Grumpy Coworker

Month: March 2011

  • Bookmarks… Rules as a reaction to failure

    Great thoughts on how bureaucracy begins:

    However, lets not forget the other side of the equation:

    • Hyperactive attorneys [hot liquid warnings on coffee cups]
    • Hyperactive congress [regulations on how long business records, email, etc. have to be held]
    • Overreaction to 1 in a million accidents, i.e., not respecting the statistical risk of getting killed by a falling satellite vs. the risk of being hit by a car while on your motorcycle.

    However, in general, humans just prefer to apply very general solutions to very specific problems.

     

  • Instant Messenger is the Devil

    I have my list of things to do. I’m right in the middle of wrapping one thing up, when *ping*.  A blinking notification on the task bar of my Windows machine, and a pop-up preview of a “yt?” message.

    Gah.  I’d like to ignore the message, but then, that just means that Outlook will consider this a missed conversation and send it to me in an email. Either way, I’m marked away from my desk–unthinkable that that should happen at any point between 11am and 1pm.  Apparently, for impromptu instant messages, this is the time range in which senders figure they’re most likely to get a response, much like telemarketers at dinner time.

    Back to reality…  I decide to respond, because it’s rude to not respond to a flashing notification and a “ding” noise.

    The sender’s response is a simple question, which requires me to temporarily abandon the half-completed email that I was composing, and search my inbox for a message that answers the question.  This takes 15 minutes, because I eventually have to resort to sorting by sender, by conversation, by date, by size to find what should have been fairly easy to conduct a simple search on.  Question answered, and I forward the email that describes the answer in great detail.

    I then take 5 minutes to regroup, and begin to focus on my next task.  20 minutes into that task, another impromptu instant message with similar results.

    Fast forward to the end of the day:  I have 3 half-completed documents and 5 draft emails composed, and now, I can’t shut down my computer without dealing with them.

    I guess I could’ve went the day with “do not disturb” on, but then people not nearby in the office would have assumed that I was out of the office and not working, which is fine until people start assuming that I’m never in the office.

    Ok, maybe instant messenger isn’t the devil, but a stalker or overbearing significant other.

     

  • Have You Been Soaking in Your Cologne?

    Cologne’s pretty expensive by volume.  It’s not exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect someone to fill his bathtub with. However, when a stiff breeze carries the smell of your cologne across the parking lot, I have no choice but to imagine that this is what you do.

    Part of me wonders how many showers it takes to clean the scent off, much like what happens with the smoke smell after a night at a smoky bar.

    The workplace, in general, has long been smoke-free. Do we have to start lobbying Congress or our local legislatures for the same protection from pervasive perfumed smells as we have from tobacco smoke?

    Maybe I should figure out what cologne is choking off my air supply and find out who makes it. Then, at least, I can  wait until I notice that you’ve stopped wearing this particular scent, and then bet against the company. Of course, there would probably be a good case for insider trading, at the levels at which you purchase their product.