Go West - Life is a journey ...

Ignorance at Work

August 7th, 2006 by gowest

I am working for a company with offices in 4 different time zones (considering India not as part of this spiel). The majority of the offices and employees is located in a stated further west from where I live. The most annoying with those people is their ignorance. It seems like they seem to think they are all alone in this universe. First of all as part of my job I am on call 24/7 - a really annoying part of my job. In the very beginning I was trying to monitor emails until like 9 or 10 at night, but I got flooded with useless emails that could have easily waited until the next morning. Then the so called monitoring. Do you believe that a large company with thousand of employees is not able to put sufficient server monitoring in place? Our monitoring and reacting is pretty much based on users reporting a problem. As if that would not be enough, there are still things that easily go beyond of what I already wrote about.
With people located in different time zones it takes a little more effort to schedule meetings for times convenient for everyone. I consider that common courtesy. Those goofys out west don’t care. I get meeting requests for very late afternoon or by default scheduled into the lunch hour. But hey, that is not all. Even if I already have a meeting scheduled for a certain time, I still get meeting requests for the same time. I know the meeting requestor did not even bother to check availability. All it counts is the convenient time for the requestor.
I consider it sad with how much respect ( = none) co-workers treat each other. But it is a symptomatic for many things I see day by day. The scary part is that nobody seems to care. This week one team member who became a team member of mine through the merger of teams, freaked out and sent out an email questioning the loyalty of everyone. What had happened? Well, he got a request from management to do something and it just overwhelmed him. I mean - the guy is sending emails 24/7. I think he lacks on time management and thinks that every request management gives him needs to be done ASAP. Poor guy and also bad management. Employees are just squeezed out until they snap.
What shall I say? I am trying not to be part of the whole thing and work with an attitude. Surprisingly I am still way ahead of when it comes to deliver significant results - even with ignoring emails after I go home.

Posted in Work | No Comments »

Good Vibrations (really!!)

August 4th, 2006 by gowest

Do you know that when a 16 month old screams or cries into your ear while you carry him on your arm, it gives your eardrums some really good vibrations? I mean, I don’t know if it is really good, but I had the feeling it took a long time for the vibrations to stop. So, the volume level must have been pretty good. It almos felt like when I was 18 and went to a heavy metal concert for the very first time. After the concert it took about 3-4 hours for the high pitched noise to go away. Those were really good vibrations.

I wonder if those vibrations and the associated loss of hearing is one of the blessings people are referring to when they talk about kids? I mean - it can be a real blessing if your hearing ability goes down a little bit and you do not realize how loud that 16 month old is really screaming. I think kids are a blessing, I really do. I am just not sure if I appreciate every single piece that ‘comes with the package’ as much as other people do.

Posted in Life | No Comments »