tomzyk's Journal: The "Business World"

This whole "business world" thing baffles me more and more with each passing day.

I have a boring job where (step 1) my boss tells me what needs to be done, (step 2) I plan for it by drawing up site and database diagrams and other menial tasks that just need to be done for documentation purposes and (step 3) I complete it WAAAAY ahead of his expected time. This gives me plenty of time to read up on randomness and wander the building. :-)

Now, I originally thought that I was the only person this happened to. HA!!! Not by a long shot! Over the past few weeks I've noticed several people in my building constantly walking around (seemingly) from office to office.

I was reminded of a Dilbert strip where Wally is teaching Asok how to work "smarter" not "harder". Wally tells him Step 1 is to start walking quickly through the halls all day while carrying a bunch of "importantly looking papers" and just snarl when anyone tries to speak to you; this makes it look like your job is more difficult/stressful than theirs and they won't bother you. (Step 2 was something about making sure your toothpaste matches your shirt and to just get toothpaste stains on it so you don't have to wash it as often.)

Anyways... back to the subject: I swear that this is what people do in my office building! (Step 1 that is; I haven't witnessed Step 2 yet.) People are constantly wandering past my desk to the printer or to the bathroom or to other cubicles or wherever. I recently took it upon myself to follow some of these "pacers" and see what a typical day was for them. To my absolute astonishment, these people seem to have even LESS to do than I have! I'm serious! Here's some examples of these people (men and women both):

walking from cube to cube to chit-chat with each other - Two ladies spent the ENTIRE AFTERNOON (that's a full 4 hours!) yesterday talking only a few cubes away from me.

taking frequent trips to the bathroom - One guy seems to spend 3 to 5 half-hour sessions in there every day, so, unless he has some serious bladder problems, I'm assuming he's takin naps on the crapper all throughout the day.

constantly hovering around the printer - A few people (but one guy in particular) seem to just hover around the printer/copier for most of the day. I assume this is just to be able to get a good whiff of perfume from the Administrative Assistants or something because they're miserable at home, but whatever. They just contantly make trips over there, even if nothing is printing out, or if they DO have something to print out that has multiple pages, they will do so 1 page at a time and make a separate trip for each sheet. (This one was brought to my attention a few weeks ago when I had to to the typical computer-geek-guy thing and fix someones computer settings.)

And this, I'm sure, is just the tip of the iceberg. I plan on doing much more research in this bold new business world that I have discovered. It truly is amazing that this can go on while the company just layed-off several thousand people, but whateva! Not my problem. I'll just use my time finding out who wastes the most time; that way I'll have someone to point a finger at when they decide to cut my job. >:-)

I guess Scott Adams really knew what he was talking about when writing those Dilbert strips. In my 4 years since graduation I have witnessed MANY of those strips, which I used to think quite comical, actually happening in currently thriving businesses.

This is ....

[sigep_ohio]

exactly what I do all day. It is so great. In fact, I think I will nap on the shitter some more. Thanks for all the time wasting ideas.

And an article gets posted :)

[tomzyk]

Heh. Today they posted an article entitled "How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office" [slashdot.org]. But it's not really about the things I listed above; it's more about things like: use call forwarding to make it seem like you're at the office all of the time, write scripts to send out emails in the middle of the night, etc....