Why are people stupid?
By Katie Brown
It really is no wonder that I have been praised by my supervisors for my ability to complete tasks correctly and on time. I have just had an epiphany and I have a sneaking suspicion that just about everyone I work with is stupid and lazy.
In the government world, there is a wonderful task called “CM.” This acronym can be used as a verb, as in the phrase “I’m CMing his work, and it sucks.” It can also be used as a noun, as in the phrase “I need you to do some CM on that project.” CM stands for Configuration Management, and for us lay men, means fixing peoples crappy work.
I have officially become the CM SME (Subject Matter Expert) for our team. This is a very unfortunate turn of events, because as it turns out, CMing sucks. I began to CM the work of someone who was integrally involved in developing the system of standards off which I am basing all my CM efforts. I thought that would mean that this person would actually follow the methodology we developed. Oh, such naïveté.
So now a job that is already delayed because the [expletive deleted] moron left some documents open, therefore unable to be edited by anyone else, before they left for vacation, is going to take 3 times as long as I thought. Why, oh why, are people so stupid?
A long story short, work is slightly frustrating, due to the stupidity of my coworkers. My relief comes from the following activities:
1. Listening to audiobooks on my iPod while CMing
2. Daily doses of Dilbert
3. Taking solace in the fact that I, unlike my coworkers, am not a lazy moron
Perhaps it is because I refuse to apply the phrase “good enough for government work” to any of the work I produce (which is ALL government work, by the way) that I almost daily receive an email from one of my (many) superiors praising my efficiency and dedication.
Dedication, pfft. I leave this place every day and don’t think about it until I walk through the doors the following morning. I refuse to take the advice of my coworkers to take engineering coursework at a local college to make myself more employable. If these dummies make up the rest of the work force, I will be employed forever.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
0745-0915 10 MAY 2011
I get a look from the security guard as he hears that I am listening to an audiobook and he rolls his eyes as I struggle to get my badge, roll down my window, and shift into first gear to inch up to him. In this job, I feel like I have to apologize for driving a manual transmission vehicle. He waves me through the gates with a “welcome back ma’am.” I park and march toward the door, leaving my cell phone in my car so as not to violate operational security. If I would have left it in my bag, nobody would ever know. Marching with me are 6 or 7 men in dress shirts tucked in. We walk zombie like through one door, then another, successfully sealing ourselves away from the beautiful 70 degree sunny day. I show a second security guard my badge, and get another “welcome back ma’am.”
It feels strange to be called ma’am by people old enough to be my parents. I make a conscious effort to call men “sir” and women “ma’am” in this building. It’s a nice homage to a more polite past, but it is the military’s present. Yesterday, I was walking with a colleague, a government civilian who was a helicopter pilot in the Air Force during Desert Storm. That is as much as I know about him, and I have worked closely with him for 6 months. Walking down the hall, a group of men saw him coming down the hall, said “attention” and froze, staring into space directly under my colleague’s line of sight. How do they know? I asked my colleague if he gets that often, probably an inappropriate question, but he knows I’m woefully out of touch with the ways of the US military. He said he used to get it a lot, back when he “was somebody.” I’m sure it’s strange for these men to go from being top dog to the point that people literally stop what they’re doing because you walk by or walk into a room. Our facility is specifically noted as a “no hat, no salute” location, but I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed someone freezing and standing at attention because of the presence of another individual.
It’s strange to me to treat people differently based on a rank they achieved. Even if they are in uniform and I can see their rank, I have trouble being nervous or acting differently simply because of a title. I choose to treat people as people first, and equally, and if they give me a reason to treat them better or worse, I’ll adjust as needed.
I pass through the door after waving my badge in front of a dark gray sensor on the wall and hearing it beep and click open. Sealed further from the beautiful day. My ex-cubemate used to say I had “pretty-day-itis” when I would leave early on pretty days and make up the hours on ugly ones. Said ex-cubemate moved out 3 weeks ago, working for another contractor at another military installation, doing something. I don’t really know what most people here do outside my own team. Then a second cubemate left. It is down to me and Mike, and I have no idea what he does here. We rarely share more than a “good morning” and a “have a good day/weekend.” This is another place where this job feels like a bad fit for me, as we spend 8 hours sitting 5 feet from each other, and never speak. Not that I’m the most social creature in the world, but I would like some friendly chit chat from time to time.
I take my lunch out of my bag and walk it to the freezer, plug my Common Access Card (CAC) into my computer, and type in my pin, agreeing to the statement that discourages me from using this computer for anything other than “mission critical” work, and informing me that my use of this machine is subject to being monitored. I read my emails, two, both calendar invites for meetings in June. I look at where they showed up on my calendar. I like days that look full. So many of my days here are empty.
At this point, I opened up this word document and began writing my thoughts. I have been listening to some beautifully descriptive books and reading my roommate’s “Pre-College English” papers he brought home to grade, and have been inspired to write, if only for the fact that I can do it well. Additionally, Matt Arnold inspired me with a facebook post that simply sang with creativity and big-word-itude, that it made me feel lax in the creativity department.
I look at my schedule for the day. I work on several different projects and see, unfortunately, that I only have one thing to work on today. Research. In college, I loved research. The purpose of doing the research in that case was tangible and real, it was to produce a paper, on which I would be graded, and in the process I will have learned a lot about the topic. The purpose of this research is a mystery to me. It is to produce a “systems interoperability matrix.” Basically, to annotate which Command and Control (C2) systems do what, and with which other systems they interface. Thrilling stuff, really. I can see the end result, but I don’t see how it will be useful. Several other people on our team have created “interoperability matrices” and we have them on our portal to look at as examples, but I am not sure if their matrices ever made an impact or were used… at all. From what I can tell, they were developed and now sit unused on our portal, collecting e-dust. They look nice, but they become irrelevant and the introduction of a new version. Basically, this is a long term project that I have zero motivation to finish.
Someone just heated up a breakfast treat in the microwave and it smells like bacon in here. It's officially time for my morning cup of tea and granola bar.
It feels strange to be called ma’am by people old enough to be my parents. I make a conscious effort to call men “sir” and women “ma’am” in this building. It’s a nice homage to a more polite past, but it is the military’s present. Yesterday, I was walking with a colleague, a government civilian who was a helicopter pilot in the Air Force during Desert Storm. That is as much as I know about him, and I have worked closely with him for 6 months. Walking down the hall, a group of men saw him coming down the hall, said “attention” and froze, staring into space directly under my colleague’s line of sight. How do they know? I asked my colleague if he gets that often, probably an inappropriate question, but he knows I’m woefully out of touch with the ways of the US military. He said he used to get it a lot, back when he “was somebody.” I’m sure it’s strange for these men to go from being top dog to the point that people literally stop what they’re doing because you walk by or walk into a room. Our facility is specifically noted as a “no hat, no salute” location, but I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed someone freezing and standing at attention because of the presence of another individual.
It’s strange to me to treat people differently based on a rank they achieved. Even if they are in uniform and I can see their rank, I have trouble being nervous or acting differently simply because of a title. I choose to treat people as people first, and equally, and if they give me a reason to treat them better or worse, I’ll adjust as needed.
I pass through the door after waving my badge in front of a dark gray sensor on the wall and hearing it beep and click open. Sealed further from the beautiful day. My ex-cubemate used to say I had “pretty-day-itis” when I would leave early on pretty days and make up the hours on ugly ones. Said ex-cubemate moved out 3 weeks ago, working for another contractor at another military installation, doing something. I don’t really know what most people here do outside my own team. Then a second cubemate left. It is down to me and Mike, and I have no idea what he does here. We rarely share more than a “good morning” and a “have a good day/weekend.” This is another place where this job feels like a bad fit for me, as we spend 8 hours sitting 5 feet from each other, and never speak. Not that I’m the most social creature in the world, but I would like some friendly chit chat from time to time.
I take my lunch out of my bag and walk it to the freezer, plug my Common Access Card (CAC) into my computer, and type in my pin, agreeing to the statement that discourages me from using this computer for anything other than “mission critical” work, and informing me that my use of this machine is subject to being monitored. I read my emails, two, both calendar invites for meetings in June. I look at where they showed up on my calendar. I like days that look full. So many of my days here are empty.
At this point, I opened up this word document and began writing my thoughts. I have been listening to some beautifully descriptive books and reading my roommate’s “Pre-College English” papers he brought home to grade, and have been inspired to write, if only for the fact that I can do it well. Additionally, Matt Arnold inspired me with a facebook post that simply sang with creativity and big-word-itude, that it made me feel lax in the creativity department.
I look at my schedule for the day. I work on several different projects and see, unfortunately, that I only have one thing to work on today. Research. In college, I loved research. The purpose of doing the research in that case was tangible and real, it was to produce a paper, on which I would be graded, and in the process I will have learned a lot about the topic. The purpose of this research is a mystery to me. It is to produce a “systems interoperability matrix.” Basically, to annotate which Command and Control (C2) systems do what, and with which other systems they interface. Thrilling stuff, really. I can see the end result, but I don’t see how it will be useful. Several other people on our team have created “interoperability matrices” and we have them on our portal to look at as examples, but I am not sure if their matrices ever made an impact or were used… at all. From what I can tell, they were developed and now sit unused on our portal, collecting e-dust. They look nice, but they become irrelevant and the introduction of a new version. Basically, this is a long term project that I have zero motivation to finish.
Someone just heated up a breakfast treat in the microwave and it smells like bacon in here. It's officially time for my morning cup of tea and granola bar.
Monday, April 11, 2011
For your Situational Awareness (FYSA)
For 6 months now, I have been working for a government contractor in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Even as I write this, I am hesitant to write the name of my company, or the name of the government agency to which I am contracted. My time with the government has put a fear in me that I am now a target for any number of attacks, from terrorist to viral. As an entry level technician, I have been providing administrative support to a project, helping at their meetings and conferences after an unfortunate discovery of my unparalleled ability to take verbatim notes.
I started as a receptionist, and was quickly requested to assist one of our company’s projects with this sort of administrative support. They set me down in front of a laptop and said, “Just write down anything you hear that sounds like a tasking or an action item.” As the meeting progressed, I got more and more bored and daunted by the grandiosity of the 8 hour meeting ahead of me. To keep myself from dying of boredom, I wrote down every word I could make sense of. Big. Huge. Mistake.
The project was very impressed with my note taking ability, I continued to support their meetings and conferences on a part time basis, and 6 weeks ago was offered a full time spot on their team. Now not only do I continue to take wicked awesome notes at meetings, but I also am learning low-level systems engineering processes and doing all the crappy administrative jobs for the team that nobody else wants. I am happy to have a job right now, especially one that doesn’t stress me out and pays me well.
I have toyed with the idea of getting a master’s degree, and have actually gone so far as to apply and be accepted for a library science program, but have mixed feelings about that path. I’ve been told that “master’s is the new bachelor’s” and have watched as people around me at work have gone back to school and completed programs for Systems Engineering and Library Science, but still I remain uncertain. In my current field, it seems almost expected that you obtain a higher higher education degree… however, I don’t expect my current field to be my field for very long, and if I can avoid tens of thousands of dollars of debt and years of the added burden of classes, papers, and tests on top of my current job and other obligations, I feel like I should do that.
I am not optimistic about staying in this field for long. I have dreams of opening my own business, and I don’t foresee a master’s degree helping me reach that goal at all. Every time I’ve looked into a master’s degree it has been simply to get me into a field in which I could TOLERATE working for an extended period of time. Now that I’ve had my breakthrough about owning my own business (which I’ll expand upon at a later date) I feel no need to waste time and money on something I don’t believe I will ever use. I hope to ride the wave that is this government job for as long as I can (probably another couple years), save up as many dolla dolla billz as I can, and start making movements toward my dream.
This is my first entry since returning from Mexico just over 6 months ago. My time there was beautiful and I’m incredibly grateful for the friendships I formed and strengthened, but my home is here. In my house with my friends and family I feel so completely at ease and myself. When I step out into “normal” American society, I feel like a bit of an outsider, but on the whole, I’m alright with that. I’ll tell you what I’m alright with, specifically (in homage to my last entry in Mexico):
I don’t have cable. We have sing-alongs on Friday night instead of going to a bar. My family are my friends. My cats are spoiled rotten. I wake up in the morning and greet the ocean, sky, trees, and birds before anything else. I read. I have little trinkets in my house that make me happy (and drive my boyfriend crazy). I come home from work and don’t think about work until I arrive at work the next day. I live next door to Razzo. I live across the street from Tienda Jessy. I feel inspired to dream about the future. I feel comfortable financially. I can walk to the beach in less than 30 seconds. I am healthy and happy.
Monday, March 30, 2009
mighty mighty pittsburgh
Went to Pittsburgh this weekend for Janelle's birthday. Fun! This picture makes it seem like I did nice things like look at the scenery... but there was a lot of drinking going on. Pittsburgh is a really interesting city. Old, industrial... pretty. I like it. I love the drive there too... Amish people rule, as do windmills.I'm really lucky to live where I do.... such an interesting part of the country... so many things to do and places to see.
Got a haircut too. People at school really seemed to like it, so I guess it's cool... shorter than usual.
I cut my cable back to basic cable to save money and try to better myself. Basically just means I'm watching more DVDs. Anyways, everything is basically the same as ever... work work work, we have a delay tomorrow, meeting, and then I have to find time to observe the middle school Spanish teacher... and go to the doctor...... and get my car looked at...... and pack..... by next Thursday. gah!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
bells bells bells bells bells bells bells
So I went to momma and Natalie's houses this past weekend, one picture from Sideling Hill, the other from a photo album at mom's house... my friend galo and I both had the "Lil Slugger" hat in the middle picture as babies and I took a picture of it as evidence.Today it is 74 degrees and I went walking through Frostburg for a little while after school. It's a really beautiful day. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 40 degrees. FML.
We have some wonderful bells here on Main Street... and it also smells like someone is cooking something AMAZING as I sit on my couch with the windows open wide. mmmm. probably my neighbors.. they always make the best smelling food. jealous.
Two more days this week (boys basketball will be out Friday... it's funny how just having a few people missing from a class completely changes the dynamic)... half day next Friday.. going to see Janelle in Pittsburgh next weekend... happy.com
Sunday, March 15, 2009
drip drip drop
i'm at natalie's, it's been raining pretty bad this weekend. i reckon i'm the only one awake right now, once they get up i'll have breakfast then drive back to mom's, do a little shopping, then leave. i want to get more flash cards from barnes and noble... assuming they have a spanish kids section.. the one in salisbury did... and stock up on some healthy goodness from trader joes.
yesterday we played risk--I WON-- and trivial pursuit ...i lost... but it was fun. trivial pursuit is darn difficult though. i dominated the western hemisphere in risk, though. then we played rockband and went to bed! i'm glad i was able to come down here this weekend... i was way jealous of all the frostburg students who just started their spring breaks this weekend.
26 dias hasta mexico!!!! sooo excited!
so i have this week of school--monday no 8th period, honors convocation, end of the week is ACIT basketball tournament so lots of people will be out on friday, then next week of school, friday is a half day, then the following week of school, which is just normal, then the next week i go monday through wednesday, thursday is a half day, then i'm driving to dc and getting up on friday to go to PV!!!!!!!!! i love just seeing it all written out like that... ahhh..... pv...... mmm.......
yesterday we played risk--I WON-- and trivial pursuit ...i lost... but it was fun. trivial pursuit is darn difficult though. i dominated the western hemisphere in risk, though. then we played rockband and went to bed! i'm glad i was able to come down here this weekend... i was way jealous of all the frostburg students who just started their spring breaks this weekend.
26 dias hasta mexico!!!! sooo excited!
so i have this week of school--monday no 8th period, honors convocation, end of the week is ACIT basketball tournament so lots of people will be out on friday, then next week of school, friday is a half day, then the following week of school, which is just normal, then the next week i go monday through wednesday, thursday is a half day, then i'm driving to dc and getting up on friday to go to PV!!!!!!!!! i love just seeing it all written out like that... ahhh..... pv...... mmm.......
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