Grumpy Coworker

Category: Productivity

  • No, I will not join your downline.

    I’m not even sure these nutritional “supplements” are non-lethal, much less effective.  How do I know that these vitamins, or whatever they are, aren’t going to show up in a drug test later?

    I also have to ask:  What kind of compensation structure is involved that makes this multi-level marketing network marketing of nutritional supplements worth the time and energy you spend on it?

    Am I the only coworker you’ve tried to recruit for this?  If so, I must apologize for wearing my “sucker” outfit today.  All my other clothes were dirty, and I’m behind on my laundry.

    On the other hand, if I’m not the only coworker you’ve tried to recruit for this “opportunity”, how much work time are you spending recruiting?  Have you tried spending the same amount of time reading a book that might improve your performance?  Even if you get nothing out of the book, you’ll no longer be known as the “guy who tries to recruit people for every money making opportunity he finds.”  You might accidentally make more money from the lack of negative image drag.

    Honestly, if you were intentionally hired to do the job that you’re paid for, chances are fairly good that you’ll get a higher return on your invested time there than if you spend it trying to sell a product that you virtually nothing about.

  • A 15 minute meeting is more disruptive than a 3 hour one.

    A possible fictionalization of the history of meetings:

    A long time ago, possibly before the invention of electronic calendars, meetings were scheduled in one-hour blocks.

    Then, someone noticed that the electronic calendar could schedule meetings for 30 minutes, and so, half-hour meetings were born.

    Finally, someone really, really, smart realized that you could schedule meetings that went from 1:03 pm to 1:34 pm…

    Fortunately, no one else’s brain worked that way, so a happy medium of 15 minute increments for meetings was agreed upon.

    The Lilliputian Meeting Tyranny

    While the Brobdingnagian 3 and 4 hour meeting still strikes far more fear in the heart of productivity, the truth is that the ominous giants rarely have openings in the schedule walls that they can fit through.  Aside from brute force ramming into everyone’s schedules, the giants stay isolated in the wilderness.

    The real danger lies with the 15 minute meetings.  These Lilliputian meetings are not a threat because 160 15-minutes status meetings can squeeze into an open 40 hour schedule.  *shudder* They are a threat because  20 15-minute status meetings can fit into your lunch hour in a week, with none of them causing enough of a threat to be individually defended against.  Even worse, 40 more 15-minute meetings can be scheduled in the small bits of daylight in your schedule.

    Of course, the 15-minute meeting is too small to actually say “no” to.  It’s like making someone return their lunch because they’re 2 cents short of $2.89: What kind of person are you to make someone do that?  Are you that greedy with your time that you can’t spare 15 minutes?

    So, what do we accomplish in these meetings?

    The 15-Minute Meeting Agenda

    • 5 minutes travel time/dial-in time/waiting for people to realize their clock is out-of-sync
    • 5 minutes of greetings
    • 2 minutes of status
    • 3 minutes of disconnect beeps or leaving early for a restroom break

    Inspired yet?

  • ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat.

    I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Results Only Work Environments [ROWE], particularly from the book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Amazon link).

    I was curious about finding a naysayer and found Why I Don’t Like Rowe | Renegade HR.  The article points out ethics, some worker’s need for structure, and communication/morale/culture challenges of working remotely.

    I thought of an even bigger challenges–loosely related to structure:

    1. Often, there isn’t much agreement on what results are.  Driven employees will hit home runs that management won’t even understand.
    2. It’s so much more convenient to clock watch employees 8 to 5.
    3. Those same clock watchers would rather judge productivity by seeing that more than 40 hours in a week are logged by everyone than try to figure out if more than 1 hour per week of actual work was done.
    4. How the heck can you have a 3 hour, 120 person meeting if not everyone is working 8 to 5?

  • Meeting double-tax

    Everyone’s favorite meeting is the meeting to prepare for a meeting. It’s like a double tax on your already overtaxed time.

    When our work is behind schedule, and someone calls a meeting to discuss creative ways to get back on track, why does our team need a meeting to prepare for that meeting?  Because it’s not about creative solutions, that’s why.  It’s about agreeing on who we can blame for sucking worse than we do.

    And when the project is done and the project manager schedules a “Lessons Learned” meeting, why does our team need a meeting to prepare for that?  You guessed it … it’s not about the lessons learned.  It’s about being prepared to deflect all criticism and prove that everyone else on the project sucked worse than we did. Thanks, but I’d rather have my time back, so I can do more and suck less!

    Here’s the point:  meetings to prepare for meetings always contribute to the suckiness of the workplace. Without them, people would have more time to do real work, and could actually have real discussions in the real meetings.  So please, stop double taxing my time.
    Hmmm… reminds me of the Types of Meetings.

  • Hot Potato Status Meeting Game

    [Amazon affiliate link]

    Originally posted at YouMightBe.com.

    Object of the game: Don’t be caught giving your status update when the potato goes off.

    Requires: Hot potato timer or random timer smartphone app.  If you know of a link to a good one, please leave it in the comments.

    Rules of the game:

    1. A different person starts the status meeting every week.
    2. The random “Hot Potato” timer starts when the first person begins his or her update.
    3. When an update is complete, the person picks a random person to hand/toss the “hot potato” to.
    4. Repeat giving updates and handing off the potato until updates are complete or the hot potato goes off.
    5. If the potato goes off during your update, you must buy coffee and donuts/bagels/etc. for the entire team the next morning.
    6. If the entire meeting goes off without the potato going off, the manager buys the food.
    7. Interrupting an update means that you get to hold the potato next, or if you’ve gone already, until the person giving the update is finished talking.