Outsourced

Today, my wife was told, "Oh, by the way, we're outsourcing your job in two months to Schaumburg, Illinois. If you want the job there, you'll have to re-apply for it."

What the f--k?

To say my wife is distraught is an understatement. No specific time frame given. Just, "oh, we'll move your job at some point in the future, with just enough time to fill you with dread and uncertainty". It gives you f--k-all time to prepare for that, and it throws all of our plans into a trashcan. Thanks for nothing, Unnamed Idiot Company. (Oh, the stories my wife could tell about trying to deal with these legacy processes!)

Of course, Friday is always the day they tell you this stuff. They figure they can get four productive units out of you the rest of the week, and if hearing the news curtails your mood severely, well, it's the weekend anyway. And of course, they f--k that up, too because now my wife has no incentive to provide anything beyond the bounds of the most minimal of competencies for the remaining tenure of her employment. As for giving notice when she finds a new job, well, sucks to be you, Former Employer.

I have been thinking about the whole world of employment recently. Note that I said "employment" and not "work".

employment: the condition of a contract - implied or written - wherein labor is theoretically exchanged for wages, with the hours or tenure of the labor understood by both parties. This differs from a job, wherein the contract is one which is legally recognized and which offers protections to both sides.

work: the condition of implying effort - physical or mental - to a task, either self-determined or determined by others.

There is no correlation between a job and work. There might be one between employment and work, but one of low value.

Back in ye old days, a job was something that was very difficult to lose or to be moved. This was an implicit contract betwen the employer and the employee. "If you do the things I ask you to, and I'm satisfied with them at a minimal level, I will keep you here as long as you want to be here." It was probably the closest thing to what the Brits call "the Dole" that a capitalist society would ever get; almost guaranteed employment. For employees to labor for thirty, forty or even fifty years at the same company was not uncommon.

Enter the 80s. (Really, if you think of it, probably the 70s.) I don't know the exact reasons for it, but there was a seismic shift in how employees were treated. Now, they were to be treated like disposable commodities, downsized or rightsized or otherwise euphemistically fired, shifted, or outsourced. It took about 20 years for the employees to catch up and treat employment not as a possible lifetime contract, but a contract of convenience, one to be disposed of whenever one felt that there was a better opportunity somewhere else. Of course, this merely gave the employers the justification to downgrade the status of the "ungrateful" employees even more.

As I believe, "Office Space is a documentary, but Mike Judge never intended it to be." The solution for his main character was to become a contract employee, building houses for his neighbor. I wonder how that's working out for him with the housing crisis.

I've never been great at offering condolences. Even offering sympathy, I find it hard to think of things to say. What I'd really want to do is punch the guy in the nutsack who called my wife to tell her this, but it wouldn't do to have both of us potentially unemployed.

Call IT for Assistance

I shall explain an IT situation at work which will be amusing only to those who have experienced similar situations, or perphaps to anyone working in IT.

Every three months, my department runs a process which we have been running for years. However, there was a key component to that process which was provided by a specific member of IT. The process was automated, but this specific member - with a lot of seniority - adjusted the output of that process to fit our specific needs. When this process was created in 2007, IT asked our department to verify the output. Unfortunately, since verifying the output would require obtaining historical information that was just about impossible to obtain, everyone sort of looked the other way, IT kept complaining about our department not verifying the process, and we used whatever data the IT department supplied.

Then...that person quit. And the secrets of how that process was performed walked out the door with her. We have the query she ran, but we know nothing about what she did to the output to bring it to its final form.

Therefore, for almost six months now, we have not had this critical information. We have completed information up to March 2010. June 2010 came, and went. Still no IT support. We finally got some IT support last month, they managed to run the existing query for us - which provided incomplete information - and then...we fell off their radar. Now it's coming up past September 2010 and...still no data.

I have no authority to compel IT to give me what I want. Neither, I suspect, does my boss. So here is how it will go down.

1) My boss asks me to complain to IT. I complain to IT.
2) IT does nothing.
3) After 1) and 2) cycle for a while, and after we need to supply this information outside of the company, my boss kicks it upstairs to his boss - which is one of the four men in the company who are the bosses.
4) His boss assigns the IT shakedown to his partner in the Gang of Four, who I suspect is the designated nutcracker.
5) The nutcraker goes over and shakes down IT, the way the Mafia shakes down a storeowner.
6) IT devotes emergency resources to the problem. The result is a half-assed result that is very different from what we needed, but which we're forced to use in the end.

Currently, this is how our IT department works. "Busy" does not even remotely describe IT. IT's responsibility is not to information technology, it seems, but crisis management as IT is called upon to use its magic and put out a never-ending series of conflagrations as more and more of the company's business goes through IT.

The reason IT can't put out my small bonfire is because right now they are dealing with a massive ten-alarm bring-down-the-thunder conflagration which threatens to turn our business into ashes and will make weeping widows and distraught children. Yes, it is extremely hot where I'm sitting but trust me - the asbestos-clad forces of IT have seen much, much hotter things. "I can't deal with your piddly bonfire now - I'm up to my ass in fire hoses."

From my understanding of business - this will get much worse in the coming decades. With automation and artificial intelligence taking a greater and greater role, most functions of business will either be supplemented by computer technology...or replaced by it. (Read "Data Dump", on this website.) More and more jobs will become IT jobs. More and more of the business of a company will be influenced by something that happens in IT.

This will require an expansion of IT at some level. Maybe not at the data entry level or programming level - those levels are being outsourced - but at least an expansion at the watchful eyes level. At the "take the requests from the angry executives/workers/customers" level. At the input and output levels. Jobs might end up shrinking across the board, but IT's share of the remaining jobs that humans can still do will increase more and more over time.

I remember reading something said about computer programmers, namely that an good programmer is worth 10 average ones...and an excellent programmer is worth 10 good ones. My hope is that somewhere on site we have a good programmer who can solve our conundrum. Honestly, I'd be happy with an average programmer devoting his or her time to my bonfire, or even a poor one.

(* * *)

My mailing pledge to you:

a) If I ever send you an e-mail, the e-mail will have a subject header, one which is in some way relevant to the content of the body of the e-mail. It will not be "[No Subject]" but instead something like "Where's that library book you borrowed from me, you rat bastard?"

b) There will be more than a simple mysterious link as the body of the e-mail. The only exception to this rule will be in cases where I've actually exchanged e-mail with you and the body of the last e-mail message contains something like, "I'll send you a link in a follow-up e-mail, but I'm rushed for time so I might just send the link instead." Even then, it would be rare that I would send a link without any accompanying text.

c) If there is text in the mail, the text shall use proper grammar and capitalization, and it will eschew loose slang. You will not read anything like "hey guys :) check thizz out" but rather, "Here's an interesting link on the relationship between murder and bullying - I picked up this link at Fark.com and it's worth looking at." (This is merely a sample, as I would not repost any of fark.com's links.)

d) If the text uses proper grammar and capitalization, it will not read like a Markov Chain.

The above was inspired by three people I know whose e-mail accounts have been taken over by spammers. Cutting too close to home. I might end up dropping yahoo.com as a reachable e-mail address.

(* * *)

So I’m in the car and I’m in my new pants, getting ready to go to work, pulled up to the traffic light that’s just off the mall. And then I look down and notice….

…I can see my underwear. Not just the outline, but the white underneath. The pants are see-through. Ruth says that this is called the "pantyhose/slip moment." And even though I intend to wear these pants because they're so damned comfortable, work’s not the best place for that. So I turn around, go back, put on a pair of new jeans and I’m in the office at 9:15 am.

About 10:30 am, I feel something on the back of my leg. I forgot to take the sticky tag off. Good thing I was seated most of the day and no one noticed it.

Ate lunch. Some pizza sauce got on my white Land’s End shirt. Agh. Ever have that kind of day?

Gleaming the Cube

Dull work anecdote. You can skip this one.

* About a couple of weeks ago, there was a guy who was fired at work. He was fired right in front of me. Everyone in the accounting department disappeared, except for me (I'm not in the accounting department, but I used to sit there) and this guy. I'm paying attention to my own crap, and I see the guy talking to someone in HR.

I then realize that this guy is being handed his papers. So I decide to leave so that there's one less person watching his most embarrassing moment. I also wonder what the hell kind of circumstance could lead to someone in the morning being fired without being given notice.

...

Today, I learned two interesting pieces of back story, at least to me.

As it turns out, they hired someone to replace the guy who was fired. I learned today that he was only on the job for one week. And, then...he quit.

Why? It seems that he had interviewed for a lot of places - and then, after accepting the job where I work, another place at which he had interviewed got around to offering him a position - a better one. So he dumped my workplace like a hot potato.

Very uncool. But in some circles, it would be considered very cool. He showed as much loyalty to a company that the company showed to the guy he replaced.

The other part of the story: remember the guy that got fired? Well, as it turns out, he's going to the MBA program of a local university. Remember the guy that replaced him and then left after a week? That guy's wife goes to the same MBA program.

As it turns out, the two know each other. She was telling Fired Guy that her husband - Replacement Guy - was interviewing at Fired Guy's company. This was two weeks before Fired Guy was actually fired. Furthermore, Replacement Guy's wife was telling Soon-To-Be-Fired Guy all about this new position that her husband was interviewing for. As Soon-To-Be-Fired Guy listened, he was telling himself "wow...that sounds just like my job...."

Les Sabots

I was talking to someone upstairs at work today, in the search for diet soda. Right now, my work uniform is a decent looking short-sleeved shirt, a pair of khaki shorts and a pair of flip flops. My biggest concern is that sooner or later the winter moratorium on short pants will be declared and I'll be consigned to long pants before the weather forces me to.

As I waited, this other person - similarly dressed except for the flip-flops - pointed out what he thought was my faux pas. "Last year, I wore flip-flops to work and they sent me home and told me to get another pair of shoes."

This has never happened to me for what I suspect are a number of reasons. The call center is the part of the business that is located upstairs, which is where the non-salaried employees work. Having worked in something like a call center before, I suspect that life upstairs really sucks. You're on the phone X number of hours a day, the bosses monitor both your time and your calls, your breaks are strictly regulated and you're made to feel small and insignificant in a number of petty and mindless ways.

Think about it this way. Imagine an economist at the University of Chicago having to check in with his department chair before he can go to the bathroom.

And yet, here I am, flouting the dress code and getting away scott-free. There could be many reasons for this:

1) No one knows enough about me to really care what I'm wearing. I'm the man with the red stapler.
2) I'm so vitally important that I can get away with various violations of the rules with a wink-and-a-nod because I'm so necessary, or....
3) ...I'm a salaried employee. Who works downstairs, with the bosses. Who only has one direct supervisor, who is off-site. And the flip-flops rule - either de jure or de facto in its enforcement - is a way to make one group of employees feel one way about themselves and the other group of employees feel another way about themselves.

So, given the choice, do you flout your comfortable flip-flops or seek other adornment? Can't throw the flip-flops away. Too pricey. If you stop wearing them, your wife asks "Why aren't you wearing those flip-flops? You like them so much!" More likely, you take the coward's way out, continue to contribute to class inequity by wearing the flip-flops of oppression and resolve to wear closed-toed shoes next summer.

HHF 59 is done, BTW. Actually, everything up to HHF 63 is first-drafted. (waves)

Trade-Offs

Here's a problem. Assume that the place you work has an IT department. In order to get certain information from IT, you have to request it. This process can take a long time. Let's also assume that you feel fairly confident in your ability to handle and organize information. IT, frankly, would like to give you access to its inner workings so that instead of you coming around and pestering them every two weeks for something big, you would simply create it yourself.

Question: Do you take the access that IT gives you?

Answer: It depends. If IT is offering you access so that you could do the hours of work that they used to do on your behalf, then no, you reject it. The entire purpose of having an IT department is so that you don't have to do that crap yourself. The purpose of a business being split up into different departments is so that odious tasks can be distributed appropriately to specialists. If IT isn't going to volunteer to take crap of your desk, why should you volunteer to take crap off theirs?

However, if what you're asking for is the kind of stuff that you could probably put together in 15 minutes - but stuff IT doesn't want to give you because it doesn't want every Tom, Dick and Harry poking around in its databases - then, yes, you do want the access that IT gives you. You don't want to have to wait for IT to get around to doing a simple task on their clock instead of your clock. If it's just a case of IT not wanting to give you the widget you need out of some sense of territorial tresspass, then yes, you do want that access.

This is the kind of trade-off I have to deal with every now and then. Out of everyone who works in this building, I have more access to IT stuff than anyone else does. And so far, I've been able to make it work.

(* * *)

There are two things that are taking up my creative time.

First: Hallowed Halls of Fielding. If I told you how many parts I've planned for this story - and yes, that number of parts does not equal infinity - you'd shit a brick. This work is going to be novel length. So why am I writing it when I could be writing an actual novel? Madness and boredom, mostly.

Second: A timeline of future events that I might use as a sort of pre-written alternate future history. Do you have a story set in 2025 but don't want to have to generate the technological changes that correspond to 15 years from now? No problem, baby. I've got it all under of control. Only up to about 2019 so far.

Sometimes You Eat the Bear, and....

All in all, everything from 5 pm yesterday does not bode well. First, I get a call from my boss. After more or less sitting on my hands for two weeks, he gives me enough work to more than fill my time. Which means that there will be no second draft of "Reclamation", at least not during work hours.

Second, I get home and at 9 pm or so...I conk out. I go upstairs, lie down for a few moments, and I'm unconscious. This seems to happen every week or so, most likely the result of accumulated sleep deprivation. I'm going to get that checked on this month, honest. What it means is I can't work on "Reclamation", once again.

So, this morning you'd think I'd have some time. I get ready to shave, turn on the hot water and...nothing. The hot water has frozen shut. Probably because it's about 14 degrees outside and we have an outside waterheater. My wife and I futilely try to unthaw it with an extension cord and a blow dryer. We try to clean up as much as possible with cold water and we'll have to wait for the water to thaw out and take showers when we get back. At present, I am unshaven.

Okay. I tell myself that if I have some spare time, I'll look at the second drafting process. I pull up Dennis's comments and the combined comments of smk-Scissors MacGillicutty and prepare to mail them....

...and the combined comments of smk-Scissors are gone. Missing completely. All that is left is my original, unmarked up copy of "Reclamation". Something must have happened during the save process. I can pull up smk's mark-up again through my mail, but Scissors's comments are lost, completely! (Which doubly sucks for him, as he's facing computer problems at home and the last thing he needs to worry about is his beta-read.)

So, sometimes there are perturbations in the universe. No fic analysis just yet. Sorry.