sueeeus

Feeling a bit snarly today.  Hopefully because follicles are busy doing what follicles should do.  Or something to that effect.  I’m just so frustrated with non-answers today.  I’ve got a few plates spinning and although it’s not that unusual to receive vague or nondescript information from those with whom I must collaborate, it gets a bit frustrating when it seems that nothing meaningful or useful comes from anyone.  Such has been the case thus far today.  A jam packed morning wasted with nothing to show after hours of multi-threaded attempted collaboration.

Scenario 1. 

Me:  Black or White
Colleague:  Try Blue.
Me:  How do I use Blue
Colleague:  We don’t work with Blue.  You have to ask someone who works with Blue.
Me, to another colleague:  Do you know how to use Blue
Colleague:  We usually use Black.  Ask your focal how to translate the Blue to a Black so that we can work with it.
Me, to first colleague:  How do we translate the Blue to a Black
Colleague:  We don’t do this. 
Me, to second colleague:  Do you have a focal who might be able to translate our Blue to a Black
Second colleague to second focal:  Can we translate Blue to Black
Status:  pending…
(…I didn’t mention that all I need is 5 minute’s worth of support from the second colleague, and all I need to know is how to authorize it, but because of interdepartmental bureaucratic policies, it has taken the better part of a day and still, no solution.)

Scenario 2.

Colleague:  Your project has elements that are non-compliant.
Me:  Which elements
Colleague:  We can manage this project for you, and ensure compliance. 
Me:  Which elements are non-compliant  
Colleague:  No answer
Me:  If we consider letting you manage this, what is the process for transferring this part of the project
Colleague:  We can make sure you are compliant.
Me:  We mean to be compliant.  We want to be compliant.  We document and justify every element.  What, specifically is non-compliant
Status:  No answer…

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that people aren’t being particularly helpful.  And me   Helpful is my middle name.  I live to serve.  I am so frustrated!  As I said, maybe it can all be chalked up to follicular activity, and quite possibly I’m blowing it all out of proportion.  Even so, I remain agitated.  Hrumph.

I love potato chips because they are salty, crispy, and oh so satisfying.  Duh.  Now, as to why I love engineers, or rather, working with engineers.  If I didn’t work with engineers, what is the likelihood that I would have viewed Mercury in its path across the sun on this very day   Would anybody have brought a solarscope in to the office   Methinks the chances are slim.  How fascinating!  This experience has made my day!

I hope my little one becomes interested in astronomy.  I recently went on a quest for a planetarium of sorts.  I wanted a night light that projects a night sky on his ceiling, so we could look up and talk about it while he drifts off to sleep.  I didn’t find much of anything with any sort of decent customer reviews.  There was a turtle toy with a shell that had little perforations in it, that supposedly projected a night sky when lit, but it seemed a little meh.  Instead, I gave up the quest and got a multicolored LED nightlight that slowly changes colors, from red to green to blue to violet and back again.  It’s a hit, but it casts an eery shape on the wall, reminiscent of a horned devil, and nearly no imagination at all is needed to get spooked during the red rotation.  I’m not so fond of this night light.

Oh yes.  I nearly forgot.  Another reason why I love working with engineers.  Some of the old timers were wondering about the new person we are getting this week.  New to their group, not new to the company. 

I wonder how old she is, said one. 

(What does it matter )  About my age, says I.  (I know of her, from days gone by.  There aren’t so many women engineers around, so the names are easily remembered.) 

Twenties, then   said they. 

God BLESS them! 

Forties, said I. 

I love them dearly, yes I do.

…by idiots…

Sometimes I get that desperate caged feeling where my stomach feels like it’s risen to my throat and it’s hard to catch my breath.  It’s a reaction to frustration.  Or a manifestation thereof.  Either that, or it’s the physical realization of the mental exercise of biting my tongue and heeding my words, reigning in my thoughts so that they don’t explode with the words that I want to express.

It could be ego.  Or ruffled feelings   If I take the initiative to get something started that can potentially help quite a few people, do some extensive research and produce a fairly detailed working draft or prototype, and I coordinate with another who has a little experience in the matter, to seek his review and perspective as to whether I’ve missed anything important, should I take offense when I realize that he has scurried off to the bosses (how does one possessive-pluralize a word ending in double-s, anyway ) office to discuss his thoughts on what I’ve come up with so far   Rather than discussing matters with me   Is that not what coordination is   I am offended.  I gather that he wants to do things his way.  I wouldn’t have a problem with that if I hadn’t already invested the effort I’ve given.  I have deep objections to duplication of effort, and I don’t like to waste my time.  I don’t do my work for glory and fame.  I don’t insist that things be done my way, but if it so happens that the way I’ve proposed is logical and considerate to and for the many over the few, why not   I maintain that it’s not an ego trip, to fight for my way.  My goal is optimization. I want to find the best way.  Not for me, but for all.  For the situation.  I try to keep that in mind when I do what I do.  Whatever it is that I do.  So.  When I realize that the insufferable chatter across the cubicle wall is about me and my work, I get ruffled.  I’ve been down this road before.  I don’t have much tolerance for this weasly behind my back behavior.  No.  Instead, I put on my headphones and turn up the volume so that I can no longer hear my surroundings.  It’s so hard to interact with unreasonable people, and harder yet to muster up any sort of respect for them.  I can’t stomach the thoughts that arise, and I find myself boxed in.

Bah.

It’s not like my work makes a huge impact on humanity, or anything like that, but once in a while I do something that gives me a nice feeling of accomplishment. I built a dynamic web calendar some time ago, that provides a two month rolling window, minus the weekends. I was quite pleased that I was able to figure out how to make it, at the time, but it had room for improvement.

We have multi-tiered organizations, where I work. There are many departments, groups, and sub-groups. My calendar shows a complete group’s schedule, sorted by its sub-groups, with the supervisor and leads highlighted. The beauty of this particular calendar is that a supervisor (or anybody) can see at a glance the coverage (or lack thereof). Availability is important where I work, as we are a service organization.

Each person has control over their schedule and can input their planned out of office days. Each type of absence has its own color code. We also have flexible work schedules, where our pay periods are two week intervals. We can work non-standard schedules (within reason), as long as we work 80 hours every two weeks. In general, that means 4×10 hour days each week (a day off each week), or 80 hours/9 days each pay period (a day off every other week). I originally had a table look-up function where I had a sub-set of alternate schedule possibilities and holiday dates pre-loaded. Not very robust. It worked, but wasn’t very elegant, and I had to manually update the table each year to load the next year’s dates. And there are so many possible day off combinations. Too. Much. Work.

So. I made it calculate on the fly. It doesn’t sound like much, but I am quite pleased with myself for figuring it out. It’s not the most efficient code. It’s nearly 900 lines, after all. And, I probably reinvented the wheel, because someone else has probably already done this. All the same, I did it, and it works. For leap years, as well. Imagine that! It can calculate all the 4×10 and 9×80 alternate work schedules, and company holidays. Each day for each person, it says, hey, I am dd-mm-yy. What kind of a day am I Am I a day off Am I an alternate schedule day off Am I a vacation day Okay then. I will be color X. Next And so on. Yes, there is a LOT of looping taking place.

Twenty years ago today, I was a fresh young grad, barely 21, beginning her first professional job out in the wide wide world.  I had no intention of having a career.  I would have none of that, thank you very much.  I hadn’t known what I wanted to be, when I grew up.  I just knew that I would need to work, and I assumed that I would need to have an education in order to find good paying work.  I never questioned whether or not I would go to college.  It was a given.  I’m not sure why I was certain of that, but I was.  In retrospect, I should have considered other schools, besides the local university, but it didn’t occur to me.  My dad was a professor at another local university, across the state line, and it never occurred to me that I might go to that university.  I’ve never been one for much imagination.  But I do get things done. 

I was interested in architecture.  And education.  Those would have been my first choices.  I already knew teachers were paid a pittance for their life’s work, which was, and is, a travesty.  I hoped to put some distance between myself and poverty, so I decided against that path.

I was very daunted by the whole concept of university.  I had graduated from a very small, rural high school that boasted 42 students in its record high graduating class, four of which were exchange students from exotic places, far and anon.  I assumed I had received a laughable education, as I was able to finish all my ‘homework’ between classes, either racing through it as soon as it was assigned and before class was finished, or during the first part of the next class, when all is chaos, before the teacher has gained control.  I only remember doing one report at home, in the entire four years.  That, and assigned reading.  But nothing else.  I assumed that I didn’t know anything, and that university classes would be different.  They would be the real thing.  I psyched myself out, convincing myself it would be harder, and so much different.

I was 17 and laden with preconceived notions of inadequacy.  I met my RA, Resident Advisor, that first day in the dorm, and asked about her major.  She was older.  Mature.  She was the  RA, after all.  Architecture.  Oh, I said, quite interested.  How do you like it   It’s very hard, she said.  She didn’t recommend it.  How funny it is, how a fragment of conversation can change the course of one’s life.  It was that advice, from one who knows, that dissuaded me from that path.  I think back to that moment and wonder how I could have put so much faith in a struggling student, and so little faith in myself.  In retrospect, I know it wouldn’t have been that hard for me.  I think I would have done quite well, out there in the world of architects.

Instead, I went to the job placement center, and scanned the statistics for the best prospects of employment upon completion.  The engineering disciplines were at the top.  Chemical was first, followed by Electrical and Mechanical.  Having had no chemistry background whatsoever, I opted for electrical.  And there it was.  My decision.

Obviously, I didn’t know anything about anything.  Else how could I assume architecture would be too hard, because someone else said so, yet electrical engineering would be just fine.  I amaze myself, how much of an idiot I can be sometimes.

I did it.  I graduated.  I made it through.  I did well enough.  It was stressful, and I could have done much better, had I not psyched myself out.  It turns out that I did have the relative ability and intelligence needed to learn that field, after all.  Imagine that.  It also turned out that my small university actually had a very good engineering department.  Our graduates were placing in the top 10 percentile, nationally, I vaguely recall.  So.  I got a decent education after all.  For a bargain, at that.

Job placement was tough, that year.  Only half of my fellow classmates got jobs, upon graduation.  I had several offers.  I might boast, but I ought to consider that perhaps I was a good catch from the perspective of EEO quotas.  There weren’t many female engineers at the time.  I fit a double minority, being half Korean, and all.  Even so, I was relieved and proud to be joining the ranks of the professional employed.

I knew little of the company.  I chose it because it was the closest to home, even though it was hundreds of miles from home.  In a city.  A big city.  A big city full of traffic.  It was terrifying.

Twenty years ago today, I stepped through the gate, into a new life.  I was confident I would stay only a few years, get some experience under my belt, and move on to a place more vogue.  Groom myself for management.  Because that’s where it’s at, baby.  Management.  The measure of success.  A few years turned into two decades in the blink of an eye.  Management is the farthest thing from my mind.  Coworkers have become friends who are all part of my family now.  I love these people who I’ve shared the last twenty years of my life with.  This company has been good to me. 

I’m many many years from retirement, and wonder how long I will remain here.  I’d like to stay for some time, if I can work it all out.  I have hopes for my life, for my family, for my child(ren)’s upbringing.  I would like for it all to work out.  For now, it’s one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time, until I formulate a more definitive plan.

Last night.  Wild man toddler finally asleep, after a 2.5 hour battle.  A few moments on the couch, prior to calling it a night.  Mr. Gadget turns to me and says…

(regarding my job)

(the day job)

(the one that pays)

…What is it that you do

…or…   It’s a small world, after all.

Yesterday I got a post on our family message board* from one of my nieces, my deceased brother’s first born, who has been tapped in to our family for only a few years, as she was adopted at birth to a fine family who lived across state from us.  I’ve waited all her life for her to reach that age where she could meet us, the rest of her family, and when she did, it was a beautiful thing.  She is a beautiful thing.  She’s one of those people that you find it hard not to stare at, because she is simply breathtakingly beautiful.  When I look at her, I clearly see her mother, and I clearly see her father.  She is such a perfect amalgamation of the two of them, and it fills me with wonder, every time I even think of her.  She’s intelligent, has a great sense of humor, carries herself with confidence and dignity, and can play the piano like nobody’s business.  All that, and she’s in, to boot.  As in, she’s totally cool, man.  I’m not in, you see, so I don’t know how one would say that one is in, in today’s youthful crowd.  I digress.  Suffice it to say that I am pleased that she has welcomed us into her family.

Meanwhile, I work for a gargantuan company that employs thousands and thousands of people, worlwide.  In its heyday, it employed over a hundred and fifty thousand people.  People!  That’s alot of people!  In fact, in a few short weeks, I will have logged twenty years with this company.  Twenty Years!  Goodness, where does the time go   Somehow I’ve survived all the downsizing efforts and mass layoffs throughout the years.  I’ve wrestled with the idea of this working life not being what I had dreamed, and come to the realization that the grass may not be greener elsewhere.  I work with very fine people, who I love, and twenty years of experience and stability bring with it a decent wage, a stable daily schedule, health benefits, and a month of paid vacation each year.  Things could be so much worse, so I am grateful for what I have.  I digress.

So the conversation goes like this…

…I hadn’t even considered that my niece was a barista when I made the first espresso comment.  I was just being a bit flip, because I did remember a guy with a name like that, and I remembered talking with him about his dreams of brighter pastures, back when we were much younger, kids out of college with only a few years under our belts.  It was the late Eighties or early Nineties, layoffs were looming, and he was going to move to another city to try out the gourmet coffee scene.  I was going to open a bed and breakfast.  He followed his dream, I’m sure he worked his a$$ off, and now, now he’s done it!  I am SO pleased to hear this news. 

This story, though long-winded, is important for me to write about, because the bottom line is that I am filled with such a beautiful and wonderful feeling that stems from being connected.  I feel connected.  It’s a big thing, really.  We live in a world filled with millions of people living their lives, and somehow, somewhere, somewhen, we are connected.  It makes me feel so good, so happy, knowing this. Feeling this.  Experiencing this.

*We’ve had a message board for many years, thanks to the illustrious duo of C&D, my sister and her man.  It’s like an original blog, or a pre-blog.  This wondrous thing has kept my family connected in so many ways, for so many years.  Our family dynamics wax and wane, and it’s all there, all captured in our message board.  It’s a precious thing to me.

I recently met with a coworker to discuss, um, work stuff. I knew him by name, having worked with him in the past, but I couldn’t recall his face, and vice versa. So we met in person, and he brought me up to speed on the work stuff. The thing is, his eyes kept darting from my eyes to my hair. It’s not like my silver streaks are blinding, or anything, and I admit, I’m not one to keep up with things like haircuts and color updates. But come on. It’s rude! Maybe one glance would be okay. It wouldn’t bug me (much). I might not even mind a chiding comment, like, say, “Looks like project X is taking it’s toll on you, har har har.” I might come up with some wry and witty retort, and that would be that. But to keep darting from my eyes to my hair to my eyes to my hair. Again, I say, how rude! That was the first meeting. The second was with the rest of the team. (It’s a special assignment task force, oh so very important, yeah, yeah, right, unh-hunh, yeah.) Ahem. During this meeting He calls me Jan. Being new to the team, and considering we were teleconferencing with people from across the country, I at first thought he was talking to someone else, not in the room. But I realized that 1) I am the only woman on this team, and therefore 2) he was speaking to me. Now I don’t know how one confuses Jan with Sueeeus… And during this meeting The steady-eye-contact-challenged team leader introduced me to the other team members in the room (who I already knew). One of them looked at me with unfeigned lack of recognition. Ummm, we worked in the same group and I sat two desks down from you (a few years ago), I reminded him. Ohhhhhh, he says, not completely convinced. I don’t think I look that much different. I did change my name though (having married Mr. Gadget), and that throws people off somewhat.