Category: Work

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I'm Ashamed to Admit…

…that I totally unaware of "ze" and its variations.

This was from a required diversity training at work. I was surprised to learn things I hadn't known previously and scored 100% on the final test.

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There's a Lot Of Freedom In Not Giving a Fuck

From Sixbears in the Woods:

How much of your activity is constrained by following stupid rules? Quite a bit, I bet.

I used to work with a fellow firefighter who was an inspiration. They guy liked driving the ladder truck. He was good at it and enjoyed that level of responsibility. With that in mind he never went for promotions. The guy also didn't care about impressing the officers above him. If he didn't want to do something he didn't do. For some reason the officers feared him. My coworker never abused that power, so the few times he used it stood out.

The Fire Chief made a rule that nobody could wash their car at work. That was something that usually happened on the night shift when times were slow. On a quiet night sometimes someone would bring their car into the basement and give it a quick hose down. My ladderman buddy never washed his car -ever. That is, until the rule against it was made. He pulled his car in front of the station in the middle of the day and washed it in plain view of everybody. The chief looked at that and quietly asked him to wash his car in the back from now on. That ended the no car wash rule.

My friend wasn't afraid of getting fired so those threats had no hold over him. He had a pretty enjoyable employment and stayed until retirement. The man taught me the value of living without fear and not giving a F**k.

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Training

The boss's boss (whom I not-so-affectionately refer to as Ephalba) has a lady boner for Professional Development and ongoing training. When she first came on board a year ago she made it quite clear that our department had been very lax in that regard and that things were going to change. So, within a matter of weeks, a new edict was handed down that we were to all sign up for training (of some kind) at least twice a year going forward to "grow our careers."

I think I let out an audible groan.  Bitch, I am 28 months from retirement.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I thought I could definitely use some improvement with my Adobe Photoshop skills, as well as learning Illustrator (I've always been fascinated by it but never had the time or—to be completely honest—the level of concentrated interest to actually sit down and learn it. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do both.

I presented my proposal, and while my immediate boss was all for it, the Wicked Witch shot it down. "These classes need to be job-related."

(a) You said any training, and (b) what about this whole "grow your careers" bullshit?

My boss argued that this was a skillset that could be used across the organization and—should I choose to move to a different department at some point—they would come in handy.

Ephalba was having none of it.

It's no wonder that before she took over the department I actually looked forward to going to work (albeit from home, but that's another story), and now I dread it.

So I looked through the offered Microsoft classes and thought, "What can I skate through and get that bitch off my back?"

And it screamed out at me: MD-100 Windows Client

Yeah, software I've been using since version 2.1 on a IBM XT clone running DOS.

While I"m sure she would've preferred I take something like Sharepoint or Powershell classes, she didn't balk at this. After all, I am Desktop Support.

The class (all online, thankfully) was two weeks ago. It lasted 5 days. And I hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed myself. Did I learn anything I didn't know before? Actually yes—because while the class ostensibly was for Windows 10, most everything was done in the Windows 11 environment, of which I'm only just now becoming familiar, having loaded it on my work laptop a couple months ago. (Something by the way, I'm shocked as hell that main ITS hasn't chastised me for.)

The instructor was good. He was funny. He was engaging. And while a lot of what I learned couldn't be used—either because we aren't officially on Windows 11 yet, or because main ITS has our environment so locked down that all the cool stuff can't even be accessed—it was a worthwhile experience. And it kept me home for the entire week and suspended all my usual work tasks.

In fact, I enjoyed this instructor so much I signed up for his next online class, MD-101 Managing Modern Desktops, in December, which will be another week-long reprieve from my usual crap…and fulfill Ephalba's "two classes per year" requirement.

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A Work Week From Hell

Three more years. Just keep telling yourself it's only three more years until retirement.

You may have noticed that the blog has been relatively quiet this week.

On Monday (one of my two weekly work from home days) I was greeted by this email from my immediate supervisor:

Fellas, this week might be a bit challenging as I will be out of the office starting tomorrow for shoulder surgery and B. is out the whole week with some personal health and some significant primary residence issues.  It would be best if you guys could come into the office as much as possible this week so we have in office coverage.  I will ask L. to send out an email to staff about limited IT support this week but I'll let you guys coordinate what you can on in office coverage for what works best for you two.  Definitely going to need you both to step up a bit more this week while we are so limited on team resources and staff being out.

Mark, you will be in charge of all desktop support and coverage tasking C. where and when you need assistance for things you need help on (F. may be able to assist on some things as well, just communicate any needs clearly).  C. has a very full plate too with coverage on projects and application/system support (SharePoint SPO migration for August go live is a big one) F. can also provide support with communication and follow through on SPO and other things as they come up.  Just keep her posted on what you need help with. 

C. will be in charge this week and I have delegated control to him for while I will be out. FYI  please check in with C. for all supervisory matters while I'm out of the office, as he is the boss this week.

If anything major comes up or you have issues anywhere please keep L. in the loop and she will give guidance on how to proceed or handle.

We all have our professional crosses to bear, and B. has been mine—especially over the last few months.

Since May, he has taken a two week vacation (because apparently his adult daughter is incapable of driving across country by herself), returned to work for a week, followed by another two week vacation "building a deck" for said daughter in Florida, followed by one week back at work, and lastly followed by yet another week-long vacation spent on a cruise. Each of those vacations were augmented by a spur-of-the-moment extra day tacked on one or both ends of his official time off.

We're a small team, and when even one of us is gone, it affects all of us. But with B. being gone for these extended periods, and now, most recently gone cruising for a week followed by yet another week-long absence has left me stressed to the point where I know I will be getting sick—for realz—sometime within the next week. I know that simply because I know how my body deals with this kind of stress.

We normally have about 50 work-in-progress tickets on any given day, constantly churning as some are knocked out only to be replaced by new ones. Some are easy and some require more expertise than just any one of us on our own possesses.

This past week, the ticket count has been consistently hovering over 120, with fully half of those open or not even acknowledged because we simply do not have the manpower.

Even before the clusterfuck that B's serial vacations created, it was commonly acknowledged that we needed at least more more technician, but what did they do? They hired a fucking project manager (F. in the email from my boss) who doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day operations of I.T. in our department.

Adding to the clusterfuck that was this past week, after a period of six months where we were unable to order any new equipment from Dell because of contract issues, everything was resolved and the backlog of requests were finally ordered and they started pouring in over the past three weeks. Everything's been sitting in our lab awaiting imaging and deployment because, again—we don't have the manpower to deal with any of it.

So midweek, someone in their infinite wisdom decided to call upon the talents of a not-official-but-knows-I.T. person working in another division in our department to help with the imaging of the equipment since I—who usually handle this task—was absolutely inundated with trouble tickets and break/fix requests.

Okay, the guy may know I.T. stuff, but he didn't know how we did things, so an entire day was spent—pulled away from the tasks that were already bearing down on me—to get him up to speed on how we got equipment ready to go out. Every task in the process was met with a question. And when he wasn't questioning why something was done in a particular manner, he was just constantly trying to engage me in pointless conversation.

LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE TO CONCENTRATE ON MY OWN WORK YOU CUNT!

"You don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…you don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…you don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…" became my mantra this week.

If all this weren't enough, it seemed that even the most basic of procedures—things that would normally take a few moments at most to accomplish—were taking hours because nothing was working.

I found myself uttering, "because of course it doesn't" or "because of course it does" more times than I care to mention.

Wednesday I came home and did something I haven't done for more than a decade. I sat on the sofa, chatted with Ben for a few minutes and then went upstairs and crashed. I slept until around 9:30 when I got up, came back downstairs, ate a bowl of cereal, and went back to bed for the night an hour later.

Both my boss and B. have been curiously silent in our group chat this week, and at this point I won't be the least bit surprised if we get another email on Monday telling us that he and B. are both going to be out for another week. I took my laptop home this afternoon and will be treating Monday as a WFH day—just like this past week—even if that dreaded email arrives.