Weekend!
I’m sure you’ve seen the meme about not knowing why IT guys are paid hanging in or near your local IT guy’s cube.
The gist of it is this:
Everything is going well: Management yells “What in the heck do we pay you for?” at the IT guy.
Something breaks: Management yells “What in the heck do we pay you for?” at the IT guy.
Like most cartoons that people post up on their cubicle walls, it’s vaguely self-serving, but we had a situation at work a few months back where the IT guy for another department up and moved on after getting too much hassle from management about never doing anything (new company, same job, more money) and about half of the scripts that he wrote stopped working after the second set of patches installed by his replacement. So his replacement spends all of his time being harried because he’s now doing manually what the previous guy’s scripts used to do automatically and it takes him 5 times as long to, for example, set up a new hire’s account.
But he always looks busy, which keeps management off his back.
In a similar vein, we had the culmination of 8 weeks of absolutely insane prep and hard work pay off today when we reached the next major milestone on The Big Project a couple of days early. We’re not *DONE* done, but we’ve reached the point where we can walk away and tell the users “if something breaks, call this number” instead of “no, you can’t touch it yet”. Which means that we finished this on the day before Friday.
Which means that tomorrow will be appear to be a “What in the heck do we pay you for?” from a distance, if you didn’t take into account that, a couple of months ago, we’d scheduled tomorrow to look like yesterday.
Which then means that we’ll slide pleasantly into the upcoming weekend and be able to say stuff like “I’m going to be a hair late on Monday” rather than “I’m fixing to show up a half hour early for the meeting in which one person will say the wrong thing and I’ll open my mouth to object and management will make the ‘don’t worry about it, don’t say anything’ hand gesture before being told to get back to the thing I normally do.”
So I’m going to bunker down this weekend and just get prepared to get some presents for the nephew who turns… 16? That can’t be right…
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
It’s going to be so fishing hot (seriously: high today of 109) that I think all I CAN do is stay in my house, with the blinds drawn, and pray the power doesn’t go out/my AC doesn’t croak.
People ask me why I don’t like summer. THIS is why I don’t like summer. The interstate south of me – where I would drive were I going to go have fun – is buckling in the heat.Report
@fillyjonk
I’m with you. We have already started our mental countdown to autumn in our house. I find that by aggressively thinking about pumpkin spice and falling leaves, I can almost tolerate summer. Almost.Report
I’ve started knitting scarves, fingerless gloves, etc. And I’m looking longingly at my sweater patterns…it happens every mid-July even though I know it will be mid-October before it’s cool enough to need anything like that.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8PzhNuh7wReport
We’re in the middle of re-structuring our work group, which is going to create a ton of new work for us that is more in-line with our core competencies. In the meantime, I also find myself trying to look busy a few times per week. So much easier when the boss’ boss is on vacation. He leaves for 2 weeks after today. Woot-woot!Report
“We’re in the middle of re-structuring our work group, which is going to create a ton of new work for us that is more in-line with our core competencies.”
Did you bubble it up to the 10K foot view and then let it trickle back down for greater synergy? (Sorry, the wife and I often use CorpSpeak to babble at each other. Whoever can do it longer wins.)Report
LOL. I have been put in charge of crafting the new mission statement. So far the input I have gotten talks a lot about ‘strategic partnerships’ and solution-driven projects’. I will say, it’s a good opportunity to re-focus our efforts. My group has become a catch-all for projects no one else wants to take on. While I enjoy the diversity, it’s not really what we do best and as a result we no longer have adequate time for the things were actually supposed to be doing.Report
@jaybird I am not sure it is right, actually, I thought he was turning 17…. hmm….
Anyway, what Jaybird said with a side of “I overdid things having 2 14+ hours of being on the go this week and it’s hot (not fillyjonk’s awfulness of hot, thank goodness). That said, one of my meds makes me feel like it’s about 95 when it’s 75, so y’all can imagine what 95 feels like. Blech. I just want to lie down with ice packs, directly in front of the bedroom air conditioner, and stare at the ceiling until I feel cold again.Report
I’m on a med that increases my risk of getting heatstroke so summer is double plus ungood. I USED to be a field biologist.
Now my plan is to do research I can do in the fall, even if it means I’m essentially double-booking myself (teaching AND fieldwork) and am tired all the time from trying to do it all.Report
@fillyjonk Yeah, I’m actually purportedly supposed to Avoid All Direct Sun as well, for risk of heatstroke and allergic reactions, due to another med. (I swear, these meds are more help than they are side effects! Much more. But it’s still vexing.)
In the summer, I find myself mostly following that directive, though I’m terrible at it in spring and fall and end up wiping myself out and/or getting bizarre rashes due to my lack of following said directive. Because OUTSIDE. It sings to me.
Once the temp goes over 80 degrees though, I am the most meek, compliant, wilted patient they ever will see. Well, 95 percent of the time anyway. *looks sheepishly at bizarre rash on her left wrist from not shading herself adequately in the car the other day*
As a field biologist manque myself (well, really the people who were pushing the hardest to recruit me were the game wardens, but I had a secret yen for Malaysian rainforest work… this was back before I had any meds or a need for em… )…. I can imagine how deeply it must suck for you to be curtailed in that way 🙁 And doing field research WHILE teaching is the worst.
Many sympathies to you.Report
17?!?
Goodness gracious.Report
Mostly I think it will be festival decompression from the last weekend-for-the-family / week-for-me. It was a whole lot of work, a whole lot of fun, and I have a tan now (!)
Main task will be putting the house back together – before we left for the festival, fledermaus decided she was sick of a messy bedroom, so removed ALL the things from the bedroom to the living room. Things are now only allowed back in the bedroom after individual inspection and decision-to-keep. But the living room is about two feet deep in stuff across its entire surface.Report
I’m glad I’m the proletariat, or maybe outer party.
I don’t get paid a lot, but the work is benign and the boss is a good guy. Everyone in the office are good people. We’re just expected to do our job without being hassled with “Why am I paying you” nonsense.Report
@professor-esperanto All of Jaybird’s coworkers and bossen are good people and he’s never been asked that by anyone who is actually his boss other than in jest (at this job, anyway). Sadly customers / co-contractors are not always so gracious.Report
This weekend is one of the more obscure Jewish holy days, one that most Jews do not even celebrate, Tisha B’Av. In English this literally means the Ninth of Av. It is a fast day that observes the destruction of the First and Second Temples and many other calamities that befell the Jews. The traditional observance is too fast, sit on the floor while wearing sackcloth and ashes while reciting from the Book of Lamentations.Report
Also the weekend of the Feast of the Prophet Daniel.
We need fewer Nebuchadnezzars. Or, at least, for them to be beasts for shorter periods of time.
I mean, no religion.Report
I’ve had lamentations on 9th Avenue.Report
I’ll be in class of course, and then cleaning my office, putting away cameras, etc. post vacation.
Might clean something too.Report