Sleep Time

Hamlet:

"To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub."

Do you experience apathy? Is your speech slurred, and your memory impaired? Does multi-tasking hurt your brain?  If so, you may not be drunk...you might be sleepy. I probably won't get many arguments by stating that we should all get more rest.  Who doesn't like to catch up on sleep?  What puzzles me is the fervor in which some workers regularly schedule sleep out of their daily schedules...and it is making you CRAZY.  


So why are people doing this?  Studies have shown that the people who regularly suffer from sleep deprivation have the following 2 things in common:

• They have others to care for at home
• Their job prevents them from obtaining regular sleep

The American Psychological Association says:

"Having a 24/7 lifestyle can also interrupt regular sleep patterns: the global economy that includes round the clock industries working to beat the competition; widespread use of nonstop automated systems to communicate and an increase in shift work makes for sleeping at regular times difficult."

The human adult is optimized to stay awake for around 15 hours a day.  How many hours to do you devote to work a day including travel time to the office?  10, 12 hours?  How many hours does that leave in a day to take care of your home, self, family?  Not very much if you ask  me, and I don't even have kids!  

As an IT worker, it is common for me to work long, strange hours.  This has often caused sleep issues for me.  At one job in my past, at a major Fortune 50 company, I was required to wear and respond to a pager.  One night, that thing did not stop going off all night and I got no sleep at all.  I was still required to go in to work the next day and be on call the next night.  It was at that time in my evolution of an IT worker that I developed the ability to answer and delete pages in my sleep. No joke! I was so stressed and exhausted that I think my brain was going through some desperate motions to save myself.  My boss wasn't very happy, though.

I ended up quitting that job for a better one.  I made it a point to never allow myself to be treated like that again.  I chose to quit because the reason why I was asked to do so much work was due to the inability of management to adhere to an SDLC for its products that caused many bugs in released versions.  They just expected their techies to support, report, and provide ad hoc fixes for the crap they shoveled out.  Heck we were making these guys look like rock stars!  As long as the support staff continued to function under those conditions, we would be expected to keep it up.

Not getting enough sleep causes people to become depressed, too.  And guess what?  Depression and anxiety are another major reason for people not to get enough sleep.  Some people don't get enough sleep, but don't even realize it.  That's because sleep loss also causes poor decision-making, especially if the decision is between making money and sleeping.

So what's another way to tell if you aren't getting enough sleep?  One way is to try to remember what you dreamed about in the morning.  If you aren't dreaming and remembering at least one dream a week, I'll bet you aren't sleeping enough.  That is your body is trying to tell you something and if your priorities continue to be skewed in the wrong direction, your health will suffer and so will your productivity.  


After all, Hamlet wasn't really waxing poetic about getting sleep, he was thinking what it must be like to die. Get some sleep and don't make yourself crazy.  Most of us will appreciate it even if your boss needs a reality check. You only get one life to live.

Avoiding Work Creep - The Details

Those of you who have been reading my blog may have already read my entry on Work Creep.  Here, I continue the topic with some specific suggestions that have worked for me in cutting the creep out of my day.

1) IF YOU DO WORK on the weekend or late at night, let your boss know what you're working on and let those who asked you to do the work (even if it is your boss) know that you took your personal time to do the work and you didn't get to do something else instead.  For example, if you weren't able to attend your best friend's baby shower, let those folks know what you missed out on in order to help them.

2) PITCH ITERATIVE DELIVERABLES - the word iterative means to repeat and a deliverable is an end-product you provide to your customer.  This is the divide and conquer technique.  If you are a mechanic, you deliver repairs, if you are a hair-stylist, you deliver beauty treatments.  If you are an IT worker, you probably already know that your deliverables can be an email, a file, or a whole chain of tasks.  Why not bargain to break up what is due and when it is due for you?  You may be surprised by the results of this conversation if you just try it.

3) TAKE A NUMBER - Most workplaces have a way to number requests in the order they are received, or at least they have an appointment system.  If you have both where you work, make full use of them both.  Don't let people do "drive-by's" for immediate assistance.  I learned this by working with our Tech Support department at work.  IT tech support is usually organized in tiers 1,2,3... and so on.  When the guys on the first tier are unable to solve an issue on their own, they are NOT ALLOWED to walk over to their buddies in tier 2 for a life-line.  Why?  Because the company makes more money when they escalate to the higher tier.  Why would you let someone else do that to you without paying you more money?

4) REPORT YOUR TIME - Some people are surprised when they see the work they do in a statistical format.  For example the free application Manic Time runs in the background of your Windows session and keeps track of the applications, documents, and away time on  your laptop, if that's how you work.  Other applications like Harvest for the iPhone can be used by folks like home contractors to record their time on the job.

5) PAY UP - When I owned my own maid service in Dallas, TX, I was faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem.  I had to find a nice way to tell clients with seriously dirty places that I just didn't have the man power for their mess.  I asked my maternal grandmother what she did as a seamstress the past 30 years when she faced a customer in her small-town shop that she just didn't want to help.  Think about it...if my grandma was rude to a customer, the whole town would know about it in a day or two.  She said simply price your service out of their reach.  If it is at all possible for you to increase your bill rate some how, then do so.

6) CURRENT RESPONSE TIME IS - It helps to give your customers as much information as possible, even if it is bad information.  The reason why is that folks get frustrated when they are left baffled because they are unable to make a decision about what to do with their time.  Your customers may also have others' deadlines waiting on their success.  If anything, if your response time is a week or more, it tells others that you are genuinely busy and they will have to wait.

Avoiding Work Creep - The Basics

Those of you who have been reading my blog may have already read my entry on Creeps at Work, but this entry is about the opposite...when work creeps into your private time.  It's a growing problem these days, no matter what field you work in.  Managers are trying to do more with less, and the more blood (work) they can squeeze out of the turnip (you), then the more they will keep squeezing.  Rest assured there is no shortage of work to go around these days.

I made up the term "Work Creep" after becoming familiar with a Software Development Life Cycle term called Scope Creep.  For those of you who do not know, scope changes can make a software design project larger or smaller.  Scope changes can affect the timeline of the project and the cost of the project.  These changes in scope are more commonly referred by the term scope creep.  In the same way, work creep can be thought of as something similar.  Work creep can make your workload smaller or larger, without any increase in pay or decrease in days off from work. Work creep can affect the timeline of your own personal life as in, your bed time, meal times, but in the end, it affects how much work you are responsible for at your office at the end of the day.

As babies, we cry when we don't get our basic needs: sleep, food, potty and shelter.  As humans, we don't outgrow these needs.  We have an instinct to cry for these things as a child because not to do so would put us at an evolutionary disadvantage to survive.  As adults, you still need the same things, but I wouldn't try crying about it.  Instead I have a few other suggestions.

After spending nearly 10 years at one job, I've learned to practice a number of tactics to keep the work from infiltrating my personal time without being looked upon as a "passer of the buck".  Often my tactics work.  I'd like to share with you what I've learned.

1) Practice saying, "No," BUT always spin your decision to avoid work after hours in a way that benefits the company.  Nobody needs to know your personal business, but I’d be willing to bet if you dig in to what’s being asked of you, you’ll find out someone else forgot to do something in time. For example, your boss asks you to work after-hours to complete a report at the last minute.  Perhaps you could find out exactly what information she needs from the report and provide that component during business hours, then complete the rest of the report the next day?  I think you’ll be surprised how willing people will be to work with you if you just find out what they really need.

2) Don't make yourself easily available for work after hours.  Think about the guy on Office Space who tries to sneak out of the office on Friday afternoon.  I mean, you probably don't want to make it THAT obvious, but DO make it more work for someone to ASK you to do extra work than it takes to actually get the work done.  If you have a calendar that others can view your Free/Busy data from, then require folks to schedule time with you.  If they ask why, just remind them that that is the best way to make sure you can address their concern.

4) SET BOUNDARIES - this goes for personal as well as work life.  If you don't know what your boundary issues are, you should really stop and think about how much personal processing space and down time you need to take care of your life and those you love and NOT the other way around.  Don't regularly agree to do work inside your boundary space.  Others are going to take the lead from what you say YES to.  If  you find yourself saying, “No, it’s OK,” a lot then that’s a red flag that it is probably not.

Me, really? You *really* want my opinion on the food here?

Got this email today....

"You’ve been randomly selected to participate in a research project involving the café service and offerings at your company.  We are interested in your feedback about your usage of the café, attitudes and your dining habits at work.

Please complete the survey regardless of how frequently you use the onsite café. Because a limited number of employees are receiving this survey, your response is very important. Our food service partner is leading this study in partnership with us. The survey will only take about 8 minutes to complete.  Please respond by ..."


If it is at all possible to laugh an evil laugh in a joyful way, I did it when I read this email.  Although, I'm pretty sure my responses will get tossed out as outliers, ever hopeful, I went at the survey with a critical capability only surpassed by my friend, Jayme Von Cupcake, on her blog, The Confection Confessions...


Here were my main praises about our company café:

1. My girl Miss V.  She's the best cook ever because she puts up with me.
2. Baked desserts are made from scratch and quite good.  You get cream cheese frosting instead of cheap whipping.  Cookies taste like home made.
3. Fresh baked breads are always good.
4. Freshly-made seasoned potato chips are to-die-for
5. Availability of fresh take away snacks, premium soft drinks, coffees, and teas
6. Availability of healthy snacks, including lower fat and carb alternatives

Now here's where I let them have it...

1. Provide basic government nutritional information for your food.  
2. Pay attention to your to-go items. I have gotten one of your over-priced spoiled drinks in the refrigerated case more than twice.
3. STOP putting PORK in the vegetables and soup.  Have you noticed how many people are from India and the Middle East that work here?  Have you noticed how overweight some of the locals are that work here?  It's a bad idea and I think it sucks.
4. Do you really have to make a soup every day that either uses meat stock or a cream base?  They're really greasy.  I bet everyone would enjoy a nice vegetable or tomato soup once in a bit.  It would be a healthier soup choice.
5. Offer low-fat sour cream and cheese.  I know you can because you offer low-fat salad dressing and mayo.
6. Offer low-fat breakfast items that aren't loaded with sugar
7. Keep to-go portion of the cafe open til at least 5pm.  It's not fair to keep an ice cream freezer in that gets locked at 1:30

The Cube-a-door

It is with great sadness that I must report the demise of one of my favorite things...my cube door.

I was then disheartened to learn that the guys at cubedoor.com don't appear to be in business any longer. So I turned to my trusty web-browser and found an exceptable substitute...

I wonder if anyone has ever tried this?  It looks way simpler than the sideways shutter-mounted piece from the other company.  Plus, it offers free shipping.   I think I'm gonna try it out.

Before I even reach the door...

Dear Security at Work,

Could I please have a few minutes of your time?

With a decrease in the “available” parking spots for able-bodied, non-pregnant employees, it irritates me to no end to see this when I come to work in the morning.  Surely this person has issues parking?  I can’t imagine someone being this arrogant.  Will you please locate this employee and remind him/her of our policy?

If you like this post, you may find this one entertaining, too:
http://workdusoleil.blogspot.com/2011/04/pregnant-ladies-are-not-disabled.html

Some of my favorite things at work: The Cube Door

My cubicle is my home away from home. I find it rude when someone just walks right in and interrupts me.  Why not seek out a product to help you establish a boundary and keep you on task?

The answer is a cube door. Yes, my cube has a door!  This invention has been around for almost 10 years and it was such a good idea, they frequently run out of models.  I also noticed that they have decided to move their manufacturing to the United States (not America, but the USA, they mean different things) and for this I give them 2 thumbs up, but don't just take it from me...

Everyone will love this at your office!  For that reason, I have to warn you that once you put this up; there will be an initial influx of inquiries.

"Where did you get that?"

"Are you busy!?!  Haha!"

"I want one"

Those were some of the comments my co-workers made to me.  But, restrain yourself from the obvious no-shit-sherlock responses.  It's pretty self-explanatory what it means and they'll get it eventually. All of the responses I have received at work have been positive, all the way up to the VP level.  I definitely recommend you get one and keep yourself focused on work instead of spending your days recovering from interruptions.

They are around $18 each.  Next on my search...is a roof for my cube...

No trolls allowed

troll
VERB: trolled, troll·ing, trolls
VERB: tr.
Slang To patrol (an area) in search for someone or something:

One day I was working on a project and I noticed a new manager trolling around my desk.  Now keeping trolls away has always been one of my specialties.  When it comes to keeping trolls out, I've used a combination of tools, mean looks, and frank call-outs to keep those little suckers at bay.

Among the tools, my favorites are the headphones and the wall.  Headphones are just the thing to make you look super busy at work.  It either says, "Shh, I'm on a meeting" or "I'm really focused right now, don't bother me".  If you work for a while with headphones on, you'll notice that people are super cautions about interrupting you...even the trolls.  Even if the troll is nervous about responding to you, you don't want to ignore him.  If you ignore him, he might walk in your cube and tap you on the shoulder.  Eeew.  That then makes it necessary to use the wall.  Any type of wall will do.  You can shut your office door, request facilities make your cube wall higher, purchase a cube door, or just put a chair in your doorway with a sign on it that says you're working on something for your boss.  Personally, I use the cube door, and my boss loves it.  Don't be afraid to state your boundaries!

Alas, there will come a time when you have to get out of your cube for a break, or a meeting...will he be waiting?  If either of your two cube neighbors have left the area, he will be waiting.  Why?  Because he's a limp-dicked punk.  He doesn't want anyone to hear what he has to say to you.

"I just want you to know that you're looking very nice today, and it is very much appreciated."

Eeew! How gross.  Only my BOSS should appreciate my professional appearance, and I don't think that's what he was appreciating.  How about, "Nice shoes" or "That's a pretty color" like everyone else does.  Something told me this was more of a habit this dude had developed over time and the words he didn't choose in this case told me more about his personality than the words he did choose.

Consequently, I told a trusted woman outside of work and asked what she would do.  I indicated I would NOT go to HR about this because that kind of move has always ended badly for anyone I've known who did it.  She mentioned that I was likely not his only target.  Notice I don't use the word victim here.  I am not a victim.  I'm   just grossed out and repulsed at this troll that won't leave me alone and to top it all off, I'm pissed off because I have work to do and I don't have time to mess with this crap.

One day, I see the troll-man sitting at our administrative assistant's desk. Our admin is an older Puerto Rican lady with a thick New York accent.  I politely wait for him to leave and I sent her an email asking the man's name.  And, as any secretary worth her salt would do, she tried work the details out of me.  Like I said, I really didn't want the issue spread around as gossip, so I just told her there was a potential matter for HR, but I needed to know his name before I cold address it.

It was then that this Long-Island Latina let loose! I wasn't alone! She apparently had enough of his crap about a week before I said something to her and she told him off but good.

"You are way out of line, mister.  A married man like you shouldn't be going around the office paying attention to single ladies!"

Well who though it? She was one of his targets, too!  After that, the troll-man hasn't said so much as hello to me.  I still have a lot of work to do, but now I don't have to feel so gross about a scrawny little married man passing judgement on my attire with naughty insinuations.  Trolls out there, don't try it.  My secretary will kick your ass.

(used from funnyjunk.com)

If you want to brainwash me at work...

Then give me some good drugs or a free fitness membership at Lifetime Fitness, because you won't get me to do Corporate Drumming, willingly.  I am a DBA.  I am impervious to emotional appeals and Pavlovian conditioning.

If you haven't ever heard of Corporate Drumming, I'd consider yourself lucky.  It's one of those team-building exercises that starts with a "Leader" that is usually a musician who has so much energy that he must have been mainlining coffee and nicotine in the company basement for a few days.  This is not your typical, small-on-talk, just-provides-the-beat combo drummer.  This is a hired brainwasher that is there morph you into a conglomerate amorphous mass of sound, drowning out the sound of our own heartbeat.  Remember this...there will be a speech to follow.

Don't let my condescending remarks about the drummer fool you.  These are usually pretty good musicians and make a good display of talent to get you cheering and clapping for their performance.  Honestly, good drum combos are rare, and these guys are usually really good.  Once they get you clapping it's like the old salesman's trick of asking you a question you'll say, "Yes," to. Then they try to get you clapping in sync.  If you get to this point, you're past the point of turning away and leaving the brainwashing session.

Don't use the "I forgot my drum" excuse, because you'll notice they've already provided them for you.  I have been a musician for years, and I've never been provided with a free instrument.  This immediately made me suspicious to walk into a room of free drums.  Once again, it's the old salesman's trick of placing something shiny in front of you that you will touch, so he can lay his line on you.  And if you're worried about sounding bad, they've already thought of that for you.  The audio will be jacked up so loud, that you can't really hear yourself think, much less drum.

Then once they have you worked up into a frenzy, drumming the crap out of yourself...they lay the company line on you that they want to you to tow.  I must admit it's a new implementation of the "Bandwagon" tactic of advertising.  A company must fulfill its objectives and are responsible for empowering their employees to do so.  They want to make money and we want to have jobs.

So what's my beef?  They are using MUSIC to mimic the dynamics of orchestrating a business environment.  If this is so true, then why aren't musicians some of the richest 1% of our society like our business owners in the USA?  It's a fallacy of false cause.  Just because your employees are drumming doesn't mean you have control of your business environment.  And just because you have control over your business environment, doesn't mean you have a group of undiscovered drummer savants in the wings of your accounting department.

Music is special to me.  It's also a form of self expression.  Being forced to participate in crap like this makes me feel like I did when they let all the kids finger-paint blobs and call it art in kindergarten after my artist grandma taught me to watercolor trees and flowers.  Corporate America - you were doing much better with trying to get your employees to work out and eat better.  You might want to go back to that for better results.

Pregnant Ladies are not Disabled

Crippled people are disabled.  My father had Muscular Dystrophy.  That's a chronic, debilitating disease that caused him pain every step he took his whole life.  That's why the disabled get to park at the front of businesses.

For some reason, this office has decided that pregnant girls have a problem getting into the building.  Funny, I don't see someone come out to the car and place them in a wheelchair like they do for the lady in tech support who is a paraplegic.

The last time I had to take a parking spot on the back row, I walked in with a mouth full of dirt, covered in grass that blew into my face from the corn field next to us.  I was pissed to see two empty expectant mother spaces right up front.  In fact, these spaces have been empty every day for the past 2 months.  If this company can't get enough parking spaces for the regular folk, then I vote those extra 2 "expectant mother" spots can go.  Last time I checked, we get to work from home and the company will pay your Internet bill.

Timing...

OMFG - I just had to explain to a project manager why its better to keep repeatable scripts in a file rather than email the commands around for a project.  < head desk >

Shoulda waited a few minutes to make that last entry in order to find something funny in the day!

Method in the Madness

I had this goofy professor in college, Dr W., I'll call him.  The students who took his class often referred to his class as the "Dog and Pony Show" because the lectures were of absolutely no use to the class of about 75 students.  The homework assignments were a different story, though.

Dr. W. taught the senior-level program debugging course.  Apparently my college thought I'd be doing a lot of debugging in my career.  Dr. W was a man who obviously had red hair before it went grey and always had rosy cheeks.  I always got the impression he had long ago given up on trying to keep up with technology, so he allowed his students to teach him all the new cool stuff.

Dr. W was famous for placing intentional mistakes in his programs that he gave the class to work on.  He'd change a zero to the capital letter O, or switch a number one to a lower case l, then tell us to find the error and run the program.  He told us to expect stupid mistakes, the kind you don’t think to look for, like that in the real world, and man was he right.

When I thought about his teaching method, it was really more like the way my dad taught me how to drive.  He just put me in the driver’s seat, taught me about inertia, then told me to expect another driver to do something absolutely moronic and I'd be fine.  So that's how I got taught to fix code at work...by expecting something moronic at every turn.

So, when I get called to get on an all-nite call with the VP of operations.  You better believe I start looking for what stupid stuff got done.  Honestly, I usually check myself first, AND, you'd think everyone else would self-check but they don't.  That's when I found it.  50Gigs of missing memory, making the server slow because some sysadmin decided to "leave a little on the side for another project" he didn't specify what.  

ARRRGH!  Thanks for a week of pulling my hair out because someone decided to "set something on the side" for himself without telling anyone.

I wish I could make this funny, since my journal is supposed to be comedy and all.  Maybe it will come to me after I'm not so mad any more... :(

I have a client who is driving me nuts...

Thank you jetgirl for the contribution to the content today. ;-)

Anyone who has ever run a business where you serve a client has run into this one.  Working in I.T. is no exception.  Have you ever had a client who, shortly in to the project, starts doing things like this ?

• initiates contact by talking about price first - of course that is the only driving factor in a good business deal, right ?
• always want to talk on the phone - how dare you try to multi-task ?
• constantly changes requirements - this makes me want to get sick
• imposes emergencies on you - that's what lazy people do when they want someone else to do work for them, fast.
• complains about other vendors or clients he/she's worked with - shows an overall disregard for professionalism.

What you've got is a problem client my dearies.  What I typically have done to keep these people away from me, is over-quote them.  If they realize how much it actually costs to do the work they need, they are most-likely going to bail.  (Folks who start out by asking about price are concerned with paying as little as possible and you'll most-likely end up doing free one-offs and hating yourself at the end of the project.    )

But what do you do if you really need the money ?

Seriously, how do you manage get the coffee you want when you order?

Q: "Can you help me identify what user X is trying to do?"

A: "Check now"

Q: "Try again, that answer sucks?"

This is what happens when you don't do your own homework

I knew sitting in close proximity to the contractor dungeon at work was going to encourage more drive-by activity. A drive by is when another co-worker sneaks up on you in your cube with the goal of getting you to do his work by disguising it in the form of a "question".

I hate these type of approaches.  It makes me have to stop all 4 or 5 different things I'm working on at the moment and do only ONE thing, for someone else.  It also tells me that you aren't articulate enough to express your question in writing.

So in the contractor dungeon, there was this one little guy that seemed to be pretty much high maintenance.  He seemed to operate by drive-by's alone.  It obviously isn't working for him, because I saw him drop and re-create the same databases a total of 4 times.

The questions he started sending us really made him look stupid.  He managed to cut and paste the error message into an email, but obviously didn't even read the message because it told him how to fix the problem he was having.

Then later on in the same day, he started complaining about not being able to get the proper permissions to create databases....when he had already done it 4 times, remember.  Turns out, he was fat-fingering the login.  < head on desk >

So this guy gets so frustrated later in the day, that he sends my team an email asking us to just walk over to his cube, login with our administrative id, and create his databases for him.  That was about all I could take of his high-maintenance ass.

I emailed him back, copying everyone he worked with and told him what he was asking me to do was unethical, and that beyond that, his constant bugging us was rude and disruptive and that he needed to do his own work.

And do you know what?  I didn't even get in trouble.

So, the moral of the story is, when you get through college by paying people to do your homework for you, you look like a douche in the real world and you get bitched at.

Man, that's Stucked Up

"The loads are stucked up," I read.

WTF?

"The loads are stucked up."

What the heck does that mean?  Was it naughty?  Was it a type-o ?  Only one of the many ciphers I'll have to sort out today while receiving emails from people who don't know English very well.  Despite living and working in the United States, I was some what of a minority at the workplace.  Me, a white girl.

But it is not my differences that make up the story I will tell.  This story-telling is a trip through the rabbit hole into the world of I.T. and it can get pretty "stucked up"  uh, I mean fucked up.

I looked back at the email with the curious title, and I realized it was a non-native English speaker's attempt to use an euphemism.  How cute. On to the next email...

Oh joy.  It looks like I will be working again this weekend.  It won't be a question of if I'll need medication to get through the week, the question will be what kind.  I'm slowly loosing my mind, one deployment at a time.