Why do I go to work every day?

For many reasons my current work situation is far from ideal.
It's a good old conundrum that I may try to explain another day.

Often on my way home I'll think to myself "this is it, it's over. I'll go in tomorrow and resign". I feel a sense of relief just thinking it.

But I don't. I go back and do it again, and again.

Why do I go to work every day?

Of course the easy answer is for the money, but that's just part of it.
I've done the "right" thing and put some hay away while the sun has been shining. With my leave entitlements, some investments, and lower costs I should be able to live for about a year without a job. It wouldn't be easy but I'm sure I'd find an income of some sort to make it last.

I could "start again" in another industry, or try my luck at another company. It would probably work out OK, maybe even great.

It's true that I don't like giving in and I'm always looking at getting over the next hill.. and the next hill.. then the light at the end of the tunnel approaches.. and so on. I can easily turn that one around and realise that I have effectively given up on other important aspects of my life.

The real reason is that I'm afraid that if I stop, I won't start again.
Who knows if it's true.
I'm too scared to find out.

A policy of distraction

We had an "IT Upgrade" at work recently that set everyone’s PC and Mobile Phone according to their "IT Policies". They changed my email to archive on a server with a clunky interface instead of "normal" .pst files. I'm getting used to it now and assume it's so I can't take my .pst files with me if I leave. Maybe it's a more efficient or cheaper way to do it too. They also changed my mobile to use a pin instead of a pattern to unlock it. I can't change it back either. My PC desktop is locked and can't be changed too. Minor annoyances.



A few things that they did that I think are just plain silly.

• Email notification on our mobile phones which is a "ring ring" like a bike bell whenever a mail arrives.

• Email popup window on our PC's and a tone when an email comes in (some call it toast).

• Keypress tones when you're sending a text, entering your pincode, or whenever a button is pressed.

All day I hear "ring ring", "dinnnnng", when mails come in, and blip blip blop when people text or use their phones.

Fortunately those setting were not locked and so I stopped all mine and sent an email around letting other people know how to do it.
Yes, it was a little bit amusing hearing the whole office going "ring ring" dinnng dinnng as my mail went to everyone.
Most people turned it all off but some haven't and it's very distracting.

Do people really hear the "ring ring" and check their phone every time? Almost everyone at work complains about too many emails and then they jump on board and make it worse.
On the "toast", I wonder how people avoid being distracted when they're working on something important, you'd think, and a little box pops up with a "blip" saying "oooh goodie, you've got another email" a few times every minute.
Sometimes I think it's a battle of who can "reply all" the quickest to a mail with potential glory points for being the quickest. Then another "reply all" from someone else, followed by a few more. Some of them have replied at the same time and said the same thing, or something different, which the first person feels the need to "reply all" again and explain it. What they're really doing is wasting everyones time, including theirs and creating the problem they complain about - too many emails.
It's not uncommon to have 10 emails with the same title and three or so different threads. Crazy.
I smile a bit when someone is sharing their screen on a webex or doing a presentation and their "toast" comes up. The little box has the sender, title, and the first few words. How risky is that? As well as yet another distraction. I smile even more when everyone pauses and reads it before it fades away.
And when there aren't enough ways to distract me already.. lets introduce instant messaging on my PC. "Bing" Hey mate you didn't respond to my email.
.."you're a distracting dickhead"  send... Oh, I hope they're not doing a presentation..









A quick Update on my "unfriending"
Now I think they closed their account and didn't "superblock" me. A mutual friend messaged me back to say they're going well which was good. I shouldn't have thought the worst, but I did. Now I'm very relieved about that. They probably just needed a break from Facebook, which I understand. Facebook can easily dominate your life. I know I check mine too often, and even at work which I tell myself I won't; and didn't for a long time.

Unfriended

During the past few weeks I've been "unfriended" on Facebook by a couple of people. I've been unfriended before and while I was a bit confused why, I could sort of work it out. None of them were people who I had really formed any significant sort of a a bond with so it didn't worry me much at all. Recently I noticed a lack of posts from a bloke and when I went to check, he had unfreiended me. It was a bit of a shock and I was dissapointed, I'd never met him but he was a champion cyclist from about 10 years ago, maybe more. We had shared some comments back and fourth about doing the cog rides. He said he would come up and do one oneday. Maybe he just had a "cull" and I didn't meet the grade. It seems fashionable to cull your friends list and then put a post up saying if you see this you weren't culled.
Another one was a friend from BMX racing. She was at the race with her family when I had a bad accident a few years ago. I'd say we had a good friendly connection and she helped me through some bad times with a handful of very thoughtful comments. She moved interstate with her family and we continued to comment on each others posts. It seemed to me like she was having a rough time with herself. Most "things" seemed to be going well for her on the outside but I think she was battling something within. Her last message to me was a bit worrying. Something about struggling from day to day. Her English was broken and it didn't make a lot of sense. As if she typed it in a hurry, or was not in a normal frame of mind. I think I worked it out though. Of course now I can't see it on Facebook. Similar to the other bloke, I noticed a lack of posts and went to check. Yep, unfriended.. but different. When I searched for her it said no connection, or something like that. It was like Facebook knew she was there but could not connect. Almost as if the account had been cancelled but her name was still in a search index or something. Now her name does not even come up. I sent a message to a mutual friend and they have not got back to me. I don't want to nag but I'd love to hear "oh she's OK just having a break". I really hope she is just having a break from Facebook. Or maybe I have said something that upset her and she blocked me completely; if you can even do that. I don't know. It would suck in a way if she has blocked me but it would be better than what I worry might have happened and fear the worst.
It strengthens my view that a lot of the best people in the world have had the hardest lives and live with the worst demons inside. And the sad part is that if they didn't, they would not be the best people...

Innefective behaviour. Examples from from real life.

I think I've mentioned before a game that I play with myself at work. Rather than get frustrated by people who do dumb things, I watch what they do, and have a silent chuckle to myself.

A couple of examples from this week:

During a meeting a client asked a colleague of mine a question. My colleague answered in detail. It wasn't a yes / no question, more of an explanation. The response was "no !" with big smile and an explanation of a different point of view on the issue, with a cheesy grin.
Responding to someone with "No" is more often than not going to put them into an argumentative or angry frame of mind. Having a smartarse grin while you say "No" will almost guarantee the latter of the two. It's just plain ineffective and will not help improve anything.

From where I sit I can see Sally’s desk and hear a word or two depending on the background noise. While I was probably having a moment of "reflection", or more likely day dreaming, I noticed Mal talking to Sally at her desk. Mal was learning over her as she sat and leaned backwards as if she was being attacked by a lion. He had a very assertive face, even angry and threatening. I couldn't hear what he was saying but the body language said it all. Even I felt intimidated from where I was. That's the way some people operate. All role power "you'll do as I say" type people. It looked like an interrogation with Sally making a few comments while Mal stood glaring at her. As it looked like coming to an end, in a moment of silence I heard him say "so do me a favour and ..." I thought to myself "dude, you can't use role power with such assertion and stand-over type body language, and then demand a favour". Even demanding a favour is strange rather then asking for one. "You will do me a favour". Maybe he was offering her a deal. You do me a favour, and I'll be a bit nicer to return the favour. That's how favours work, right?

Missed opportunities. My own doing.

I was transitioned to my current employer under the claim of a "transfer of business". There were opportunities to work at a higher level, get promoted, whatever you want to call it.

I sucked when I got there because I was bogged down in the details, as usual, trying to finish off the work that came across with the transition. It wasn't so bad because it was a manageable volume of work already under-way. With the transfer of business there was an arrangement to pay my new company as day rate" to manage the existing work to allow a "seamless transfer of business".

It got worse when my original company started issuing more work to their old vendors. It made my job to finish it off much more complicated. Sort of like trying to put out a fire while someone is spraying petrol on it. If I had known they were going to keep issuing work to their old vendors I would have done things differently when I started. Instead I was busy finishing it off and preparing for any new work to be awarded to my new employer, as you'd think would be the case under a "transfer of business" arrangement.

Now several people have been employed in National roles and coming to me to pick my brain for information. At some stages harassing and nagging me with a continual stream of emails, phone calls and meeting requests. I didn't mind so much until they came back with my info a week or so later and use it to tell me what I need to do.. Oh, no shit genius, who told you that?

I've been pulling back on the amount of time I spend "helping" these people now and focussing on my job. Sorry, I'm the dickhead still there at 8:30pm trying to do my day job after they have taken up most of my day with their "help cover up my incompetence" phone conferences.

This week I got a few requests / instructions from "the clients" National PMO to task my current National PMO and to help them do it.. Right, so the clients people know the my PMO don't know what they're doing so they're directing me to instruct them.. You might need to read this a few times to understand. It's difficult for me to explain.

My lesson is to never get bogged down in the details again (unless I change jobs and it's my job to do it). Establish what the objective is, what the tasks are, who, when, how, how much etc - and then manage others to do them. Always.. know what they do without necessarily knowing the details and manage the people. That's my job. And when I get out of the weeds, I think I do it well.

The trouble starts when things don't go well I get pushed into the weeds. I let them do it because I like to get things done. People know I'll do it and save their arse. And in the process I sink in their shit, my career and health suffers, while they tick a few more boxes on their performance review and move up.

It's my own doing and it's up to me to stop letting it happen.

The Game

Over the years I've had periods in my working life where it's been difficult to get out of bed and go to work in the morning. I've generally done it because to me not doing it is the start of giving in.
Sometimes the difficult period is caused by the work itself, but more often it's caused by a particular manager.
A few years ago a mate of mine told me that when he has a difficult manager he makes a game out of the situation. He had a boss once who used to have an explosive temper. When he was angry he would be very verbally abusive and rant on about how the subject of the rant didn't care, was incompetent, doesn't know what's going on, isn't trying, hasn't checked the basics, hasn't followed up, and more. He would start off speaking a bit louder and then work himself in to a full on yelling rage. Either in person during a meeting, or on a phone conference. My mate worked at the same company in a different team. I had a few encounters with the yeller and was the subject of a couple of his outbursts. My mate told me afterwards about the game technique. He and some of his colleagues made it a game to see what would set the Yelling Man off. They deliberately wound him up and waited for him to crack.
The Yelling Man was a well known serial offender that even HR would not do anything about. They would deal with me if I was half as abusive just once. I guess that's because the General Manager effectively pays the HR staff and if not has a significant influence in their careers. Whereas they wouldn't know me from the next pleb and would jump at an opportunity to make an example out of me - good for their next performance review. So I don't feel sorry for him at all. I guess it's a bit of a risk involving other people in the game. It wouldn't be well received if someone spilled the beans.
Out of this I learned a new "coping" technique; to make a game of something negative. Often I try to guess what part of something a pedantic manager won't like. The font, colours, too "verbose", not enough detail, put it in a table, or a chart, or "I'll look at it later". When I get the feedback, I hi-5 myself and have little internal smile and walk away.
A while ago I inherited a new boss after the old one moved onto new things. He was difficult in different ways to the yeller. My game was to observe how he reacts with me and other people. His words, body language, and actions. It takes the frustration away from my job and I have re-enforced a lot of behaviours to avoid. I'm lucky enough to sit quite close to him. When I turn around I'm looking at his back so I see people as they walk up to and away from his desk. Most of them approached him as if they were creeping up on a sleeping lion. Either with fear in their eyes, or full of false bravado to slaughter the beast with their bare hands before they get mauled to death. They almost always walked away defeated. Nothing they had done, or could say, was good enough; they were useless.
I've worked for this person before and he was a large part of the reason why I changed roles at the time. For the past few years he was a peer of mine, and while he still had a few signs of old school management style, and a lot of ineffective personal skills, I thought he had improved. It turned out that our mutual manager had been keeping him under control. When he was off his lead he went back to his old ways but about ten times more extreme. After the first few weeks, his manager came to me and asked for feedback on him. I told him that he had been given plenty of feedback in the facial expressions, body language, the way people walked way looking defeated, and that he probably couldn't work out why nothing went the way he wanted it to. You don't need feedback from me. If he couldn't pick up on the feedback that I saw him get there is nothing that I can say that will make a difference. It was a very frustrating few months before it came to an end with another change in my career. The game of observation and inner laughter at his bumbling relationship destroying and completely ineffective management made my days bearable.

People and objectives

I took far too long to learn that most managers simply don't care about anything that's not on their development review objectives, or is of interest to their manager.

I used to wonder why we'd spend tens of thousands more dollars to get work done sooner that could have been done for a fraction of the cost next week, or next month. As well as this, most managers don't care about preventing risks from becoming issues unless they have senior management attention.

It dawned on me during a performance review discussion when I was trying to explain how much money I had saved doing something a different way, how it prevented a future issue (risk mitigation), and increased the delivery rate.
The project costs had already blown out due to a massive scope versus cost and time misalignment in the planning phase, or the lack of an effective planning phase. This meant saving money was not important to him because everyone knew it was going to be well over budget by a lot more than the amount that I had saved. It was the same with the time, or delivery rate. It was well known that we could not deliver the project at the rate that was originally expected. So like my cost savings, my relatively small productivity gain was of no interest. I feel kind of silly for not realising it a long time ago. For a long time I've been working on the basis that it's always good to save money and time providing quality and scope is maintained and there are no other undesirable consequences. I think in a well disciplined organisation the two would align and it would work well for me. My focus on costs and time would align with my managers objectives and what they would get measured on so they would appreciate and recognise my contribution to their hopefully favourable review. That company was not at all disciplined. I could rattle off countless examples of State differences due to undisciplined managers and lack of leadership, ad-hoc unmanaged changes including constant changes to the metrics, no effective process documentation, conflicting and unachievable directives, and an "old boys club" in the background guarded by a paddock full of sacred cows.

Need

Is "I need" the worst way to ask someone to do something?

I thought so.. as in "I need you to fill in this template". Just saying "fill in this template" may look worse at first but I don't think it is.

Now I think just "need" is worse. Yep, this is what really happened to me one day. An email from my manager, "Need this filled in by COB today", with a spreadsheet attached.
Not even "need you to fill this in by COB today". Let alone a please thrown in to at least make it look like a polite request.
On top of that, the template was far from self explanatory and there was no attempt to provide the context or ultimate objective of the exercise.

Not surprisingly, what he received wasn't what he wanted, or needed.
I prefer to use "would you please...?" followed by the context or as I've heard it called "commanders intent". That way there is a good chance that anything not clear in the instruction will be cleared up when they read the objective. It also helps them feel part of the bigger picture and gives them an opportunity to add their thoughts. Funny thing is that when he sent the email I was sitting about 10 feet from him in talking distance. When I read it about 10 minutes later, he was gone so I couldn't ask for some more details. Not just gone to a meeting or something, packed up and gone from the office.
Now if I was a smartarse, I could have just ignored it. He wasn't asking me to do anything, just making a statement on something that he needed. I could have replied, "OK, good luck". But I'm not always a smartarse, so I polished my crystal ball and did what I thought was required.
I can't help thinking the next step didn't work out for him and wondering if he threw me under the bus. As in: Oh, I'm sorry I didn't get that done because I was let down by Harry. Was that his plan all along? Not enough time to explain it to me, or he didn't know what had to be done, so he set himself up with a nice little excuse. Obviously I won't know but I can learn from the experience and make myself a better person out of it.

There are two reasons I don't like "need" at work. A need is something you almost can't live without, or at least something very important. As in "I need food", or "I need help with my homework".  It's also something that requires the other person to care about enough to want to help. In a work situation, if a respected collegue was in a position where he could lose his job and needed help, I'd probably ask how I could help and do the best I could to help them. On the other hand, some jerk who needs help to protect his false image is going to get the bare minimum that their role power deserves.

Getting Sacked

My first real full time job was from half way through 1985 to I think 1989 when I was sacked. I was given a job to do by a salesman. The information was not very clear so I asked a question about it. It was a fairly typical question that comes up from time to time about the specific size of the product. He told me to stop being smart and to do my fucken job. It was a bit out of character for him because I usually got along with him fairly well. He wasn't the nicest person, but he usually wanted to get things done properly. I can't remember exactly what I said but it was something along the lines of "well if it doesn't matter I'll just average it out and it will be OK". I probably said it with a shitty tone in my voice. I was annoyed. I realise now that I was, and probably still am, a type C person who likes clear instructions and will then do a good job - possibly too good if it takes too long. Fuming a bit, I went and did the job, it wasn't difficult and probably took me half an hour, maybe an hour if I had some distractions. In the back of my mind I was worried it wasn't exactly what the customer wanted but it would have to do. I went home and came in to work the next day and had pretty much forgotten all about it. I really didn't think it was that much of a big deal and I thought I was doing the right thing asking. And I wasn't asking to be smart but I appreciate now that it may have looked like it to someone else. My boss, the production manager met me as I was walking up the stairs and told me I was sacked for misconduct yesterday and to get my things and leave. He walked me to my desk, I got my things took them to my car, and left. As I drove off the song on the radio was "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles. I was shattered emotionally and felt angry, sad, ripped off, confused. I enquired about unfair dismissal with the department of labour and industry but they pretty much said that misconduct is an acceptable reason to sack someone. I'd need to argue it wasn't misconduct if I was to challenge it. And he made it sound like misconduct was doing anything that your employer didn't like. When I look back, he was a public servant and there would not likely be any repercussions for him if he talked me out of pursuing it, whereas he would have had to do some work if I pursued it.
Obviously I've thought about it a lot since then.
The salesman was a dominant person in the company and controlled people by role power and fear of being sacked. He was a bully. I was confident in my job because I did a good job. I added a lot of value to the company in many ways. I was right to ask. The problem was that it put his credibility and authority at risk in front of other people. His credibility was being questioned. Why didn't he know the details of the order that were required in order for it to be completed? And his authority; how dare someone question him and then comment that his response was not helpful.
There was a good lesson in that. Often just being right isn't enough. You also need to deal with it in the right way, and I didn't. It sucks that there are people like him around, and it's the way it is. Dominant bully type people are more likely to be in positions that control people; that's what they like and they're often seen as "the ones who get the job done". They have to protect their "image" and keep people in line. Otherwise they will lose control. Role power and bullying is all they have.
The sun came up the next morning. Life went on. Almost straight away I got another job via a mate of mine.  In a strange twist of fate I ended up working for them again for a brief period later on but that's part of another story.

PE at High School

Mr Fergus was a PE teacher. He was a classic sports lunkhead who assumed everyone wanted to be the worlds greatest footy or cricket player. Nothing was ever good enough for half of the class. There were a few athletic stars who could do no wrong, a few who "had potential", and the rest were too slow, too weak, went the wrong way, couldn't catch, couldn't hit, couldn't throw.
I hated PE.
One time I was daydreaming when Fergus was babbling on about the rules of lacrosse. At some stage in his babble he said which half of the class was to get red sticks and which were to get yellow ones. Everyone got up and started getting sticks so I went and picked up a red one. Apparently he said people on my side of an imaginary line were to get yellow ones and when I grabbed a red one he asked if I was listening. That's what teachers like him did.
I said "no" without trying to be smart. It was pretty obvious I wasn't listening and would have been hard to bullshit my way out of it. And he was probably looking right at me when he said it because he knew I wasn't listening.
The trouble was when he asked why I wasn't listening. Again I was caught for a bullshit answer so honesty seemed like a good move. "I never listen to what you say" was probably a bit too honest. Still, it was a good lesson in facial expressions of a teacher who clearly had no response other than "go and stand over there" as he pointed to the library.
I remember hoping that my punishment would be to stand there for the next 20 minutes while they played with their sticky basket things as he yelled at half of them for doing everything wrong.
Just my luck the vice principal walked past and asked why I was there. Mr Fergus told me to stand here because I wasn't listening to him. He just tilted his head up a bit, did a bit of a hummmpf, and walked off. He was Mr Leonard and wasn't a bad bloke. In fact when I look back, he was a good bloke. One of a few good teachers.
The game stopped and the class were sent to the change rooms. I joined into the crowd as they ran back, got changed, and that was the last of that episode of the Harry versus Fergus saga.
Looking back there was an understood mutual disrespect for each other. We both went along with the motions and didn't push each other too far. There were a few teachers like that.
In 1983 Fergus found out that I had won the 16 class Vic BMX title and mentioned it to me. He asked why I wasn't interested in PE when I obviously had some ability. I said it was boring. We get an hour, 10 minutes each side to get changed and to and from the change rooms, 10 minutes of warm up, 10 minutes lecture about the rules of some game that most people don't care about, and 20 minutes to play a game full of interruptions while you criticise people for doing something wrong. Then he gave me the head tilt and hummmpf. I've seen that head tilt hummmpf many other times since. It pretty much means "thanks, I'll think about it". If the eye roll is exaggerated, it means "typical", or "that's bullshit but I can't be bothered discussing it any more".

Introduction

I feel a bit lame creating a blog using a pseudonym.
Why have I done it this way?

I'll write about more things this way. I don't generally talk or write openly about my thoughts and experiences.

Some of what I think, and so will write about, is related to work. It's not professional to make disparaging comments about my employers and in some cases doing so could get me into serious trouble.

In the past some of my thoughts have resulted in responses that I found very frustrating. I enjoy healthy and rational debate and have often changed my view having listened to other people. A lot of people are very fixed in their views and become very nasty and attack anyone who they think has a different view. And to them, anyone who isn't in total agreement, is in complete disagreement. It's a situation that I avoid by generally keeping my thoughts to myself.

I have no idea how I'm going to promote an anonymous blog. It's not like I can post it on Facebook and say, hey look, I found this random blog. Or maybe I can.

If you read it, please add comments. Preferably something positive or that rationally adds to a topic or is part of a sensible debate.