Mismanagement 101

I think they must teach this in a business class or something:

1. Discover a competent employee who understands complex directions and takes initiative
2. Reward him with compliments, raise
3. Give him more autonomy and trust him to set his own priorities
4. Get rid of employee's not doing as well
5. Give incompetent employees duties to competent employee
6. Promise to hire people to work under competent employee and also to have developers create workflow management tools to aid him in his job
7. Never make good on your promises
8. Continue to grow your business but not to scale it in any reasonable way, giving competent employee even more work
9. Half-heartedly listen to competent employee's request for help more manpower
10. Hire incompetent temp to do work that you didn't trust incompetent full-time employees to do
11. Fire temp; wonder why temp didn't work out
12. Confront competent employee about his duties not getting done
13. Tell competent employee that you will begin to prioritize his work for him
14. Don't prioritize his work for him
15. Have competent employee explain to you just what is so hard about his job
16. Disregard his attempt to tell you that the two halves of his job are actually two jobs requiring two employees
17. Inform him that one of the "halves" is the most important part of his workload, but that it should only be taking him one or two hours a day maximum
18. Constantly and with suspicion question once-competent employee about what he is currently working on
19. Act surprised when employee is disgruntled

Seriously, I've seen this happen before to a number of coworkers, and have even experienced it first hand. Where do managers pick this stuff up?

Maybe I'm being a bit over-dramatic here. I mean I still like my job and, despite me no longer thinking he's a good manager, I still like my boss. And I don't plan on quitting any time soon.

This all stems from my work getting increasingly difficult as our company grows, but no one listening to me asking for help. But the kicker is what happened today. Basically, my boss sat down behind me today and told me, in so many words, to prove that I was actually working and not jackassing around.

It is beyond annoying that he doesn't realize that I'm working diligently, no matter how hard I try to explain and demonstrate that fact. Hell, one night last week I didn't even go home! I stayed at the goddamn office all night because I was that dedicated to getting a project done. But now it's in doubt whether or not I'm wasting time.

Part of me wants to become the incompetent employee I'm assumed to be. I would get to be lazy and would not shatter anyone's current expectations. Another part of me wants to put even more hours in, get everything that is done that is expected of me, no matter the cost to my personal life or health. I would get to be a martyr and could revel in my own self-righteousness. The more reasonable part of me, though, knows that I should just keep doing what I'm doing: working as hard as I can, within reason, and doing my best. It's not my job to make sure the business is being managed properly. If my boss sees that work is not getting done and can do nothing more about it than blame an employee that is already working hard, then that is not my problem. If it comes to me being fired for incompetence, then he is even more stupid than I thought.

Lying

I forgot to mention that a week or two ago the president of my company said, "Morning, Josh," as I was walking into the building.

"Morning," I replied, "but I'm not Josh." I really shouldn't lie to people like that.

Frustrating

I know my previous posts about my new job have been just short of gushing, making it seem as though I've found the most awesome job in the world, so I thought I'd make a post about how it does frustrate me sometimes.

The "president" of the company ... (Tangent: In such a small company, traditional corporate titles become ridiculous, being both ostentatious and not descriptive enough. Our president is a figurehead for the company, but he also is the sales department slash account representative slash the guy who smooths things over when shit goes wrong.) ... where was I?

Anyway, the president and I have very frustrating miscommunications sometimes. The miscommunications sometime come in the form of novel-length email strings or whole days of walking back and forth between each other's office looking confused. This is a result of us being two distinctly different types of people. In the time-honored tradition of reducing a complex society into an oversimplified dichotomy, he is a Talker and I am a Doer. (This is not to be confused with the Thinker vs Doer generalization.)

Talkers react to issues that would best be solved by discussion and negotiation and schmoozing and other human interaction. Doers react to issues that would best be solved by planning and organizing and completing tasks. This is not to say that Talkers don't do anything, and that Doers don't talk. It's just that each group doesn't see what the other does as necessary to resolving an issue. They often can't see or don't understand the issues that the other can.

For instance, the president spends his day wheeling and dealing, and he finally pulls in an account. The talk is over, so to him the deal is done. The only thing that's left is that pesky problem of delivering on the promises he made during his speal. He doesn't care if what he promises is reasonable, feasible, or even doable. It's not an issue to him; he just talks until the deal is closed.

Enter me. I've got to make what he said we could do a reality. I need to take the client's specifications, and the extras he said we would do for them, and figure out a way to execute them. Whether or not he promised something we can't do or that can't be done is not an issue to me. It was just talk.

Obviously, this is where we don't see eye to eye.

When he closes a deal, he'll send me reams of email strings that criss-cross, overlap, back-track, and repeat themselves, as well specification documents that the client created and negotiation documents that he and the client made together. It takes me literally hours to sort through all this crap to find out what it is I'm supposed to do. There's stuff in there like, "Hey, it was good seeing you at the convention! Are you going to the next one?", "The next time you're in town, I know a great steak place to eat.", and "You have a great weekend with your daughter!" It's all mixed in with relevant details about the deal, which also might be mixed in with relevant details about other simultaneous deals. Writing code and entering information in to a database is easy. Parsing through this bullshit is one of more difficult parts of my job. It get's a little frustrating.

Similarly though, when he asks me for a status update on a project so that he can impress, reassure, or otherwise talk at his clients, I give him a list of what I've completed, what I am working on, and what I have left to do. He often gets flustered and asks, "Yeah, but is it done yet? What do I tell the client?" I'm trying to do something, and all he cares about is what he'll say.

So, there you have it. In summary, my job's not perfect, the world is full of confusion, and this post is done.

Interesting Start

Aside from the excitement of just having a new job, there have been several other interesting things happen at work.

The week before last, the guy who used to have my job, whom I assumed got promoted, was fired. It turns out he wasn't promoted, he was moved to a new position because he couldn't (or wouldn't) complete the tasks of my position. Apparently, he didn't do the work of his new position either, so they canned him. I guess I viewed this as a warning: Incompetence and laziness will not be tolerated.

This past week, my boss, the CTO, has been on vacation. Before he left, I got a crash-course in how to do my job. One of the last things he said before he left on Friday was that he was impressed with how much I've picked up. That was heartening.

Last Monday was the first day my boss was gone. A guy who started the same day as I did, and the only other tech guy in the place, left on his lunch break and never came back. This is more stunning than it is disappointing. I mean, to come in, get your paycheck, and then go on an early lunch, never to be heard from again -- that takes a disregard for professionalism that I doubt even I could muster. But, really, I'm not disappointed because he wasn't that cool of a person anyway. As far as coworkers go, I guess he was decent, but something about him was a bit off, and not in that nerdy, computer geek kind of way. He was bigoted, crass, and a bit full of himself. Plus he spoke in ghetto slang unironically. Imagine if Eminem had gotten a degree in computer science -- that's what this guy was like.

So, last week I'm the only tech-oriented person in the place and they've just launched a new web portal, and because the guy before me wasn't doing his job we're behind schedule on the old portal. On top of it all, I barely know how to do my job, I've got no direction from my absent boss, and I've got to figure out problems originally intended for the AWOL software engineer. I thought I was barely treading water. But, at the end of the week, the CEO came in to talk to me. He told me how impressed he was that I was getting so much done despite the circumstances. I was pretty relieved, though I know I'll feel even better when my boss is back next week.

It's been an interesting go so far. I hope everyone remembers how impressive I am when it comes time to hand out bonuses and raises. We'll see.

Liking the Job So Far

After a week of employment, I think that I will really enjoy my new job. Though some of these feelings may be due to newness of the experience, I think some facets of the job will lend to it being pretty cool long after the novelty has worn off.

The role I'm in, "web application support," has quite a few diverse functions. It's a little bit of tech support, a little bit of web development, a little bit of database management, a little bit of technical writing, etc. Essentially, it's got enough interesting little bits happening continuously to keep the wriggly organ between my ears from getting bored and mushy.

You're Hired!

Yesterday I interviewed with a small web marketing start-up for a Web Application Support position. I walked out of the interview with a job -- and dumbstruck look on my face, I'm sure.

It was mostly like any other interview I've been one, except the person interviewing me was the CEO. (Like I said, it is a tiny company.) He explained that the company takes schools on as clients and gathers information from its and others' websites on prospective students to give to the schools, at a premium, of course. The particulars of how such a company based on this business model works is beyond my knowledge or interest, so I didn't ask. But, having been in operation for less than a year, they have already cleared their overhead and made a profit, so they must be doing something right.

Anyway, the CEO continued to explain the job in pretty basic terms, letting me know that the CTO would explain it to me more in-depth. He then leaned in and explained that the CTO is a stickler for details. He's a very particular, stringent guy, so much so that the last two people they'd hired for this position hadn't lasted long. With that newly minted terror in my mind, he told me that he would send the CTO in to talk with me. This didn't bode well.

The CTO was a tall, relaxed guy with a big smile, not at all what I was picturing. He came in with a set of questions the CEO had given him to ask me, but after only getting through a couple of them, he tossed them aside and said, "These are stupid." We just started talking. He was interested to find that I'd started college as a Computer Science major, and even more intrigued to find that what web programming knowledge I have is self-taught.

Finally, he explained that the position does require a little bit of technical knowledge, but more importantly, it requires an ability to quickly learn new concepts, fully comprehend complex processes, and thoroughly document gained knowledge. With that, he got up and said he'd send the CEO back in.

I was anxious. I thought that I had the necessary skills to be good in this position. However, historically speaking, I've always thought this during job interviews, but have had much difficulty in conveying this to the interviewers.

The CEO came back in and nonchalantly mentioned that the CTO was impressed with me. "Can you start tomorrow?" he asked. I was almost too stunned to answer. I've never been hired during an interview before. It felt, in short, fucking awesome.

A couple hours later, while I was celebrating with my roommates, the CEO called me to let me know that they wouldn't have my computer ready by tomorrow, so to just come in Wednesday. So, today's my last day of unemployment. I can't say that I'll miss it.

Dumb Move

I'm not sure why I haven't mentioned this before now; like Ron Burgundy, it's kind of a big deal: I'm moving tomorrow.

I'm moving out of the Happy Times's house in the suburbs to live with The Long-Dater Goober and her previous and my soon-to-be roommate, Sneezy. (I'll come up with better nicknames later, I promise.) We're moving into an apartment on the north side of the city, just off the Red Line. It's in a decent neighborhood, and I'll finally fulfill my wish to actually live in the city.

While I'm pretty excited about this move, I'm also really nervous. I came here a year ago with only a few hundred dollars and no job prospects in a faltering economy but with some trusty friends to rely on. This time I'm moving with only a few hundred dollars and no job prospects in a full-on recession and no one but myself to fall back on. This is, without a doubt, the stupidest literal and figurative move I've made in a while.

So, if you've got some extra luck laying around, send it my way. Or if praying's your thing, please mention me to your deity of choice. Well-wishes and heaping helpings of hope are greatly appreciated. I'm going to need it.

What I've Learned in my Twenty-Sixth Year

I turned twenty-six yesterday. I decided to make a list of things I've learned:

• Making sudden, life-altering decisions may not work out how I plan
• It is more valuable and useful to make the decision to change than to decide on what (I hope) that change will be
• If I want to pay off my debt, I shouldn't quit my job, especially in the middle of a recession
• I am not well-adapted to work in customer service
• I am horrible at keeping in contact with good but distant friends (though, I think I already knew this)
• I have a very skewed perception of how strangers, coworkers, friends, and family view me
• The Cubs are awesome and the Sox suck ... I guess
• The thought of going back to school doesn't utterly repulse me anymore
• I am capable of enduring
• Apple soda is delicious
• Possessions -- things, stuff, junk -- are a liability; one that I am happy to eschew when needs be
• I still really like programming, and I should find a way to get back into it
• CTA buses don't give change cards
• I still hate old people

In addition, there are some things that I have failed to learn:

• Employers do not care about The Way I Think Things Should Be Done™, no matter how efficient, cost-effective, or time-saving I believe it to be (or that it actually is)
• Why the only emotion I can fluently express is Anger
• What it is like to live by myself, on my own
• How to motivate myself to write again
• How to fix a motorcycle

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Over a week ago, I had to shave my beard because of a job interview. As this image illustrates, I was saddened. To make matters worse, when I got to the interview, the interviewer was sporting a beard. Oh, tragic irony! Oh yeah, and I didn't get the job either. I guess that was kind of a bummer.

Then, over the weekend, I shaved my head. Partially because Happy Time and Stellar shaved theirs in support of Happy Time's mother enduring chemotherapy. Additionally, I so desperately want a change in my life, and this is the only one I can afford. Please, someone give me a job soon, or lord knows what else I'll cut off!

Hope

Distant hope is encouraging and inspiring. Hope so nearly realized is tortuous and maddening.

Radio Silence

After six months of hearing nothing -- literally nothing but automated email responses -- back from potential employers, I finally have landed a job interview! I'm excited by the opportunity and confident that I'm qualified for the job, but I don't want to presume that I'll actually get the job. I don't want to raise my expectations only to have them squashed.

Actually, in the past couple weeks, I've gotten a few other promising inquiries:

• A small, Chicago-based web company contacted me to write some online help for their site. This is turning into a story unto itself, and there will probably more to tell later
• A headhunter in Kansas City must have found one of my old resumes and has asked if she could submit it to a few companies back in Missouri. I gave her the go-ahead because the jobs sounded kind of interesting
• The state of Illinois has asked me to come in for a competency test to see if I'm qualified for a position that I applied for a month ago. I'm waiting on my college transcript to arrive
• Even a regular customer at worked asked me if I would be interested in helping her walk dogs. I gave her my number

I'm not sure if this is the end of the radio silence of the past half-year or just a momentary reprieve. Either way, I'm grateful for the much needed morale boost.

Yosh

In a Hispanic accent, Josh sounds like "yosh." Apparently, the Mexican stockmen at the Piggly Wiggly know me better than I thought.

Holiday Spirit

Yesterday I was thankful that I actually cursed-out a customer. It has been a dream of mine since high school, and it was finally realized in a nearly justified manner.

I worked as a cashier yesterday, instead of at the Service Desk, because no other cashiers wanted to work on a major US holiday that a grocery store has no business being open on anyway. About half-way through the day, I began scanning one guy's groceries and asked him, as I am required to do of every customer, if he had a Piggly Wiggly Preferred Club Card. He responded, "Not with me."

This is a typical response, to which I usually and did reply, "Would you like me to look it up for you?" (We have a subprogram on our registers that allow us to look up customers' Preferred Card information if they forget to bring it with them.)

He said, "If you want to."

This is an atypical response; "Yes" or "No" (or something similar) is what I usually get. It is never left up to me to decide such things. Why would it be? It's not my food; it's not my money. So, I replied in my usual deadpan snarkiness, "Well, I don't want to, but I will if you want me to." I expected a chuckle or smile and a real answer to my question. I received none of these these.

At the end of his order I asked again, "So, do you want me to look up your card for you?"

"Don't put yourself out," he said with a roll of his eyes.

Okay, I thought, so, we're being pricks about this.

"Look," I said, "I've already asked you twice if you want me to look it up for you. So, do you?" Sometimes it's hard for me to understand why these little things are such a big deal to people.

"And I said, 'If you want to.'"

"And then I said that I didn't want to but I would if you said so," I said with an implied "So what?" at the end.

"Well, that's some great attitude."

"Sorry for being honest." I waited, hoping he would just say "Yes, fine, just look it up already!" and we could finish the transaction. We looked at each other. He wasn't budging. Seconds swam by. I finally called it. "Okay, so that's a 'No.'" I told him his total.

As he swiped his credit card, "You're the worst one here," he said in regards to the renown the store has for hiring cranky help.

By this point I was done. "Okay," I said, knowing this to, in fact, be false, but not wanting to encourage him. He had all the courage he needed.

"I'm going to call your manager tomorrow."

I nodded and raised my eyebrows, as if to say, "Neat, I love threats." If you've got nothing better to do on your holiday weekend than tattle on the mean kid at the checkout counter, then, bud, you've got to find a hobby.

He continued, "That's just fucking laziness is what it is."

My finger hovered over the last button on the register for a second before pressing it. Did he just call me "fucking lazy?" Should I curse him back? The receipt printer hummed under my hand. No, I know you really want to, but just let him have his last word. I tugged the receipt loose from the printer and turned to the angry man. But he said "fuck." Why can't I say "fuck," too? His eyes glared at me, dared me, taunted me. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. "Well..." I said. Part of me sighed and hung it's head at another part that was beaming like an overjoyed child. You've already started; you might as well finish. I handed him his receipt. "... fuck you, too."

He walked away muttering more curses under his breath. Are you happy?

Yes. Yes, I am.

Don't Take the Rice So Literally

This story comes straight from the What The Fuck files: A man came into the store yesterday and approached the service counter. He had the shifting eyes and huffiness of a person that cannot believe they must suffer the great indignity of making a formal complaint. I waited with annoyed anticipation to discover what inexcusable tragedy had no doubt befallen this poor soul. "What can I do for you?"

He set a box of instant rice on the counter and flicked a receipt at me. "I want a refund for this."

I grabbed a pen and began to fill the Returned Merchandise form.

Date: 11/2/08
Item: Minute Rice
Reason for Return:

"And what's the reason you want to return this?" I asked with faux interest.

"It doesn't cook in a minute." I stopped writing and hoped, just hoped, that he was joking. I looked up and saw on his face that he was not joking in the slightest. I sighed the deepest sigh and trudged forth through the mire of mind-numbing ignorance.

The story ends with him walking away in a huff, leaving his half-used box of Minute Rice behind because it was "worthless." I can't help but wonder how many cups of rice he could have cooked in the time it took him to drive to the store, make an utter ass out of himself, refuse to file a complaint with the manufacturer, waste my time, and then drive back home.

He's Followed Me

I was standing around at work, minding my own business, expressly not working, when a regular customer who knows my name (even when I "forget" my name tag) called out to me in distress. I turned my head and raised my eyebrows before I even realized she'd called out for "Josh" to help her.

So, he's here, too; Josh moved here with me. And he apparently hasn't had much luck finding a job in the city, either, and is working at the Piggly Wiggly, too. Or else he just likes to hang out at grocery stores and get to know cranky old ladies who can't open the ladies bathroom door because the handle sticks a little.

Either way, I'm glad to know he's alive and well. I was starting to get worried about him.

Rejected Transplant

During my first couple of months here, I was applying for jobs in the city pretty haphazardly (whatever seemed interesting on Craigslist or CareerBuilder) and getting at least one reply a week. If the reply wasn't to invite me to an interview, it was sometimes to ask me to clarify or expound upon something in my cover letter or resume. At the very least, I was getting responses back to say that the position had already been filled or that they didn't think I was qualified. Then, almost two months ago, the replies stopped.

About the time that I started applying not only to jobs that seemed interesting but also to just about any job I thought I could do for a while and that payed enough for me to get by -- about that time, I stopped hearing back from the people I was sending my resume to. At first, I thought it was just a dry spell, but, nearly two months later, it's seeming more like a drought.

I'm not sure if the problem is with what I'm applying for, who I'm applying to, or something on my resume. But I'm beyond discouraged. I had thought that by now I would have had a job for a month or two, be looking for an apartment, and saving up for one more month or so before I moved out of Happy Time and Stellar's place. But here I am: surviving only by the grace of friends and no closer to finding employment or living quarters in the city than I was at the beginning of the summer.

Moving from Kansas City seems pretty long ago. More and more it feels like it was a mistake. What opportunities did I think were here for me? What did I dislike so much about Kansas City? I don't even remember anymore. And I literally can't go back; I don't have the means or any better of a shot finding a job back there anyway.

The transplant is complete, and I'm sewn inside this new city. I am a mismatched organ, and Chicago is rejecting me wholesale.

Fuckin Donuts

At work the other day, a man came through my line with a paper bag from the bakery. These bags are usually used for doughnuts, so I asked him, "How many doughnuts do you have?"

He replied, "They aren't doughnuts."

Sometimes people put rolls or buns from the bakery in these bags instead, so I inquired what was in the bag.

"They're long johns."

Usually when immense stupidity happens upon me while I'm at work, I do my best to ignore it. My face goes slack, my eyes glaze over, and I feel a little bit of my soul sucked out of me and vanish into the ether. For some reason, though, this time I decided to try to educate this poor, misinformed man. "Long johns are a kind of doughnut," I explained.

"No," he replied, "long johns are long." Then, in case I didn't understand the point he was attempting to make, he added "Long johns."

I thought a second, collected his change from the till, and returned, "The thing that makes them all doughnuts is the dough." I handed him his receipt, "Doughnuts."

He didn't say anything in reply, but, then, he didn't have to. After all, he was free roam the earth, probably gainfully employed and with a happy family waiting for him at home, horribly misinformed about doughnuts and uneducated in the basics of rhetoric, while I was stuck working for the minimum wage allowed by law at a place not-ironically named for a wiggling piglet.

What the Future Holds

The other day the powers that be at Piggly Wiggly asked me if I wanted to start training to be a customer service supervisor, working at the service desk. It speaks to the poor customer service of the Pig if they chose me -- Mr. McBastard, a guy who would more likely curse at you than give you correct change -- to be their liaison with customers. I said yes, in hopes that they'll give me more money.

The moment they asked me, though, my life flashed before my eyes. Not my life leading up this point, mind you, but a possible path my life could head down: I start working at the service desk, eventually give up on finding a job in the city, at age 30 knock up a 17-year-old bagger, move into her parents' basement, have a couple more kids that suspiciously look like the black guy that works in the deli, and drink myself to sleep every night on a broken La-Z-Boy watching monster truck rallies on pay-per-view.

I don't even like monster truck rallies.

Needless to say, I've become a little daunted with trying to find a job in the city. And the thing that worries me is that I've always been better at complacency and laziness than patience and diligence. That's why this possible future, despite how ridiculous it seems, rings somewhat true. I imagine, though, that Stellar and Happy Time won't let me give up on looking for a job, mostly because I'm sure they'll want me to stop living in their house way before I'm 30.

Too Quiet

I haven't posted anything here in a while, because, well, there's not much to tell. I'm still looking for a job in Chicago (though, last week I did start working at a nearby Piggly Wiggly to pay the bills), my motorcycle's still not fixed, and I'm still living with Happy Time Harry and Stellar.

All in all, not much has happened, but you know me: I'm always up for not doing much of anything. It has been kind of nice aimlessly drifting through the past month or so, carefree. The only down side is that it's been fairly debt-inducing. But that's nothing new for me.

I suppose there are other things about which I could be writing in the meantime. So, I guess I'll try to resume my responsibility of inane blogging with yarns and misadventures. Stay tuned.

Conversations with Josh

A guy at work called me Josh. He knows my name. I was one of the first people he met at the company. I trained him for two days. I sit no more than fifteen feet away from him. He smiles and greets me by my name, my real name, when I pass him in the halls.

He came to my desk the other day to ask me if something was possible for us to do. I told him it was not, and he returned to his cube. When he got back, I overheard him explain into the phone to someone else, "No, I talked to Josh; he said it can't be done."

The next time he talks to Josh, he needs to tell that guy to quit following me!