Category: Job Jollies

Is it just me, or does anyone else get irked at complementary closings of e-mails that are obviously part of someone’s sig block.

And that is how you resolve that problem. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to call.
Regards,
Fred
fred.smith@mycompany.com
303-555-7734

Yeah, having every e-mail you send out automatically have “regards” tacked onto it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, I’ll tell you.

Of course, complementary closings in e-mail are kind of goofy, anyway. I just usually rattle off a “Thanks” or a “See you soon” in the last paragraph, sometimes by itself, sometimes with other text.

But I always sign my name. Even if I include a sig block with my contact information, I type my name each time. ‘Cause I’m that kind of guy.

And if I need to include a “Regards” or “Sincerely” in there, then, by gosh, I can take the extra few moments to type it myself. Otherwise, it’s the same as including it in a rubber stamp of your signature. Tacky.

So, that’s what’s got my dander up this afternoon. How about you?

Dear Mr. Hill. Surprised to see the [company] name on the enclosed 2 in 1 Teamwork Peak 300 Atlas Diary sample?

Why, yes, I was. I was even more surprised to see the city name you used. It’s technically correct (if you do a ZIP code lookup, it reveals we are in Lakewood), but is not what we — or anyone else in our business complex — use (Golden). (The area was actually unincorporated JeffCo, but a Golden PO, until Lakewood annexed the property; all the established businesses still have official permission to use their Golden address, however, and do.)

Thus, the free 2 in 1 Teamwork Peak 300 Atlas Diary (pant pant) is kind of useless, since anyone who asked where our “Lakewood office” is would get blank looks (and failed searches).

In other words, yes, I was suprised, but I was not impressed. Which, I suspect, was more the sort of reaction you were fishing for.

Scheduling conference calls for 6:30 a.m. is just way too frelling early. Even if I am already at work by then.

A broadcast e-mail from this morning from the office manager:

I’ve been told a valve broke and leaked glycol into the elevator shaft and cooling pad. The elevator does not work and we do not have any cooling in the building at this time. They are trying to assess the problem and determine what is needed to fix it.
Thank you for your patience.

Loosely translated:

The south side of the building, especially the south end of wing B, which has both an eastern and western exposure, right where Dave’s office is, will heat up 82 or so, much warmer than the outside temp, which is actually quite comfortable right now, thank you for asking.
Feel free to use the stairs to come down to the lobby where it’s nice and cool.

Fortunately, I have a little fan to blow the warm air around with, sort of like a convection oven.

During our business meeting in Pasadena in June, I got a reputation amongst my peer managers and my boss for being a bit fastidious in my copy editing. It was decided that my secret super-hero identity was Too Many Commas Man, after my propensity for inserting commas into the stuff we were reviewing (mission statements, etc.).

This has become something of a running gag in e-mail threads in our group. Today, I mentioned it to my boss.

Me: I suppose there are worse reputations I could have.
Boss: Yup.
Me. I could be Too-Many-Colons Man.

Based on the coffee that came spewing across the wire and through my monitor, I think I amused him.

[Cue Mr. Burns, tapping his arched fingertips.]

Excellent …

Since they happened to be in the neighborhood, the New New Boss and the CIO dropped into the Glasgow, Scotland, office to try to make the transfer of someone there into my group a reality, rather than something that just kept being sort of bandied about.

And they did. So while there are still some negotiations to get done over title and rates and work priorities, and while nothing is ever completely done until the ink is dry (witness my ongoing efforts to get the guy down in Reading transferred into the group, which is favored by the guy, his boss, and everyone else, but dependent on some less-than-responsive HR types), it sounds like I have staff in, and a future trip to, Scotland.

[Cue Willie the Janitor]

Hoot, man!

I mentioned a while back how I’d lost the contest for our global IT logo. In fact, I think I said:

The selected logo is (a) way too busy, (b) way too dull, (c) way too detailed to be shrunk, (d) way too blah. Muddled, muted colors, multiple blocks of text, and it all combines into something that looks like the front page of a PowerPoint presentation. It looks like something designed and/or approved by a committee.

We competitors were then told that we would all get shirts with the new logo on them, as a “prize” for competing.

Oh, boy! I just found out that everyone who submitted a design will get a t-shirt with the winning logo on it! Yippee!
Now, what sort of grungy chores can I think of for wearing it? Digging ditches? Tarring pavement? Slopping hogs?

Well, won’t be doing that, since it’s actually a nice (if all-rayon/polyester) polo shirt. Suitable for wearing on visits to other offices, tra-la.

I am greatly amused to see, though, that the “way too busy … way too detailed to be shrunk” logo has, in fact, been significantly simplified for the embroidery on the shirt. The gradations, teeniest-tiniest print, shading, and other crud have been softened, sanded down, made embroiderable.

It still looks like crap, and, in fact, it’s still pushing the ability to be embroidered, but, at least it’s kind of readable.

I feel so inspired.

“The dog ate it.”

“Something came up and I lost track of the time.”

“My secretary never mentioned it.”

“I forgot to put it in my Daytimer.”

And, now …

“Sorry, my spam filter inadvertently routed your message into my deleted items …”

More precious than rubies. More precious that gold, and diamonds, and pearls. More precious than cunningly wrought jewelry, pieces of eight, mithril armor, and doublets full of doubloons.

G&A Labor Money in My Budget for FY04

Oh, yeah. Watch me do the Happy Budget Dance.

Because when everything is flowing well, communicating with my office via dial-up is barely tolerable.

When it isn’t flowing well, I can easily fritter away an entire morning trying to get a single sync to work, trying to get a single e-mail out.

Sort of like today.

Of course, I’ve also been watching our cable fritz in and out all morning, so I suspect that broadband may have its own pitfalls.

Rrg.

I really dislike using the telephone. I really do. I am visually oriented, and long phone conversations tend to give me a headache as I try to focus just on the sound of the voice, and not be distracted by other stuff around me. Which is why phone calls from me tend to be short, sweet, and to the point.

Nonetheless, I’m making it a point to call each of my staff at least once a week to touch bases as to what’s going on, give them a chance to vent in a way that e-mail won’t support, discuss careers stuff and the weather and what about those Dodgers and all that jazz.

I have 30 minutes scheduled, and expect it will run 15.

I dislike doing it, but it’s one reason they pay me the big bucks.

One problem: I just discovered that one of my staff evidently hates using the phone, and is less communicative over it, than I am.

So … maybe just 5 minutes for that call.

Coming in this morning, I fired up my e-mail, etc., etc.

And there’s a message from the CIO (or, as it turns out, send under his name). Interesting.

You are amongh a group of affected users to an event that occured over the weekend. The was a government security issue with our mail server in [snip], and hence the server has been brought down. All data had to be removed from the server. Using backup tapes, we have been able to restore the mail up to, and including, last Monday. At the moment it is not possible to restore more of the mail. Once we have received permission from the relevant government agencies, we will restore the remaining data to the extent that it is possible. It is important to note that this was not caused by an internal problem within [our company], nor is it due to a hardware failure.

Which makes me wonder what (classified stuff?) slipped into our mail system, and how. We do a lot of Federal work; some of it is classified, though mostly in other business units and mail systems.

And, yes, a cursory examination indicates that all my e-mail, back to last Tuesday, is gone. (Which is intersting, because I’d have thought that it would sync back to my offline message store. Evidently not.)

Hmmm. There was some moderately important e-mail in there. And moreover, possibly some responses to things I sent out on Friday morning.

But that would explain why I was getting overdue reminders for To-Do things and apponitments that had already passed. Hmmm.

If there’s one thing I enjoy less than, say, dental surgery without anaesthesia, it would probably be …

… dealing with complex budgets, with parameters as to what’s appropriate unexplained to me, in a new department, with a new boss, with new personnel who don’t understand the process, with both ops and IT saying that they won’t pay for it …

… and coming into the discussion cold after having been out sick 2.5 days.

And having about forty messages related to same among the 100 or so that were waiting for me on my return (not counting the 180 spams).

*Sigh*

UPDATE: Hey, look — we made it into the comics page!

Woo-hoo! We finally have electronic timesheets! Years (if not longer) after other companies, including our competitors, made the move, we’ve finally done likewise.

Not that it was done because it was a good idea. No, the government auditors were increasingly critical of folks having to submit paper timesheets Thursday, forecasting Thursday and Friday time, so that there was enough lead to get everything input. “Forecasting time is evil!” they cried. “We will make you suffer!”

That, plus some administrative cost savings, were enough to balance the expense of the system.

But whatever the reason, it’s good news to me.

Now, if only they’d send me my password …

Hey, I’m not just a middle manager, I can lay claim to being an executive, too! How exciting!

So I’m bad with names. Names will sound familiar to me, and faces will look familiar, but I’m really awful at putting them together.

So in my new dept., I have someone named Susie, and someone named Sally. Neither of whom I know.

So in visiting the sites this week, I was constantly getting their names mixed up. Nobody seemed irked about it, except for me.

Finally, though, I figured I had it down. Susie is this person, Sally is that person. Huzzah.

This morning I found out that Sally is known as Sarah in the e-mail system.

So now I have another silibant S name to keep straight.

So was it that Sally is Sarah who’s not Susie? Or that Susie is Sally who’s not Sarah, or that Susie is sometimes known as Sarah, but shouldn’t be confused with Sally.

*Sigh*