There Is No Meat In This Hamburger

I'm far from in the flow, especially work-wise. I mean I'm not at all in the state where I'm fully immersed and focused on my tasks and projects.

We are facing another reorganisation. It's the forth affecting me directly in 4½ years (if I counted correctly). Each had as the side-effect that it got more difficult for me to perform my tasks - that is, the organisation got more complex, I had more interfaces to deal with and landed between more millstones. Yes, if you can do it more complex, my caring employer does it.

Rumours had been floating around for a while. Finally last week I've been informed officially that there is another round due in a month. Our team will be dispersed to four different departments. We are still supposed to work together in the project but four more line managers will have the chance to play silly games with us. In our organisation, line managers are far more powerful than project managers. In addition, the processes will be more complex, more people will be involved, which increases costs and decreases productivity. A certain portion of my salary is profit and performance based, thus this reorganisation will have direct negative consequences on my salary.

In this mess, I'm offered a position with an impressive and flashy title, however, I do not see that this position comes with the competences needed to do the job, or in other words, there is no meat in this hamburger.

There are nice projects on the horizon, but right now it's just digging at the coal face. Is it time for a transition?

Wtf?

It might be just utter carelessness, however this week the brass of my caring employer's engineering department went one step too far. An engineer showed up in my office and demanded to be told about the project I'm working on since the beginning of this year and I'm supposed to work on for about the next 5 years. I'm the engineering project manager and also responsible for the systems engineering. It turned out that bloke was told that he has the same role and he should inform himself. Screw-ups like that don't just happen, do they?

Toño called it an early night and left me sufficient wine to get into a good mood. So here is a picture from 1993 when I was in a seriously good mood:



I dare to cite an older post of mine:

# On Kamchatka, I was told that the flight back was postponed by a week due to lack of fuel.

# I then bought some smoked salmon and drunk a bottle of vodka, which the salesman offered because he never had a Swiss customer before. There is photographic evidence that I then tried to teach my dead and already smoked fish to smoke a cigarette (not that I remember this).

# Thanks to bribery, we got a flight three days later.

# The first money given was rejected because the dollar bills were not clean and new enough.

# At the bottom of the stairs to the plane we had a fistfight, because we bribed more than others and were given access first. The ones who bribed less did not liked this. There were no boarding cards.

Work-to-rule

I think everybody who is risking his neck for a few coins every workday and is not self-employed is suffering from crappy organisational structures. Or at least so do I. Thus I read the statement by a business consultant, trying to sell his organisation improvement method, with a tiny bit of satisfaction:

For works councils and labour unions threatening with work-to-rule has become an effective leverage, because everybody knows that nothing gets done if everybody sticks to the rules of the organisation.

That's it for work till Monday. Me - out - now.

Swisscom is synonym for lacy bunch of liars

In November last year, I decided to go 3G on my mobile service and to get rid of my landline. I went to a shop of my (not so) service provider Swisscom to get my questions answered and the transition processes rolling. One of my questions was if I could keep my email address if I went forward with these changes. The shop girls answer: Yes, you can keep it forever. I should had recorded this. The question was particularly important to me since this is my main a-side email address.

A few days later, one could not reach me over my landline any more, although I had to pay for further two months. I didn't mind, since I did hardly used it anyway and did not complain. However, when the landline service finally and officially run out, the email account was blocked immediately too.

On the same day, I went to their webpage, and filled the appropriate form to complain. I got an acknowledgement of receipt and since then absolutely nada.

By the way, it took Swisscom more than three weeks to swap my mobile service to 3G.

To look a bit on the bright side of my Swisscom experience, this is the landline hardware I got rid of:

Early Appreciation

I cycle to work and the first thing I face when entering the premises is to cross 6 rails (that have been out of operation for almost a decade) while turning to the right. After parking the bike, I have to walk along 16 parking fields for cars to reach the entrance. Especially the first step is great fun at sub zero temperatures (I did break some bike parts due to this some years ago).

One of the values my caring employer has proclaimed itself is appreciation. So I always get a good impression of the appreciation that is show towards cyclists before I even clock in.



Picture taken with Hipstamatic, equipped with Helga Viking lense, on Blank film. Hipstamatic has been introduced to me by Borstal Boy.

Jammed by Visual Pollution

Sorry, another work related rant... but I just lost an hour of my precious life to visual pollution.

I was called to a compulsory course on my caring employer's new appraisal system. It lasted an hour, which is still better than the one about the new wage system which took four. The course was set at 8am, a time where my receivers are still quite far from operational. However, they were completely jammed when they detected that the presenter was dressed in worst 80es style combination: too long jacket left unbuttoned, shirt, tie and jeans. It did not help either that the jeans were so unfitting they could turn you straight and that his hair was touching the collar.

The day can go only uphill from here.

PS: we have also a new tool to submit/associate our worked hours to project accounts. The button you have to press to submit the data is labelled "Interrupt". Wtf?

I'm all right Jack, pull up the ladder

I'm a bit in a funk when it comes to work right now, or more in a rather indifferent après moi, le déluge kind of mood. Because it seems that doing a decent job does not solve anything. The mess is only get bigger.

The German idiom the fish reeks at its head describes it quite well. Things are rather badly organised around here so that you are given only quicksand under your feet.

One of the best teachers I've ever had was in organisation. He taught me the Hamburger Job Model: A good job is organised like a good hamburger. The buns and the meat have the same diameter and there is a balance between the amount of bread and meat:



The upper bun represents the tasks, the lower the responsibilities and the meat are the competences to get from the tasks to the responsibilities. Whatever, the real life Job Hamburger looks more like this:



You have got certain tasks, have to put your neck on the line for like everything and are not served any meat at all. How I'm supposed to achieve anything on that diet?

Appreciation

A year ago I was in the U.S. of A. for the integration of a system. For me, the most unusual thing was that half of the time in meetings was wasted used to praise the good work everybody at the table is doing. This was kind of new to me. Were I've worked so far here in Switzerland (construction & defence), doing a good if not exceptional job is something that is just expected. Receiving appreciation can be compared with masturbation, i.e. DIY.

However today, a VP came to my office and gave me a couple of bottles of a 92 points wine for this job. I was quite flabbergasted. It was even out of his private cellar.



He should have given them to me a couple of hours earlier, before I'd filled the employee satisfaction survey. Though there I did not bitch much about a lack of appreciation but that my caring employer sucks when it comes to diversity. As chance would have it, exactly this VP had no clue what a registered partnership is, when he'd inquired my matrimonial status. One has to teach those brass everything.

Where's The Sky?

My caring employer has decided that it's time for me to move to another office. There is a positive side of it. The new one is bigger which is in favour of my areal filing system. However, there are some negative sides too:

• A vending machine is in crawling distance. Not good for my love handles.
• It's on the second floor. The old office was on the fifth floor. When avoiding the lift, this was a free workout I was even paid for. And, it's also not good for my love handles.
• I can't see the sky without breaking my neck.

Old view:



New view:

I was begging her

... nevertheless, did not make it on the guest list. and she sent me an invitation.



Just another of those facts of life I have to come to terms with. My strong believe in the good in man has been reinforce.

Having The Blues

Yes I also listened wept to The Speech. However, soon after it was over the blues kicked in. What is the point of listen to this alone in a hotel room with a box of tissues (I tend to be carried away lightly), when there is a man in your life you want to grow old with gracefully. Call me greedy, but I want more. I want his hands on me. All over me. Now. Subito!


Sinéad O’Connor - I Want Your (Hands On Me)

Boomus Interruptus

I have no idea why, but this morning I had to think of this article... We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that? (Wired, July 1997)... or as Neils Bohr said Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

Sliding to Work

Did I mention that Hertz gave us a car with four season tires despite the imminent danger of a blizzard?

No Bad Weather - Only Wrong Gear

Next to our hotel is this river, which we always call lake by mistake. It's unusually wide and calm from a Swiss' perspective. Whatever... last week it was crowded like Boxing Day at Walmart with geese.

Suddenly one morning, we heard noises like in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Looking up, we saw the sky darkened by migrating geese. We are talking here of zillion of geese passing by. We stood there for minutes watching the endless trail pass.



We better should has taken this as a hint. The temperatures dropped significantly since the passage. We are now at -12 °C. Taking the wind into account, it feels like -23 °C. And for this night, 15-25 cm of snow are forecasted.

You may say that I've been to Siberia and thus must be used to far lower temperatures. Well, this is a business trip and I'm here in proper business attire.

However, cold means dry snow. When we came here two weeks ago, everything was covered in damp snow, which was awfully bad for my feet in leather soled shoes. Because of fear or slip and fall, they make me walk like a penguin (desperate note to self: get some flash looking business shoes with rubber sole - if there is something like this).

By the way, I'm terribly missing my goose down feather duvet. I don't like hotels that leave you with just a blanket.

And did I mention the icing rain that made us chip the ice of our car for half an hour after work?



It's time that this trip ends.