Thoughts of a Working Man

I have to say that after only two weeks, I am very pleased with my new antidepressant. I have more energy. I sleep better. I'm more focused, and in general life is worth living again.

Man that feels good to say. If you haven't suffered from depression--God bless you--and you can't imagine what it's like. I can't pretend I know how everyone who has clinical depression feels, but if you read my earlier posts, you know how it was affecting me. I feel like I have worth as a human being again.

First, I'm glad I don't report to this manager. He's a nice enough guy in casual conversation, but on a project he's a bully. I can't think of any other word for it. I sat in a meeting today and watched him bully my technical expert about a document we are writing together.

I've had a chance to observe this manager as we've worked together these past couple of weeks, and I don't like what I see. He withholds information until the last possible instance. He reviews documents like he's conducting an inquisition. He almost never has anything positive to say, but he has plenty to say in an accusative way that implies that he feels he's surrounded by incompetent drones.

Were I not a civilized human being, I would pop him one. (Okay, I'm not terribly civilized, but I can control my temper. I'm learning.)

My next reaction is to want to confront him about his behavior. But I'm realizing that doesn't really work for me with people. Others don't seem to see their behavior from the outside. They want to defend and justify, and I have responded in the past by pressing my attacks and making them look bad even as they defend themselves. Needless to say, making a manager look bad--making anyone look bad, really--doesn't work for me. Eventually, I end up losing.

Right now, I concentrate on letting his criticisms of me slide off. That's actually getting easier. I consider the source and reject the personal stuff and the stuff that implies I'm incompetent. It's actually harder for me to let abuse given to others in my presence slide. Bullies love to intimidate, and they love to do it in front of others. I really hate giving them an audience.

All this is leading up to a question for anyone who may be reading this. How do you deal with a bully in the workplace, especially when the bully is a manager? I've long felt that bullies have to be confronted. At the same time, I'd rather be working than starving, and as long as I'm working here, I don't need a manager for an enemy.

So, if anyone out there has ideas they'd be willing to share, post them here. I'd love to learn some new people skills.

Thank God it's Friday!

...and calling and calling and calling.

The phone has been ringing off the hook this morning. Apparently a large local power company has put new job requirements out for a tech writer or two, and everyone who hasn't talked to me in the last month or so has called me back.

It's ironic how when I think I don't need a job the phone rings, and when I think I need a job I can't get anyone to pickup at the other end.

So, where am I in all of this? I'm taking the management here at their word that I can expect to be employed here probably through the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30. I am also taking them at their word that they'd like to keep me around on a permanent basis. Neither of these things is guaranteed, and both of them appear to be out of my control.

At the moment (more irony?) I have nothing to do. I'm on hold for two different projects, the leaders of which have told me they'll "get back to me." It is sometime difficult for me to keep myself occupied and not to look to a casual passerby as if I'm screwing off, especially when I am. I have to hope that isn't used against me by someone, but it's really out of my control at this point.

I'm approaching this situation differently than I did on the previous contract. There, because I really didn't like the place, once I got frustrated trying to get more work and also with their bureaucratic hangups, I agitated to get myself released. Here I'm not making waves, even when I want to, and I'm letting them move at their own pace.

I'm convinced that more productivity is lost to management indecision and consensus building than is lost by worker laziness or lack of motivation. I know I'm happiest when I have something to do that my employers want me to do. I'm next happiest when I'm doing something that engages me. When I can't have the first thing, like now, I work on the second thing to keep from going crazy. (Assuming I'm not already crazy.)

It has been an interesting morning, so far. First there was my horoscope:

If you've been wondering about whether or not you did the right think in a recent situation, wonder no longer. You're about to receive a very direct hint from the heavens telling you that you're not just headed down the right path, but you're also aimed directly at making a cherished dream a reality. Pay attention to where you are right now--and realize that you're only a few steps from where you've always wanted to be.

My boss and his boss stopped by the cube this morning to (a) tell me that had a major project they wanted me to document, and (b) that the boss's boss wants to talk to me about making my position here permanent. It's not my dream of early retirement and a life of ease and stability, but it is a stable job with the prospect of having a contributing purpose in being here.

I let it be known several months ago that I would not be averse to extending my employment here and making it permanent. Their reactions were at first not favorable and then ambiguous. The boss liked my work, but I guess the previous boss's boss (uberboss?) was focused on cutting costs. The former uberboss is gone. Perhaps the new uberboss has a different outlook. It seems promising.

I think that was what was driving yesterday's long musing on purpose in life. All I ask from my work is that I be considered a contributor. Often in technical documentation, especially in contract work, I feel like a necessary evil to be taken up only under duress and dropped as soon as possible. Often I feel that the people who hire me don't really want documentation, but they've been ordered from on high to get some documentation done. Often I have this strong sense that my work will never be used by anyone, so no one seems to care about what I've done or getting it right.

Okay, documentation isn't the organization's stock in trade, but it can make all of the organization's processes run more smoothly. And if the processes run smoothly, productivity improves, quality improves, and costs go down. Unfortunately, in today's business climate, it requires too long a term of vision to see that. It may take a year to put the information house in order; it may take five years. That makes it tough in a 14 week business quarter to justify any longer term investment.

I should preface this entry by saying two things. First, if you believe that human beings are a type of life separate and apart from plants and animals, this piece may not be for you. I believe there is no fundamental difference among all life forms on this planet. I'm not trying to argue another out of her or his beliefs. I'm simply exploring my own beliefs as they pertain to the question I pose. I tend to believe, as Desmond Morris wrote in the book of the same name that human beings are the naked ape. Taken a step farther by recent genetics research, it appears that there is no fundamental DNA difference between plants and animals or between various species of animals. The only reason I'm not an ant or a starling or a rat is what DNA was turned on when during my gestation.

Nobody else has to believe what I write here. I'm not looking to pick a fight, and if you, gentle reader, are, please go someplace else. I won't fight you.

The second thing of interest here is that this is (or will be when I've finished) a long piece. So you might want to bookmark it and come back when you have more time, or you might want to read it in chunks. It's your call. I'm just telling you what is here up front so that you may have your expectation set appropriately.

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It seems like a question with an obvious answer. We work to live. I need a place to live. I need transportation. I need food. I need companionship. I need, in short, the money that comes from trading my time and talents for money from someone who wants what I have to offer.

That said, I can do--in fact I have done--many different things in order to get the money I need for these things I deem important. I don't have to do what I'm doing; I don't have to be in this job. I'm in this job because I deemed it to be the closest I could get to doing what I wanted to do while bringing in the money. Yet it seems that doing what I want to do is really immaterial to what I need to do in order to survive.

When I look at life as a whole, from the smallest single-cell life forms to the largest, from those that seem to lack anything resembling a brain to those who have the most highly developed brains, what I see is that our purpose is to reproduce our type of life. We live for sex, especially sex that leads to new life. Everything else that we do is subordinate to that one purpose: the continuation of the species, whatever that species is.

Procreation doesn't, frankly, take much of the time of any life form on the planet. Far more time is devoted to the second most important thing we do, which is keep ourselves alive. To keep ourselves alive, so that we can fulfill our primary purpose, we need food and a safe environment. Not every lifeform, fortunately, needs to reside in the same environment. Life on this planet seems to have adapted to every possible environment on the globe from the frozen wastes of north and south to the equatorial heat of the planet's midsection and everywhere in between. We live where we can find--or in the case of human beings--grow the food we need, and we live in habitats where we feel secure.

Of course, not everyone lives in a safe place. These are the endangered. Perhaps their habitat is under attack from other life forms. Perhaps the food that used to be abundant (or abundantly grown) in one area no longer flourishes. So we life forms move out, if we can, for greener pastures, safer habitat. Life spends far more time finding its food and securing itself a safe habitat than it does procreating, yet without food and a place to live we can't fulfill that prime purpose of life.

I find it interesting that all three of this very important things that all life forms seem to do still doesn't take up all of our time. We eat, we sleep, we mate, and still we seem to have some free time left over, at least a lot of us do. I don't have as much free time as, say, my dogs. We provide them room and board. So they're in a safe environment and get fed and exercised daily. (They don't get sex because we had them neutered at the appropriate time, but that was our decision not theirs.) We have turned their primary purpose into being companions, security, and entertainment for us.

Now I want to get to the crux of the matter. Why do I work? Given that I can take care or my basic needs (and then some, often), what is my motivation for working. I've procreated. I'm eating well (perhaps too well). I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I have two nice vehicles. I have a wife, and two of our three children (one hers and two mine) visit us whenever they can. Life is good.

Work, on the other hand sucks. Obviously the money is good (see house, cars, food, wife above), and the kind of work I do I can enjoy (when I'm busy, which obviously I'm not at the moment). Yet I do not feel fulfilled. I do not feel that I am contributing to anything important to anyone else. I lack purpose in my work. It only serves to satisfy my environmental wants. (I really do have more than I need, so by that definition I am rich.)

Purpose may be the one thing that distinguishes human beings from other animals. We seem to need a purpose to what we're doing, even if we have to make it up. Most of the coworkers I've ever had--and younger self--have as a purpose to support themselves and their families. Some of my coworkers--and my younger self--want to get ahead: promotions, better jobs, better houses, better cars (,better spouses?). Those ways are no longer sufficient for me. Either I have all I want or I have reconciled myself to live with what I have. All I want now is for my work to be worth the time I put into it.

Though I do not know, anymore than anyone else, when I will die, I can say confidently that I don't have as many years left as are behind me. I do not want to waste the remaining time I have simply in the pursuit of enough money to keep body and soul together. I would like to think that what I do matters to someone, and I haven't had that feeling in some time now.

So I search for purpose to my remaining days, and when I find something I want to commit that time to, I am out of here.

In a sense, that's life in the workplace these days. We seek clarification, and we live with uncertainty. I got some clarification this past week. First, I got a face-to-face interview for a new contract with a different company. I don't want to see like I'm bragging, but I am very good in interviews. I go in prepared, and I know I can do whatever job I'm being interviewed for. So I'm seldom anxious about interviews these days. And yet that let to some uncertainty. I feel certain that I'll be offered a job in this new situation. It will still be contract, and it won't come with a lot of certainty, but it offers me a window to say that for the next four months I'll be employed. Where I am now, I didn't have that certainty beyond the next six weeks. So I sought clarity. Given my situation, I can't walk into the manager's office and ask straight out. The manager has to talk with my representative at the consulting house where I work. So I had to get hold of him, which turned out to be needlessly difficult. I left a message for him, but he chose to call the manager rather than me. (I know this because the manager had him on speaker phone, and the whole office could hear the call. Managers, please consider this when you are using speaker phone and your office door is open.) That annoyed me, as the manager had no idea why I'd called. Well, we finally got that squared away. Once the manager was apprised of the situation, he worked to bring some clarity to it. I'd rather stay where I am, as it is a good work environment for me, I like the people, and I like the work. If I was a 'real' employee, I would assume I'm staying indefinitely, but contractors are not real employees, as we are constantly reminded. We're in the workplace, as one employer I had candidly told me, so that if they have to reduce headcount it can be done without losing any of the 'real' staff. It's not very comforting. Anyway, I'm as secure as I can make myself for the next four to six months.

I'm being extended on my current contract for a couple of more months. They managed to find another project that could use my talents. I know they've said they like my work and want to keep me, but it's good to see that there are actions behind those words. Meanwhile, all those folks that were expressing interest in me last week seem to have forgotten me this week. All but one, I should say. One recruiter followed up with me about another opportunity. This is the way it normally goes. Everything has to be done right now, then nobody can make a decision. And most recruiters lose interest in you as soon as the client rejects your resume. I seldom even get courtesy calls back from most recruiters to let me know that things fell through. (The few that do, stay on my contact list.) But woe unto me if I don't reply to all inquiries politely and keep them properly informed about what I'm up to. They hold the hammer, and they love to use it. Everybody loves a hierarchy when they're not at the bottom.