been feeling sick yesterday and hadn't been acting at all like herself. She was off her food, very lethargic and generally not at all Sookie-Sue like. I thought she'd be ok this morning but she was still very mopey and wouldn't eat so I felt a little worried when I went off to work.

Of course, then I decided to do some internet research to make sure she was ok. I knew one of the Dog Whisperer's beasts had Parvo not too long ago. Parvo is a very nasty dog infection that's highly contagious and, apparently, unless you bleach everything the dog comes into contact with, it's very hard to kill.

So, I did some reading and discovered that Sookie's symptoms resembled those of the early stages of Parvo. I panicked. I made an appointment at the vet for the end of the day and proceeded to worry until I went home for lunch.

At lunch time, Sookie seemed somewhat normal. She ate a little, played a little and seemed mostly back to herself. Feeling like a very overprotective pet parent, I decided to cancel the vet appointment and just watch her to see how she acted.

I went back to work feeling better. Well, except for the fact that our President had scheduled yet another one of his infamous "impromptu staff meetings."

These, as I've mentioned before, are usually scheduled for the entire staff with less than 24 hours notice. This one starts at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow. In our company, these 'invitations' to the meetings are greeted with much dread and paranoia. I've mentioned this. It stems from the fact that these meetings a) Never, ever provide good news, b) follow several closed-door conversations between my boss- the V.P of the company and his boss- the president of the company and c) are sprung on us with little warning and little reassurance.

As I've mentioned, these staff meetings usually bring bad news such as:

• We're being sold, we're being sold and it's likely that we'll be closed.
• We're being sold and though we won't close, we might lose our jobs.
• We won't lose our jobs but we have to change our attitudes and start making money.
• We're not making enough money and we need to make more
• We are making some money but we're merging with another company and it's possible we might lose our jobs.

So, you can see...these meeting invitations are met with paranoia. What amused me is less than 3 minutes after getting the emailed invitation, I had three simultaneous instant messages from coworkers, all with the same.. "Oh No" in them.

I tried not to be paranoid even though I was informed that I'd missed the fact that our company president had just met with our boss in a very, very quiet meeting with the door closed. Normally, when those two talk, even with the door closed, you can hear the sound of voices even though you can never hear what they're saying. Trust me, my coworker and I have tried to hear and it's impossible. This one was so quiet, my coworker wondered if they were miming.

This, of course, inspired an inappropriate fit of giggles from me as I immediately pictured our president dressed as Marcel Marceau and doing that creepy box thing that mimes do. On the plus side, this made me feel much better. On the down side, since it won't actually happen, no one will understand why the words mime and our president's name will always inspire a loony grinning fit from me unless I explain. And, even when I try to, they will still look at me like I'm crazy.

I digress. To top things off, our boss ended up rescheduling our department meeting until after this staff meeting. He only does that when he 1) either is afraid that we'll ask questions about why we're having a staff meeting or 2) Needs to discuss the meeting with us after it's happened.

Either way, it doesn't bode well. My only hope is that if they're going to schedule a meeting at 8:30 a.m., there better be awkward bagels.

So, on top of my dog feeling poorly and the paranoia that Something Bad is going to happen, I also managed to accidentally delete some rather important information. In my defense, I feel like I was doing my job. My boss and the poor programmer who is responsible for the information don't really agree.

You see, I've recently taken on the responsibility of trying to test our software for vulnerabilities. While I'll never be a hacker because I'm simply not smart enough, I use certain hacker tools to help search for them. Hacking isn't all bad. Bad hacking is called Black Hat hacking. Good hacking is White Hat hacking. The point of White Hat hacking is to try to make sure it's safe against the Black Hats. I'm learning everything as I go along but am having a lot of fun doing it. I've found some nifty tools. One of these tools checks websites for vulnerabilities. Except today, one of my tests apparently deleted some information. I was chastised because I logged in and a real hacker wouldn't have that access. I tried to politely explain to my boss that just because we didn't create accounts for hackers to do bad things to our software, they're usually pretty adept at finding their way in. This is simplified by us by using some not so hard-to-crack encryption for passwords. They couldn't see that I'd helped them out by finding something a hacker could find in less than five minutes. They only saw the damage I'd done.

Fortunately, it's fixable. Unfortunately, I'm in the dog house. I should probably feel bad but I really don't except for the fact that the repairs have to be done by someone who is rather busy and doesn't have time to fix my damage.

Finally, to top it all off, I end up getting scheduled for meetings all afternoon. I dislike meetings. I especially dislike them when I think I'm invited because someone finally realizes I should have been invited all along because I have the same responsibilities as my coworker who is always invited only to discover I'm only invited because she's going to be out of the office on a day when she needs to be there. I wouldn't mind except she really doesn't need to be out of the office. As usual, her and one of her clique have contrived to make it seem like she has to go to this crucial meeting when, really, she has very little to do with the meeting; she just wants to go hang out and support her friend. It would be ok if she didn't have, you know, responsibilities in the office that day, responsibilities that she made sure she made sure she had and I didn't. Yes, I'm bitter. If it wasn't such a regular thing, I wouldn't mind so much.

Ah well, there's no point worrying about it. Life will go on. So will the meetings. They go on. And on. And on. I ended up being rather late home which made it fortunate I'd cancelled the vet appointment.

Sookie seems to be feeling sorry for herself again. I don't know if it's to milk attention or she really does feel under the weather. I think I'll spend the evening keeping an eye on her, just to make sure. Maybe it'll stop me thinking about the meeting tomorrow which, hopefully, will be much ado about nothing.

And, if it is much ado about something...I'll just picture it with mimes.

Happy Tuesday.

Really Boring Staff Meetings....

Today was a sort-of interesting day at work. Lately, I've been feeling frustrated by my job. I've mentioned before that there's a high-school mentality to some of my coworkers. They have a little clique and they're very exclusive. Recently, one of the clique was promoted to a manager level. Now, if it had been me, I would have thought, "Crap, I'm a manager now. I should probably start acting like one."

Let me explain. Like most companies, most of our managers tend to have management meetings. They discuss confidential affairs only with those who need to know. They might be friendly with the staff but they're not super-best-friend-pals at work. There's a line drawn when someone becomes a manager and, unfortunately, if you want to be a good one, you have to stay on your side of the line, occasionally getting close to standing on the line but never crossing it.

Our new manager hasn't learned that yet. She continues to have loud, obvious, whispered conversations with people when she's obviously trying to make sure no one else hears but, by the mere fact that she's obviously whispering, she's getting people's interest. I'm not saying she's not nice because she is. She's very nice.

My problem with her is that because she's part of the clique, the clique tends to benefit from her manager status. My coworker, for example, often spends up to an hour or so just chatting with her friends. She starts with the intent of talking about work but she's very, very easily distracted and she's a chatter. As a result, she comes back from her friend, the manager's office, loaded down with 'inside information.' As a result, she somehow ends up on every project before I've even heard that there is a project. Naturally, I get frustrated. I've contemplated talking to this manager but, sadly, I know that while she might politely receive my comments, it would end up being another closed-door, whisper session with my coworker.

I've let it bother me until today. Today, you see, we had a staff meeting. If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know that I often take a slightly sadistic joy in Awkward Staff Meetings.

Sadly, today's was not an Awkward Staff Meeting. It was a Really Boring Staff Meeting. Really Boring Staff Meetings consist of our president standing in front of the room and talking about numbers. He also talks about projects but since our department manager went over those with us the other day, having to listen to the whole thing again gets frightfully boring.

So, I did what I always do: I tried to listen but found my mind wandering. It wandered to food, of course. I was craving a chocolate milkshake. I don't even like milkshake's that much so I began to wonder why I was craving a chocolate milkshake. The result? I have absolutely no idea why I was craving a chocolate milkshake.

Then I began to think about my work situation and the annoying manager. I contemplated my options. I could speak up or shut up, is what it came down to in the end. Since I've already spoken up several times to by nice-but-slightly-ineffectual boss, I contemplated the reason I was annoyed in the first place. What it came down to is that I do a lot of work and get no credit while my coworker does a lot less work and gets a lot more credit. Then I began to wonder what I would achieve if I got put on more projects. I'd be busier. I'd have to do more work. Then my coworker would find a way to get put on the same projects as me which is how it always is.

Then, as I have several times before, I realized that, really, I suddenly didn't care. I know I'm a good worker and I know I'm quite good with clients/coworkers/customers. I just don't ever get to work with them. If my coworker wants to be the visible one, let her. Eventually, she's going to be so busy that they'll realize that it might be better to spread the wealth. My coworker isn't good at being an independent worker. She constantly has to have meetings or consultations with people to discuss projects. Me....well, I'm not a fan of meetings. I'm a fan of knowing what needs to be done, knowing what I have to do to get that thing done and doing it.

I simply realized that my coworker and I are wildly different- I like to make decisions and take responsibility for them and she likes to get people to help her make her decisions so that she doesn't make a wrong one. There's nothing wrong with that. I just have to accept that things won't change and I either have to change instead or I have to find another job. Since there aren't any jobs out there, methinks I'll just suck it up and let her get the glory for a while. In the meantime, I'll do the work that she's not doing because she's off in the manager's office, having a chat.

Anyway, this thought process took up a large percentage of the Really Boring Staff Meeting. The other percentage was spent listening to our nice-but-not-terribly-great-at-her-job HR manager talk about building safety. We then had to take a tour of our building so we knew where the fire exits were. Since most of us knew, it was an odd thing to do. It really was for the new people just in case they didn't know but since the newest people were pulled into a meeting, it was a wee bit redundant. Still, I did get to enjoy the small signs of our Office Olympics from a few weeks ago during the tour.

After the tour, we were sent back to our desks to "pretend it was a normal working day." Yes, that's exactly how it was put. I think most of us took her seriously and pretended so hard we did some work. We were that into our roles.

Then, after about five minutes of pretending it was a normal working day, our HR manager came over the intercom and informed us there was a "fire in the kitchen. Please evacuate." Most of us in our cubicle farm strolled the 20 feet to our fire exit and went outside. Then we had to walk around the building to our 'rendezvous point.' Then we went back inside to the nice air conditioned building because it was very, very hot and sticky outside.

We went back to work. Five minutes later, our HR manager came over the intercom and informed us that "A tornado has been spotted. Please evacuate."

We dutifully walked around to the exit we'd been informed was the tornado evacuation exit because it had stairs leading down to the basement. We all did as we were told and headed down to the basement. Except...the door was locked. We were stuck on the stairs. A few minutes later, the HR manager comes down and says, "it's locked." We knew this. She informed us she had the only key and proudly unlocked the door.

Once inside the rather hideous, extremely musty basement of our building, we politely asked our HR manager if there could possibly be another key just in case, you know, there was a tornado and she wasn't around.

"I'm always around," she said.

We tried not to look at each other as we politely suggested that she might a) go on vacation (if she did, she promised to leave the key at the front desk), b) go to lunch ("I never go to lunch if there looks like there's going to be a storm" or c) just had to leave unexpectedly ("I'd never do that".)

She didn't get our concern. Now, if you're an HR manager with the ONLY key to a locked basement that's the sole hope of our company in case of a natural disaster in the form of a tornado, don't you, you know, think it might be good to have an extra key made? I appreciate that she wants to be responsible and not risk a security breach of someone getting hold of the extra key that shouldn't but, well....there are ways around security breaches.

Still, we finally went back to work without having to pretend it was a normal working day. I asked my boss if that meant it wasn't really a normal working day since we'd had to pretend and if we could leave. He said no. I was quite sad.

All in all, it was an interesting day at work what with milkshakes, workplace revelations, a fire in the kitchen and a tornado.

Of course, I never did get my milkshake.

Oh, well, maybe tomorrow.

Happy Friday and have a good weekend.

The Visitors Are Coming!

Today was most definitely a Monday. I got to work and started a project that I thought would be simple. Alas, being Monday, nothing is ever simple. It turns out that even though I knew for certain that I'd updated a web page a few months ago, my changes were gone and I had to start from scratch. This realization came after quite a few attempts to find my edits which took up rather a lot of time. By the time I realized I had no choice but to start all over again, I had wasted valuable minutes trying to undo the undo-able error.

Still, even though it was Monday, I was in a scarily chipper mood. I have no idea why. It's remarkably easy to alarm people when they ask you how you are and you say enthusiastically, "It's Monday! YAY!"

I think that enthusiasm from me at work is always sort of a shock to most people. On a Monday, it's just plain alarming. I exacerabated the alarm by reading the motivation poster in the kitchen aloud to anyone who dared seem un-perky. I did not win a lot of fans. In fact, one of my coworkers even swore at me.

I think the saddest part is the more I alarm people with my perkiness, the more it encourages me. In our department staff meeting today, my manager told us we all had to download an application for our computers. When he realized they had to create a download just for little old me, the lone PC user in a sea of Macs, he stared at me and said, "you're really the only one?"

I beamed at him and said, "yup." He stared some more. "Really? Well, aren't you special?"

I merely smiled in my slightly loony way and said, "why yes, I always thought so." He didn't say much more on the subject. I think the fact that he acknowledged that I am the lone banana in a sea of Apple's was enough for the day. It's the teeny, tiny victories that really count, even if they only last a couple of hours.

This week is very special in our office. We have outsiders coming in to be trained on our software. It's very exciting, at least that's what I'm being told. This means for my area that we might be paraded out on a break just to prove that we exist. We also must dress nicely each day. For me, this isn't exactly an issue. I like to dress nicely for work. However, I do find it slightly ironic that we have to dress up to impress the visitors who most likely won't see us. I suppose we're supposed to give the impression that we're highly professional. Given that we actually are quite professional and still manage to be that way in jeans and t-shirts, it's rather interesting that we have to pretend that we dress nice every day.

I'm not against dressing nice for work as I've stated many times. Normally, I get odd looks and questions when I wear something other than jeans to work. It's just that we're pretending. The construction on our building has been working top speed to be done by tomorrow so that the visitors think we're perfect. It's still not done though Neon Einstein and the Motivational Bathroom Pictures are hung so that our guests know we're all perky and upbeat. Of course, given that there are only two bathroom stalls in our entire building and we're going to have quite a few women in for the training, I'm not quite sure how upbeat you can remain when you really need to go and there's a line but, well, they didn't think of that when they gave us our two bathroom stalls.

It's all a charade, really. I suppose any workplace is when you look at it. I watch The Office regularly and I have to say, though we don't have a supervisor quite as incompetant as Michael Scott, some of the events on that show are a little too familiar. I think every workplace is the same. You have to be on your best behaviour when outsiders are in the building to make them think you're perfect. When they leave, then you can start acting crazy and breaking out the jeans. One of the reasons I'll probably never be a boss is that I tend to think the output and work product is one of the things to look at, not what the workers look like who get it there. Also, if you're nice to the workers, they might output a little more, up that ratio of work to salary. My office isn't mean to us per se but, well, they don't exactly have staff appreciation days or parties. Even our Christmas party didn't happen this year because no one could be bothered to plan it. Also, I suspect we had no budget. I don't see why we couldn't have turned on the flat screens, cranked up the popcorn maker and had a party in our little Cubicle Land but no one seemed to go for that.

Now the time for holiday parties has passed. A President's Day party just didn't seem to appeal to anyone. Still, at lunch, we've taken to having little parties in the kitchen area. I think we might have to close the doors when the visitors are in the building; my perkiness might really frighten them. It's one thing to unleash a loony grin on your coworkers but I'm not mean enough to do it to complete strangers.

Of course, it's only Tuesday. By Friday, I might feel differently. I'll let you know.

Happy Monday!

De-Motivational Staff Meetings....

Tomorrow is Friday. Which means the lovely and welcome weekend is just around the corner. I, for one, am glad about that.

I woke up in a foul mood today. I think I was just irritated with myself for wasting so much time the night before on the computer issues and I also didn't want to get out of my comfy bed to go to work. Over the course of the morning, I did get in a better mood though why, I really don't know unless it was because time was passing.

Still, by lunch, I was in a pretty decent mood. I'm glad because after lunch, we had a staff meeting. It was not an impromptu staff meeting, thank goodness because those inspire fear and worry in most of us at work. I think we all worry we're being told someone just got fired...and then we realize that in our office, if someone gets fired, we get an email to tell us and that's it. No discussion allowed.

Today's meeting was scheduled. By the time I came out, I was in a ridiculously goofy mood. I can't explain why, really....I think it's a result of my newfound ability to care about my job enough that I do it well but not enough that I take it home with me so much anymore. This attitude has done wonders- I've stopped being bitter towards my coworkers and I've stopped resenting the fact that I continue to be invisible. Not much has changed there, to be honest. My coworker still gets asked to give all the webinars on our shared software and be on all the commmitees while I plod away on the work that gets done. Yet rather than resent it, I tend to rejoice in the fact that I don't have to do it. Granted, it is a little unbalanced but it's not going to change and, honestly, that's ok by me.

The scary thing is that I mean all of what I'm saying. I don't know, it's like someone flipped a switch on inside my brain. Today, I discovered my coworker had been asked to do a webinar on the software we share yet again even though I've made it widely known that I would like to at least co-present at the next one and for a brief minute, a surge of frustration flared and then...it was gone. There was no harboured resentment, just a nice resignation that I can't change anything and I'm ok with that.

So, back to the staff meeting. Today, we had another pep talk. Fortunately, this one did not involve budgets and numbers. Instead, we were told that because salary is one of our company's biggest expenditures, the ratio of work to salary was going to be examined and analyzed.

I think this is the point at which I started to get giddy. It's the type of fodder you can't ask for but just falls in your lap. After all, as one of the, uh, lower paid employees in the company, that sort of works in my favour, right?

Here's my logic, you see. My salary is quite a lot less than what I'd consider the average. I know this because when we were going through the nightmare of being sold last year, they had to post our salaries on the web for due diligence purposes. Thus, the first thing we all did was go out to the website and see what people were making. I didn't exactly memorize it but it stuck with me. Let's just say I'm making quite a fair amount below average.

Anyways, so, if the average salary is, say, about $12K more than mine, that means those people are expected to work at a ratio of 1 days work for the average daily salary. Thus, since I fall below average, doesn't that mean that I have to do less work?

I admit, I did consider asking my boss for daily thumb-twiddling time but then realized he wouldn't be amused. Also, we're supposed to pretend we have no clue what anyone makes even though I know my boss and his boss make at least triple my salary.

So, that was my first moment of glee- when my snarky sense of logic kicked off. The comment about salary to work ratio was followed by another encouraging statement of how in the immediate future, our jobs are going to be analyzed so that the company can best find how to use our talents and skills because there are a "lot of really smart people" who aren't being "used efficiently."

You think? Really? I've now told my boss this no less than three times.

The sad thing is that I know, in my area, nothing will change. Besides, I'm using my talent right now...writing...a snarky blog about my company.

Besides that, I think I have a bit of a talent for making soup. However, I don't think they're going to find much of a use for that in the office....though it'd be fun to see them try. Software and Soup: Guiding the Future of Education while Comforting your Soul with the Power of Soup!

I like that idea. I have a feeling my boss wouldn't.

The sad thing is I have skills that I've honed in my last few jobs...they're wasting away because I don't get the opportunity to use them. For some reason, I'm always kept back from dealing with clients even though, prior to this position, that was one of my biggest assets and strongest skills. I used to be a good liaison between technical people and non-technical people, breaking down complicated stuff into terms that a non-computer-savvy person could understand. I think our company could use that but, alas, even though I've asked to do more of that, it's not considered part of my job so my suggestions are ignored.

So, you can understand why I was so amused during our staff meeting. We've become a corporation. We've transitioned from this nice, friendly, family-like company where we were allowed to speak out and say what we thought and have some input to a corporation where we get pep talks every week. I'm telling you, if they start putting up those motivation posters that say things "TEAMWORK: When we all work together, we all win together," I'm really going to go around a replace them with the Demotivator version that says "TEAMWORK: A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction."

We've become a corporation that needs meetings to say "Go Team!".

I am amused. Our corporation recently hid the cable boxes away from us in a locked room because they were afraid we'd steal them. Now me, personally, I'd go for the big flat screen TV rather than the cable box but, hey, that's just me. We're also getting new cameras added around the building for 'security'. We don't have much to steal, not really. Ok, so we have computer servers but we always had those and no one stole them. I think our 'security' really means that we're going to be monitored so that we behave ourselves.

I know, I sound loopy. I am, I suppose. I'm entirely amused at my company. It might wear off tomorrow but, for now, I have to admit, I've always liked the non-impromptu staff meetings. I usually find some form of entertainment in them. I preferred it when the vocal folks would stir up trouble and speak their minds. Now, they just quietly sit there and while you can see their irritation by their change in postures, they don't speak up so much anymore. It's a shame, really. Still, as long as I can be amused by something in our meetings, they can't be all bad.

At the very least, they give me great blog fodder.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Happy Friday and have a good weekend!