A conference call is a lonely place.
Since it’s all on the phone,
Not face to face.
At least you can do other crap.
While this may sound rude,
It’s more useful than a nap.
You can’t just drop the line,
Since there will be a beep,
And that’s an obvious sign.
You should put your phone on mute.
In case you loudly snore,
Or play the flute.
Just listen for your name,
Always be ready to reply,
Or you will get the blame.
Volunteering is a wonderful human trait.
You help others for no expected return.
You do feel good about yourself.
More importantly, someone gets helped.
Someone could be a person or an animal.
I live with a volunteer, in fact.
Anything needs rescuing?
Anything needs cooking?
Anything needs watching?
Anything at all?
She’s got it covered.
She’s on it.
This can be quite painful.
I am the spouse of a volunteer.
The military term is “in the cross-fire.“
If anything goes amiss, I will hear about it.
I may even be blamed for it.
If nothing else, I will be impacted.
The military term is “slight negative impact.”
Like a bomb hitting the wrong house.
Oops.
This seems unfair.
So many people do good in the world.
Some do a little, some do a lot.
There are lots of people needing help, as well.
So, maybe it’s time to let someone new step up.
So, I beg you (again.)
The next time an opportunity arises.
The next time you can jump in and save the day.
Do one thing for me.
Shut up.
When you are young,
Nothing comes slower than Christmas.
Assuming you are Christian,
And your parents buy you gifts.
(Santa may or may not be involved.)
When you are older,
Nothing comes slower than summer.
Assuming you go to school,
And your parents don’t make you work.
When you are a grown-up,
Nothing comes slower than vacation,
And you need a day off beforehand to plan,
And a couple of days off afterwards to relax.
So, when you book your vacation,
Make sure you have days on either side blocked.
Otherwise you end up with 5pm meetings,
Conference calls, and other stresses.
I am probably going to need vacation,
To recover from my vacation.
But I can’t afford to be away that long.
That is stressful in itself.
Vacations should not cause stress.
But they usually do.
I miss summer.
I miss Christmas.
I’m late for a meeting.
“A sense of urgency” is MBA-speak.
It often seems like an empty phrase,
Simply meant to build team motivation.
Then, you find people who are missing it.
Ouch.
Work sucks sometimes.
Well, most of the time.
That’s why it’s called “work”,
Rather than “play” or “candy.”
This is an important lesson.
I’m coming very close to having
To use a phrase in the office
That I never wanted to use.
One reserved for dire emergencies.
My wife will think this means
I am about to curse at someone.
(Technically, cursing is calling God down to do harm.
I usually just drop f-bombs. I don’t really expect to have sex.)
I’m not going to curse, although I would feel better.
I’m not going to imply someone should sleep with other species.
I am just going to have to take a deep breath, and say,
“Suck it up, buttercup. The deadline is today.”
I lost my sense of urgency for a while once.
I found it when I heard my boss coming down the hall.
(As Douglas Adams said, “I love deadlines. I like the
whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”)
A sense of urgency doesn’t mean killing yourself,
But it does mean a day’s worth of work takes a day.
If it takes a week or more, you might not have a
Very strong sense of urgency.
You might just be distracted. Or multitasking.
However, I don’t’ think that’s always the case.
Most times, you’ve just lost your sense of urgency.
Did you look under your chair?
Woof. Woof. Woof.
Oh. God. No. It’s Monday.
Four out of five dogs are asleep.
One Shih-Tzu without a snooze button.
I did not have enough fun this weekend
To explain feeling this bad right now.
How am I hung-over without drinks?
Time to find my motivation.
A shower always helps.
Except on Mondays.
On Mondays, it just makes you damp.
Maybe I should work at home.
Let’s see. It’s ten after seven.
Meetings start at nine.
So, I’m already late for work.
I hate Dallas traffic.
I would just call in sick, but
I’m not in third grade anymore,
And Mom wouldn’t come make soup.
(She didn’t last Monday, anyway.)
Spousal Unit just reminded me
That her first appointment is at noon.
She will be back in bed before I leave.
I will poison her coffee on the way out.
It’s time to go.
One day next week, I’m changing jobs. I’ll be moving back to Developer Relations from my current technical sales job.
I was never meant to be in sales. In a way, I’m surprised I survived as long in technical sales as I did. I took the job because two people I trust recommended that I do so, but I really didn’t get what I expected.
I’m a geek. I admit it. I keep score at baseball games. My favorite part of a cruise is mapping the captured GPS coordinates when I get home. I love computers because they will do something repeatedly if you take the time to teach them to do it once. I love programming – I always have. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more pure programming jobs I could apply to do – without relocating, anyway.
I finally realized today why I would never fit well into a sales organization – this story happened a long time ago, back when I was a real programmer. I’m surprised I didn’t recall it until today, although my brain may have been trying to protect me from the knowledge. It’s a warning to anyone in a technical field that thinks sales looks like fun – not a warning to never do it, just a warning that the mindset is completely different, so be prepared.
I was working for a company that sold a Lotus Notes-based customer relationship management system – my job title was “consultant”, and my actual job was to customize the system for each specific customer. In this case, our customer was a heavy equipment manufacturer. We went to one of their largest dealers to ask the staff what features they required in a CRM system, besides what we already had.
Two of the interviews stand out – the parts manager who ran the depot and the senior sales manager. I talked to the parts manager, and his suggestion was to add an inventory of all the equipment that the customer owned, so when he looked at a customer’s record, he could easily find what they had, which told him what parts they might need. This sounded like a reasonable request to me – in fact, once I heard it, I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.
The sales manager said that would be nice, but what he really needed was a section for the customer’s secretary’s name, her birthday and what type of flowers she liked.
That’s the key difference between technical and sales. Technical is concerned with the problems that may need to be solved and how to solve them. Sales is concerned about accessing the right person and schmoozing them.
I can schmooze with the best of them when absolutely required, but I really don’t want it to be the centerpiece of my job.
I’d rather talk to machines than people. They talk back less.
Full disclosure – I’m divorced and have alienated any number of people over the years, so I’m certainly not an expert at relationships (even though my second marriage has lasted four times longer than my first so far – although it may end when someone special reads this post.)
That said, there is one relationship I simply don’t understand at all – that of a woman and her cleaning lady. First of all, I hope “cleaning lady” is PC, I think they used to be called maids and before that, they were servants.
First, cleaning ladies strike fear in women’s hearts. Ask yourself this – do men snake all the pipes and replace washers before the plumber arrives? Do men replace fuses and make sure all the wiring is straight before the electrician arrives? Of course not – that’s why you hire a professional. So, why is it mandatory to pre-clean the house before the cleaning lady arrives?
Contrary to their ability to strike fear, cleaning ladies also seem to be confidantes. I do not know any male who has invited their plumber or electrician to their wedding, but I can think of at least one woman who invited her cleaning lady, and I know one woman who hosted her cleaning lady’s wedding.
Every time I hear about the relationship between a woman and her cleaning lady, I flash back to an old Seinfeld episode, where Jerry starts sleeping with his maid, and it turns out she’s really a hooker. She also starts doing less and less work, which may be a more critical point from the male perspective. Sex is fine, but those curtain rods aren’t going to dust themselves.
When men complain about the costs of a cleaning lady, the counter argument is usually that the current one is worth the money and a cleaning service (e.g. an anonymous cleaning lady with no connection to the woman of the house) would be much more expensive. The secondary argument is that if someone were paid to actually clean the entire house, then the woman of the house would have to pre-clean properly in advance. (“I admit it. The house is cluttered. How could someone possibly clean it?”) What?
My one theory is that a man should just cancel the cleaning lady and then tell his Spousal Unit that the cleaning lady has been rescheduled to the next day. Then, the Spousal Unit will frantically pre-clean the house in preparation.
The other issue – where I am not alone – is that the cleaning lady puts things where she thinks they belong, even if it should be intuitively obvious where they belong. “Let’s see, I have a clean glass. Here is a cabinet with 337 glasses in it. So, I guess this glass belongs in the cabinet on the other side of the kitchen with the plates. Also, all the husband’s shaving equipment is lined up neatly by the bathroom sink. It must belong in the drawer under the other side of the sink beneath the tampons, or perhaps in the closet in the other bathroom.”
As a man wiser than I once said, “The cleaning lady comes every two weeks and it takes me two weeks to find the stuff she put away.” (I would quote him directly, but I’m protecting the innocent.)
I am not friends with my plumber or my mechanic. There is a part of me that would like to discuss my Spousal Unit’s failure to get excited about my new blog (and my inability to tell her why this really hurts) while my mechanic is watching the oil drain from my car, but I don’t think he likes being distracted. Also, I have no idea what his name is, which makes it harder to confide my true feelings in him.
If I had one of my friends helping me with work around the house, I would be paying in beer and pizza, not cash. They probably wouldn’t expect a clean area to work in, either. Mainly because they live alone, and they don’t have cleaning ladies.
Unfiltered Thoughts 