Why is it that when some people nit-pick it inevitably turns into an almost hysteria-filled litany of other faults magnified beyond their original significance? Or, being on the receiving end, it merely sounds that way? As a person who has a lot of Virgo-like tendencies, I know that I can be prone to a bit of fault-finding of my own. I work hard to suppress those tendencies.

Be grateful.

Just sayin'.

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Foot Fu

Last night, AElfgifu decided that my feet were the ultimate comfy spot and Ignatius decided that his bulk should interfere with ealdthryth's video streaming-fest.

MMMMM! Plush kitty endorphins!

Although our evening entertainment hours were filled with kitty companionship, at bedtime, they all abandoned us. I woke up this morning and there was a definite paucity of cats in the room. Considering that they tend to glom onto us when the weather turns cool, I found this to be puzzling.

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A Change

I work in the corner of the building where the sun don't shine. For all that I actually have a window seat, the sun never appears in my line of sight. During the summer, this is OK, because it prevents my cell from becoming a variant on the Easy-Bake Oven^™. This time of year, however, my area seems to more closely resemble a meat locker. The next cell over has a thermometer in it. Either it is broken or the temperature never rises above 64 over here. During the winter, it dips lower, and even my hands start turning interesting colors not normally associated with caucasian flesh.

Most of the time, however, I am comfortable. The ambient solar radiation is just enough. This week, however, I have "suited up" with jacket and tie to help combat the increasingly frosty environment. Now everyone is asking where I am interviewing. I keep telling them the only time they should worry about me changing jobs is if I "suit up" in combination with a shave and haircut.

I sense an ostentatious lack of belief in my assertion.

Oh well, it helps prevent them being complacent.

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What's In A Name?

I began musing randomly again. It is about something I have noticed in almost every big company with which I have worked and have observed from the news and industry literature. One of the worst things to come along in the management world is the continued objectification of employees. What is wrong with the term employees? One management philosphy geared around team-building and camraderie started refering to employees as associates. OK, not bad, but unless all employees have some sort of say in the running of the company, it is merely a new label. It does make some employees feel a little more vested in the company, so it isn't a bad choice, generally speaking.

Personnel was a reasonably accurate description, too, and alluded to the fact that employees are people. "Person" is part of the name, after all. Then some "brilliant" sod decided that employees were "assets", but had to make it sound nicer, so employees became another type of "resource" the company could use. Ah, ha! Let's call them resources! That idea had to have come from someone who had an accounting background. Now we know why it the Personnel department became Human Resources.

Now that all of us employees have been depersonified into "resources" we are now perceived as interchangeable parts. Whoever made that illogical leap should get pummled. A lot. So when we need someone to take up a different job function, we grab an existing employee (er, excuse me resource), print a new business card for them, and Voila!, we have successfully reassigned a resource.

OK, yes, I have grossly exaggerated and trivialized the situation, but there are definitely days where I find someone in a job they are completely unsuitable for. The only qualification appears to be they were the only person available to do it, and someone else (who should have known better) was unwilling (or politically unable) to go recruit the right person.

Sadly, the interchangeable parts idea has also bolstered this idiocyconcept of wrongshoring that leads to the moderately mistaken belief that a company can somehow save money by engaging slightly-less-expensive-per-hour resources for significantly longer time periods. By tossing out the in-house expertise and knowledge, companies lose. And then when they ditch said wrongshored resources in a desparate bid to reduce expenses, a whole new set of knowledge and expertise gets cast aside. Brilliant! For the sake of "saving" a dollar, companies are willing to treat knowledge and experience as something disposable. Nice. NOT.

Hey! Dude! Look over here! Hidden costs! And don't forget my own mantra: Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

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Hamfluenza

It sounds like one or two people around here are starting to come down with the H1N1OMGWTFOHNOES stuff. They have dutifully followed the corporate injuction to stay home instead of becoming yet another vector for the CDC/DHEC to track. Even though they are down, they aren't quite out, as some folks are still managing to dial in to conference calls. Unfortunately, some of those calls are done over the speaker phone. Therefore, those of us trapped in the labrynth known as Cell World get to enjoy the juicy and repeated echoes of someone trying to expectorate their own lungs onto a refrigerator. My lungs were starting to hurt in sympathy.

Bleh.

Yes, I feel sorry for them that have the Dread Disease of the Year, and I do wish them well and hope that they get better soon. It is just that I (and I presume, my fellow cellmates) could do without vicariously experiencing hamfluenza via sound effects.