Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The "Friendly Reminder"...

The dynamics of the work environment are always interesting and can often be complex. Alot of politics are played and more often than not people are looking out solely for themselves and their personal job security or advancement. Working for government of any sort alters the normal/traditional flow of business due to the bureaucracy, but contracting for the government tops them all.

From my experience over the past several months I have found that working for a contractor can be frustrating. You have a hundred "bosses", none of them really know what is going on or can provide a straight forward answer and the benefits/pay suck long run. These factors have lead me to be largely unsatisfied with my job and constant speculation about what I "want to do with my life". Additionally, with the having to deal with "stupid" people on a daily basis in the office and in the field, it shouldn't be hard to understand why I am looking to "move towards the light" in this employment.

All is not bad with this job; some of the employees are enjoyable and I would keep in touch with them once I or they move on. I have good time at work most days and my hours are really flexible which means I can have the second job and earn some much needed extra income.

Then of course there is the entertainment I provide myself by being "nit-picky", sarcastic me and makin fun of people that I interact with. Some people are just too easy; dent get me wrong though, I have no problem with "stealing candy" from the proverbial baby in this instance and will do it 90% of the time.

There is a guy on our job who fits this to a tee. Great guy, works hard, but socially awkward and not the wittiest of persons, we shall call him Turtle, or TMNT for short (all other names have been altered as well). He is a 24 year old high school graduate, who is a lifer. He has recently been placed into a "supervisory" position and the power trip began. Yesterday the following email was sent to me and two coworkers:

Please make sure you're doing at least 8 cables a day, not including amendments & cancelations. If you request overtime due to workload, management (B, L, S) may look at this before approving. Also, this may be used as part of your annual SAD (company) performance evaluation.
Exceptions to not doing 8 cables on a particular day:
1. You don't work 8 hours that day.
2. Fire drills and other crisis from one or more of your field offices.
3. All of your requests not yet processed are pending itineraries and/or necessary information from the field.
On most days, you should be doing at least 8 cables a day as an escorted travel coordinator.


I have thought about it and I honestly dont know what direction this "Friendly Reminder" (the actual subject line of the above email) is coming from. I dent know what to think of this. Of course the three of us just laughed at the email and ignored his "friendly reminder". One even went as far as responding to it. Quite funny, I giver her props for this one:

Number 1: Let me just start by giving you the middle finger
Number 2: I will not be requesting overtime, I do not want to spend one minute more that I have to in this place
Number 3: If I'm here another 6 months, don't worry about my annual evaluation...I will have shot myself in the head.

Thank you.

which was then followed by:

Exceptions to shooting myself in the head:
1. My measly paycheck does not leave me enough $ in my bank account to buy a gun/bullets (in which case, I would probably grab the biggest kitchen knife I can find)
2. I go insane well before my 1 year, am put into a straight jacket, and committed to the local mental institution (no access to weapons of any sort)
3. I shoot you in the head instead (problem solved)


I have thoughts of my own on the email. Especially since I do more work than most people in this fucking job, but I think the two responses above are adequate. I couldn't help but write about this today while I was not doing my "8 required escorted cables". I needed something to do; there aint enough internet reading in the world to occupy me all day. I will admit however that the email motivates me less to do work than motivating me positively, passive aggressive is so much more fun if you are being manipulative in the process.

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