Then I get to say “fuck you, I’ve put in my 40 hours, I’m going home” in the middle of the day on Thursday.
Not to my boss, though. I’m not crazy.
Maybe to the overeager kid who wants to bounce ideas off me and thinks that just because I have time to go to the water cooler I have time for his dumbass ideas 
He needs to be careful what he wishes for. There’s a big difference between getting things done and putting in time.
Agreed. The best life lesson I received in management through motivation was when I was stationed at the PMEL lab at RAF Upper Heyford in 1988. We had a SMSgt transfer in to run the lab. At the time we had months worth of backlogged equipment that needed to be tested or repaired.
His goal was to get us down to same-day-turnaround if at all possible. To do that, he started setting up weekly goals. If we could get down to X amount of backlog by the end of day Thursday, we would get Friday off. Then each week the value of X decreased. One of the limitations was that we couldn’t NRTS 9 more than a small percentage of the equipment, and it had to truly be NRTS 9*
Everybody put in the work, and we got down to the point where nothing stuck around for more than a day that could be done on-site.
When I transferred back stateside, we had expanded to Thursdays and Fridays being off.
The lesson I took from that: If you can’t afford to give your employees more money, give them time, as long as the work that needs to get done is getting done.
*Bench checked-condemned. Item cannot be repaired and is to be processed for condemnation, reclamation or salvage.
That is truly beautiful. So many managers/companies would just take that as meaning that folks were sandbagging, when in fact they were doing exactly as expected - putting in time - until someone carefully and precisely defined the real goal and gave workers the motivation to reach it.
There’s the problem right there. The Peter-Principle phenomenon of successful salespeople being disastrously assumed to be successful managers is so widespread that one of the most successful sitcoms in history had that as one of its core premises.
These are the same kinds of attention-thirsty managers who simply must have a live and captive on-site audience of employees (useless Zoom meetings only partly satisfy them). That’s why I’m making the easy prediction that a lot of the remote work necessitated by the pandemic will be brought back on-site despite the fact that it’s as if not more efficient. And in the corporate world of the HR Culture, that will also mean increasing surveillance and cost-cutting measures that ultimately decrease productivity.
After a certain amount of money, the time starts becoming a lot more valuable. They can’t print up more of the latter.
The thing is, they aren’t necessarily wrong. But it’s due to having an arbitrary amount of time to fill as opposed to just laziness.
That said, the lab had a fair amount of cherry picking happening; taking easier equipment tasks and postponing the more difficult ones unless/until ordered to do them.
Providing a goal of something everyone wanted helped people remain focused on the tasks, cleared out everything that was easy first, and chipped away at everything that wasn’t easy when that was all there was to work on.
It was putting the carrot out in front of the mule, but letting the mule have the carrot when it got to where it needed to be. Not just constantly dangling something that was never going to be given. And then providing a new carrot for the next goal.
And it got the equipment that was needed off the racks and out to the field.
He’s not just the manager. It’s his company. So nothing substantial can be done without his say-so. Toss in a smattering of Trumpish qualities, and if he’s not praised enough then it’s not a good idea, and anything good is because he made it possible.
I seriously need a new job. If my insurance weren’t tied to my employment, and I had a basic income provided by the state, or the ability to file for unemployment without being fired (without just cause) first – which would amount to the same thing – I would have quit that day.
But you know, bills, dependents, rent, responsibilities. Gotta suck it up and soldier on, hoping something better comes along and I won’t be so depressed that I miss it, or viewed as so old that I’m not a viable candidate, and feeling a bit of me die each day.
I worked for Best Buy in the main office, which has four connected towers.
The place was crowded enough when I arrived as a new contract developer – basically one big room with thirty developers with desks and low partitions.
Circa 2011, everyone from Tower D was relocated to the towers, so D could be rented out (to a firm that collected credit card debts from the families of dead people, as I heard it).
My group was made denser by giving everyone a desk about two and a half feet by three, grouping desks in cluster of four, with two-foot aisles between clusters, for a total of, what, fifty people? Sixty?
I can’t think under those conditions so I did something about it – I declared that I was working from home, and did so until they (very reasonably) let me go.
Good luck negotiating that in a wheelchair.
Don’t just hope something better comes along. Actively look for another job. When my job switched to open-plan (and did other shenanigans that amounted to a decrease in pay), I started applying elsewhere. It was tricky for a while, but after 6 months I found another job paying 20% more. Right now, if you’re WFH, it’s easier than ever to do phone interviews in the middle of the day. I had to have a lot of “doctor’s appointments” to take calls in private.
Just out of curiosity, may I ask your age? I’m 52, and agism is a thing even though they can’t ask your age directly in an interview.
As for it being easier to find a new job while working from home, most of my experience is in over 20 years of automotive advertising. I hate it, and want to do something else, but it’s also what I know really, really well. I can’t think of any field other than advertising that I could walk into that pays as well as what I make at this moment, without relevant experience. And I’m not even that well paid for my position. And I hate advertising.
Add to that the swiftly rising unemployment numbers, and suddenly I’m competing with a whole bunch more people for far fewer job openings.
I’m not saying that it’s hopeless; I’m intelligent, I work hard, I don’t drink or take drugs, etc. I can do other work, if given the opportunity.
What I’m saying is that – in this moment – I’m feeling really old and really burned out, and that feeling is not being helped by our global pandemic.
ETA I just finished proofing a coupon for one of our clients websites that is for 20% off service repairs or service maintenance over $299.95, and the client instructed this be added:
We hope this offer can be of benefit during these uncertain times. Thank you for the trust you place in our team and company. Please contact us with any questions.
…
Fucking insanity. The offer is no better than anything they offered pre-pandemic, but now that there’s a pandemic during which car use has dropped off a cliff, and likewise car maintenance and repairs, they “hope this offer can be of benefit during these uncertain times.”
The header image reminds me of the all-glass apartment buildings in the totalitarian state of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1984- and Brave New World-inspiring novel We.
Pretty much every job I’ve ever had has been “Here’s our infinite wish list of stuff we’d like. Do as much as you can.” Thus my work is never “done”. I just end my day when I feel I have met my professional responsibilities and my employers accept they are getting their money’s worth. (Obviously occasional deadline rushes excepted.)
It works nicely when the contract with myself is “they get all the hours in an eight hour workday”. It doesn’t work so well when I’m working from home and not quite disciplined enough to lock myself away for the requisite hours. So then I end up having “how much of the last hour should I really count” discussions in my head.
I structure my life so that I need as little willpower as possible to get productively through the day. No snacks at home, no distractions at work, etc. The plague is messing with that :-(.
I felt the same way… until my employer realised i was the dumbest staff member so they laid me off.
I’m not the super self starter type, especially when placed in a relaxed environment like my house, but all that goes out the window with kids.
I think right now everyone is pretty understanding that families exist and kids are there, cause where the fuck else can they go? No seriously if I wanted to home school we would have. (Don’t get me wrong, of course in the middle of a pandemic they shouldn’t be going to school…but I shouldn’t be getting my kid’s daily assignment at 9am either.)
I work better at work. I work better with my coworkers rather than my 2 year old. This is not the 50’s. Today I had help from the mother-in-law for a few hours in the morning and fortunately the little one took a long nap. Mom is at work today, tomorrow the roles will be flipped. Next week I go on furlough for most of May…
Amen, brother. It’s taken me over 20 years to get to a least-bad workplace.
This is when I realize how incredibly privileged I am to be able to whine about working from home.
it’s sneeze guards all the way down
When I was paid by the hour, my time was theirs.
When I was paid an annual salary they paid for the work not the time and sometimes I slacked and sometimes I worked truly excessive hours - but the work always got done in good time and to good quality. Overall they got much more than their due for what they were paying as an equivalent hourly rate.
Yeah I have to say I am feeling the same. I am 54, still employed and have done one interview while working from home. They tried to use webex, which wasn’t working so we finished on the phone, but I found it very uncomfortable. I just can’t see myself getting past an interview without meeting the interviewers.
The shut in situation isn’t helping. I relished my bike commute. I can’t see this working in the long run. May as well retire. A lot of the enjoyment of work was being able to socialize with friends and co-workers. Thats mostly gone now.
