I’m so glad we’ve had this time together

If I could figure out how to pull electronically on my right ear, Carol Burnett style, I would. Remember her show from back in the 70s? She always tugged her ear at the end of each show. It was, I read, a signal to her family that all was well at home. Why she couldn’t pick up the damned phone is, I’m quite sure, another story.

And it’s another story that brings me here now.

I’ve been roaming around the blogosphere reading about people’s lives and am dismayed at how many blogs end right dag nab in the middle of the story without ever telling you what happens. I found one mom who was writing a very funny story about raising her children alone while her husband was deployed in Iraq. For over a year she revealed great snippets from her family life and then said, “Hey, I’m tired of single parenting; I’m tired of my husband not being in my kids’ lives. I’m going to follow him on his deployments. God help us all.” And that was it. It’s like I’ve lost a friend. I’m worried about her and I have no idea who the heck she even is.

I can’t do that to you—my loyal cadre of eighteen followers, who I’m sure are lying awake nights thinking, “What, when, where or where can my friend Mary be?”

So here’s the truth—unvarnished and without sugar coating: Mary the Tech Worker has retired. Having achieved neither fame nor fortune, Mary realized how shrill and angry she sounded and decided to make a change. She quit her high tech job and can be found selling Nathan’s hot dogs from a cart on Coney Island.

Not really. But you get the idea.

Even your friends can only stand so much ranting and raving before they stop returning your phone calls, right?

But kids, I want you to carry on without me. I want you to get pissed and yell and scream. Just promise me you won’t tape tea bags to your foreheads or anything really stupid like that. I want you to open the damn window and shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I want you to remember your friend Mary as someone who thought about things so much that her head busted open and a beautiful, happy princess jumped out and joined the real world. Okay?

Top ten signs you work for a micromanager

My micromanager is beyond the Pale, and answers more to the tune of a nanomanager. Check out this list, which I put together from research and cold, hard experience.

10. Follows you into the bathroom and continues to talk to you about your project status--and you're of opposite sexes.

9. Makes Captain Queeg and Captain Bligh look like management geniuses.

8. Sits in on meetings you chair, saying, "Pretend I'm not here," then hijacks meeting.

7. Never takes vacation. Does get sick from time to time, but comes to work anyway, saying, "I'm needed." Takes sick days only for major surgery, and then only while still anesthetized.

6. Claims all assignments are clear and unambiguous.

5. Won't supply clear answers to questions about ambiguous assignments.

4. Corrects the way you ask clarifying questions about ambiguous assignments.

3. Has said, "I don't like surprises," but gets obvious thrills from surprising subordinates.

2. Can't always resist the urge to tell subordinates how to use the phone system. Doesn't actually know how to use the phone system.

1. Strenuously denies micromanaging anyone, ever.

Love to know if you have more signs...suggestions for dealing with such beasts are also welcome.

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make
our choice; we cannot have both. -Abraham Flexner, educator (1866-1959)

Ah, Abe, how times haven't changed. In California, I hear more about potential park closures due to budget shortfalls than I hear about the potentially enormous effects the budget crisis will have on our schools. Now, Vladdie goes to a private school, so I don't feel it's my place to criticize. But it bothers me just the same.

WOW: encomium

PRONUNCIATION: (en-KO-mee-uhm)

Interesting word came my way (thank you Anu Garg!); it’s a noun and means glowing praise.

Reminds me that it’s review time in Corporate Land. I’m not sure much encomium will be flowing my way, as it’s my first time through this cycle at the new job. At my previous company, I wrote my own review. Can you say “lazy management?” You can bet there was a lot of encomium in those reviews. And without fail my bosses would take what I’d written verbatim and submit them for my review. Sweet, huh?

I suspect I’ll see a lot more meconium in this review. Familiar with that one? It’s the first stool of an infant—a “dark green fecal material that accumulates in the fetal intestines and is discharged at or near the time of birth.” Um? Bleuch.

Here’s a fancy pants example of our WOW in action:

"The speech cheered the faithful no end, as did Sarah Brown's smooth and skillful introduction of her husband. Yet though her encomium went down well with the party, it nauseated many television viewers."
Ruth Dudley Edwards; Why Mrs Brown Should Have Skipped the Heroics; Irish Independent (Dublin); Oct 4, 2009.

Oh those Irish! Always a ten dollar word.

WOW: machiavellian

PRONUNCIATION: (mak-ee-uh-VEL-ee-uhn)

It’s an adjective and means: characterized by cunning, deception, and expediency.

Is it any wonder that I’ve always been curious about this word? It epitomizes the tech world as I know it. In my salad days, I took the working world at its word. I believed what my management told me. There was the time the CEO of my company told us all in a company meeting that there would be “no layoffs.” I put that in quotes because that’s what the dude said…no layoffs. How long before the layoffs, the jaded among you ask? Why, the very next day about 25% of the company met their employment maker.

But that’s not really cunning, deception, and expediency, is it? Cunning, deception, and expediency would be more like telling the 200K odd people who work for you that everyone was going to have to pull together as a team, take one for the gipper, cut their pay so others could work and then pocketing your $48 million dollar bonus and laying people off anyway. But we’ve talked about this before…or I should say, I’ve yammered on at you before about this one.

So back to our word: it originates from Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Florentine statesman and author of The Prince, a political treatise describing use of craft and deceit to achieve political power. I’m pretty sure I’ve worked for his great-great-great-grandson.

Usage that my friend-whom-I’ve-never-met-but-admire-just-the-same Anu Garg quotes is thusly:

"Rumours of Machiavellian plots and conspiracy theories have permeated the period of mourning."
Darryl Broadfoot; Mitchell: End the Revisionism; The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland); Nov 23, 2007.

Use it in a sentence today!

Bitter, party of 1, your table is ready.

Kids, pull up a chair—I've got the mother of all rants singing in my soul and I've got to let 'er out.

I had the unavoidable pleasure of presenting my project to the company’s European marketing team this week. This group has a new VP, whom we'll call Jason, and who's based in the UK. Apparently Jason was looking for an opportunity to take it out and whip it all around to impress his new subordinates. And unbeknownst to me I was served up as the whipping girl du jour.

Firstly, I should point out that to accommodate my colleagues in Europe, I had to get up at the UNGODLY hour of 5am, chug some java, and get on the road in the DARK in order to get to the conference room on time. Man alive, I am so NOT a morning person. Archie and Vlad know not to talk to me or really even to look at me until I've been upright with coffee cup in hand for at least 60 minutes. Imagine then my state of mind going into this meeting.

These days we in the tech world conduct inter-continental meetings remotely, so my boss and I sat together in the large, empty conference room, hovered around an alien-shaped speaker phone. Really this thing looked like it could crawl off the table and install itself in my brain stem. In retrospect, I wish it had.

Slowly, the team in points East of Eden assembled and promptly muted their phones, so that I was literally and figuratively presenting to an empty room. Luckily my uber-micromanager boss kept leaning across me to adjust the contrast on my laptop screen and muting the phone as I was speaking to give me pointers on what I should say next. Can you say not-giving-me-that-confident-feeling?

And finally the crescendo of our morning-time meeting: Jason said that the campaign creative looked like "the back of a software box" and had nothing of interest in it at all. Kids, I appreciate a smartass simile as much as the next gal, but not when it's directed at me. Yes, I can dish it out and no, I can't take it. He went on but I won’t bore you or embarrass myself with the details of what he said.

I waited a few minutes and thought about telling him that his accent reminded me of back episodes of "Dr. Who" from the 70s and asking him what his personal relationship with deodorant was. I briefly considered telling him that his was the empire that crumbled and lost what turned out to be the largest world economy in history. I even thought about telling him that I hated the Beatles and rejected every contribution to pop culture that has ever come out of the British Isles.

Instead I thanked his team for their support and told him it had been a pleasure working with them. In the end, that felt better—Brits get sarcasm, don't they?

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. -Khalil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)