Work

Living in a cubicle city is interesting. (It’s also interesting to note that I typed “living” and not “working”… perhaps it’s time for me to think about a change of pace?) When the only things separating you from your co-workers are five foot eight inch walls and a frosted-plastic sliding “shower door” (which, if shut, apparently indicates that you aren’t being a team player), the whole concept of “privacy” is really just a thin social construct that only works if everyone agrees that it’s important and abides by the rules. You can’t help but listen when someone sitting three feet away from you is on the phone with their doctor, but Cubicle Law dictates that you pretend that you don’t. It follows then that you don’t ask pointed questions about private conversations you’ve overheard. Since there’s not really a way to have a closed-door meeting in a six by eight space taken up mostly by desk, it also follows that you don’t barge in to someone’s space when they’re talking to somebody else and overrun their conversation. I haven’t yet had an office with a door in my professional life, but hopefully some day I’ll be able to make a doctor’s appointment without going outside the building and using my cell phone. I also hope that the people I work with throughout my life will always understand that not only is it Cubicle Law, it’s also politeness and common sense NOT to enter my office and re-organize my files and my personal items, throwing away what they deem unnecessary, when I’m out sick. Not that any of this has happened to me. I’m just saying.

On Brett’s blog this week, he wrote about performance review time at work, and it cracked me up so much that I had to share it with some of my coworkers, all of whom feel his pain. Like Santa, the review fairy has ways to know whether you’ve been naughty or nice. One of the ways is called “The Self Review”. It sounds important but really all it is is a way to take your balls and put them in a vice and give you the opportunity to tighten the screws. See, I told you she was magnanimous. Three things can happen with self-reviews and like throwing a pass in the NFL, two of them are bad. Those two things are you’re honest and you tell your overlords about all the internet you surf at work which then results in you getting a bad review or you totally oversell yourself and the overlords figure that you’re a self-promoting prick with an agenda. In the end, it shouldn’t be my damn job to review myself. They are bloody well paying my boss to know what I do every day (trust me, he drops by enough that he should). The Self Review is a ridiculous piece of HR double-speak so that the Man can find new ways to screw you…. (click here to read the rest, it’s worth it) And I responded: We have to do something similar, except we rate ourselves on ten dimensions (called The Expectations) – things like “Manages Conflict Effectively”, “Handles Problem-Solving Wisely,” and “Builds Trust,” and write paragraphs on how we’ve performed up to scratch. We are required to utilize ridiculous patronizing language (called The Rating Levels) to do it too. For instance, instead of Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, we have to say Excelling, Learning, Doing, Absent. […]

This evening while walking with Brittney in my neighborhood, we found a wallet in the street. Lots of credit cards, $7 cash, no drivers license, but after a bit of digging we located a crumpled carbon copy of a ticket that 19-year-old “Tyler” had received for minor in possession of alcohol. The ticket had his address on it (a few houses down), and probably explains why there was no drivers’ license in the wallet. We returned it to a stoned and/or drunk but grateful Tyler, who only opened the door a sliver when we knocked, but that sliver was enough to let out the overpowering odor of stale beer and cigarettes. It was a little disappointing in that we thought that perhaps Tyler’s parents might answer the door and ask how we knew to which house the wallet belonged seeing as how there was no drivers’ license therein, at which point we’d gleefully show them the minor in possession citation and Tyler might be grounded until he was 21. Oh well. Last night I woke up rather unpleasantly at 2 a.m. to the light of a police helicopter shining in my bedroom window. The helicopter circled my neighborhood, and specifically my street, for what must have been 30 minutes, shining that zillion-watt beam every which way, on roofs, backyards, side yards. As soon as the helicopter left, we heard voices outside and saw a police car and officers walking down our street with flashlights, looking in courtyards. It took me another hour to get back to sleep. I don’t really mind the disturbance; I’m glad they’re searching so thoroughly for their suspect. It disturbs me, though, to think that there might be a criminal of the caliber that would warrant a helicopter search roaming through my street in the dead […]