The Offsight Onslaught

I spent all of yesterday and the first half of today away from the office.  That may sound like cause for celebration, but in this case nothing couldn't be further from the truth.  Outside the office doesn't mean that I wasn't working--instead, I was subjected to that cruel form of work commonly known as the offsite meeting.  Every year we have an annual conference where we meet with the other finance people who work at the manufacturing plants.  Back in the heady days of 2011, the conference was held at a fancy hotel in downtown Chicago.  This year's rendition of the conference, on the other hand, was held in a suburban Minneapolis Sheraton hotel.  Clearly we were already starting in a hole...

To be fair, not everything about offsite meetings are bad.  It can be nice to actually meet the people that you only talk to over the phone and through email all year long.  And offsite meetings normally involve free lunch, which can be an added bonus.  In a best case scenario, the meetings involve minimal interaction, allowing my mind to wander blissfully, interrupted only by the occasional iPhone check.

While a free lunch can be nice, food can also be a major problem at offsite meetings.  I haven't been bold enough to pack in my own cooler with chicken and vegetables, so my normal strategy of eating every few hours gets shot to pieces.  After I go about three hours without eating, my stomach is growling like an angry predator and my mind immoderately and fully shuts off.  By the time lunch rolls around, I'm ready to kill someone.  And when 3PM rolls around, I'm ready to kill someone else.  Meeting organizers sometime anticipate the need for a snack, but a mountain of gummy bears just can't do the work of a little  quality chicken.

This week's offsite meeting presented me with some unique logistical challenges.  The organizers somehow missed me on the pre-meeting email that instructed everyone to dress casually, so I walked in yesterday dressed business casually while the rest of the crowd was in shorts.  I intended to take full advantage of the shorts policy in today's half-day meeting, but there was one problem...and once again, it was food-related.

Knowing that I'd be returning to the office in the afternoon, I needed two servings of chicken stocked in the refrigerator.  I didn't feel like asking to borrow the Sheraton's facilities (would they allow guests to store chicken in their kitchen?), and 90 degree weather and a hot car to bad things to meat in a hurry.  I had to drive past work for an early dentist appointment first thing this morning anyway, so I figured I'd swing by and drop my food off in the refrigerator on my way.  But what would I wear?

I didn't want to walk into the office in shorts and tennis shoes.  That's too casual even for casual Friday, and I my plans for casual Wednesday have caught on about as well as my attempts to institute shirtless Tuesdays.  Even if I only planned to walk to the refrigerator and right back out to the car, I just knew today would be the day that my boss's boss's boss happened to walk by and see making a complete mockery of the dress policy. What if they got rid of casual Friday all together and I was to blame?

So I dressed business casual to drop my chicken off at work, then drove to the dentist and changed into shorts in the car before my appointment.  After, I drove to the Sheraton for the half-day offsite meeting, knowing that I'd have to change in the car once again at work to return to the office wearing business casual attire in the afternoon.  Of course, at the end of the day, I'd have to change again into gym clothes before heading to Lifetime.  The sheer logistical effort was staggering.  The food, meeting, and gym plans required more outfit changes than a Lady Gaga concert.


Even ignoring these other nuisances, I could best describe the events of the past day and half as dreadful.  I knew I was for a rough journey when I saw these scattered around the room:

Sure enough, the flipcharts spelled trouble.  Long, boring, all-day meetings are barely tolerable when I don't have to pay attention.  But flipcharts can only mean one thing: awkward, forced small-group discussions.  Since we just went through a major restructuring, the meetings were painfully repetitive--I've seen the same set of org charts flashed on a PowerPoint slide enough times that they're burned into my retinas.  And with all this change, we spent all of these small group sessions brainstorming obvious, common sense ideas about ways to deal with change, how we can get work done more efficiently, and what kind of training might be helpful.

These discussions always go the same--one overly enthusiastic person dominates the conversation (undoubtedly a former annoying child who always had his hand raised in class), while someone else volunteers to be the "recorder" and write ideas on the giant sheet of paper in hopes that she won't be asked to present the group's ideas to the larger group at the end of the brainstorm session.

Meanwhile, I stand there scowling, waging an internal battle in my mind.  On the one hand, I feel obligated to at least say something so as to not come off like a bitter, uncooperative employee.  But at the same time, the only thing I can think to add to the conversation would be to point out that he fastest way increase our efficiency would be to drop the pointless breakout sessions from the agenda.  And my focus is clearly lacking in these situations--I find myself constantly wondering if there's a single person in the room who truly finds these things valuable...

After twelve hours of this crap over the past two days, I have learned a few things.  First, it's not true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  I'm still alive, but my body is weak from hunger and my mind is softer than a bowl of pudding.  Second, I've learned some invaluable lessons about how to take an hour and a half worth of content and make it fill twelve hours.  I'm impressed at the way some of my coworkers have perfected the art of the financial filibuster.  In case you ever need to pull off something like this, just bring some markers and flipcharts and throw out an obvious topic...the rest will magically fall into place.

The P.A....Potentially Awful?

When I'm not at work, I do my best to avoid checking work emails or my Outlook calendar.  That's not easy when that stuff gets sent directly to the iPhone, and I certainly loathe the annoying chimes that start to go off around 10PM when coworkers with children put their kids to bed, then log into their work computers and start firing off emails and setting up meetings.  But that's precisely why Steve Jobs invented silent mode on the iPhone.

The advantage of ignoring all those late-night messages, of course, is peace of mind and relaxation.  But there are times when I walk into work and pay the price in the form of an unwanted surprise.  Today was one of those days.  The problem wasn't that a meeting popped up last night after I left work, it's that I didn't bother to check today's calendar in advance.  When I walked in this morning and checked Outlook, a dreaded one-hour, 11AM meeting was staring me squarely in the face: Performance Appraisal!

Ahh, the annual P.A.  I should have known it was coming--the fiscal year ended in May, and late June/early July has always been performance appraisal season.  But my manager put it on the calendar weeks ago, and it seemed so far off at the time that it slipped my mind entirely.  But sure enough, today was that once-far off day, and I figured I've used the "I can't make it, I have a bad hamstring" excuse enough times that that well is officially dry.

I have mixed feelings about the performance appraisal.  On the one hand, it reminds me a bit of the horribly uncomfortable IDP discussion in that the P.A. is inevitably an awkward conversation.  It's not often that you have someone sit across the table from you for a full hour and tell you to your face what they--and all of your closest co-workers--think of you.  Whether the feedback is good, bad, or indifferent, it's a bit of an unusual situation. Usually when people tell me how they feel about me, it involves more yelling, a lot more spontaneity, and a fair amount of obscene gesturing.

If your manager is showering you with praise, you have to fight the urge to smile giddily and say something like, "Of course!  You don't have to remind me that I'm awesome!"  If the feedback is bad and it becomes clear that your coworkers universally hate you and consider you dangerously incompetent, what can you do?  You certainly can't talk your way out of unlikeability, and any attempt to explain your actions over the past year will come across as a series of pathetic excuses from a defensive loser.  The main advantage the performance appraisal has over the IDP discussion is that it's a much more one-sided conversation--you pretty much sit there and listen and don't have to do nearly as much talking about feelings, hopes, dreams, and goals...and that's obviously a very good thing.

Though awkward, the P.A. is extremely entertaining at the same time.  Unlike school, full-time work doesn't involve test scores and graded homework assignments...which is both good and bad.  The P.A. is the one time each year that someone actually grades and assigns a score to your work...and it can be nice to know where you stand.  And who doesn't spend time wondering what their coworkers think of them?  To receive a piece of paper with their word-for-word comments about you is delightfully informative.  The comments are listed anonymously from a large number of people, but it doesn't take a genius to quickly figure out who said what.

The funniest part of the process is that there are only two characters of text in this entire booklet of information that anyone really cares about: the individual performance rating.  There are pages that cover what you accomplished (or failed to accomplish), along with comments from co-workers, qualitative discussions about strengths and weaknesses, and on and on.  But when it comes right down to it, everyone is looking for that magic little number that factors into the bonus calculation...the rest is just details.  They say that actions speak louder than words, but in the world of finance, numbers speak the loudest.

Fortunately, another P.A. is behind me, which brings twelve more months of relatively awkward-free days at the office...or at least a few months' worth until it's IDP season again.  Instead of the formal one-hour production that takes place every year, I wish they could just post the performance ratings on a bulletin board somewhere, listed anonymously by employee ID the way colleges handle test scores.  As for the feedback portion of the P.A., just tell me real-time when I screw up or when I'm awesome...or at least the latter...

Ch-Ch-Changes

Well, I'm still employed.  I was supposed to receive the official word last week, but since I was out, my manager put a mysterious fifteen minute meeting on my calendar on Monday.  I guess that was a good sign, because the less fortunate employees had longer meetings, which were sent not by their managers, but by HR directors.  So I'm still working, but the bad news is that my job, like just about everyone else's, will be changing.  And unfortunately, my responsibilities will now focus primarily on the monthly COGS estimate process...so each month will be like it's own miniature version of Spring Plan.  You can guess how I feel about that...

This week at the office has been rampant with gossip and speculation as everyone tries to figure out who got the axe.  It's been very entertaining, really.  And I'm happy to report that the company has generally done a pretty good job in who it chose to lay off.  There were a number people who were either painful to work with or just downright incompetent, and a few of them did get the boot.  Of course, there were also some notable exceptions where smart, likable people were sent packing, which was sad to see.

The saddest part of all of this is that my immediate group--the all-star team, really--is getting dismantled.  Because of the reorganization, one of the guys I currently work with will be in a different group in the near future, while I wander the abyss of monthly estimates. And today marked the final day with the company for one of my coworkers, who will start business school this fall and is taking the summer off to enjoy sweet, sweet laziness in California.

In honor of his last day, he got to select the location of a team goodbye lunch.  This is one of the great things about working on a team with five guys--there were five emphatic votes cast for the same location:

What's better than all-you-can eat meat at Rodizio?  Having work pay for it.  Work-sponsored events are hard to come by these days, so this was a big win. I felt bad for my female manager, who filled up very quickly and had to watch the five guys on her team devour chunks of meat for the next hour.  I wouldn't say that I ate my fill today...I wasn't nearly as uncomfortable walking out as I was the last time I ate at Rodizio.  In fact, I wasn't uncomfortable at all...my bottomless appetite is legendary at work, but the group was still shocked when I went back to the salad bar again after our table had started turning away the meat ninjas. 

Their quietly judgmental stares kept me from entering the land of discomfort...but maybe that's a good thing, since I'll be headed to the gym in a few hours, then playing tennis later tonight in the 95° heat and humidity.  I can say from experience that sweating bacon grease makes it tough to grip the racquet, especially on a humid day.

After a goodbye and a group hug in front of the restaurant--I told them not to squeeze too tightly given what I'd just consumed--I returned home to work from there the rest of the afternoon.  My departing coworker had to go back to the office for his annual performance appraisal, which we all had a good laugh about since he had about three hours left with the company and couldn't care less what was said in that meeting.

 The kind of goodbye that HR won't let you have back at the office.

Earlier this morning, because of all these changes, everyone in my department was required to attend a one hour course called "Excelling Through Organizational Change."  That was an hour of my life that I'll never get back...it had everything I'd hoped it wouldn't, including small group discussions, writing ideas on giant sheets of paper, and talking about feelings.  The instructor actually discussed survivor's guilt for those who didn't get laid off.  Why should I feel guilty for not being laid off?  Like I said before, with a few unfortunate exceptions, HR seemed to pick the targets pretty wisely.

This was the kind of nonsensical crap that was covered in the meeting.  Here's a chart that explains how we react to a negatively perceived change:

I wasn't motivated--or awake--enough to try to explain my own personal version of the reaction chart, which includes a straight, horizontal line very close to the x-axis with periodic red dots, each labeled "Indifference."  The way I see it, not that much is really changing--I'll still be getting paid to be somewhere I'd rather not be.  I was due to rotate to a new job anyway...at least when I transition into the new position in the next few months, I'll already know what I'm doing, even if I'm not crazy about doing it.  That beats that last four times I've started a new role, each of which began with blinding ignorance.

It's sad that the Dream Team is getting torn apart, but drowning our sorrows in meat was the finance send-off equivalent of winning the World Series and retiring.  Only one lucky team member is actually leaving, but it was a good ending nevertheless.  I guess now it's time to put the captain's hat on and get back to estimating the inestimable.

Returning to Normal: A Silver Lining?

Watching a vacation come to an end is never easy and always depressing.  After spending almost every waking minute outside in the sunshine for the past two weeks, the thought of returning to normal (spending virtually every second--waking and sleeping--indoors) makes it tough to get motivated to return to work tomorrow.  Not that that's ever been a particularly motivating experience, but tomorrow morning promises to be especially difficult.  It feels like a miniature version of the first day of school after a long and fulfilling summer of freedom.

There's plenty to feel sad about on this Sunday evening.  The bathroom situation alone is a real downer...I have to transition back to a world where I can't urinate wherever, whenever, and on whatever I choose.  That simple act changes from from being convenient and fun to something the authorities like to call "public urination" and/or "indecent exposure."  But in the spirit of eternal optimism, I'm committed to looking for the positives in this sea of negative. With some deep thought, a little creativity, and some bending and stretching of the truth, in no particular order I've listed ten reasons why returning to work and the normal routine tomorrow might not be as bad as I'm expecting.  I certainly hope I'm right...

#10: No More Children!
If there's one good thing I can say about the office, it's the blissful lack of children.  Aside from the occasional co-worker who brings a baby to work, it's pretty much all adults.  I'd forgotten how many parents drag their children to America's state and national parks.  I don't know how anyone could consider hours trapped in a car with children relaxing or enjoyable, but they seem to keep doing it.  The flight home late on Friday night, which included a chorus of crying and shrieking children keeping me awake the entire time, had me longing for the relative calm of the office.

#9: Away With Sunscreen
I love the sun, but I really hate sunscreen.  It smells weird, and it's annoying and difficult to wash off.  Now that I'll be spending my days sitting at a desk, with only occasional glimpses of the sun though a distant window, I can toss that bottle of sunscreen aside and watch my pasty shade of Minnesota white promptly return.  Only the most ghostly, pale redheads have to worry about burning under the 40-watt fluorescent blubs of the overhead cubicle lights, so I can rest easy come Monday.

#8: White Noise vs. Whispering Pines
I find the sound of the gentle breeze through pine needles and palm fronds very relaxing.  Giving that up would be tough if not for the low and constant hum of the white noise quietly floating from the speakers in the office. It's not quite the same, but at least the white noise is more consistent and predictable than the wind.

#7: Improved Hygiene
Spending two weeks sweating for 9+ hours a day with limited access to showers can take its toll on a person's level of cleanliness.  The past few days, I've been startled every time I glance down and notice the color of my legs.  It still takes me a minute to realize that's what my skin looked like before I got used to seeing it covered in dirt and dust...I'm even whiter than I remember!  And my nose has been far less offended by my own unpleasant stench lately.  I'm pleased to report that now that I've returned home, it's back to the normal routine of showering every third day like a normal person.

#6: Free From Free-Fall Danger
Arizona and California have a lot of mountains, canyons, and cliffs, and a simple stumble or a split second of lost focus behind the wheel can be the difference between life and death.  There are still plenty of unfortunate ways to die, but back in Minnesota, falling isn't one of them.  Here, the greatest dangers associated with tripping are a skinned knee and an embarrassing moment.

#5: A Slower Pace
No one wants to see their life pass by too quickly, but as the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun.  On vacation, a full day of hiking flew by faster than an hour in the office, and these past two weeks went by faster than a single day at work. I may not be having much fun once tomorrow gets here, but time certainly won't be flying by like it has been recently.  For the foreseeable future, time will come screeching to a halt. 

#4: Fabulous Fashion
I've said it before: fashion is my life.  With a washer and dryer at my fingertips, I can once again choose my attire for the day based on color, style, and the weather forecast.  That's a nice change from picking clothes based on the dominant variables of the past two weeks: fewest stains and least powerful odor.  And it was getting kind of scary to see how some of those clothes were able to stand up on their own out of sheer crustiness.

#3: (Don't) Bite Me!
All those hours spent outside on vacation gave the gnats, mosquitoes, flies, bees, wasps, and every other form of insect and arachnid ample time to chew on me.  The impressive quantity of bites I collected has my legs looking like they've been through a wood-chipper.  Minnesota is famous for mosquitoes, but they're not such a big problem when you spend all your time indoors.  That's not to say that my life will be free of pests...there are plenty of co-workers who bug me more than a swarm of hungry insects.  Unfortunately, it's a much more legally complicated situation to take a swing at a co-worker than it is a mosquito...

#2: A Return To Adventure Driving
Given the choice between the 2012 Nissan Altima that I was driving for the past two weeks and the 1998 Chevy Malibu, no one in their right mind would vote Malibu.  But where's the fun in driving a quiet, reliable, visually appealing car?  When I climbed into the Malibu at the airport and shifted into reverse to back out of the parking spot, I was greeted with an odd clunking noise.  Every time I hit the brakes, I get more strange noises.  But that's why they invented the radio...as long as it's still working--and it can't be long before that breaks down, too--I'll be drowning out the sounds of upcoming mechanical problems with loud music.  When driving the Malibu, I'm living on the edge...adventure is something that doesn't come standard with the newer models.

#1: Full-Size Keyboards!
Last but not least, I welcome the return of the full-size computer keyboard.  No more tapping on a tiny iPhone screen; back to the full-size, non-lite version of Blogger.  I can now churn out nonsense at a mind-boggling rate.  Prepare to be amazed!

See?  The old routine might not be that bad...I just need to remember what it was that I used to do at work.  And I have the added excitement of seeing who gets fired this week!  The corporate restructuring is in full effect, and the VP, director, and manager layoffs have been announced. I received quite a few transparent "So long; I've suddenly and mysteriously decided to pursue other opportunities" emails these past few weeks.  Tomorrow kicks off the wave of analyst layoff announcements, which promises plenty of entertainment.  Will I have a job?  Fortunately and unfortunately, I don't doubt that I will...but how will it change?

Watch Out For That Iceberg!

There's a strong inverse correlation between hours spent at the office and length of the day's blog post.  Today was a long day, so, like yesterday, this will have to be relatively brief.  The good news is that I left work before 5PM...but that was only fair after waking up before 5:30AM and heading to the office much earlier than normal.  Fortunately, one of my coworkers happened to be cleaning out his apartment last night and, feeling sympathetic to my Spring Plan struggles, gave me one of most appropriate signs to ever grace the walls of a cubicle:

The sign really hit the spot on a day like today, which began way to early with a chaos-filled morning as I raced to finish things up before the first deadline.  I'm proud to report that we pulled off a finance miracle and met that impossible deadline.  It was intense morning of budgeting and finance professionalism, as you can clearly see:

I successfully charted a course through the choppy waters of Re-Plan--you might say I excelled today (for those you less fluent in the language of finance, that's a spreadsheet pun...which, but the way, would have absolutely killed at the office).  But whatever small progress I made felt like a hollow victory, knowing that I could be starting over again tomorrow.  I'm no Leonardo DiCaprio, but I fear that there may be a giant, yet-to-be-seen iceberg looming ahead in the dark sea of finance.  But there's only a day and a half left this week before I sail off into the sunset for two weeks away from the cubicle.

If you're thinking that my new cubicle decoration sends a rather pessimistic message, I couldn't agree more.  And that's what so great this little desk ornament--it evolves with my mood:

With a simple flip, the world is much happier place.  Regardless of what happens tomorrow, once Friday hits I'll be turning my frown--and that sign--upside down.  On an interesting side note, there's a guy at the office whose last name is Paradise; we're hoping he doesn't stop by my desk when the sign is happy-side-out, or things could get awkward.  And with that, I must rest to ensure that I'm fully alert for the rest of the week...if I fail to spot that iceberg, disaster will undoubtedly strike.

P.S.: As a special treat for subjecting my readers to yet another boring office-themed blog post, I have a fun challenge: can you spot what's wrong with the captain's hat photo above?  Look carefully...observant readers will notice that the picture couldn't have been taken today...

What you saw was actually a captain's hat stock photo from almost six months ago.  The giveaway?  My beloved-but-now-defunct backpack is hiding under the desk in the lower right corner of the picture:

If you failed to see that, shame on you.  You call yourself of loyal follower of this blog?  I expect more focus tomorrow.  And in return, I'll write about something unrelated to work, I promise.

Re-Re-Re-Plan!

Not two days after setting a personal record by reaching the triple digits of consecutive-day blogging, I'm breaking all kind of new records.  I expected today to be one of the worst work days of the year; it was, just not in the way I expected it.  Today was supposed to be the final hurdle of re-plan, the last absurd time crunch before that dreadful 9:30AM deadline tomorrow morning.

The real work couldn't even start until 5PM this evening, when we were supposed to during last year's plan process, so I wasn't too optimistic that I'd receive anything on time.  And sure enough, 5:00 came and went and I'd received absolutely nothing.  So I drove to the gym...I figure can just as easily not get work done there as I can while sitting at the office waiting around for an Excel file that may not show up for hours.  As I sat in the parking lot eating my chicken, I got the email--the production schedule was available.

So, I set a record for the shortest workout of the year, came home, and got to work.  It'll be an early morning tomorrow as I struggle to make sense of all this craziness.  But I was expecting this time-crunch.  The real cause of despair was a separate piece of news that arrived via email mid-day.  There's discussions that company leaders may want to readjust most of the assumptions one more time before re-plan is over.  We did an impromptu "prelim" re-plan last week; this was supposed to be the normal, regularly scheduled re-plan this week, but now we might have to throw today's work out and do it all again for some kind of twisted "post re-plan."  I'm furious at the mere thought...it's absurd!  A third go-round of absolutely useless rework!!

My deepest sympathies go out to my co-worker, a nice guy who, unfortunately for him, will be the only one from my group in the office next week.  If this mess isn't wrapped up by Friday--and it's certainly looking like it won't be--he'll have to step in for me and finish re-re-building the budget, and he's been minimally involved and won't know what to do.

And now I must head to bed.  I'm angry, tired, frustrated, and extremely bitter.  And with that, I set another record: the shortest, most uninteresting, short-on-pictures blog post to date.  I wrote on Sunday that "The Final Countdown" would be the theme song of the week.  After some serious thought, I've decided that another song sums up my feelings more accurately at this moment:

The Top Ten Reasons Corporate Restructuring Can Be Fun (#5-1)

After yesterday's post, I hope no one lost too much sleep last night, tossing and turning as they wondered what could possibly round out the upper half list of the top ten reasons corporate restructuring can be fun.  The wait is over--here you have it:

#5: Off-Limits Jokes Are Now Acceptable
Normally, you don't hear people joking about leaving the company, especially when important people are sitting in the room.  With the looming cloud of layoffs hanging overhead, that stigma has evaporated, creating a very entertaining atmosphere at the office.  Wednesday's staff meeting (the day after the announcement) included some fantastic jokes that would have been taboo just two days earlier.

One of the managers was joking about his frustration with Spring Plan (well documented on this blog) and mentioned that he had moved passed the anger stage. The division VP asked, "what stage are you in now?"  He immediately replied, "the resume-polishing stage!"  Later, another manager joked that we could all start responding to those annoying voicemails that we all get from local headhunters.  A timely comment, since the day of the restructuring announcement, I received a LinkedIn message and a voicemail from an annoying headhunter who had heard the news and was anxious to point out that it's "good to have a backup plan in place in times like these."  Delete...and delete.

#4: Deciphering The Corporate Spin
When it comes right down to it, we all know that "corporate restructuring" means nothing more than laying people off to cut costs.  It just really isn't any more complicated than that.  But if you want humor and entertainment, the official press release is a fantastic read--I couldn't have dreamed up a more long-winded way of saying "we're laying people off to cut costs." The corporate PR staff deserves a pat on the back for their efforts to put a positive spin on positively bad news.  Sifting through the overblown language in that press release feels like solving a riddle littered with corporate buzzwords.  My favorites include, but are not limited to:

• "Improve organizational effectiveness..."
• "Better align resources with..."
• "Accelerate efficiencies..."
• "Focus on key growth strategies..."
• "Fundamental shift in the business environment..."
• "Major productivity and cost savings initiative..."

Less humorous was the fancy language describing the "changes" to the pension and 401(k) plans, which referred to the adjustments as "still highly competitive."  It doesn't take a master's degree in PR-speak to know that likely means the plans were going to be gutted like fish.  After all, most companies offer absolutely nothing in the pension department, so a coupon for a free box of cereal could technically be considered "highly competitive."  Luckily, for the time being, it looks like new hires will bear the brunt of these "highly competitive changes"...

#3: Parking Ramp Paradise
It's was impressive how quickly everyone's mind latched onto the one upside of the layoffs: a 10% reduction in the workforce means that parking spaces in the ramp will be easier to come by--and much more desirable--than tickets to a WMBA game.  By the time winter rolls around, those of us still with the company will be thanking corporate leaders for this whole restructuring thing.  These days, the ramp is so packed that if you hit a few long red lights on the drive to work and arrive a minute later than you planned, you'll face a 15 minute death march from the far reaches of the parking lot to the main entrance.  In about five weeks, it looks like I'll have one less reason to show up at the office on time...

#2: Fantasy HR
Fantasy sports are a popular topic around the office--it's tough to take more than a few steps down the rows of cubicles without overhearing guys talking about their favorite teams, highlights from the previous night's games, or pending trades in their fantasy leagues.  With five weeks of waiting and wondering who's going to get the boot, a few coworkers have tossed around the idea of setting up a friendly wager via some kind of office pool.  Each of us would serve as the HR manager of a fantasy team of office workers, placing bets on who stays and who goes, with odds for each employee.  The details are still fuzzy at this point, but I imagine this game could merge the fun of a game of corporate Survivor with the excitement and rivalry of fantasy sports.

#1: Public Performance Appraisals!
During the Q&A session at the end of one of those "mandatory business updates," someone asked whether the layoffs would be based on performance or position.  Unlike the world of real estate, in this case it's not all about "location, location, location"; the division president responded by saying that the layoffs would be based on a combination of performance and potential.  That's a double-edged sword that offers reasons to feel both comfort and panic if you give it much thought.

For people who feel confident that they're doing their jobs well, it's spectacular news to hear that they won't get axed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  On the other hand, those who do receive the dreaded pink slip have no way to rationalize their misfortune--they'll know that they got fired not only because they sucked at their job, but also because the people they worked with decided there was no hope for improvement.  And when they mysteriously disappear from the office in five weeks, everyone who ever interacted with them will be fully aware of those shortcomings.  Can you say, "embarrassing exit?"

And there you have it--the top ten reasons why the next five weeks will be one heck of a good time!

The Top Ten Reasons Corporate Restructuring Can Be Fun (#10-6)

On Tuesday morning, an email from the CEO showed up in everyone's inbox with an important video announcement: we were undergoing "corporate restructuring."  Shortly thereafter, a series of "mandatory business update" meeting invitations from various important people popped up on the Outlook calendar (is it still called an "invitation" if the meeting is mandatory?), presumably to inform the masses of all the relevant details.  Hours before the first of these meetings was scheduled to take place, however, the news had already been announced publicly.

There would be significant layoffs accompanying this restructuring effort, and we would later learn that roughly 10% of the main office population would be taking the 'ol mandatory, extended, unpaid vacation.  What we still don't yet know is who stays and who goes.  Employees don't learn their fate until late June, which leaves a five week stretch of waiting, wondering, and rampant speculation.

Some are genuinely worried, but I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy.  In the spirit of looking for the silver lining in this situation, I've prepared a list of the top ten reasons that corporate restructuring can be fun.  Today's post includes #10 through #6...and yes, that means I'm going to milk this for all it's worth and spread this post out over two days.  But at difficult times like these, I think it's safe to say that the world could use an extra day of unbridled optimism:

#10: A Day at Work "Away From the Cubicle"
The instant I read the email from the CEO on Tuesday morning, I knew absolutely no work was going to get done that day.  Over the next twenty-four hours, I spent almost no time at my desk as I attended four different "mandatory business updates," each ranging in length from thirty to sixty minutes.  Since each different business leader was required to stick to the same canned (no pun intended) script and PowerPoint presentation, these updates were painfully repetitive and uninformative.  It was the same message over and over: "lots of you are going to get fired and most will end up in a new job, but that's all you'll know for five weeks."  But as I expected, nothing got done on Tuesday, so the day wasn't a total loss.

#9: Count the Synergies!
As referenced above, the "mandatory business updates" were a spectacular waste of time, but it was mildly entertaining to count the number of times a division president could sneak some variation of the word "synergy" into a prepared statement.  I lost count somewhere around seventy-eight, halfway through the first mandatory business update.

#8: The Retirement Blues
Retirement is a time for celebration and reflection, but for the unlucky bunch who announced summer retirements in the weeks leading up to the announcement, Tuesday didn't offer much fuel for the celebratory fires--if only they'd withheld that announcement a little longer, there's a good chance they could have collected a hefty severance package before riding off into the sunset.  During the Q&A session at one of these meetings, it's rumored that one such pending retiree asked, "can I rescind my retirement and be severed?"  Apparently the answer was "no."  Bad news for the older workers, yet absolutely hilarious for those of us in the infancy of our careers.

#7: Working Hard, Or Hardly Working?
In the days following the announcement, it's been delightfully entertaining to watch the reactions of my coworkers.  Employees' responses to the chaos generally fall into one of three categories.  Some aren't terribly concerned and go about their business as usual.  Others fear for the worst and adopt the philosophy, "if there's any chance I'm about to get fired, I'm not gonna go down working hard!"  The threat of layoff seems to have a lit a fire under the seats of the third group of workers, who seemed mysteriously motivated and friendly this week.  In my opinion, at this point it's too little, too late--I think the layoff decisions have already been made, even if they're not officially unannounced until late June.  But regardless, the next five weeks hold the promise of pure entertainment as I watch the spectacularly lazy, the suddenly motivated, and the generally indifferent work together in all kinds of potentially hilarious office situations.

#6: The Summer Of George!
An unplanned job search is about as appealing as licking a toilet seat at a truck stop, but it's tough to frown too hard when my mind wanders to the image of collecting a severance package and getting paid to do absolutely nothing for an extended length of time.  Paid unemployment would be a sweet, sweet early preview of retirement...or, for the overly motivated show-offs who hate fun and choose to go back to work immediately, it could mean collecting a double paycheck while working a single job.

Much like George Costanza's glorious three months' severance pay after getting laid off from his job with the New York Yankees, the Summer of John makes for an enticing fantasy...




Check back tomorrow for the top five reasons corporate restructuring can be fun.  If you thought today's blog post sucked, then check back on Sunday, because the outlook for tomorrow looks surprisingly similar to what you just read today....

Jackpot!

I don't play the lottery, but that didn't stop me from hitting the jackpot yesterday.  In a previous post, Fear The Mullet, I promised that I would capture a video of the nearby mullet-sporting cube-dweller as she played Farmville and fielded personal phone calls while on the clock.  It took me almost a month, but I'm proud to report that the stars finally aligned yesterday afternoon.

Don't get me wrong; the past few weeks have seen no shortage of personal phone calls and plenty of Farmville and Facebook in her cubicle.  I just wasn't lucky enough to be at my desk when the two events occurred simultaneously and there were few enough people around that I could pull the phone out and start recording.  But everything finally came together yesterday afternoon.

Farmville was up on her screen (though she was so deeply engrossed in her personal conversation that she wasn't actually playing it), and she was chatting away with a person that I later deduced must be one of her offspring.  And I'm proud to report that you're in for a bonus treat with this video--it includes a rather graphic description of some kind of personal medical problem!

The only sad part is that the sound didn't record very well in this video.  Turn the volume all the way up for this one...the sound gets at least marginally better by the end:



It's really too bad the sound didn't come out better, because the gravelly, squeaky sound of her voice pierces the air like nails on a chalkboard when you're sitting nearby.  And the dialog was epic, with her describing the amount of pus that came out when she squeezed some kind of sore on her body (sadly, that part's at the beginning of the video and really tough to hear).

Near the end of the clip, right around the 1:00 mark, mullet woman describes to the person on the phone how one of her stitches recently surfaced "...from when you were born.  On my...."  Thank god she didn't finish that sentence!  I don't want to know what kind of relationship they have in that family, as she goes on to say "when you came over, I was going to show you!"  (You'll notice the video abruptly ends shortly thereafter, as I was leaning over a trash can vomiting.)

Interestingly, this video was shot on the same day that the company announced a major restructuring, complete with a massive wave of layoffs.  I wondered what this woman thought of the bad news...surely if the company is looking to trim some fat from the admin budget, the first place to look is the cubicle where the only output is gossip, games, and idle internet surfing.  But it turns out that I didn't have to wonder what she was thinking very long, because as soon as the news broke, she was on the phone with her friends sharing every detail.

Apparently she's not at all worried about getting laid off because she's been with the company since the dawn of time and is close to retirement.  She actually welcomed the prospect of a severance package to help send her on her way.  Just as I had suspected all along, she views herself as impervious to the pink slip...and sure enough, the day was chock full of Farmville and phone calls, including the one captured in the delightful video clip above.

On a side note, I have to wonder what was going through the minds of the people who happened to walk by during those glorious seventy-three seconds that I spent standing in my neighbor's cubicle filming the crazy person at the desk a few feet away.  This clearly demonstrates my commitment to this blog--I risked both my personal and professional reputations as well as my life; if that woman glanced behind her during my recording session, my shotgun-wound-induced funeral couldn't have been far away.

But anyway...I think everyone involved in this situation is sitting on the cusp of a gigantic win-win-win proposition here.  It's rare that a company can lose an employee and realize significant productivity gains spanning an entire department.  Crazy mullet woman gets her prized severance package and bolts for the exit; someone much smarter and more motivated, skilled, and valuable is spared their job; everyone in vicinity of mullet woman's cubicle is able to redirect the effort they wasted ignoring her phone calls to completing their work. 

She may welcome the pink slip, but I'm willing to bet she'd come crawling back begging for a job as soon as she realized that the phone connection and internet speed back at the trailer aren't what she's become accustomed to...

Going Down With The Ship

For those of you anxiously waiting to hear about the outcome of my epic battle with Tony and Mrs. Tony yesterday, the exciting conclusion will be the topic of a blog post later this week. And shockingly, yes, someone did actually ask about it!  See how I build suspense and keep people coming back for more? It's like a "to be continued" cliffhanger from your favorite TV drama.  This strategy is precisely what builds and maintains my loyal fan base...or threatens to drive away my sparse audience...one or the other...

Unfortunately, I'm too mentally exhausted this evening to give tennis the blogging attention that it deserves.  I'm left with just enough energy to complain a little more about work!  The dreaded presentation went fairly well this morning--as well as could be expected for a presentation based on outdated, irrelevant information.  But there was one problem--while the overall budget wasn't unreasonably high, one of the business units within the division saw costs go up more than expected.  I knew that would get plenty of attention, and as always, I was exactly right.

During the meeting, the director for that business unit said that he would need to understand in detail what was causing the costs to go up.  I'd fully expected that question and started working on that immediately when I got to the office this morning....but it was going to take some time, so I told him I'd be working on answering that question over the next few days.  But after the meeting, I started getting bombarded with phone calls and emails from other coworkers who support that business unit, explaining that they had just seen a copy of the presentation and asking me what was causing the increase in COGS.  Having the exact same conversation with thirty-eight different people at five-minute intervals was a major obstacle between me and the work necessary to answer the question.

"Why are costs up?"
"I working on figuring that out right now."
"When will you have an answer?"
"As soon as I stop having this conversation twelve times every hour."

Would it have been appropriate to award a prize to the hundredth caller?  I wanted to send a mass email to the company distribution list with one message in the subject line: "I'm working on it!!!"

Once everyone in the business unit had taken their shot at me and the messages finally started to die down, details of the long-feared budget re-work began to roll in.  Again, I knew it was coming, but that didn't make it any less painful.  Around 2:30PM, emails started hitting my inbox with lists of mandatory changes that we needed to make by the end of the day.  Then it was into the Excel jungle.  Once everything was updated, another message would show up, "there's been one small adjustment, please use this version."  Back to Excel, re-working the rework.  Another email: "this is the final, final version--use these numbers."  Back to the spreadsheets.

This continued through the end of the day.  It was one of those afternoons where you find yourself sitting a cubicle, churning through mindless and unnecessary rework, wearing a captain's hat and wondering how fast you'd need to run to successfully break through the glass on the fourth-floor windows:

I'm most proud of the fact that I left the office before 4:45PM.  By the time "final" budget revision version number three came through and I had worked my Excel wizardry, I jumped ship before they could make any more changes.  I don't doubt that versions four, five, and maybe six are sitting in my inbox, but I can't work on something I haven't seen...as far as I know, I met the deadline.  Ignorance is bliss...

But the voyage will continue tomorrow, I'm sure.  And don't let the attire fool you, this is no cruise...well, it might be a little like the Costa Concordia below.  Regardless, I promise to write about a new topic tomorrow, and results of that tennis match will be forthcoming shortly.  As one reader pointed out, there's been way too much writing about office work lately for a blog titled Away From The Cubicle...

Plan-Tastic?

Here I go again--for the third Sunday in a row, I'm staring down barrel of another potentially awful week of work.  Will things continue to go defy expectations for the good?  I sure hope so, because tomorrow was supposed to be a day of semi-celebration, but things took a turn for the south on Friday.

Once again, last week exceeded my wildest hopes and dreams.  Once all the pieces of the budget were in place on Monday afternoon, it looked like the total story would be relatively acceptable...not spectacular, but we wouldn't be sharing terrible news, which would make things much simpler.  Despite the not-so-terrible message, by the time Thursday rolled around and it was time to present the budget yet again, I was prepared to get bombarded with questions.

Me and the other guys in my group once again agreed on shirt colors on Wednesday, and we all showed up in yellow for the presentation.  Apparently it's tough to get mad at a wall of sunshine, because things went unbelievably well.  The strangeness of our attire--accompanied by a few more "Three Stooges" remarks--lightened the atmosphere right from the start, and we barely had to answer any questions, even on the portions of PowerPoint that included less-then-spectacular news.  So much for the probing and prodding I'd been fearing for three weeks--we were out of the room early!

Then Friday happened.  I was working furiously on putting together a slightly different version of the PowerPoint for our final presentation of this *&#$ budget (final of the month, anyway) on Monday morning.  Then an email arrived informing us all that the total add-up across all the divisions didn't come out as planned, and we might have to rework some assumptions and basically re-do everything on Monday to reduce the overall expense estimate. I knew something like this would happen...it was hardly a surprise, but it didn't make the situation any less frustrating.

The part that will never make sense to me is that we're supposed to be building an unbiased forecast of cost of goods sold expense.  We're essentially providing our best guess on what it will cost to manufacture products X, Y, and Z next year.  There's no incentive for me to guess high or low--I just take the available inputs and call it like I see it.  If, at the end of the day, we're going to end up being told what our estimate needs to be, why do we spend all this time estimating?  If someone could have told me right away what that final COGS estimate should be, I'll happily take back the past three months of pain.

Once again, I have to bite my tongue to avoid screaming at anyone who will listen that putting numbers in a spreadsheet has absolutely no bearing on actual cost of goods sold expense.  Seems to me like we're just setting ourselves up for disappointment and bad news.  I think I'm going to try to pulling something like this on the weatherman next time I see a forecast I don't like:

"Hello...channel 22?  I see your 7-day forecast calls for snow and freezing temperatures.  I don't like that, so tell me it's going to be 90s and sunny, okay?"  The forecast causes the weather...right?

The absurdity of the situation continues...as I previously mentioned, we're already scheduled to rework everything in early June when the fiscal year ends.  Now we're going to redo the past two weeks of work, then wait two more weeks and redo the past four weeks of work.  Any reason we couldn't just be patient and rework stuff once...or maybe not at all?  That would make way too much sense...

This nonsense would suggest that the presentation scheduled for tomorrow morning would be delayed, but that's not the case.  We get to go through the effort of finalizing this presentation, walking into the room and declaring, "Here's the budget you've been waiting months to get a look at!  By the way, I should mention that this is going to get overhauled in the next few hours, so everything I'm about to tell you irrelevant."  That shouldn't annoy anyone...and we'll look like geniuses!

I now sit at the second eye of this hurricane, and I'm wondering if more storms are headed my way.  As of noon tomorrow, we were supposed to be celebrating the completion of the toughest part of May's grueling budgeting process.  But now that meeting looks to be a pointless and potentially embarrassing mess that will officially kick off a slurry of entirely unnecessary rework.  That improving outlook for the future that was growing inside me last Sunday is now shrinking at an alarming pace...

Fear The Mullet

Every office has a token crazy employee, and mine is no exception.  Two cubicles away from me sits perhaps the only person in the company who kills and cooks her own possum on a regular basis.  Her appearance, attitude, work ethic, and general demeanor suggest that she was conceived, born, and educated in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the deep south.  She has the most outrageous mullet you could ever hope to lay eyes on, framing a face that looks like it was genetically engineered to appear in a mugshot underneath the headline, "Woman Arrested After Stealing Case of Colt 45, Beating Ex-Husband."

This woman is, by my estimates, in her mid-50s.  She's one of those low-level employees who gets to the office before any of the normal people and leaves promptly at 3PM.  She never says a word or makes eye contact with anyone in my group, despite the fact that we sit right next to her and have walked past each other every weekday for over a year.  A few months ago, one of the new guys in my group first started and had the privilege of sitting directly across from her.  Being friendly, he said hello and introduced himself to this insane woman, not realizing the pointlessness of his effort.  She said hello and hasn't spoken a word to him or anyone else in our group since.

Based on this description, you'd think that I don't know a thing about this quiet coworker, but that couldn't be further from the truth.  That's because she's on the phone--constantly.  She is very obviously talking to her equally pathetic friends, whom I can only assume are sitting in their trailers collecting unemployment checks, since they're able to spend the entire day on the phone with this woman. I have no idea how she got this job in the first place, but I'm quite certain the only reason she still has it is because everyone in a position to fire her knows that she's got a pickup truck with a fully loaded shotgun rack sitting out in the parking lot.

If the phone calls alone weren't bad enough, she's an incredibly loud talker and has the strangest, most obnoxious voice I've ever heard.  During these grueling hours on the phone she is multi-tasking, constantly playing Farmville or logging into her Facebook account.  She makes absolutely no effort to hide this, even as countless people walk by and peer into her cube.  To top it all off, the topics of her conversation on these phone calls are limited to a handful of subjects: reality TV, celebrity gossip, her family's self-inflicted legal problems, and occasionally the real treat--details of her doctor's appointments.

Her blatant refusal to do work alternates between hilarious and frustrating.  On the slow days, the Facebook and loud phone calls provide a good laugh for all of us who sit around her.  In fact, she's so busy not being busy that we openly laugh and mock her while she's on the phone, too distracted to notice.  Other times, her antics are frustrating and extremely annoying.  On the busy days--which have been coming fast and furious lately--or when I'm on a conference call, her loud conversations are terribly distracting.  The destruction of shareholder value, a constant presence in her cubicle, begins to radiate outward on days like these.  I can literally feel the waves of lost productivity spreading to everyone within a four cubical radius.

I could easily write a 10,000-word post about all the quotes, all the trivia, and all the observations I've picked up over the past sixteen months, but I'll recap a few of the highlights here:

• Two of this woman's children were recently arrested in a bar fight.
• She watches every single show on TV, including shows that air on different channels at the same time.  Her favorites: American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, absolutely any soap opera, So You Think You Can Dance, Desperate Housewives, and CSI reruns.  Her living room must look like an air traffic control center to pull off this much TV viewing.
• She recently spent an entire Saturday watching a Ghost Whisperer marathon "because there was nothing else on."
• Her friend Trevor calls American Idol's Killie Picker "Pickles."  Crazy woman does not like Pickles.
• This woman also does not like Mark Anthony.  Her theory on why Jennifer Lopez stayed with him for such a long time: "He's not very good looking.  He must have something going on down there, if you know what I mean!" 
• Crazy woman is unable to distinguish between TV shows and reality.  When fictional characters have done something she doesn't like on last night's episode of some show, she gets very upset on her phone calls.
• I could only hear half of the conversation, but just today the crazy woman asked her phone friend, "Did you get the trailer over to the house?"  I found this question rather odd, since I'm certain that the trailer is the house.
• I know more information about this woman's colon health--or lack thereof--than any doctor should ever know.

I'll pause there, because I'm fully committed to posting on this subject again.  Thus far, I've snapped a few photos to hold you over for what lies ahead:

These are all well and good, but I aspire for so much more...to my readers, I make the following commitment: when this woman is in the middle of a phone call and playing Farmville, I vow to capture a video clip and post it on this blog.  Only then can you fully appreciate the annoying voice, the stupidity of the conversations, and the black hole of productivity that lies within the confines of this cubicle.  Shareholders, I'm truly sorry.

In the mean time, I'm considering printing a copy of these pictures and posting them prominently on my cabinet at work, where crazy lady walks by multiple times each and every day.  Will she notice?  Will she kill me?  Who knows...it'll be an interesting and potentially deadly experiment.

The Three-Eyed Hurricane

As I reported last Sunday, I was expecting a stormy week ahead at the office.  That week is now behind me, and I'm happy to report that those five days went shockingly well, blowing away even my most optimistic expectations.  On the latest night of the week in the office, I was out of there by 5:15PM--not bad at all considering that this time last weekend, I was mentally preparing myself for an office camp-out.

By late Tuesday afternoon, we had essentially finished building our budget.  But that's not the tough or scary part.  Once we've finalized what the actual total dollar amount, we start preparing the explanation to that annoying, looming question: "What changed between this year's expense and next year's budgeted expense?"  This entails filling out the dreaded analysis of change template, or "AOC," the three-letter acronym and resident four letter word of the Spring Plan process.

We fill out all of the things that we know changed--total production volume is up or down, our mix of more expensive versus less expensive products changed our budget by $x amount, and these three hundred other known changes also caused our expense to go up or down.  The leftover amount--the gap between what we can explain and what our actual budget amount is...that's the part that can really create problems.

There are horror stories where the unexplained amount reaches into the tens of millions of dollars.  Unfortunately, there's no "uh...we're not sure..." section in the AOC template, so closing the gap requires some brilliant fiction and storytelling to come up with possible explanations on why things changed form one year to the next.  It it makes presenting and defending the budget very challenging and unnerving, knowing that if there are questions about the stuff you made up, you need to make up even more stuff to defend it...

That part of the process had me the most scared--if that gap was big, it was going to be a very, very long week.  When we got everything put together, the gap was $15,000.  That's tiny...microscopic...on a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, fifteen thousand is less than an fraction of a percent!  It doesn't even show up in the rounding.  I could easily walk in and say "I have no idea what this $15,000 is," and I'd get laughed out of the room for even talking about such an immaterial number.

I could not believe my good fortune.  This was the stuff of finance legend--if there were a Finance Hall of Fame, I'd be a first ballot inductee.  I wanted to high-five my calculator and frame my spreadsheet when the budget came back with almost $0 unexplained dollars.  That never happens...never!  The freakish rarity of the situation made me worry that I'd missed something in the process, but there was no time to get too concerned--we had to shift our focus toward presenting the budget, first on Wednesday and again on Friday.

The presentation portion of the week went equally well.  The overall budget was generally good news, which always makes things easier, and having logical explanations for all of the changes in the AOC template further simplified the process.  No fiction this time around; no feeling like the whole thing was a giant house of cards that could come crashing down at any moment during the presentation.  It didn't hurt that me and the other two guys in my group coordinated the night before Friday's presentation and all wore green shirts, which drew a few laughs and one "Three Stooges" remark.  By Friday afternoon, I was thrilled--no late nights, no missed workouts, and expectations wildly exceeded.

But it's not over just yet.  I'm sitting in the eye of the hurricane this weekend, and it's back into the storm tomorrow morning.  Our portion of the budget is behind us, but we receive two other important inputs from other groups tomorrow afternoon, then frantically consolidate everything and start preparing the presentation of the overall picture on Thursday morning.  The verdict's still out on whether it'll be good news or bad news.  Once again, a staggering amount of things need to get accomplished this week.

Next weekend will be the second eye of this hurricane before we present the budget one final time the following Monday morning to a different, and perhaps our most critical, audience.  At that point, the third, longest, and most peaceful eye of this storm arrives, lasting for a few weeks before the final two-day whirlwind when we do the whole thing over again in two days in early June.

This past week went unbelievably well, but I can't allow myself to set my hopes too high for the coming week.  Things have a crazy way of averaging out over time, so last week's smooth sailing could easily mean violent waters ahead.  I've only weathered the first eye of this ferocious triclops storm, but I can't deny that my outlook for the future is decidedly more positive than it was last Sundae.

The Storm Up Ahead

It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm on the eve of what will likely be the busiest, most painful week of work all year.  Well, among the top three anyway.  The week after next doesn't hold much more promise, and the first week of June will make a run for the top of the charts, too.  Why the stress?  Two words: Spring Plan.

Around this time every year, we build the cost of goods sold budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in June.  This is my second time through the process, but it is unfortunately my first time leading the process for the group.  At this time last year I'd only been in the job a few months; I could barely find the way to the drinking fountain, let alone lead a major process.  I hardly understood what was going on back then, and my confidence is only marginally higher today.  The one thing I took away out of all that Spring Plan confusion last year was that when my turn came, I should work ahead as much as I could, because the deadlines come fast and furious in late April and early May.

 

It was good advice for my future self, but unfortunately, I've realized this year just how little I can accomplish in advance.  We present the first semi-official version of the COGS budget on Friday, and we haven't even finished building it.  The amount of work that needs to get done between Monday and Friday is downright frightening.  If I could spend today getting some of that work done, then this would be a much shorter blog post.  But there are too many missing inputs and too many meetings that need to happen this week for me to check anything meaningful off the to-do list.  I can see that work is lining up to deliver a forceful kick to my groin this week, and there's not a thing I can do about it...

Despite my best efforts, most of the work is going to get crammed into a two-day window (tomorrow and Tuesday), because we present a preview of the budget in a pre-meeting to the main meeting on Wednesday afternoon.  With two days to do a month's worth of work, everyone is stressed out and ready to kill each other.  We have to request information from people that simply isn't available yet, then find ourselves in a vicious catch-22, asking for inputs to the budget that should be an output of the budget-building process.  The inevitable compromise is "give it your best guess," but we're left holding the bag when Spring Plan is all screwed up.

The strange part is, the process of actually building the budget isn't all that complicated or time-consuming.  It's the insane number of Excel templates and PowerPoint presentations we have to complete, explaining in painstaking detail exactly what changed from this year to next year.  The toughest, most panic-inducing part of the process is filling out the templates in a way that tells a positive story, regardless of the actual numbers we're given.  The process of building that story can (or at least should) take a very long time, but it all has to happen on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Once Wednesday afternoon hits, the presentations begin.  We present the first look at of the budget on Wednesday.  We'll get poked, prodded, and challenged to make adjustments.  We'll update the maze of Excel spreadsheets, revise the PowerPoint presentations, then do it all again on Friday.  More poking and probing, then back into the labyrinth of Excel templates; more revisions to the PowerPoint presentations.

Early the following week, we receive two more key inputs to our overall budget, and then it's déjà vu.  Fill out more templates, build another PowerPoint presentation.  Then Thursday arrives, and we present the almost-final budget to even higher ranking people.  It's déjà vu of déjà vu--poking, probing, changes to the budget, updates to the spreadsheets.

The two weeks after that will return to something resembling "normal," but once the fiscal year closes at the end of May, we redo the whole budget in two days--I kid you not.  We get roughly forty-eight hours to adjust and take into account how the fiscal year actually ended, since right now we're building our budget for next year based on (inevitably wrong) assumptions about how we'll finish this year.  By the middle of June, this image will be burned into my retinas:

The most common phrase at the office these days--and one I'm sick of hearing--is, "did you build that into Spring Plan?!"  Everyone wants to know what assumptions we're making in the budget.  Did we put enough dollars in?  Did we put too many dollars in?  Everyone wants to make sure we're capturing every little change, overlooking the fact that at this point, most of the underlying information we're working with is weeks or months old.  And every time we have to make even the slightest change, it creates hours of rework as it cascades through spreadsheet after spreadsheet.  It's a finance nightmare.

That's a very long-winded way of saying that I hate Spring Plan.  If this were happening to someone else, I'd probably laugh--the ridiculousness and absurdity of the process is humorous, in a sad and twisted way.  In meeting after meeting over the past few weeks, I've been tempted to point out to everyone that this is only a plan!  I desperately want to remind them that no matter what numbers we put on paper (or enter in an Excel spreadsheet, for that matter), it's not going to impact next year's performance or profit in any way.  So far I've been able to bite my tongue...but how long can I keep it up?

Perhaps that's what I find so motivating about this whole endeavor.  Why should life become unbearable for three weeks when the output of that effort doesn't make one bit of difference in the end?  To top it off, leading the Spring Plan process is a very thankless job--if you do it reasonably well, everyone takes it as a given that the plan should be accurate and thoughtful.  If you screw it up, your name will come up in every monthly business update throughout the next fiscal year as the bosses explain why actual results are deviating from Spring Plan.  So there's no pressure or anything...

In other news, dreading Monday has made me realize that Sunday is really only good for one thing: to act as a buffer between Saturday and Monday.  Without Sunday, I don't think I could truly enjoy my Saturdays. By the time Sunday hits, I'm nearly as depressed as if I were actually at work.  Of all the days of the week, Monday takes the brunt the world's complaining, but I feel much better on a Monday night than I do on a Sunday afternoon or evening.  Over the past few months, I've found myself staying up later and later on Saturday nights, subconsciously avoiding going to sleep because I know that when I wake up the next morning, a little piece of my soul will have died overnight.

Even writing the word "Sunday" makes me twitch.  I think I'll start spelling it "Sundae"...I won't dread Monday any less, but at least I'll have a positive image in my mind as I prepare for the week.

How Do You Spell Awkward? I-D-P

Springtime is fast approaching, which means longer days, warmer weather, and, unfortunately the return of IDP season. For those of you who aren't well-versed in work-speak, IDP is corporate acronym for "Individual Development Plan." The IDP is a career-planning tool that, while not technically required, can derail your career prospects if not completed. 

When describing the IDP process, managers use phrases like "highly encouraged" and say things like "anyone who is serious about career advancement fills out an IDP." It's perfectly clear that for anyone who wants to maintain a glimmer of hope in moving up a rung on the corporate ladder, skipping the IDP is the professional equivalent to letting Tanya Harding take a swing at the knees of your career.

The actual Individual Development Plan is a rather lengthy, painful document that asks all kinds of questions about you, your motivations, aspirations, strengths, development opportunities (a thinly veiled synonym for "weaknesses"), and goals over both the short and long-term. After filling out the form, you typically schedule an hour-long meeting with your manager, where you discuss what you've written.

Don't get me wrong--I think it's great to work for a company that values my efforts and asks for my input and thoughts on where my career is headed.  But the formality and seriousness of the whole process makes for an extremely awkward conversation.  The probing nature of the IDP's questions make me feel like I'm a mentally fragile patient, revealing my deepest thoughts and feelings to my psychologist.

After much thought, I've determined that the main problem is that my ultimate goals for my career--and my life--are far too simple for the lengthy IDP form.  I can sum those goals up in four simple words: less work, more money. It can become very challenging, and rather repetitive, to turn that basic philosophy into a coherent, five-page document.

And while I can't argue with the merits of reflection and self-awareness, it's tough to keep a straight face as I try to have have a serious discussion with a manager about my so-called "strengths."  Shouldn't my manager or the other people I work with every day be the ones telling me what my strengths are?  I can't help but imagine what a first-class, oblivious idiot I must look like if I'm sitting there listing things I think I'm good at while my manager is thinking, "Nope...wrong...that one's definitely not a strength...what is he thinking!?"

It doesn't get much better when I get to the "development opportunities" portion of the discussion, which inevitably feels like a career tightrope walk. I certainly don't want to point out any of the serious weaknesses that I've managed to successfully hide over the years, but I also can't go the complete cop-out route with a response like, "I work too hard...and care too much." How could I have been so naive to think that the days of answering these types of questions were over when the job interviews ended?

With today's IDP discussion now safely behind me, I can toss aside that terrible, terrible document and focus on the ways that I can make next year's discussion more palatable.  First, the IDP acronym needs an overhaul--how about Infinitely Disappointing Process? And perhaps some attire more fitting of the situation would be a step in the right direction...