I hate these meetings. People talk a lot about nothing, and we don’t get anything done. It’s good that I can mute myself on Teams so no one can hear me scream.
Yeah, that seems to be the case overall.
I’ve been at the same level at my firm for many years. Somewhat intentional, as going for a bump up in level would mean some responsibilities I’m ill-suited for, as well as making my billing rates enough higher that I might have trouble finding projects that could afford me.
Add to this, my company is fairly parsimonious with raises in general, and bonuses are a faint memory. I set up a spreadsheet a few months back to try to estimate my social security - and using their multiplier formulas, my highest earnings (for SSA purposes) were in 2003. Several years in the 1990s are in the top 10.
I stay for several reasons:
- I’m within a few years of retirement age, and honestly don’t have the energy to job-seek (unless forced to!), and am likely too expensive for anyone to hire me
- There are some other less-direct benefits to staying where I am, such as better 401(k) matching, better vacation / sick leave than I’d get elsewhere, etc.
I’m getting to the point of needing a new mouse at work – two of the little buttons no longer work due to faulty microswitches – but I’m not sure if my supervisor is going to balk at the price for an identical replacement (just under $30). I’m already using a wireless keyboard from home at work – my home PC died, and I had no other use for the keyboard – and I’m thinking about using a mouse from home until I can address the purchasing issues.
I’ve also started buying my own pens, but that’s not really a rant.
It was only my what, second week on the job?, and my boss called me aside and said:
“Nothing wrong with that meeting, but keep in mind, you had two managers in there that we bill out at $xxx/hr, two supervisors at $xx/hr, and yourself. That’s a lot of money that I have to justify charging the client for. So keep in mind, a 10 minute meeting is worlds better than a 20 minute one. Anyone calls a 30 minute meeting, and we are going to have a talk that’s even less comfortable than this one.”
I keep remembering that talk when I’m in “free” meetings (like a church committee meeting that doesn’t cost anyone anything). I keep wondering if I need to tell that story to my committee head. She’s retired, and doesn’t seem to feel any urgency as we approach the one-hour mark…
Glad the meetings are still online and I can keep other browser windows open to keep me sane. And mute my chewing noises…
So, @MagicEyes, isn’t there anyone who cares how productive meetings are? Especially some manager who’d give a damn (and maybe could observe?).
I deal with the opposite, which is just bizarre.
“I see the battery on your 5 year old laptop has inflated so much that it cracked the case, and is now a fire hazard. Ask your boss what account should pay for a replacement, and he’ll be happy to buy you a new laptop.”
chirpchirpchirp
“Oh hey, Boss, I saw your employee needs a new laptops.”
“No problem, I’ll send him to you to get something purchased.”
chirpchirpchirp
Or the employee that was carrying a keyboard back and forth between work and home. “I have a box of old keyboards you can scrounge through, there are some nice ones in there, but if you don’t see anything you like, let me know, and we can buy you a new one.”
“No, I prefer carrying this ordinary Dell keyboard around in my back pack.”
Speaking of the length of meetings a church I once belonged to had an ingenious way to keep the annual congregational meeting from running on. It was held a half hour after the later service, on Super Bowl Sunday. You know the last line someone says, “Are there anymore questions?” You got a death glare if you responded.
That is brilliant!!!
I went to a little “fundy” church for a while, where the preacher was arrogant to the point of saying “Nowwww… I’m gonna stand up here until I’ve said everythan’ I intended to… EVEN THOUGH I know there’s a Packer game on in fifteen minutes, and some uh you laaaaadies have a roast in the oven…” (WTF?!?)…
He didn’t last long, they fired his sanctimonious ass. And I started going to a church where they hurry the service up if there’s a game at noon…
Fortune Fiemster talked about how the Baptist congregation encouraged the pastor to hurry up and finish so they could get to Applebees before the Methodists (small town).
One thing I’ve learned in my life is that after noon on Sunday is never a good time to go out to eat in a small town.
Our department head was in this meeting! I think she doesn’t want to take over because the new guy needs to learn how to do that himself. Also we’re having some growing pains, because we’re trying to do new things and more people from other departments are involved. I’m hoping the new guy will be an improvement over the person who was doing this before, because she also made me want to tear my hair out, for different reasons. I think we’re back on track, but we’ll see how it goes this week.
So far Monday morning is off to a good start, except for the people who want me to change something on the website, but they can’t tell me where it is. And they just sent me an email that makes everything worse! I need to take a little break before I deal with this.
It’s a slow day so I’m going thru old emails & cleaning out the inbox; this was sent timely, just not looked at by me until today…
We have this diversity/inclusion group, basically we still value you even if you’re not a straight, white (male) person, which just makes the irony burn that much hotter.
There was an email sent out for Chinese Lunar New Year talking about how it’s being celebrated in “AAPI communities throughout the world” Since I wasn’t familiar with that acronym, I looked it up, Asian American Pacific Islander. I wonder how many Asian American Pacific Islander groups there are in say, any country in Europe. I’m sure there are Asian American Pacific Islander groups there who were celebrating Lunar New Year.
Gotta love when the head of the diversity/inclusion group uses a jingoistic term to describe a holiday celebrated by people who are not from nor live in the good ol’ US of A!
Well, as long as the books are in the African-American, it’s all good.
I’m aware of the Chinese lunisolar calendar lunar new year being big in the East Asian sphere, including parts of Southeast Asia. But lots of cultures celebrate a lunar calendar new year and of course not all at the same time. Combine that with the use of AAPI, which has the other issues you raise in terms of terminology and the questions I have of how many Pacific Islanders (Polynesians for instance) pay any attention to a Chinese calendar, and you have someone who is trying very hard to look diverse and inclusive and failing miserably.
I have a feeling my company is about to get split up. I work SS7 grooms for cost savings and diversity. The directive has come down from On High that we should now make cost savings our highest priority (second only to outages), even if we have to throw switches into simplex. Normally a phone switch should have AT LEAST two SS7 links. Not anymore, I guess. But hey, that quarterly bottom line sure is going to look good.
I don’t think this is going to bite us in the ass. At all.
I’ve been suspicious of something going on with my company for a few years now. They’re adding employees to the quality department (it’s now at capacity, as far as seating room is concerned), and keeping purchasing and customer service at minimum staffing. They’ve yet to replace the testing supervisor who was fired, and the current manager is nearing retirement age. My department – engineering – has been shrinking. We’ve had two experienced engineers leave in the last couple of years, and there has been no apparent move to replace them…and it’s my understanding that if a department doesn’t replace an employee within a year, funding is essentially lost for that position.
On the plus side, my company is the exclusive worldwide supplier for certain goods and services, so some part of it would have to stay in operation.
Our new person is really making me growly. I’ll be so glad when this project is over. I’ve already eaten half of a chocolate bar, and I’m still not calm. Maybe I need to get some essential oils.
Thanks to COVID and multiple supply chain disruptions, our company didn’t hit our target for the profit margin this year. Which means no bonuses.
This sucks. It’s no fault of ours we couldn’t overcome a global pandemic and supply crises.
The only thing better would be if the top managers got their bonuses for their inspired leadership during covid.
This is a parent company thing, and I suspect they did hit their profit goal. Although I could be wrong.
PlZ refrain from using texting shorthand in professional emails. K Thx, that’d be gr8.
Gah. My fingers nearly broke themselves in protest just typing that.