The "hurry up and wait" phenomenon in the workplace

In My Humble Opinion
1

My first experience with the HUAW phenomenon was when I was at basic training in the military, my first full time job.

On multiple occasions, our company was given urgent instructions that we had to be somewhere on time, and that we could not be late.

But as soon as we arrived, we found ourselves standing around in a room with nothing to do.

Sometimes we were just staning there for over an hour before anyone showed up.

In the private sector work force, the HUAW phenomenon applies in many different ways like when everyone has to show up on time for a “very important meeting” with some implication of diciplinary action if you are late.

Of cource everyone is on time, but find themselves chatting with one another for some indefinite period of time before the meeting starts.

Also, the importance of the meeting turns out to be very overhyped.

Now, Iam sure most of you have had this experience at one time or another.

The question is, is the HUAW phenomenon something created by design, or is it just a preponderance of coincidences?

Personally, Iam still on the fence about this.

If it’s just a cooincidence, there is nothing more to say.

But, if it is by design, the question is why?

Why would any group of people in authority or management intentionally sew a state of confusion in the minds of subordinates in the workplace?

Iam not saying that if the HUAW phenomenon is by design, rises to any level of gangstalking or organized community harrasment, but it is an intentional mind game that management and authority play on their subordinates.

Why would they do that?

For their own personal amusement?

Who know?

I would love to hear from all of you about your exoerience with the HUAW phenomenon.

Do you think it’s by design, or just a cooincidence?

2

Well known phenomenon in the Army:

Battalion commander calls a formation at 1600 for a quick briefing.

Sergeant Major orders First Sergeants to stage their companies in the company assembly area at 1545 so they won’t make him look bad by being late.

First Sergeant orders Platoon Sergeants to stage their platoons in the platoon assembly area at 1530 so they won’t make him look bad by being late.

Platoon Sergeant orders Squad Leaders to stage their squads in the squad assembly area at 1515 so they won’t make him look bad by being late.

Squad Leaders order soldiers to stand by outside the barracks at 1505 so they won’t make him look bad by being late.

And this is why it routinely requires 400 man-hours to hold a brief 10-minute command briefing.

3

I also want to clarify that HUAW, and how I interpret it, is in no way malicious.

It would be inappropriate to confront your superiors about this.

It’s just a subtlety that is most probably a result of a lack of communication, coordination, and planning between several departments that make up a workplace.

4

And inconsiderate people that think that their time is more important than other peoples time.

5

In the virtual space, the time given for a video call to begin is, in fact, the time when participants can begin their mic checks, Windows updates, proofread and edit the Powerpoint to be presented, start a pot of coffee, find a laptop with a working camera, realize the in-room, off-camera dog whining might be distracting, etc.

6

This.

7

For your Basic Training scenario, you have dozens and dozens of companies who need to be transported out to the ranges, and only finite trans assets. So maybe there are 12 companies who need to get to a range by 1000 some morning. Maybe there are 3 companies worth of trucks. So, the lucky ones get picked up at 0930 and they’re at the range by 0950, just in time. The earlier group had to catch a ride at 0850 to arrive at 0910, almost an hour early. The earliest group has to be picked up at 0810 and will be dropped off at 0830. That’s 90 minutes earlier than desired. Breakfast was schedule at 0800, PT is over at 0730. After PT, the privates have to change, run down for chow formation, march to chow, eat fast, march back, get all of their equipment and march over to the trans pick up spot to be there 10 minutes early in order to ensure the company DOES NOT MISS MOVEMENT!. So that’s an 50 minutes of rushing their asses off, just to sleep 20 minutes on the truck and then sit around for 90 minutes at the range prior to anything starting.

8

Understood, Iam just glad that we never had to wait to long to eat once we arrived at the chow hall.

9

heh. Hurry up and wait. Creating a cache of aerial data takes some time. We have great hardware and it’s telling me 15 hours to go. Anyone want to have a beer?

10

It’s not by design. However, “coincidence” is not the right word.

HUAW is simply a systemic failure, nothing more, of a very common and low level sort. It’s just amazingly difficult to coordinate activities, that’s all. Getting N+ groups of people to complete previous activities so that a subsequent common activity can commence at a time all groups simultaneously are prepared to begin is just really, really, really hard without a great deal of active coordination. It’s hard to get three different couples to arrive at lunch at exactly the same time.

You were in the service, so think back; a LOT of military training, especially field training, is oriented around getting disparate groups to work together in some sort of general harmony. Armies in the field are ludicrously complex things, and getting them to work at all takes years of training.

11

My limited experience as an occasional volunteer grunt in a political party - plus watching “live” national events on US and Canadian channels - political leaders are typically running minutes to hours behind schedule, but the organizers have everyone standing by on time; I tend to blame the schedulers who don’t leave the big guys enough time and slack between events. Plus, the big shots are the ones with the most unforseen distractions.

The other point is the “weakest link” principle. Your timeliness for an event is only as good as the weakest link. If you have a conference call or Zoom that starts at 5PM, some will be as late as 5:10 getting online, the sound will not be working, or some other excuse. The conscientious are waiting the longest.

12

I can be super annoyed at people who don’t seem to care about wasting others’ time.

Sometimes, however, when I have managed to get a peek behind the curtain, some of these people have a lot of demands for their time, and it can be the innumerable people meeting with them who aren’t getting their business done in their allotted time.

13

Not necessarily so. At my employer, video meetings start on time, and periodic meetings have a scoreboard where for each meeting a 0 or 1 is entered in the date‘s column for the following criteria: everybody present or excused, everybody on time, everybody was prepared, videoconferencing rules heeded, meeting finished on time. If we do not get a perfect score the person responsible is quietly mortified (at least I was when I was the offender). Makes for pretty efficient and quick meetings.

14

Then there’s the opposite pet peeve: A meeting is called for 3, everyone shows up right at 3 including the meeting organizer, who then spends 10 minutes getting their laptop booted, projector set up, files loaded, etc. When you’ve got 30 people in the room, each of whom costs the company $100/hr, that’s $500 wasted. Repeat with every meeting.

As said above, scheduling is hard. You can make the presenter show up 10 minutes early, but then you can’t have the room already booked in the previous hour.

15

You know, this whole topic is similar to scheduled press conferences, both national and local, about any given story that is important that the general public is focused on.

The thing is, the media will first report with certainty exactly what time the press conference will begin, but they never start on time, they are always late.

The reason for this is that the speakers may need extra time to dot their i’s and cross their t’s before they get up to the podium, but I think sometimes they just get some thrill and enjoyment out of makeing people wait.

16

Since HUAW is more commonly reported in the military, I thought it could be by design, because it could be some form of drill that is related to the indoctrination process, which is the overall process of creating a military mindset.

Because in war you are going to have to adapt to situations that revolve around confusion, and you have to learn how to create order out of chaos, when everything around you just doesn’t make since.

So from this perspective it could be by design, but it’s not just a silly mind game.

It’s actually important in the grand scheme of things.

But to this day I have asked people about this who would have been in the know when they were on active duty, but can never get a straight answer, yes or no, if it is indeed part of military indoctrination or training.

Mabey it’s some kind of trade secret, and everyone involved is sworn to secrecy.

I guess for me, it will always be a mystery because I never achieved a rank high enough to be part of this trade secret.

17

This belongs in IMHO, not Factual Questions, so it has been moved.

RickJay
Moderator

18

The meeting organizer turns off his laptop to bring it to the meeting? Someone should educate them on what laptops are. My companies always had projectors already in the rooms to avoid the setting up the projector problem. You’ve demonstrated that this is was a good financial decision.
In the conference I help organize we have all presentations set up on laptops we rent so that they are ready without the speaker plugging one in, and that we can review the slides before they are presented.

I haven’t seen the HUAW phenomenon for a long time, possibly because the organizer gets lots of negative feedback if they tried it. I guess that is harder to do for a superior officer. What I did see was fake deadlines - move fast to deliver on Tuesday, only to find it was really needed Friday. Next Friday.

19

Try recording a TV show.

100’s of people all waiting on the next bottleneck.
Everyone fervently hoping that the next inevitable holdup is not something that is their responsibility, all while being bored out of their skull.

20

HUAW, as designed, is not systematic failure, it’s systematic success. If you’re ready early, that means nothing went wrong along the way.

Say you want to launch an attack at 08:00, involving infantry, armor, artillery, air support, communications, intelligence and various other elements. Do you tell them all to be ready at 08:00? Of course not - you tell them to be ready at 06:00, because you know that with so many balls in the air, something will always go wrong. A tank won’t start, communications will be on the fritz, someone will have brought the wrong map, the infantry will have marched to the wrong place… so you make sure you have a margin of error. And if you don’t need the margin of error, that means that your unit did everything right, and then you wait. And maybe catch some sleep.