Baudelaire v. Big Tuna

Hey guys. Current events are kind of a crapstorm right now. So how about I tell you a crazy little delightful tale that won't make your head hurt?

You feel better already, don't you?


via GIPHY

That's what I'm here for.

OK, so a while back there was a class-action lawsuit against Starkist Tuna. The charge was that they had been, systematically and with malice aforethought...underfilling five-ounce cans of tuna. Clearly this malfeasance could not stand, and the people cried out for redress. So they sued, because JUSTICE FOR LOVERS OF CANNED FISH.

Socking it to Big Tuna, oh yeah.

I joined that lawsuit. Hell yes. Of course I eat canned tuna; I'm a white middle-aged suburban mom. What, do you think I'm poaching salmon filets on the regular? Pfft. Canned tuna is my spirit fish, and Starkist is my brand of choice. And having been traumatized by receiving a few grams of tuna less than I had paid for, I demanded my day in court. Or a protracted mediation on my behalf by anonymous lawyers that would require absolutely no effort on my part. All I had to do to be part of the class action was fill out an online "claim." That's the kind of search for justice I can get behind.

I was promised that, if we successfully took down Starkist, my fish-deprived co-plaintiffs and I would receive 25 dollars in cash or FIFTY CANS OF TUNA.

Shown here: FIFTY CANS OF TUNA
(maybe)

I can't really explain it, but the idea of 50 free cans of tuna absolutely tickled me. That's a crapton of Starkist, folks. That's, like, at least a year's worth, or more if I discipline myself and don't celebrate Tuna Mac Tuesday every single week. Who has 50 cans of tuna in their home besides doomsday preppers and people who need to seek help for their Costco addiction?

I feel there may be some overlap between those groups.

I wanted my 50 cans of tuna, dammit. So I filled out the online form and then put it out of my mind. I didn't want to obsess over it. The wheels of justice turn slowly, I knew, and I was just asking for tuna-induced neurosis if I let the lawsuit consume my thoughts. I have plenty of other neuroses that I have no control over, thank you very much. I vowed to let things run their course without my constant vigilance and moved on.

As time went on, I occasionally wondered what was happening with the Great Starkist Legal Battle. Sometimes, when I grabbed a can of tuna from my pantry, I would spare a thought for the long-promised reward of tuna bounty. And I have to admit, at some point I figured that the suit must have been lost, or the awarding of many cans of tuna had been negotiated away. Disappointing, but I've been disappointed before. I could survive being deprived of justice and FIFTY CANS OF TUNA.

Flash-forward to today. I checked my mail, and there it was:

I was a little bummed that it wasn't a certified letter,
or delivered by Steve Harvey, or something.

The lawsuit had been settled at last! We had been victorious! We had triumphed over Big Tuna! We had been awarded...

...five dollars' worth of tuna.

Sorry, five dollars and three cents, bitches.

Turns out that 2.5 million tuna-loving opportunists had joined the class-action lawsuit, about 12 times what Starkist had calculated when they promised FIFTY CANS OF TUNA. Eh. Victory is victory. Free tuna is free tuna. Piscis piscis est.

Do you want to know how long I waited to get my coupon for $5.03 worth of Starkist tuna?

I remember exactly when I signed on to the lawsuit. I remember because when I had to enter my address, it was one of the first times - if not the first time - that I used the address of my current apartment instead of my former house. Precocious Daughter and I hadn't even moved out yet, but I knew that we'd be living there by the time they needed our address to make good on our FIFTY CANS OF TUNA. Which I apparently believed they'd deliver on a pallet via forklift.

Where do you want your tuna, lady?

We moved into our apartment four years ago tomorrow.

I almost wept with laughter when I saw that freaking postcard. It felt good. It somehow felt like the best payoff possible for all the hard work of the last four years.

Probably I can buy five or six cans of tuna with $5.03. I'll split them with PDaughter. She - who was a sophomore in high school when Baudelaire v. Big Tuna began - can eat them in her college apartment. I'm pretty sure she owns a can opener. If not, I'll buy her one. I can afford it. After all, I just won a lawsuit.

Not sorry, Charlie.

----------

You can read about the lawsuit and settlement here.

Toys: A Bad Movie, A Beloved Retail Model

I used to have a young child, who had many young friends who celebrated birthdays every year. I also had a bunch of young nieces and nephews (ditto).

I put in lots of time at Toys R Us, is what I'm saying.

It's the greatest toy store there is (gee whiz!).

Christmases. Birthdays. I'm a terrible adult and need to appease my child-days. Toys R Us was always there, fully stocked with the latest in games, toys, bikes, and random shit guaranteed to guilt you out of a large portion of your paycheck.

You may not know it, but this is love.

I totally remember standing in line with PDaughter for HOURS so that Toys R Us would download some freaking rare Pokemon to her Nintendo DS.

I remember spending HOURS in the stuffed animal section to find that perfect ball of artificial fluff to give as a gift to some random child who would probably just throw it on the heap he/she already had in his/her room.

I remember spending a significant portion of my Christmas gift budget on toys, games, and clothes at my local Toys R Us.

And loving it.

But now, Toys R Us is about to shut down its stores forever.

GEOFFREYYYYYYYYYYY.

Look, I get that Montgomery Ward went out of business. That David Letterman retired. That Life Magazine ceased publication. Time marches the fuck on.

But Toys R Us?

That is a biggie.

Where will I...someday, you guys. Definitely someday. OK?

...Shop for my grandkids?

Not at Toys R Us.

Amazon, whatever. Not if they don't have a catchy goddamn jingle, though.

What does Toys R Us mean to you, Drunkards?

Let me know.

The Worst Hangover I Ever Had

Not long ago, I talked to my physician about my drinking. We discussed various health risks and strategies for managing it, etc. The thing that sticks in my head is when she told me, "The last thing we want to do with someone who drinks as much as you do is to have you go cold turkey."

Medical-bitch, please. I'm the queen of cold turkey.

Completely unsolicited endorsement:
Worth1000.com is one of my favorite websites.

Not to belittle anyone who has gone through alcohol withdrawal symptoms - because as you'll understand in a minute, I know from withdrawal symptoms - but, as the old joke goes, I'm an expert at quitting drinking. I've done it a million times.

My withdrawal symptoms when I stop drinking run the gamut from not sleeping well for a night or two to...no, that's about it. Forty-eight hours of restless nights and weird dreams, and then I feel great. I actually enjoy not drinking at all. And I enjoy drinking a lot. It's drinking a little bit that sucks.

An oldie but a goodie.

But that's not what I'm talking about tonight. Right now I'm suffering from terrible withdrawal symptoms related to an entirely different addictive substance.

I haven't been drinking coffee lately.

Liquid crack, in its bean state.

It wasn't really a conscious decision. It's just that I really like coffee, so I tend to drink it by the potful, and as I get older, it's starting to tear my stomach up. In a nutshell, the thing I drink when I'm hungover has started to make me feel worse than the hangover. So most mornings for the last week or so, when I ask myself, "Hey...coffee?" the answer has been, "Nah, I'll just drain this five-gallon water cooler, thanks."

A charming stock photo of a little girl drinking
water from a...pilsner glass. What.

And then this morning, after several days without coffee - and even though I typically have a caffeinated Coke Zero in the evening - I got hit with the Monster Headache of Achingskullsylvania.

All damn day this beast sat on my brain and squeezed my tender think-bits. It was horrible.

Vodka never did this to me - not when I drank it, not when I stopped drinking it.

Vodka doesn't get all up in my business.

Tomorrow I'm totally caving into the beast. I'm going to straight to the coffeemaker in the morning and brewing myself some anti-headache potion.

I'm an addict. I'm weak.

How come there's not a 12-step program for java?*

*Because the coffee lobby has a stranglehold on Congress and is forcing its caffeinist agenda down the throat of true Americans and...oh, sorry, I've been reading a lot of crap about the Hobby Lobby decision today. Last thing I want to do is place my coffee addiction in the hands of the same "higher power" that thinks women should stay at home and wait for their man's company-funded Viagra to take hold.**

**hehehehehe

Shit My Job Says: Three Blind Mouse Clicks

You know how much I love conference calls.

This much.

If you don't know how much I love conference calls, read this to find out how much I love conference calls.

Soooo...Teleconference today to review a new equipment ordering process. Audio and video. Bitchin'. Webex invitations were sent out in advance, along with a copy of the written procedure. Everyone is on the phone and sitting in front of a computer at his or her respective location to follow along.

Here's how long it took for the session to go completely off the rails.

Call host: Is everyone looking at my screen on their computer and reading along with the written procedure?

All particpants: Yes.

CH: OK, then. As you can see, we've set up a special account for ordering parts called "Electric Boogaloo" (not actually the real name...duh). So first, you open that account. (mouse click)

CH: Next you click on "Orders" to get to the ordering screen. (mouse click)

CH: Then, to place a new order, click on "Place New Order." (mouse click)

CH: Is everybody following along so far?

Remote Participant #1: How did you get to that screen?

RP #2: I am completely lost.

RP #3: I never got the email with the written procedure.

RP #4: I never got the Webex invitation.

RP #5: What are we looking at?

RP #6: Is this something we're supposed to be doing?

Me:

Level 6 facepalm through the back of the skull.

CH: (Dead silence.)

RP #3: OK, I just got the email. Can we start over?

Three mouse clicks. That's how long it took.

The call then continued for an hour and a half. It covered exactly what was in the written procedure, which took less than ten minutes to read. And basically the only new information in the whole thing were the three mouse clicks to get to the ordering screen. You know, the ones that turned 15 educated professional adults into first-graders who couldn't find their place in the reader.

Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd.

I'm really glad I'm working from home this afternoon. If another call gets scheduled, I know where the vodka is.

What Does It Mean?

There's a guy working in my building today who looks exactly like Paul Vasquez, aka the Double Rainbow Guy:

He of my favorite viral video evah:



I have personally seen a double rainbow, and yes, it is intense. Even without whatever drugs he obviously had in his system at the time.

Anyway, this guy is on-site to do some kind of construction work, which seems to be going on constantly  here. I don't think they actually finished this building before they started leasing it out to tenants. They just put up a building-shaped shell and slapped some ugly-ass mirrored panels on the outside and declared it "prime leasable space." Which means "a certain number of walls and perhaps a few doors, oh and an HVAC system that functions according to a quantum algorithm we haven't quite figured out. If you want electrical outlets that'll be $250 each." But I digress.


Oh, you want windows? You can't afford windows.

 The point is, I see construction crews wandering around every week, but this is the first time I've seen Guy Who Looks Like Double Rainbow Guy. I was going to sneak up and take a picture of him to post, only he weighs around 250 pounds and likely could pound me flat with one meaty fist. I mean, he's probably a total teddy bear and treats his mother well, but I'm not going to take that chance just for a photo. Trust me, he looks just like Double Rainbow Guy without the beads in his beard.

Now, however, I'm a little obsessed with the idea that he might actually be Double Rainbow Guy. Who knows, maybe the whole living in the mountains and crying at rainbows thing didn't work out. Maybe he had to find a way to make a real living, and he decided to become a construction worker in Dallas. That might have been his lifelong dream, but life took an unexpected turn and he ended up in a tent in Yosemite with a whole bunch of killer weed and a camcorder. It could happen to any of us.

I could have been a professional snake wrangler
if I hadn't turned out to be sane.

Do you think I should ask him? Something like, "Hey, your name wouldn't happen to be Paul Vasquez, aka Double Rainbow Guy, would it?" Because I love saying "aka." It sounds so spyish. Or I could go more subtle and ask him if he's sobbed at any natural light-refracting phenomena lately. Or if he has any really good weed. Of course, if he really is just a construction guy, he probably does. I've known my share of construction guys, and they all smoked dope. Not that you should be concerned abou the integrity of any home or office building you currently occupy.


Plus, the electrical is all organic and it smells like clouds.

I think I'll just let Guy Who Looks Like Double Rainbow Guy go about his business. It's more fun to pretend he might be an in cognito Internet celebrity than to find out he's just a big anonymous dude with a beard. Safer, too, what with the meaty fist factor. But if it starts raining, and I notice him going outside, I'm definitely going to follow him to see what he does. He might start crying. Or he might just light up a fattie. Either way, I'm cool with that.

Always Drunk would like to remind readers that many drugs are in fact illegal. And many are not. Choose well.

Briefly

Remember my panic post the other day? I was getting ready for a high-profile public event at work, and the logistics all blew up in my face 48 hours beforehand. Good times.

Well, the event is over, and I can report:

I found an awesome rental place that set up and tore down our PA system in the middle of a parking lot exactly when we needed them to do it. (If you're in the Dallas area, it's AA Party Rentals. Call them. They're fabulous.)

The event itself went off without a hitch, with many compliments from the visiting corporate hoohas in attendance.

Even with two tents and a convenient shade tree nearby, an asphalt parking lot in Dallas in the middle of August is a miserably hot place to hang out for four hours.

A nice man from the neighborhood volunteered to take our leftover water bottles to a local homeless shelter. Helping the poor and not having to transport two dozen wet-from-sitting-in-melted-ice bottles back to the office in my trunk = score.

I'm very glad I switched from my inferior brand of deodorant, but I still feel as if I smell like sweat and marinated lady parts.

Il Cane Rosso on Commerce Street in Deep Ellum serves kick-ass Neapolitan-style pizza and has an awesome staff. Check it out if you're in the neighborhood and there's a long line across the street at Twisted Root Burgers.

I have blisters the size of salad plates on both feet, and I can't take my shoes off because my boss' boss is sitting in the next office. Ow.

Also, a camera crew from one of the local TV stations was there (OK, it was one guy in a Hawaiian shirt, but he had a big old camera and an ID on a lanyard). Maybe we'll be on the local news tonight, but I'm guessing the story about the new H&M store opening at NorthPark Mall will be on before us. Dallas is all about priorities.

All in all, a good day. Plus it was nice to actually do something productive at work. I'm not saying I'd want to make a habit of it or anything, but a little human contact is a nice change of pace.

Holy crap, my feet hurt.

Short Panic Mode Post

Not much time to write today. I'm trying to to throw together an event for work, and it's not going well.

It's amazing the reactions you get when you tell people you want 20 folding chairs and a PA system delivered to a parking lot in downtown Dallas for three hours. "We don't have any available." "We're going to to charge you $300 to deliver $200 worth of equipment." "We don't do business in Dallas. Yes, I know this is a local number. Ooh, you're breaking up. Bye!" It's as if they don't realize I know it's an insane request.

One guy suggested I could pick up the equipment myself to avoid the early-morning extra delivery fee. I told him I could maybe get a mixing board and three chairs in my Bug but strapping the podium to the roof was going to be tough. He was still laughing when I hung up.


If only I had one of these.

Apparently nobody holds a public event in a parking lot at 9:00 a.m. One rental place offered to drop the stuff off the night before for no additional charge. Drop it where? It's a parking lot. I'm not going to roll out my sleeping bag to babysit your folding chairs overnight, but if I don't, there will be 20 comfortably seated homeless people in the neighborhood by morning.


Who can blame them?

The same goes for the folks who said they couldn't pick the stuff up until the day after the event. Are the "Please Steal Me" signs included in the rental charge, because I don't think I should have to pay extra for something so obvious.

When I suggested I could rent a truck at Home Depot and transport everything myself, I was told I could pick up the chairs but the sound equipment had to be delivered for insurance reasons. I said it didn't make much sense to pick up half my order and still be charged the same to deliver the other half. The answer was: Nope, it don't. I think we got disconnected when I started hitting my forehead with the phone.

Anyway, I've got more phone calls to make. If you know anyone who can bring 20 folding chairs, a podium, and a small PA system to a parking lot in downtown Dallas on Thursday morning, and pick it up a few hours later, and not charge an arm and a leg, let me know. Have them call me once they stop laughing.

By "Always Drunk" I Don't Mean Every Minute...Right Now, For Instance

I'll bet your workplace prohibits drinking on the job. Unless your job is town drunk or wine taster. Or vodka taster, which would be a great job but probably doesn't exist. It's vodka - of course it tastes good.

Anyway, your employee handbook probably specifically addresses the issue of using drugs or alchohol at work. Here's what mine says about it:

Any Employee suspected of possessing, or suspected of being under the influence of, alcohol, an illegal drug, intoxicants, or a controlled substance (during working hours, while on premises owned or occupied by the company, or at any other location while conducting business on behalf of [redacted] and its affiliates and subsidiaries) is subject to have his/her personal and work property inspected and searched with or without notice.

Any Employee who reports to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol will be appropriately disciplined up to and possibly including termination (with the exception of over-the-counter or physician prescribed medications).

Killjoys.


This looks like a totally productive work environment to me.

I used to work for a company that had very similar language in its employee handbook. And we took it very seriously, violating the policy only on Fridays, holidays, and when we felt like it. 

Pulling a little red wagon filled with beer around the office
surely fell within the intended scope of the policy.

Leftover beers were stored in the refrigerator in the break room. And because we were responsible and loyal employees, we kept a spare refirgerator in our warehouse, so we could move them out of sight when a representative of our corporate office came to visit. No point in stressing out busy executives with knowledge they didn't need to have. Unless they asked for a beer, in which case we could rapidly and efficiently comply with the request.


I loved that guy.

If you didn't like beer, a couple of people always kept something a little stronger in their desks. You just had to know who they were. This typically was accomplished by getting on the P.A. system and saying, "Hey, who's got booze in their desk?" Kidding! We would never do that. Everyone knew damn well who had booze in their desk.

Sadly, my former employer went out of business. It had nothing to do with the fact that we were a bunch of alcoholics. I'll say it was because of the tanking economy and not dwell on the gross incompetence of the people who ran the company. The less said about the gross incompetence of the people who ran the company, the better. In fact, who even mentioned the gross incompetence of the people who ran the company? Not me.

Technically, my former employer didn't go out of business. The company was bought by a competing firm. The new corporate overlords agreed to acquire all of the branch offices. Except mine. That one they closed and then they fired everyone who hadn't already been laid off. After stringing us along for several months. Oh, and this is not painful to write about at all.

It was at this point that the office booze really would have come in handy. I say "would have," because before we were unceremoniously thrown out on our butts after years of service during which we were consistently profitable despite our drinking habits, something terrible happened. In an attempt to keep our doors open, several months earlier we had downsized to a smaller office. We subleased a space from another company that had done some downsizing of its own and needed the rent money. It was a good arrangement, if by good you mean we had to work in very close proximity to our landlady, who was a complete psycho and also didn't allow alcohol on the premises. And she meant it.


Perhaps I exaggerate. She wasn't this old.

So there we were, struggling to survive, a shadow of our former prosperous selves, beaten down by the recession, our morale plummeting...and stone cold sober. This was no way to run a business. If we wanted to drown our sorrow, we had to leave the safe confines of the office and drive to a bar to do it. Come to think of it, we probably could have reported our landlady to OSHA for creating a dangerous situation. Although she likely would have retaliated by tearing off our skin in strips with her teeth. She wasn't a mean person, but she was gibbon-shit crazy.

Anyway, flash forward to the present, past about a year and a half worth of depressing crap that will make a great movie starring Ed Harris as my heroic boss and Tina Fey as the psycho landlady. (Sounds like an Oscar contender already, doesn't it?)


And there's just got to be a part for Owen Wilson.

I'm now working for another company. We manufacture green technology, and we're experiencing tremendous growth, and it's all very exciting. Especially the part where I could totally stash booze in my desk drawer in violation of the drug and alcohol policy quoted above because I only have one co-worker and he's easy to hide shit from. Also, my phone never rings, so I could drink all the freaking time and no one would know except the security guard who strolls past my suite a couple of times a day.
If you're wondering how any of that equals "tremendous growth," I have three words for you: Government contracts, baby.

However, I do not have alcohol stashed in my desk drawer. I don't drink on the job. When I did that before, it wasn't because of the stress or the long hours. It wasn't just because of that, anyway. It was because I had really cool people to drink with. And because we all worked really hard together and enjoyed taking a break from it together. And that was worth committing a firing offense for. Now, I'd just be sitting alone, drunk and miserable, wondering how things got to this point. I can do that at home.

Right after I whip up the best darn chocolate layer cake in town!

My point is, employee manuals were invented to give managers a reason to fire employees when they can't fire them for the real reason, like sleeping with the boss' spouse or being a total douchebag. So they're filled with contradictory statements like "We want our employees to have a positive experience" and "You can't drink at work." But there are ways to get both. And there are ways to end up with neither. And it has very little to do with what's written in the manual, but a lot to do with the people who are reading it. And coming up with fun ways to ignore it.

I'll drink to that. Later.

Shit My Job Says, Part 2: More Rules for Employers

A few months ago, I posted a list of totally random, off-the-top-of-my-head guidelines for employers. It contained such helpful suggestions as "When a customer opens a service ticket on a product damaged during shipping, the first-line response from customer support should not be 'Wait, are we selling those now?'" and "Try to avoid giving diametrically opposed pieces of information to employees who work in the same office on the same day." You can see the entire list here.

A few of you might have detected a note of frustration or cynicism in that post. If I gave the impression that I believed I was working for the mutant offspring of developmentally challenged gibbons and Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, I wish to correct that misapprehension right now.


This is a much better analogy.

Actually, I had no intention of singling out the company I work for as inept, irrational, or prone to making decisions that were cut from "The Office" for being incredibly ridiculous. Every company I've ever worked for has been like that, to a lesser or greater degree. I was just commenting on the fact that, damn, it was happening again. With love. Always with love.

And now, in the interest of being a productive, engaged employee, I've jotted down a few additional business rules. These purely hypothetical observations may be worthwhile perusing for entrepreneurs, managers, business analysts, or non-developmentally challenged gibbons who are one lab experiment away from the ape uprising that will take out humans and middle management for good.

Rule #21: Consider placing supervisors in the same time zone as their direct reports. If this is not possible, supervisors should consider contacting their direct reports by phone at least once every six months.

Rule #22: E-mails addressed to "All Employees" should pertain to all employees, or at least to more than 10 employees, all of whose desks are within shouting distance of the sender's office.

Rule #23: If management insists on receiving a hard copy original of a document rather than a scanned version, care should be taken to not immediately lose the original upon receipt.

Rule #24: Wide-area networks are a thing. They work particularly well for companies that operate over a wide area.

Rule #25: Replacing one employee who doesn't communicate well with three employees who don't communicate well does not necessarily improve communication by a factor of three.

Rule #26: While most employees agree that controlling overhead costs is admirable, many would also agree that an admin assistant's salary in exchange for just once receiving a timely response from an executive is a justifiable investment.

Rule #27: If an organization's e-mail program has the ability to share people's calendars, people's calendars should be shared. This is especially true if the organization's conference call service can only handle one call at a time.

Rule #28: A week is defined as "seven consecutive days." Thus the phrase "the contracts will be signed next week," first uttered in January, becomes problematic when still being repeated in June.

Rule #29: In a paperless company, purchasing a printer can be rejected as an unnecessary expense. Please see Rule #23.

Rule #30: HR's difficulty in keeping a constantly changing org chart updated is directly proportional to the frustration of employees who never have an updated org chart in their possession.

Rule #31:  Companies can't control what their employees say about their jobs, but they can influence what employees are inclined to say. And how funny it is.

Shit My Job Says: 20 Rules for Employers

Here are some rules for business.  I just thought these up off the top of my head.  Any similarity to real events or real people, living or dead or banging their head against their desk, is purely coincidental. 

Rule #1:  When a new office is opened, provide employees with a move-in date for the new space.  Also, don't neglect to actually lease the new space. 

Rule #2:  Set an office budget for furnishings, supplies, etc.  Tell people what it is.  Tip:  "Cheap" and "Anything you can bring from home" are not considered standard accounting terms.

Rule #3:  Tell the HR department when new employees have been hired, or at least provide their phone numbers so HR can call and ask them who they are and how long they've been here.

Rule #4:  Tell the CEO, too, preferably before he/she publicly announces the opening of the "new" office that has been staffed and operating for more than three months.

Rule #5:  When a new person assumes leadership of a team, inform team members of the change; before the change is preferable to after, but after is preferable to not until someone mentions it in passing on a conference call.

Rule #6:  When a customer opens a service ticket on a product damaged during shipping, the first-line response from customer support should not be "Wait, are we selling those now?"

Rule #7:  When a service ticket is escalated, the second-line response should not be "Our engineers say there's no way that unit could have been damaged during shipping."

Rule #8:  Let employees know what the company's products cost, even if they're not directly involved in sales.  The preferred terminology for this is "Please don't discuss prices unless you're authorized to issue a quote," not "We don't want to give you a price list because you don't know what you're talking about."

Rule #9:  If you promise a 24-hour response to e-mails, remember that most people know how to count.

Rule #10:  When the company grows beyond the number of licenses purchased for a particular software program, consider purchasing additional licenses as an alternative to telling employees "What possible use could you have for that program?"

Rule #11:  When giving a PowerPoint presentation from a remote location, it is encouraged to make the slides available for viewing (e.g., via e-mail or videoconference) rather than describing them over the phone.

Rule #12:  Managers who are directly responsible for solving a problem should refrain from telling co-workers they no longer want to be included on any e-mails related to solving the problem.

Rule #13:  Try to avoid giving diametrically opposed pieces of information to employees who work in the same office on the same day.

Rule #14:  Keep in mind that most of the advanced features on an expensive phone system work best if more than one phone is provided per office location.

Rule #15:  Consider one of the dozens of online file-sharing options currently available in lieu of sending out priority overnight packages consisting of a single sheet of paper.

Rule #16:  Question the wisdom of flying managers in to the corporate office to lecture them on cost-containing strategies.

Rule #17:  Provide training to all employees who use the company's complex and powerful enterprise management software.  Make sure to include the senior manager who keeps insisting that all the most important data be maintained in multiple Excel spreadsheets.

Rule #18:  Avoid assigning tasks to nonexistent employees.

Rule #19:  Offering a comprehensive benefits package to recruit and retain good people is most effective in conjunction with a policy of telling them what it is.

Rule #20:  Remember that satisfied, productive employees doing meaningful work are a company's greatest asset and rarely compose satirical lists of business rules that get forwarded everywhere and eventually made into a really excellent book or hilarious sitcom pilot.  Completely fictional, of course.

Rounding the Bases

First off, GO RANGERS!!!  People who have known me for less than 10 years may be surprised by my outpouring of support for and devotion to the Texas Rangers as they play in their first-ever World Series.  But in a way, my return to baseball love fits right into a sort of "Back to the Future" theme that is going on in my life right now.  When you take a moment to stop, look around, and breathe, I think you find that sort of synergy is flowing all around, just waiting to be harnessed, just waiting to be noticed.

I became a baseball fan in 1982, the year the Milwaukee Brewers went to the World Series for the first (and, so far, only) time.  The magic of the game - its athleticism, its teamwork, its energy and grace, like a nine-inning embodiment of the American dream - enchanted me.  I remained a rabid fan for years, transferring my allegiance to the Rangers after moving to Texas, rooting for them through years of mostly medicore ball but still loving the game.  I saw (with my Beloved Spouse) Nolan Ryan get his 300th win against - who else? - the Brewers.  I met Bobby Witt and Kenny Rogers (and have pictures and autographs to prove it).  I listened to more radio play-by-plays on more sweltering Texas evenings than I can count or even remember.

But in 1995, I had had enough.  Enough of so-called professional athletes acting like overpaid prima donnas, demanding more millions in the name of "fairness."  After the 1994 strike and the subsequent unthinkable cancellation of the World Series, I turned away from the game.  I felt justified as I watched (from a distance) steroids nearly destroy baseball.  These muscled, self-centered Herculoids weren't ballplayers:  they were gladiators looking for glory.  Russell Crowe notwithstanding, I'm not a fan of the gladiator ethos.

But this year, the Rangers have brought me back to the game I love.  By playing the game I love.  This is the game I remember:  the gravity-defying defensive plays, the classic 6-4-3s, the base stealing and bunting, the antlers and claws.  As I write this, my Texas Rangers are down 2-0 against the San Francisco (boo hiss) Giants.  But I have faith.  And you can't be a baseball fan without faith.

The Rangers are in uncharted territory this week, and so am I.  I just finished my first week at a new job.  That's not unprecedented; it's my fifth new job since graduating from college in (yikes) 1989.  But it is the first time I've ever gotten a new job while still employed elsewhere.  Fortunately - make that miraculously - I didn't lose my job during the Great Recession.  Not that it wasn't touch-and-go for a while.  But with the economy kinda-sorta-maybe in recovery mode, I probably could have stayed where I was, trusted by my boss, liked by the co-workers, indefinitely.  And there was no reason to believe I wouldn't.

Change is not really my thing.  I'm totally into stability and routine.  I will in fact put up with a tremendous amount of bullshit, as long as it's familiar bullshit.  I was at my former job for about nine years, and in that time I turned down several good offers from other companies.  Because I had it so good where I was?  Possibly, but mostly because I didn't feel comfortable about making a change, even a potential change for the better.  Call it loyalty, or cowardice.  Change isn't easy, especially when you have a long history of not changing.  Ask the Texas Rangers.

Yet here I am, starting over.  New company - in fact, I won't even have an office for another two weeks, that's how new it is.  And when the office is ready, my commute will have doubled from its comfortable 20 minutes down the road to a daily crosstown jaunt.   And my boss works in a different city.  And the company could fail in two years when its government contract is up.  What the hell am I doing?

I don't know.  I don't know why or how all the ingredients came together to make this the opportunity I couldn't pass up.  I can't articulate how I came to decide that a complete shakeup in my life was exactly what I needed, since I have never, ever considered complete shakeups to be a positive thing.  Ron Washington, the manager of the Texas Rangers, will give you a dozen reasons why 2010 was the team's year, but the fact is, he doesn't know precisely how or why the pieces finally fell into place just now.  But he's going with it. 

And so am I.  Maybe my team won't win it all this year, but win or lose, I'll have enjoyed the ride.  Same with this fresh start I've just made.  It might turn out terribly disappointing; on the other hand, how can anything so exhilarating ever be a disappointment, even if it doesn't turn out perfectly?  Somehow, the Rangers and I have come to that conclusion at the same time.  Good luck to both of us. 

Feelin' Weird

When starting a new job, is it more or less disconcerting to have your first day be completely atypical?

On the one hand, being able to work from home, doing little but making e-mail introductions, researching purchases, and filling out paperwork, was a pretty sweet way to start out.  No traffic, no awkwardness, no bizarre first-day tasks.  But it was really strange to not have an office or interact with another person face-to-face for the entire day.  I've done plenty of working from home in my time, but it was always in the context of being home from somewhere and interacting electronically with people whose faces and voices I knew.  This was...not that.

Everybody at my new company seems to be really nice.  Although I'll have only one actual co-worker at first, I have counterparts in offices across the country, plus corporate staff, and they've been all been friendly and welcoming.  By next week we'll have an office with paint on the walls and Internet and everything, and then I can settle in to being the person who works in that office.

Today I felt a little like a ghost (appropriate enough for the time of year):  caught between two states of being, having left one place but not yet moved on to the next.  Given my personal history, it should have completely freaked me out.  I like stability.  I like knowing where I'm going and what I'm going to do when I get there.  This morning I sat down at my computer with nothing but a list of people to contact and a lot of questions.  I'm not saying that necessarily was a panicky situation; but based on my historical comfort zone, I at least should have been dithering.

That I wasn't - that I reached out to a lot of people and laid a good bit of groundwork for the next week's activities and felt calm and confident doing it - tells me that I made the right decision to inject myself into this highly unusual new job situation.  The time was right, the opportunity was right, and by taking it on, I was right.  Weird feeling.  Good feeling.  That part, I hope, doesn't prove to be atypical.

The Crucible

Last Friday I alluded to a big change in my life.  Those of you who know me personally and have to put up with me on a daily basis now know what that change is.  But for my fans in Moldova (hello there!):  I got a new job.

I've had the same job for almost nine years, through three office moves, several different titles, and one complete turnover in the name and ownership of the company.  The only constants over that entire span were my boss and me.  The industry we work in is almost entirely dependent on the commercial lending and real estate sectors - great news in the early 2000s, when growth was meteoric, but you might have noticed what happened to those sectors at the end of 2008.  Without going into a long dissertation on the details, over the course of 18 months I lost two-thirds of my co-workers and almost 30% of my salary.  And, not surprisingly, about 90% of my morale.

I didn't leave my job for any of those reasons.  In fact, when all of that was happening, I didn't leave my job at all.  I stayed because I believed in my boss and the skeleton staff that struggled mightily to keep all of our heads above water.  (Full disclosure:  I also believed, with good reason, that I couldn't find another job.  Recession, remember?)  In the last six months, as lenders and developers and investors have all decided that it might finally be a good idea to pump some money into the economy again, business has rebounded to an extent.  Not a full recovery by any means, but at last we're on a growth trajectory.  The future looks as bright as it has at any time since the crash. 

And that brightness illuminated some realities that had been hiding in the shadows.  When you spend two years in a haze of fear, uncertainty, anger, pain, and impending financial ruin, you miss things going on around you.  And inside you.  When the fog finally starts to lift, those things become not just visible, but glaringly obvious.  In my case, I realized that I had spent two years moving slowly backwards.  I wasn't totally oblivious:  I was painfully aware that I wasn't making progress toward any of my life goals, just like millions of other people.  But I thought I was at a standstill.  Not until recently, when I was able to raise my head a bit from the fetal position and look around, did I realize that I wasn't even achieving that much. 

Turns out that recessions don't erode only your financial stability.  The downturn drains your aspirations, your resilience, your confidence, even your ability to recognize the inertia that is turning your path to the future into a treadmill stuck in low gear.  Over the last several months, I came dangerously close to believing that the damage done by the recession was permanent and irreversible.  Not the damage to the economy - the economy always, always comes back - but the damage to me.

My expectations had shrunk to these horrible, malformed masses of insecurity, dangling uselessly like an old man's testicles.  (Now there's some descriptive language for you.)  No matter what happened - good, bad, or indifferent - I had become lulled into thinking that that was just the way it was.  The most important thing was to take the blows and stay the course.  It wasn't that I believed things would change eventually.  It was far worse:  I had started to believe, with all my heart, that things would never change.

Getting this new job came through a combination of good timing and plain good luck (more about it in another post).  Taking the job took all the strength I could muster.  It wasn't the first time I'd been offered a position in the last nine years.  It wasn't even the first offer I'd had since the recession hit.  I'd turned down opportunities with other companies because - especially over the last couple of years - my need to stay had become greater than my need to change.  In fact, I barely recognized the need for change as a valid motivation.  When I was offered my new position, it was very much like clouds parting to let the sun through as I realized that this time, finally, different felt like a better game plan than same.

Please don't get me wrong; I have great respect and affection for the coworkers and clients I'm leaving behind, and especially for my boss, who is a great leader and an amazing person.  The sense of inertia that gradually engulfed me started out, with the strongest of hopes and purest of intentions, as loyalty to him and his vision of a successful company.  That it curdled into something spirit-crushing is no reflection on him.  The last couple of years have been an unfortunate crucible for bad vibes.  Maybe it served some purpose for me to simmer in it for a while.  Maybe it was just bad, and best left at that. 

But now comes something different.  And although nothing is certain, I think that different finally has a fighting chance of taking me somewhere.

Lessons Learned from a Failed Software Implementation

Editor's note:  This piece first appeared in October 2009.  It seems appropriate to revisit in light of the peaceful revolution in Egypt.  Any group of individuals can achieve great success or great failure depending on how it conducts itself.  Sometimes millions of people can work together to topple a dictator, and sometimes 20 people can't manage to install a software program.  All I can say is, I have great respect for the people of Egypt.

If you haven't been in the cage, you haven't seen the circus. So the saying goes. After two years of evaluating, selecting, configuring, and testing enterprise software, only to have the implementation "postponed" (read: buh-bye), I've made these observations from behind the bars. I think they apply to a lot of group situations. Of course, that's just my opinion; I defer to the wisdom of the group...

• A single well-timed waffle can undo months of decisive action.
• Team hierarchies are like Mayan pyramids - it's a long and arduous climb to the top, the better to dispatch victims with a swift kick to the bottom.
• One person's fear outweighs the team's collective courage.
• Every group includes someone who truly grasps the complexity and interrelatedness of the problem at hand. This person is invariably known as "the quiet one."
• Change is idealized as a concept and demonized as a verb. As an imperative, it's universally ignored.
• Beware the consensus builders - when soliciting opinions, they seldom distinguish between quantity and quality.
• The most memorable part of a brainstorming session shouldn't be the restaurant at which it was held.
• Group goals are subservient to group politics.
• It's not paranoia to believe that someone on the team is out to get you.
• Any mission statement that doesn't include some variation on "we can't afford to screw this up" is granting the group a mandate to fail.