Category: Job Jollies

When I’m at the office, nearly every lunch I eat is over at the Tokyo Joe’s across the street. I’m a culinary creature of habit, who believes that, having made all those Big Managerial Decisions during the morning, the last thing I want to have to worry about at lunch is making more decisions. Just me, my book, and my regular-chicken-bowl-spicyaki-with-Asian-vegies-and-a-drink-for-here.

There are certain perqs to being a “regular.” The staff gets to know you. Some become friendly. They ring up the order before you can say it. They ask about your book in a friendly, interested way (as opposed to “Jeez [dorkhead] that must be a really interesting book [dorkhead], huh? [Dorkhead.]”) They maybe give you a little something extra as a regular, like extra punches on the buy-12-get-1-free card, or a free drink.

I get up to one of the cash registers today and the clerk at the other one smiles at me as I give my order and asks, “Do you always order the same thing every day?”

I smile, and say, “Usually.”

“All the staff here knows you.”

“Hmmm. That could be good or bad.”

“No, it’s good. Everyone knows ‘The Guy Who Comes in Every Day and Stands in Line Reading a Book the Whole Way.'”

I guess there are worse reps I could have.

So one of the things I get to do today is figure out what the FY03 capital budgets is for one of the local business units that encompasses several locations besides this one. I used to do this annually (duh) back when that was my job, but I’ve been out of the loop on it for at least one full business cycle, during which many of the players have changed. Since the guy who was in charge of it — and had, ostensibly, begun the job already — resigned last week, that leaves me in charge of …

(a) Figuring out where he had the files stashed on this. On his network home drive? On one of the network IT drives (full of twisting-turning file directories, all looking alike)? On his PC?

Bingo — but not just on his PC but in a briefcase replicated from elsewhere on his PC through some oddball combination of Novell and Windows utilities.

(b) Figure out how he was storing the data. I always used some godawful complex set of spreadsheets so that the Powers that Be could group, regroup, break out, and resort the data long about six different axes. This took a lot of work to set up, but save even more work when, inevitably, the Powers that Be asked for planned purchases sorted by the third vowel of the manufacturer’s president’s name (“if it were dark on Tuesdays!”).

Alas, no such luck. Instead, my successor was putting it all into an Access database, which actually makes a tremendous amount of sense (since it could then be queried on anything), but, alas, the job was incomplete and there was no key as to which tables, queries and reports did what.

So, export the main table to a spreadsheet. Bleah.

(c) Figure out which offices have not yet provided their info. Uh, well, maybe most of them have, but now I have to figure out if the info from the e-mail attachments matches what’s in the database. Dun the non-reporting offices to provide whatever is missing.

(d) Provide a detailed report to the business unit management. By COB. Be prepared to answer questions.

Keen!

Work looks to be very busy this week, so I expect blogging volume may be down a bit, especially early on. Nothing like last week, in tone at least, but a lot of playing catch-up and wearing of multiple hats.

Someone I know got invited to resign today. Someone I’ve known since I came to my job here in Denver. Someone I’ve worked alongside, had over to the house with his wife, who in fact I rehired to my company after he pursued other opportunities. Someone I supervised, mentored, and whose sat in my office and chit-chatted through various work crises, his, mine and ours. Who’s clipped cartoons for me, and received clippings in return. Who’s shared jokes, lines from old movies, and a sardonic sense of humor.

I can’t talk about the circumstances, for obvious reasons. But the very fact of it is, personally, pretty sucky.

Funny thing is, he sounds a lot like the person I was talking about a while back.

The even suckier part is that he isn’t.

An article on the major mall going up across the street from my office.

Much of the roadwork expansion around the project is done — basically 1-2 lanes added to every side of every street surrounding the place.

I can see making use of some of the stores described while on my lunch hour. Others … not so much.

I am a bit concerned, street expansion notwithstanding, about being located next to “the No. 1 tourist destination in Colorado.” That may not be hyperbole. There is a definite number of tourists who come to Colorado (with charter busses to support them) to shop at Cherry Creek Mall, or Park Meadows. I’ve never quite understood this, but, then, I don’t understand a lot of things that people find popular.

So I’m talking to someone on the phone at work this afternoon. And I happen to know she is on the Hit List, to be invited to resign (with, I must add, a generous severence package) next week as part of our current round of IT reorgs.

And, of couse, since she knows about some of the structural changes in my department, she asks how I’m feeling about it. And I sort of smile and nod and talk about opportunities from change, and change being a constant, and about that copy of Who Moved My Cheese? I got a year or two ago. All very sincere and heartfelt, but also sort of, “Jeez, I really don’t want to talk about this with her, because I know she’s going to ask –“

“So, anything I should know about in all of this?”

I know what she’s asking. Do I know about whether her position is in danger?

I feel a certain amount of responsibility toward this person. I was involved in hiring her. I managed her at one point, and have continued to work with her. We are, if not friends, then certainly comrades-in-arms. I like her. And it doesn’t help that I think it’s unfair that she’s on the Hit List. Indeed, my opinion was asked, and I helped fight for her and helped fight to make sure she was treated right when she’s let go.

But …

I have been given a confidence in my knowledge of this person’s impending termination. If I betray that confidence, I am doing a disservice to other people who I respect, and who have trusted me.

I’m a manager (at least at the moment). I have responsibilities to others. I also have responsibilities to the company. I don’t think I’m harming her in not saying anything. Telling her isn’t going to help her. Not really. No prospects for job interviews over the holidays, and not a good thing to have hanging over one during such a time anyway.

And maybe, just maybe, I’m a bit scared of torquing off someone, of putting my own ass at risk. Or maybe I just don’t want to be the one to break the news to her, since it’s not a decision I can defend.

“No. I don’t know anything concrete.”

And I don’t. There may be a change in plans. Nothing official has been announced, after all. And if it happens, it might be Monday. It might be in a month. Or it might never happen.

I think I did the right thing. I do. But I’m not very happy about it.

“Well,” as Archie Bunker once said, “ain’t that a kick in the groan.”

Big internal reshuffles within the IT organization going on, striving to reduce costs, present a leaner org to senior management, etc. Nothing new or surprising there.

My department’s being subsumed under a different one, which effectively pushes me down a tick in the hierarchy. My personnel management will be significantly lessened. My project responsibilities (etc.) will remain pretty much the same, though the work load they cover will likely increase.

And, obviously, I’m not the only one affected by this. Some folks (across the org) are being similarly demoted, some let go. Some I know quite well. The load capacity of the ecology just got tighter, so some go extinct, others become a bit more marginal.

I can’t go into much detail — the Official Word isn’t out yet, and while I don’t know of anyone in my company who reads this blog, I don’t know that nobody does, so to be fair, silence for now. More later.

I am not in imminent danger of being let go or anything like that. So far as I know, of course. In some ways, this is a good kick in the pants for me, and it may improve some dynamics that were causing problems previously. Overall, I can’t say that it’s good news, but it’s less bad that it might have been, and it provides some opportunities that weren’t there previously.

Or, as Margie said (since I did her the courtesy 🙂 of telling her about this before I blogged it), it’s part of the “ebb and flow” of the organization.

‘Nuff said. For now.

I hate doing employee reviews. The knowledge that an annual review for one of my staff is coming sits on my shoulder like a vulture, picking at my flesh while I hem and haw and wait until the tension between “You really must do this, it’s late, your staff deserves better, you are not being an honorable and dutiful boss” and “I hate doing this, I hate criticizing people, I hate confronting people with where they’ve fallen short, I hate getting into money issues, I hate it” finally erupts into a paroxysm of frantic review writing and forwarding.

So I’m feeling pretty good, having gotten two of those suckers off of my shoulder this morning. Vaguely guilty, but quite relieved.

I work in the Denver West Business Park, in beeyooteeful Golden, Colo. (Actually, it’s not in Golden. It was in unincorporated Jefferson Co., but was using the Golden PO … but then got annexed by Lakewood. But since everyone’s been doing business here for a couple of decades, Lakewood didn’t have the nerve to insist on the change. Besides, they got their tax revenue, so who cares. But I digress.)

Across Denver West Blvd. is the Denver West Village Shopping Mall Place (not its official name). I go there to eat every day, at Tokyo Joe’s. (I am a creature of habit regarding lunches. The last thing I want to do at lunch is make still more decisions. Just ask my Mom about the PB&Js she packed for my school lunch every day for years.)

Across Colfax, the other direction, they’re building the FABULOUS Colorado Mills mall. Retail galore, which will be nice when I have to shop for something at the office, though I’d settle for a local Walgreens.

Anyway, in prep for the Colorado Mills opening, they’ve been widening every street within a three or four block radius. Including Denver West Blvd. You know … the one I cross to go to lunch.

They had the part from Cole Blvd. to Colfax closed for widening (two lanes each way to three, plus a pull-out for busses) for three months. That was kind of interesting to watch, but it closed off the normal way I walked to lunch: Down the backs of the adjoining buildings, above the lake, then up the stairs to DWB and over to the signal and cross, and there I am.

Now that way was closed off, since the stairs ran right into the humongous retaining wall built for the third lane. So then it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd. to the signal, look at the torn up part of DWB as I cross, and there I am.

But now that part of DWB is open. Though the stairway has not been replaced. But they’ve closed off that section of Cole Blvd. So yesterday it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd., cross because that side of Cole is now all torn up, walk along the grass because there’s no sidewalk on the opposite side, up to the corner, look at the construction, avoid the glares of the guys in the hard hats, cross DWB, and there I am.

Only today they had torn up all of that section of Cole Blvd. So it was: Out the back, down the hill to the lake, climb over the spillway, up the hill, down Cole Blvd., cross a lot earlier because that whole patch of Cole is now all torn up on both sides, walk along the grass, oops, cross deeper into the grass because they’re widening this, too, cross into the parking lot, oops, go further into the parking lot because they’ve torn up its entrance, head for the corner, oops, give the corner a wide berth because there’s a backhoe tearing up the sidewalk all around it, up the very steep hill to the sidewalk, look at the construction, cross DWB in the middle of the block, avoid the torn up areas on that side, and there I am.

On the way back, I tried to go around the other direction, up DWB to Colfax. Nothing doing. Just as torn up, cone zones everywhere, mounds of dirt, and general life-into-own-hands-taking.

Tomorrow I fully expect that they will have dug up enough stuff to have caused a rift in the space-time continuum so that it is impossible, thanks to the laws of physics, for me to go one block to get to lunch.

So, how was your day?

Though we didn’t do any formal Team Building exercises, I found the great secret to encourage such team building. Get everyone into one car. Turn to the local Classic Rock station. Watch as everyone joins in on “We are the Champions” and “We will Rock You.” Voila — instant team-building.

I am not a morning person. I am a night person. That I get up at 5 a.m. every morning is less a tribute to my being a person capable of functioning in the morning than a person to my being a person who wants to avoid traffic and be able to leave early.

And when I do wake up, I’m not sociable. I want nothing more than to just hunker down, eat my breakfast, drink my coffee, and read my book. While I am not the aggressively anti-social Oscar-the-Grouch that my brother is, I am quiet, withdrawn, and, yes, a bit grouchy.

So imagine my unending, joyous rapture as, every morning on this trip, I get to go down and be the convivial manager type, chit-chatting through breakfast and coffee.

Bitch, bitch, bitch …