Tag: work

“How can you be tired?”

Every long-term relationship I’ve had has been with someone who does some version of construction for a living. When they come home, cut up and covered in grime, after a long day of putting shingles on roofs or re-plumbing the crawl space under a house or rewiring a hot attic, it’s obvious they’re exhausted. Tradesmen earn their pay, no doubt about it.

In contrast, I have, for the most part, had jobs that don’t require nearly the same amount of sweat. Usually I’m out of the wind and weather, sitting in an office chair. Yes, I do get my hands dirty now and then, but it’s not a day in, day out, body-destroying routine.

The frustrating thing about this dynamic is that when I come home tired, as a general rule I’m not taken seriously at all. “How can you be tired?” man-of-the-moment will say. “You don’t do anything!”

Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, it’s hard to explain how brain work, the stress of deadlines, and just being “on” all day, especially when you’re an introvert like me, can suck the life out of you. Granted, I’m not toting that barge or lifting that bale as a general rule, but what I do is still work.

Maybe you can’t relate to this, but you might want to at least consider how condescending you sound if you totally discount someone’s career. Every job has its dirty aspects. They just might not be visible to the naked eye.

Dirty Jobs
God, I miss this show!

Working on Holidays

I love that more and more people are refusing to shop on the holidays in order to pressure companies to not force their staff to spend those days at work. And I love it when I hear of a company that chooses to do the right thing and close during those periods. I will always support organizations that support their employees.

But while you are enjoying your turkey today, please don’t forget that it’s not just the cashiers of this world who are forced to work on the holidays. As you read this, I’m most likely working all by myself on this, my favorite holiday, and feeling kind of lonely because of it. I’ll also be working on Christmas and New Year’s Day, just as I worked on Memorial Day and the 4th of July.

As a bridgetender, it kind of goes with the territory. Heaven forefend that the shipping lanes are not navigable for any reason. And I’m not alone. The ambulance drivers, nurses, policemen, cab drivers, 911 operators, security guards and airport personnel of this world are right here with me, keeping the gears of society turning.

So when you give thanks today, thank those of us who can’t sit at the table with you. And maybe bring us a plate. A little of everything, but hold the cranberries, please. I hate cranberries.

how-the-grinch-stole-christmas-max

My Morning

Last night I got off work at 11pm. I went straight home, and managed to squeeze in 5 hours of sleep before getting up at 5:45am in order to go back to work at 7am. Oh, but there’s more.

I get out to my car, and all the windows are frosted over. It’s 32 degrees out. So I scrape them. But the INSIDE of the windows are frosted as well. So I scrape those, too. Did I mention I have no heat or defrost in my car?

So I drive down the road, freezing my patooties off, peering through a porthole-sized patch of window that is constantly fogging over, wiping it down every 30 seconds and hoping that no one steps out in front of my car. By the way, it’s still pitch black out. The sun doesn’t rise here until 7:20am at this time of year.

I get to work and thaw out for a brief shining moment, and then head back out into the raw, foggy blackness to meet one of those arbitrary deadlines that I spoke of the other day. The sidewalks and bike lanes on the bridge need to be swept. It’s been raining for weeks, so I spend an hour hauling about 30 pounds of wet leaves, mud, and soggy cigarette butts off the bridge. The sweat is freezing against my throbbing back. (And can someone please explain to me why smokers think it’s okay to just throw their butts anywhere they happen to be? It’s disgusting.)

As I toiled, a guy came by on his bike and shouted, “Great job!” It’s nice to be appreciated. By someone. Believe it or not, though, I do love my job. Just not this morning.

Finally I got back inside, and while waiting for the snot to thaw so I can wipe it off my face without tearing the skin, I read the news on the internet. “Twenty-seven Dead as Gunmen take Hostages at Mali Hotel”

I really have absolutely nothing to complain about. Nothing at all. Perspective.

 cinderella-scrubbing

Arbitrary Deadlines

When you feel as though you’re not meeting a deadline, it can be extremely stressful. That is, if you’re like me and you like to meet your deadlines. It doesn’t seem as though everyone does.

But given the amount of anxiety they produce, it surprises me the number of arbitrary deadlines I come across on a regular basis. For example, one of the rules here at work is that the window blinds must be dusted by the 2nd of each month. Why? What would happen if they don’t get done until the third? Will the dust bunnies stage a coup? What if the 2nd is your day off? Why isn’t it good enough to say that the blinds must be dusted once a month? Can we not be trusted? If so, why were we hired?

No one seems to be able to answer these questions. And there’s nothing that sticks in my craw more than the phrase, “Because we said so.” People are not robots. They like to know why. They want to see how things fit into the bigger picture.

That is, if there even is a bigger picture, besides some fantasy rose-colored world where everyone falls into line, never questions, and does things no matter how random and stupid they are.

End of rant.

arbitrary deadline

Dirty Jobs

I must say that I love having an employer that not only allows me to dress like a hobo, but actually expects me to. I come in contact with grease and motor oil entirely too often to wear nice clothes. My shoes are so greasy, in fact, that I leave them here at work. I don’t want to contaminate my house.

I’ve had jobs where you had to dress up in the past, and I always felt like a massive fraud. And a dress code always adds a whole additional level of office politics that I didn’t enjoy at all. There were always factions. Some people were always on the outer. There were constant complaints that one person (usually me) wasn’t dressed quite nicely enough. Or someone had terrible taste, or didn’t iron properly. And there were all these grey areas. How short was too short? Why is a Hawaiian print considered too casual, but a floral print is okay? I used to have a really nicely made silk shirt, but it happened to be tie-dyed. Heaven forfend!

On this job, no one talks about how you dress. No one complains about the state of your shoes as long as they’re close-toed. If you shirt isn’t ever-so-slightly stained, you probably aren’t trying hard enough.

There is one thing that will make you an outsider. If you don’t get your work clothes at the thrift store, people will look at you strangely. And that suits me just fine.

My greasy work shoes.
My greasy work shoes.

The Gag Treatment

When I was young, I was taught that if you have a puppy who likes to bite your hand, rather than pulling your hand away, you should push it ever so slightly further in. You don’t want to hurt the dog, of course, but if you make him kind of gag and spit out your hand, he’s much less likely to want to bite your hand again. It’s very effective.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that this method works on humans, too. Not that humans go around biting your hand, of course. But if you are working on a project and someone is micromanaging to an annoying degree, rather than resisting or protesting, it’s often much more interesting, even fun, to give that person exactly what he asks for and then some.

Have a boss who wants you to both e-mail him and call him about every little thing? Oh, honey, fasten your seatbelt, because I’m going to ring the phone off the hook and flood your inbox to the extent that you’ll never see daylight again.

Is the department head asking for a “detailed” report on x, y, and z? Okay, you’re going to get the entire freakin’ alphabet, to the extent that you’ll be following up and justifying that report to your superiors for the next month. Oh, isn’t that what you wanted?

If your nipping puppy has even an ounce of intelligence in that anal retentive little noggin of his, he’ll soon learn to avoid all contact with you. Problem solved.

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[Image credit: dog-adoption-and-training-guide.com]

My Own Personal Garden Song

After pulling up stakes and moving 3000 miles across country to a place where I know no one, essentially starting over at age 50, I spent a lot of time beating myself up because upon arrival I didn’t instantly have it all figured out.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Was everything supposed to fall into place, as if I could just pick up where I left off in Florida, like the new job and the new place to live and the 3000 mile drive were  mere hiccups in my day-to-day routine? Reinventing yourself isn’t for sissies, let me tell you.

Fast forward 6 months, and yes, I love where I’m living. I’ve even more than halfway unpacked. I love 95 percent of my job, and I actually go long periods of time not dwelling on the other 5 percent. I’ve even started to establish a stable, albeit quirky, routine. And I can now go several places, like the library and the grocery store and to work, without relying on my GPS, which is nice.

But yeah, I admit it. I haven’t made a single friend outside of work yet, and that sucks. I’m lonely. And before you even go there, I’ve been given a million suggestions about how to rectify that. If I pursued them all I’d probably be so popular that I’d have to change my phone number just to get some peace. So I feel kind of guilty. I should be on top of things. I have all the tools. And yet, here I am, alone.

But today I started humming the Arlo Guthrie version of the Garden Song, which has also been famously sung by John Denver; Pete Seeger; and Peter, Paul, and Mary to name a few. I’ll attach the video so you can check out Arlo’s hilarious take on it, but meanwhile you know the song. It starts, “Inch by inch, row by row, I’m gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground…”

And I suddenly realized that what I’m doing is transplanting my life. I uprooted myself from Florida and I’m putting down roots here. That’s going to take some time and patience, some love and care. I just need to go inch by inch. I don’t have to beat myself up when, at the end of the day, the whole darned garden isn’t planted and in full bloom.

I need to give myself a break, do things correctly and with positive intention, and it will all work out in the end. Yes, I have the rake and the hoe. I’ll get there.

Next stop for me is signing up for a pottery class at the nearby community college. That starts in April. I’m looking forward to it. And I’m sure I’ll meet some amazing people.

Forward motion is what counts. Even if it’s only an inch at a time.

Work Friendships

At every job I’ve held for any length of time, I’ve made some pretty intense friendships. I suppose when you find yourself hunkered down in the same foxhole you tend to develop a bond of sorts. Comrades in arms. At least that has always been my experience.

Whenever I’ve left a job, I’ve attempted to keep in touch with these friends, and 99 times out of 100, it doesn’t happen. I will try to make an effort but it goes unreciprocated. Does that mean the friendship never existed in the first place? I don’t believe that for a second. But work friends are a different breed. They can be strong and intense, but they lack depth. Without deep roots, they cannot thrive.

Maybe now, in the Facebook era, that will change. It’s easier to keep in touch, and more and more friendships seem to lack depth and yet thrive in cyberspace. All I know is that when I walked away from my Jacksonville job for the last time the other day, I felt profoundly sad because of all the dear people that I will most likely lose. I left them my e-mail address. Will I hear from any of them?

There’s no way to force people to keep in touch. Maybe our common thread was that foxhole, and I just climbed out of it and left them there to soldier on. But I am quite certain I will feel the lack of these friends for years to come.

foxhole

The Luxury of Leisure

Ah, to have a beautiful sunny day and no plans to fill it with! To read a good book, bask in the sunshine, feel a sea breeze across your face, and play with your dogs. To take a nap in mid-afternoon with only the sound of a distant lawnmower to lull you to sleep. Bliss.

How lucky are we to live in the first era in which free time is not only abundant for many of us, but is generally considered a basic right? The pursuit of happiness writ large. Gone for me and mine are the days when one would spend hours simply fetching water, and then more hours using it to cook, clean, and wash clothes.

Gone is the constant anxiety of praying for rain to sustain your crops (although we still should) or praying that the snow will hold off a few weeks more. How heavenly to live in a time when hammocks are used in ways other than to warehouse weary sailors after a hard day’s toil, and pizza can come right to the door!

No pressure on me to marry and produce children and have inevitable miscarriages and preserve my family’s reputation. No growing worry about surviving the cold of winter or the plagues and pestilence of everyday living. I fear neither polio nor pogroms nor the possibility of not living past the age of 35.

How lucky are most of us?

But many a marriage stayed intact when one could go off and chop a cord of wood to stave off the cold or churn butter for the family table rather than bicker about who left their dirty socks in the coffee mug. So much easier to be faithful when you spend the day plowing the field. How many pounds of fat did not strain the heart through the fitness that is borne of hard work? Was it easier to stave off depression when you were focused on mere survival?

I suspect I’d derive a great deal of satisfaction from looking out on the results of a hard day’s work. I believe I’d appreciate leisure time a lot more if it were hard won. I think I would benefit a great deal more from spending less time gazing at my own navel and more time engaging in the wider world.

How lucky are most of us? Hard to say. I’ll think about it more as I lie in my hammock.

Hammock

[Image credit: Digitaldutch.com]

Seventeen Fatal Mistakes Managers Make

I have been working since I was 10 years old, and have experienced every type of manager conceivable. There is quite a bell curve on the spectrum of competence. I’ve seen many of the same mistakes made over and over and over again. These professional landmines should be easy to spot and avoid, but apparently not, because they get stepped on with annoying frequency, and it’s all so unnecessary.

In no particular order, here are some of the most common errors.

  • Creating adversarial situations. Believe it or not, most employees want their company to succeed, and want to feel like they are part of the reason for that success. When you force them into a position where they are made to feel that you are on opposite sides, or when you pit one employee or department against another, it’s demoralizing. Imagine how much more functional your company would be if everyone were allowed to feel as if they were on the same team.
  • Not allowing employees to have dignity. If an employee needs to be disciplined, for God’s sake, don’t do it in front of coworkers or, even worse, customers. Allow them to save face by taking them aside and discussing the situation one on one. Your goal should be to correct, not to humiliate. And there’s never any reason to shout. You’re talking to an adult, and odds are good that they can hear you when you speak in a reasonable tone of voice.
  • Not trusting staff. If you treat employees as though they do not deserve your confidence, they will eventually lose the desire to be trustworthy. What’s the point of striving for trust that can never be achieved? If you truly have no faith in your staff, why did you hire them in the first place?
  • Enacting changes without consulting employees. This is one of the most costly mistakes an employer can make. Your front line employees are your best and most vital knowledge base. They can usually tell you what will work and what won’t and why. Before making a policy change, run it by them. You’re not trying to get their permission. You don’t necessarily have to take their advice. Most people, after all, are resistant to change. But they can point out problems that you may not have considered. If you have their input, they will be more likely to buy into your change. Time and again I’ve heard of large companies that pay consultants 250k to help them improve efficiency, when they could have simply asked the people who actually do the job. What a concept.
  • Wasting time. Don’t have a meeting just so you can look like you communicate. Own it. Actually make it worth the effort. If you have nothing important to say, let them go do their jobs. Likewise, don’t make employees sit through training just so you can say you’ve trained them. If the information isn’t relevant, or if it’s self-evident, don’t take up time that could be better spent.
  • Turf guarding. If you allow your employees to shine, you will be bathed in the glow as well. Why, why, WHY can’t managers grasp this basic concept? Don’t take credit for things that your employees have done. Don’t hold people back. Recognize the accomplishments of your staff, and sing their praises from the rooftops. This will make them want to do even better, which in turn will reflect well on you. It’s sort of like a perpetual motion machine of success, but one which is hardly ever taken advantage of.
  • Micromanaging. Have you ever heard of anyone who likes this behavior? Of course you haven’t. People like to feel as if they can be trusted to think independently. If you weigh them down with an ever-increasing mountain of petty rules, you will create anxiety, resentment, and a whole lot of people who are coming up with ingenious ways to look as if they’re complying without actually doing so. Worst of all, you will lose any respect that you might have had. Before imposing a rule, ask yourself what would happen if that rule didn’t exist.
  • Being inflexible. Employees are human beings, not robots. Sometimes you need to accommodate them. This does not mean you play favorites. It means you take unique circumstances into account. If you are reasonable with people, you will gain their loyalty. If you are rigid, they’ll simply consider you to be an a**hole, and won’t cooperate with you.
  • Weak link-itis. If you have an employee who isn’t up to snuff, you might think it is easier to have your more competent employees pick up the slack, but all this does is eventually burn out the good employees, causing them to become less productive as well. It also breeds resentment. Rather than lower everyone to the level of the weak link, form a backbone and get the weak link to rise up to the appropriate level or get rid of that person.
  • Throwing people under the bus. If you’ve screwed up, or cause your department to screw up, own it. Don’t blame it on your staff. If you cause a traffic jam in New Jersey, fall on your sword of stupidity and pettiness. Don’t fire your underlings and act as if the crisis has been averted. Everyone will know you’re lying.
  • Forcing employees to make fools of themselves. If you insist that your employees wear silly uniforms or say inane and insincere things like, “How can I provide you with excellent customer service today?” You are going to be the one who winds up looking like an idiot, and if they take the opportunity to run you down with their car no reasonable court in the land would convict them.
  • Creating anxiety in terms of job stability. People aren’t working for you for the fun of it. They have families to feed and bills to pay. Don’t make them live under the constant threat of possible discharge. That’s their livelihood you are messing with, and it causes unnecessary anxiety, a distinct lack of concentration, and probably a lot more turnover than you would have otherwise.
  • Not being open to suggestion. Your employees spend a lot of time thinking about their jobs and how best to do them. Every now and then they may actually come up with something that you haven’t considered that will greatly improve production. You’ll never know this if you behave as if there’s a brick wall between you, or if you get angry when someone seems to be trying to upset the apple cart.
  • Losing perspective. There are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. In the overall scheme of things, there is very little that we do on this tiny little planet that is worth getting spun up about. Relax. It’ll be all right.
  • Lack of appreciation. Everyone wants to be acknowledged for their hard work. You don’t have to like your employees, but you do have to realize that if they weren’t there, your company wouldn’t exist.
  • Putting your pride before logic. If you come up with a stupid idea, own it, rescind it and move on. Don’t continue with the insane policy simply to save face. It’s counterproductive.
  • Not sticking up for your people. In all my years of employment, I’ve only had one boss who was willing to stick his neck out for me, and that’s my current one. Because of that, when he needs me to go the extra mile, I’ll go an extra ten. He has my loyalty, because I know he has my back. On the other hand, if a boss lets me be unjustly attacked by upper management or clients, he or she is dead to me, and I’ll only do the bare minimum to remain employed. The customer may always be right, but don’t assume that means that your employee is always wrong.

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[Image credit: wanttoworkintelevision.com]