Why I Don’t Write for a Living

On more than one occasion, folks who have read my stuff have flattered me by asking why I do not write professionally.

It may look easy, but real writing is much harder than going into an office, sitting in a cube, researching entity relationship diagrams, analyzing database attributes, designing user reports and pretending that the boss in an intelligent person who does not deserve a twice daily bitch-slapping.

Also, it is virtually impossible to make a living as a writer (Fewer than 20% of "professional" fiction writers manage to make more than $20k per year from their writing). The exception is writing marketing ad copy for Publisher’s Clearinghouse - which can be very remunerative.

So, I prefer the relative anonymity of the web log, where I am the sole editor and publisher, where I can say almost anything I want without getting fired or poked in the nose.

I am not disciplined enough to get any work done unless my workplace is in a place where someone is watching me. If I am "working at home" I inevitably become distracted by the radio, the cat, the desperate housewives in the neighborhood, a yard that needs work, peeling paint, a falling down fence, the phone, noise from the building project down the street, Jehovah’s Witnesses – you name it. If I need to look-up a word in the thesaurus I often spend hours searching for the bon mot.

I cannot meet deadlines. My energy to write usually lasts about the time it takes to consume two Sierra Nevada’s. Then I nap.

Writing as a job has no allure for me. As soon as I begin to think of it as work - i.e. doing what someone else tells you to do - I find it tedious.

Writing is much harder than rocket science. Think about it. Rocket science is simply applying known laws of physics. Make accurate detailed calculations and presto you've got a man on the moon. On the other hand, writing a humorous piece starts with a blank page, a half-baked idea, a literary license and some grammatical rules that would curl your hair. You write a draft. You rewrite the piece four of five times. Finally, you just give-up on it and call it done. Now, if you show it to someone, they feel perfectly comfortable criticizing your work. Some people even get-off on it. (e.g., "That last piece on midgets was not as funny as the one on hunting accidents.") Perhaps I am too thin-skinned to be a professional writer. But you don't see these dolts going around pretending they know something about rocket science.

I do not seek fame. The downside of fame is that it makes you an easy target.
Who needs it? During my last under-employed period (1989), when the local newspaper would publish my essays, I often felt like a minor celebrity, when someone would recognize me in the supermarket (often to say how much they liked the midget piece but that I should do more on wildlife sightings in the police notes). One fan even said I was better and funnier than Dave Barry (thanks, Mom).

After one not-so-humorous piece lampooning the pro-life demonstrator tactics at clinics, I got phone calls from a pro-life lady who quoted scripture and urged me to do more research. My wife got freaked-out at this veiled attempt at intimidation and she made me promise not to write about touchy subjects in the future. That nipped my career as a famous opinionator of current news events in the bud.

The other day I was metaphorically pulled over by a word police officer for failing to properly punctuate a sentence. Instead of a full period stop, I had typed a comma. Then he cited me for a dangling participle and writing while under the influence of my muse and malt beverages.
"I'm innocent, I tell you," I told him. "I've only had two Sierra Nevada's. OK, I did split an infinitive back there a few paragraphs ago, but I have a license that allows me to violate certain rules of grammar."
The officer sneered, “Where’d you get your license – Sears?”

Ok, time for my nap.

Est la barre ouverte?

Thoughts on Non-Employment

I have decided to describe my current status as “non-employment” as opposed to unemployment or retirement. “Unemployment” connotes a lack of success in a job search. “Retirement” implies a decision to stop looking for work. Non-employment means that I am not presently looking for a job, but not sure that I am permanently done with work. When asked, I simply say I am “on the bench.”

"On the bench" is standard jargon for consultants and contractors who are "between" assignments. I especially use this terminology around my wife. She is nervous at the thought that I have actually begun an unannounced de facto retirement. Not having "work" to occupy my time, and without her being home to keep an eye on me, she fears that my evening cocktail hour will commence closer to noontime.

I assure her that I have plenty to do, and hardly any of my cohorts are drinking these days (primarily due to the unfortunate fact that alcohol disagrees with their meds.) Besides, I have come to the point in life where two beers is about all I can handle before I start mumbling. How much trouble can you get into after only two beers?

Other than the predictable domestic demands on my free time (mainly meals preparation, shopping, doing laundry and going to the dump), I am enjoying non-employment. The main problem with this status is the steady encroachment of fearful thoughts that tend to dominate the thinking of people who subsist on a (limited) fixed income. We begin to worry about living too long or getting sick and running out of money. At the same time, we dread the thought that we are squandering our healthy years by continuing to work and save, rather than using some of the hard-earned cash to buy some well deserved fun.

A job is an opiate. By accepting the constraints of a job, we allow someone else to make all the big decisions about Time in our lives. Indirectly, the working hours of our job dictate when we go to bed, when we wake-up, how much time we have for breakfast. The job description may even decide where we work how much travel we must do.

Job related deadlines and overtime demands determine whether we are able to squeeze-in some entertainment and/or family time on weekends. The paradox of business life is the devil’s bargain where we trade our personal autonomy for attaining more money and power. The higher we are in the management hierarchy of an organization the less “free time” is available to us. Those days when the execs sneak off early for a round of golf are more than paid for by weekends and nights of overtime. It is commonly known that many of the most successful executives have disastrous personal lives.

Well, the idea is that time is precious. One must spend it like gold – and certainly not give away the control of it to by people who think of us as “resources” not as human beings who need some personal time to think about life’s unanswered questions.


One of the ways we are planning to spend precious time this year is to travel beyond the local boundries of the interstate. We think we will have more fun seeing more of the world. In anticipation of said travel I am brushing up on my language skills. The new MS word2003 has a language translator and I have been spending my precious time learning some handy phrases in different languages.


Hey, it's almost noontime. (Is the bar open?)
É a barra aberta
Ist der geöffnete Stab

State of the Yard

I’m looking out the window into the back yard. Yesterday’s warm rains have wiped out any residue of recent snows. The neighbor’s home-made skating rink looks more like a swimming pool. The thaw has encouraged a distinct greening of the lawn and patches of bright new growth can be seen in the clay pots of chives and parsley.

Spring is in play.

The WSJ reports that there were 193,000 new American jobs in January. Today’s editorial touts the “lowest employment rate” in four years as clear evidence that the 2003 tax cuts are working. I’ll let you know whether I agree or not after I am finished doing my taxes.

I use Turbo-Tax so the hardest part is gathering all the pertinent documents.
I know what you organized people are thinking: Why not just keep all the tax-related papers in one folder so you can find everything you need easily? Yes, that might be an efficient way of doing things, but it is not my way.

My way is to keep every bill, receipt, statement, form, notice, credit card offers, correspondence, acknowledgement, confirmation, insert, fax, note, stub, check and any other document that is not an advertisement – in a big cardboard box.

Traditionally, during the NFL Wildcard weekend, usually in mid-January, while watching the games on TV, I sort through the box and toss the stuff that needs tossing and pile the stuff that needs shredding into a big brown grocery bag for later attention.

Usually this process is lubricated by repetitive ingestion of malt beverages. Now, I don’t know about you, but after a few frosty Sierra Nevada’s, my inclination to sort paper erodes very quickly and without warning. Thus, I typically end-up with a half-sorted box of papers, a bag of shred-able documents - which – like as not, will just get chucked into the trash along with the wet garbage (Go ahead, identity thieves, burrow through the rotten cantaloupe, eggshells, coffee grinds and banana skins. Bring it on !)

But it is good to know that the economy remains strong, with all that job growth. I was comforted the other night by Pres. Bush’s rosy picture of things, weren’t you?
He needs a new speech writer. He reminded me of a CEO at the annual Kickoff meeting. Rah-Rah, we are the greatest! We need to foster more Teamwork and we need to work harder to out-compete the competition! Empty feel good phrases.

Funny how companies give all the perks and rewards to the greedy egomaniacs who create dissention and distrust among the workforce instead of trying to get the people to work as teams.

Not that it matters to me anymore. I am officially back among the ranks of unemployed and NOT looking. At least not for the moment.

I do not have time for a regular job.

Stop sending me leads.

Back to the Future

I am pleased to report that my current "engagement" is coming to an end. Why am I pleased, you ask? (Honey, if you need to ask, you have clearly not been reading this blog. )

But just for the record, to apprise those newcomers who are too intelligent to dig back into history, let me summarize the top ten reasons why I would rather be home - staring out the window wondering how I am going to exterminate those pesky tomato eating squirrels this year - rather than schlepping my big retirement age ass 30 miles down the highway and back at rush hour every day.

Top ten reasons to be cheerful that my gig is over:

1) Did I mention that I hate being on the highway at drive time? Fellow commuters in their big scary SUVs and Truckers in their very big and scary 18 wheelers crawling up your rear bumper because you are only going ten miles over the speed limit. (Makes you want to just jam on your brakes to see what would happen) Or you get stuck for an hour in a huge traffic jam behind an accident scene all because some moron in a big SUV was tailgaiting some clueless idiot who wanted to teach the SUV a lesson by slamming on his brakes.

2) The system is among the worst I have ever seen. The users who have to work with it, hate it quite passionately. It was the wrong solution, peddled to an unwary customer. The managers who made the "buy" decision of course cannot admit that they might have bleeped up, so they blame all "problems" on the users and developers. Most of the middle managers are disappointed and pressured because they have to make things work somehow. It's fairly hopeless.

3) My shelflife is up. I am begining to smell. The three guys who interviewed me are all long gone, and on to better lives and locations. I too have lost the sense of magic and wonder that one feels at the beginning of a new project. Ok maybe I never had that sense on this job. I just feel intellectually antsy.

4) Micromanagement has robbed me of any feeling of ownership or responsibilty. I start looking at my watch just after morning coffee break. Sometimes in the afternoon I actually doze off for seconds at atime starting at some vacuous email that I have been CC'd on for some incomprehensible reason.

5) Indolence and autonomy becken. I have books waiting to be read. My Retirement portfolio needs balancing. The bedroom needs painting. Both toilets are running and wasting water. I sometimnes fall weeks behind on my blog because I am so tired at the end of the day that nothing seems worth writing about. I miss my long walks in the morning and hours spent in the periodical room at the library.

6) Freedom Calls. I want to go fishing or to the casino whenever I please. If I feel like sleeping late or staying up late, that's what I want to do. I want to have time to read the paper in the morning - not just the Op-ed page.

7) I am weary of showering and shaving every day. And getting a haircut every month and wearing laundered shirts and clean pressed trousers every day and wearing dress shoes. I want to go back to my Rockports and Dockers and tee shirts. Ponytail, beard, earings and....New tattoos! It is only a few more weeks until Spring.

8) I want to return to my old schedule, where I shop and do errands in the middle of the week when there is no traffic, and then do something interesting on weekends when the rest of the workd is jamming the local streets trying to get errands done.

9) Hardly any of my friends have jobs. Certainly none who are my age or older.

10) I have in my hand a potentially winning lottery ticket worth 23 million. Stay tuned. Drawing at 11pm.

Truth Comes in Blows

In the Saul Bellow novel, "Henderson The Rain King", the protagonist, Gene Henderson, spends much of the time searching for an answer for the little, persistent voice inside his head that says I want, I want.
In one scene, he is chopping wood and a chunk of oak pops up and gives him a bloody nose.
He experiences an instant epiphany wherein the Truth is revealed to him. He declares that "Truth comes in blows".

I recently experienced a similar, painful sudden insight. I was navigating in the dark, after a late session watching college championship football. Three Dewars and two beers had clouded my usually sharp radar, and I stubbed a middle toe on the bedpost as I aimed for "my" side in the unlighted wee hours.
I do not think I was actually thinking of anything important at the time. Most likely, I was silently regretting that I had to get up and go to work at the Hellhole in just a few hours. Then, in the numbing ache of a banged-up digit, a new and wonderful perception came to me.

As you know, for most of the duration of my current gig, I have been complaining about the micromanaging project manager. I castigated him (behind his back, of course) for being a hovering, meddling annoyance. I criticized him for holding long and boring meetings while he tediously grilled someone on the conference call because he did not understand things that the rest of us found simple and comprehensible. I accused him of malfeasance for insisting on slavish attendance at those dumb and unproductive status and "planning" meetings, not letting us get to work so we could actually do our jobs. I observed that the more involved he became, the more apathetic and disengaged I (and others) became. At problem-solving sessions, he would not listen to us when we offered facts or proposed solutions. He made many bad decisions which later had to be corrected.

After a while, we just accepted the situation and let him make all the decisions and assume all the responsibility. This was his impression of management. We were getting paid the same as if we were actually accomplishing something. Why get frustrated or angry?

Sure, it was the easiest thing to do. And for the past six months I have enjoyed a pretty good gig, being well-paid and having to invest nothing other than some face time and an odious commute. But, getting back to the point of this: The Truth that came to me in a sudden flash is I should be thankful for his micromanaging.
If he had not turned me off, I'd have become invested in the project. I'd have made commitments and would have tried hard to meet them. Heck, I might have gotton interested in the challenges instead of shirking them. I might even have worked overtime instead of going in late and going home after 6 or 7 hours. And it would all have been in vain, for this is truly the worst system I have ever seen!

Thank you, Micromanager. You are my hero. If I am still there when your ulcers are better, I vow to take you out and buy you a beer.

January 1, 2006

Another New Year. I guess we all share a universal sense of optimism when a new year rolls around. Even those jaded cynics among us who (perhaps like me) who have begun so many New Years with a list of resolutions and the hope of peace and prosperity, and then witnessed the disolution of those hopes in the fire hose of reality.

2005 was another one of those years when the idea of World Peace seems like a childish aspiration. Threats - real and imagined - abound. China and Russia are drifting back to totalitarianism. None of our old friends likes us anymore. Perhaps Randy Newman (Let's drop the big one and see what happens) should be the next president. We need someone with a sense of humor.

We don't even like each other! The Dems are calling the Republicans liars and corrupt. The Neocons seem to have patented a new definition for patriotism which sounds to me too much like nationalism. I recall that the Nazi's came to power by focusing the people's attention on the internal and external threats and then ruthlesly punished eliminated any form of dissent or opposition. As a country, we have polarized to the extremes. There is no middle. The bell curve is now a statistical pucker when it comes to politics. Each side says "Either you are with us (and shut-up). or you are helping the enemy." Good old-fashioned comromise is out of the question. How can you find common ground with traiters, Nazis and killers of babies? Amazingly, after centuries of barbaric warfare (much of it over differences in religious beliefs), we have learned nothing. Some of us have distilled (or should I say, "dumbed-down") our political philosophy down to a few defining issues such as right to life, opposition to same sex marriage and insistence upon unquestioned allegience to a leader. Unfortunately it will take another national tragedy for the sides to come together.

But, despite the gloomy assessment for the prospects of peace, I look ahead to 2006 with a sense of renewal and optimism, just like the rest of you naive children.

Footnote: Was it just me, or did you think it was kind of a bummer seeing post-stroke Dick Clark at the annual New Years Eve festivities on TV. Is this what the rest of us have to look forward to? Can't someone tell him that it is time to get out of the spotlight? It gets worse - They announced today that Clark's successor has been named to host New Years Eve when Clark finally kicks the bucket. Was it some one with talent? Good looks? Charisma? No, some poofta from the american Idol show. Reality Central to ABC: there is a reason why none of my homies bothers to watch that phony baloney "competition."

I guess Clark just did not want to give up his Job. Like so many of us, we work our whole lives to accomplish something worthwhile and then the company replaces us with Ryan Seacrest.

Trying Not To Offend Anyone

My PC crashed last week so I have been out of communication with the online world more than usual. I had to go down and crank up my "B" system which has no Ethernet port, so I have been condemned to the Total Hell of 56K dial-up these past few days. I reminded me why I harbor a deep hatred for pre-broadband AOL.

I have taken a few days off from work, so I have not even been able to sneak a peek at my inbox at the office. It kind of humbles you, being forced to use an archaic dial-up connection. Now I can empathize with people who live in the third world.

I trust my faithful fans have endured the holidays without undue strife or disappointment. Note that I eschew the usual seasonal greetings because I do not wish to offend anyone. It seems that this year people have become more sensitive to the assumed underlying sentiment when someone offers a general "Merry Christmas" as a greeting.
I gotta admit it: Wishing Merry Christmas to a non-Christian does seem a bit like wishing others a happy birthday when it is your birthday.
True Christians are offended if you offer a generic greeting 'Happy Holidays' because it clearly means that you hate Jesus.

You cannot win. Everyone is offended by something. So the hell with it.

I didn't even write a Holiday Newsletter this year because I didn't want to offend anyone. Some people are not as blessed as I, and reading about what a great year I had, and how wonderful and successful my children have become, well, it might make others feel envious.
That would be unseemly of me.

Some times I wonder why I seem to be so out-of-sync with my culture.

The news programs on the day after thanksgiving were predictably focused on the coverage of "black Friday" which refers to the bump that retail merchants expect to get from the hordes of shoppers who cannot wait one more day to start their xmas shopping.

This year there were the usual stories about people who waited outside in the cold just to be first in line to buy an Xbox at Wal-Mart. This is when I question why someone would do that? Then I think of all the 'sheeple' you see on the evening so-called news who are perfectly willling to stand in line to get tickets to a baseball game or to watch the parrot guy sing Margaritaville for the ten-thousanth time. Well, I guess I am glad for them. After all I do believe in capitalism and the victims doen't seem to mind.
The problem for me is I am line-phobic. Those who know me will tell you that I am patient with most aspects of life. But, I hate standing in lines. My wife is just the opposite. Most people who grew up in the shadow of NYC were acclimated to lines for everything. Deli, Bus, Toilet, Gas Station, Laundry, Soup - everything. NYC people see a line and rush to get into it before you; then, they ask what the line is for. You could not get me to wait in line for Guaranteed Eternal Salvation.
One exception that I can think of: If the entire financial system collapses and the liquor stores close because money is worthless, I would stand in line to trade all my Excellence Awards and plaques for a single cup of Dewars.

I was cleaning out my "office" in the basement the other day, and was impressed by the collection of Plaques and "Certificates of Accomplishement" I had received over the years.
Most of these were meaningless "attaboy" incentives that some mouthbreathing manager thought would motivate me to work harder.

Then there were the training certificates. Talk about impressive. I had evidence that I have attended Training in Project Management, Presentation Skills, Developing Superior Negotiation Techniques, Documenting Business Rules, and Re-engineering Business Processes. I have another folder attesting to my attendance at 5 different PeopleSoft classes, several for software companies that I had long forgotten. Then there were several certificates for "seminars" that I had attended in Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Visual Display of Information, and similar topics. I also had stuff from Vendor User Group meetings that had been held in places like Atlanta, Orlando, SanFranciso, and (pre-deluvian) New Orleans.

It occured to me that the companies that I worked for had paid the bill for each of these "learning" venues. A quick estimate of the total cost of all this education is probably between $30-40K. In retrospect I conclude that most of this expense was a waste. Not that I failed to have a good time traveling to these fun places and getting paid attending class as opposed to working - I did find this use of my time totally worthwhile. No, the waste was for the companies that I worked for who were paying the bills. Most of the stuff we learned at these seminars and classes was ignored by our management. I recall one senior manager greeting a group of newly promoted managers as we returned from Management Training100. He said, "OK you had a nice week enjoying the Ocean view and eating gourmet food. Now forget everything they told you and let's get back to work."

I tossed all the meaningless certificates and awards in the trash, the same way you chuck yesterday's newspaper. I wonder why I saved them all this time.

Bungle takes a Holiday

Life at work goes on and on. I am getting seriously burned -out working on one particular report, which has been in "User Testing" for eight weeks.
It was done when I went on vacation in September but somehow it got redesigned while I was away. Gremlins and scope creep have oozed out of thje woodwork. The PM decided to change programmers just as we were getting to the end of things.

Now if you have ever dealt with code jockeys you know that there is no more cardinal sin of stupidity than to change horses in strong current. Programmers hate any code that they are forced to maintain - especially if it was written by another. Much like writers editing someone else's dreadful prose.

It is not consoling that we have discovered at least three seious bugs in the way Oracle writes to their audit tables, and we have shone a spotlight on the malfeasence of the custom design team in creating a virtual plate of spaghetti for a database.

The PM is still micromanaging the whole affair and doing everyone's job. He is working pretty hard, but the rest of us are letting him do it, wondering when or if he will figure out how to manage people who know more than he does. It may take months, but for us - it's easy money for now.

Actually, phase 2 is not going so bad. Big difference, writing specs for a system that you know a little about, and with users who have had a few months of real experience under their belts.

I have come to the point where I actually enjoy the weekly status meetings, despite the fact that they do not accomplish anything. I keep thinking how it ties the PM up and he cannot faithfully do our all of our jobs for us while he is earnestly managing that powerpoint project document. (I never can figure out what percentage complete I am with any task until it has been done and not undone by management for at least a week.)
Have a great Holiday and thank your lucky stars if you are free of micro management.

Mid November thots

It was cold in Massachusetts last night. The last of the annuals in the garden, stems drooping and blackened by the killer frost, seem to accept their fate. We are all waiting for the inevitable snow.

As I stopped to remember the pungent smell of the marigolds and tomato vines, and recalled the harvest of beauty and fruit, suddenly, the air was filled with leaves, drifting from the elms and oaks along the back fence. Spiraling and spinning like a squall softly to the ground in the still morning air. There was not a breath of wind to knock them from their branches, and I wondered what had made them take flight. But no Crows or foraging squirrels were to be seen.

The air seemed filled with them. Crimson and gold leaves, which had held fast to the branches through the storms and winds of three seasons, now become airborne for that brief final moment before returning to the earth.

I guess it was plain old fashioned gravity pulling them from the branch tips to spiral to the ground. But, did they finally let go, or did the tree decide to let them go? Not that it mattered now. Dust to dust.

We are a lot like those leaves, hanging on to our lives and loves through rain and shine. Then one day we just let go, and then we know the answer.

The Secret to Success

People keep asking me "What kind of work do you do."
Even my lovely wife and kids cannot really explain what I do for a living.

Sometimes I wish I had an easily understood job title. Cop, Firefighter, Dog Catcher - everyone knows what these people are doing. But if you tell them that you are a systems analyst, and chances are, they will nod and paste a phony smile on their face while their vacant eyes tell you everything about how little they know about systems or analysis. You might as well tell them that you are a phrenologyst or a tonsorial artist.

So here is my job description in a nutshell:
I go into the office nearly every weekday around 9:30 or so depending on weather, traffic, hangover, and mood. I go to my "cube" and turn on the thingybob. The technical term for it is Kumputa. I sit in front of the Kumputa for about half the day, writing up notes from meetings and discussions. The other half of the day is spent having discussions with people and going to meetings.

You might well ask: "What are you doing that is worth a fiddlers fart?"

Aha, it is with that type of query that you reveal your true naivetie. Let me clue you in on a big secret: Success at work is not about what you do.
Go ahead and try to refute that statement. You can't. Name anyone who you think is successful and I can show you a thousand unsuccessful people who are as-good-or-better at the same kind of work.

What made the difference was not what they did, but what people in power think they did.

And what, dear readers, makes the difference beween what you really did and what they think you did? (Audience yells: "Status Reports!" ) You are right!

The main difference between me and the smarter, more technically savvy, younger, thinner and better-looking (but lower paid) analysts on my team is one thing: I write better.

Being a great writer is a gift which I take no personal credit for. Just as others were born better-looking and smarter, I was just lucky to have been born with an uncanny ability to make molehills of modest accomplishment seem like lofty mountains of unparalleled excellence.

When other (less gifted) analysts write the notes from their meeting with Mr Bigshot, they hurredly jot: "Met with Mr. Big. Discussed new Billing system requirements." Now, seeing this on one of your minions' weekly status report might simply induce a yawn, if you noticed it at all.
But consider how a Writer documents one of the most important summit meetings ever held in this hemisphere: "In a 90 minute meeting with "Doug" Bigshot, the single most important criteria for success in this project is measuring Billing process turnaround time. With these metrics business managers can measure their progress in improving processes and making them more responsive to their customers."

See? Not only did I use a lot of (possibly meaningless) jargon and buzzwords, faithfully recorded from the horses mouth, but I also gave my boss some new phrases to add to his (or her) status report. This is the nugget of how to be successful. You quote the words of the Bigshot and treat then as if he was the authority on best practices in your field. Kachink.

So there you have it: The Answer.
Now, what was the question again?

Survey Says...

Today we returned to Eastern Standard Time. Again, my annual reminder of the feeble thinking designers of digital time devices. How hard is it to include a < back button? Sometimes I wish reality was a VCR Tape so we could rewind it back to a time when things were less FUBAR.

Yesterday afternoon, I anwered a call from some outfit that was conducting a telephone survey. Ordinarily, as a charter member of the Do Not Call Society, I'd have growled "Not interested" and then rudely slam down the receiver on the intruding bastards. But yesterday afternoon, the weather had turned nasty, which drove me to shelter in my basement office, ( which just happens to be next to the beer refrigerator.) Consequently, I was feeling somewhat mellow when the office phone (which does not have a caller id display) rang. Curiosity got the better of me, so I picked up the phone and agreed to answer some questions. (Full disclosure requires that I admit to really having nothing better to do.)

The overall design of the survey seemed amateurish to me. There were a lot of questions that were meaningless because they wanted Yes or no answers about things that were too vague to be useful. (Do you think your local officials are doing a good job? With no follow-up or expansion). I found those types of questions to be annoying and refused to answer them. After a few minutes it was clear that the survey was really about Mitt Romney and how I (as a registered voter in Mass) thought he was doing. I told the caller that Mitt should spend more time in the Governor's Office and run for re-election to that post in 2008. I would not vote for Kerry Healy for Governor - (The Jane Swift debacle soured me on women Republicans.) There were a lot of questions about an "Educational Reform" initiative of 1993.

I refused to answer any of these questions . ( I vote against any override or plan that would force people on a fixed income to leave town. Yeah, I know I am no longer on a fixed income, but I plan to retire again in the near future). Let the rich young yuppies who are moving into those Million dollar plus houses down the street pay for the middle school renovation project - I've been paying my dues to this town for over 25 years! The survey caller wanted to know how I felt about the current economy (Positive); Employment (Plenty of Jobs); and Same sex marriage (I have no problems with it). After 15 minutes I asked how long this was going to take. She said 10 more minutes. I told her to make a note that the survety was tedious and boring. From one of my underemployment jobs as a survey caller, I know that the caller gets paid on "completes" so I advised her to get to the end quickly.

This experience re-enforced my opinion about surveys. Most are ill-designed and therefore give ambiguous results. Besides, how valuable is the opinion of a beer swigging independent who has nothing better to do with his time? I would have liked them to ask me about Iran (Major threat to our best ally in the mideast); Iraq (We need to start our own "Oil for Protection" program); the UN (Useless and worse); Syria (et's drop the Big One and see what happens); 12 mile fishing limit (Extend to 26 miles); FEMA (Sounds like a gay rights organization. Well, I'm resigned to the fact that no one really wants to hear my opinions. I cannot side with either political side - since I believe they are both corrupt.

At least I got an extra hour of sleep last night. And I am resolved to install a phone with caller id in the basement office.

Murky Saturday

The weather here is Boston has been cloudy and rainy for at least two weeks straight. People tell me that this is what the weather is like in Oregon most of the time. I guess it is not surpirizing that the suicide rate in Oregon is among the highest in the country.

We are all in a foul mood. Everyone you meet is light-deprived and grumpy. I feel like going downtown and looting a big 48 inch plasma TV and spend the rest of the weekend watching Hi-def sporting events, and drinking beer.

But it is not to be. The inlaws have come to town for the gala family wedding celebration. The weather is not cooperating and our plans for some crisp Autumn leaf-peeping have been drenched. Most of the out of towners are sitting in the hotel, by the heated pool, pretending that they are in Florida. Perhaps tomorrow the rain will cease and we will at last get some light.

I was back to work this week on Tuesday. The new PM did not show-up. I found out on Wednesday that he had decided on a career change. This would have been disconcerting, in the light of other recent defections from the project team, if I were an employee who was invested in the successful outcome of this project.

This is the advantage of being a contractor: We do not take credit or blame for any outcome. We are viewed as leased lawnmowers. They bring us in for a specific purpose. Like a lawnmower, we are seen as work tools. Start it up, push it and it mows the lawn. When you are done with it, shut it off and put it in the shed.

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, I really like this arrangement. I get paid a lot and the works is easy. I just have to comment on it because it is a totally ineffective way to manage a work project. People are not like interchangable parts. And the "lawn" is more like safari grass than Kentuckey blue fescue. This is why nothing happens on time and under budget.

I got a call the other day from the Micromanager from phase 1. He has been asked to stay on and run the project thru the end of the year. Great, it will be nice to have some continuity, I said. But I was thinking, oh crap, here we go again.

Will this rain ever stop?

Endings

Well, the glorious two-week hiatus from work is about over. I could not have asked for better weather. I love this time of year. It was pretty busy, catching-up on my chores, watching the White Sox kick the crap out of the Red Sox, helping the kids find a new house and helping to murder my favorite cat.

I spoke to the PM for the new project early this week and he wants me to come in for the kick-off meeting next Tuesday (Monday is Columbus Day holiday. The day we commemorate the Italian invasion of India). Columbus, that erstwhile explorer, reminds me of a lot of managers. He had the right idea - If the world is round, then sailing West would take you to the Far East. The crackers in the bedlinen turned out to be the continent of North America which he did not foresee. So we are stuck with the term "Indian" when the correct term should be "Casino Millionaire." But I digress.

Going back to work should put me back on a less chaotic schedule. I have gained 5 pounds since returning to the free life - mainly owing to the inordinate consumption of Sierra Nevada's and Dewers. And snack food. The house has been full with children and grandchildren for the past month. They are staying here temporarily while they looked for their own home. (Their offer on a place closer to the town where they are working was just accepted, so they will be here until the passing of papers next month.) We are appalled at their diet. Most of the stuff they like to eat is prepared foods, donuts, fast food products, lots of soda and take-out. The pantry is full of tempting chips and snacks. These things we had eliminated from our eating lives.

Our disapproval of their food choices are met with obstinate dismissal. They are a bad influence on my weight loss program. We are very happy that they are with us, as opposed to being in California and when they get settled in the new place it should be less chaotic. We will probably miss the constant noise that is generated by young boys when they are not napping.

We are trying to figure-out the best way to tell the grandkids about the cat, which went to the vet yesterday on the one-way trip which we have been dreading. The cat was diagnosed with renal failure four years ago. We have kept him alive and relatively happy all this time by a weekly infusion of saline solution injected with a big scary needle. But, inevitably, his system began to shut-down. He lost weight, stopped grooming; he looked miserable. We decided yesterday that he was suffering too much. I stayed in the room while the Dr. gave him a lethal overdose of happy juice. Ten seconds later he was in kitty heaven chasing a fat mouse. I admit that I felt the same way Elvis described in the song Old Shep ("I had killed the best [cat] the a boy ever knew... ")

The new Roberts supreme court is currently reviewing the right to die case in Oregon. Conservatives are uncharacteristically going in favor of Federal Authority here as opposed to States Rights. John Ashcroft did not approve of the law in Oregon and his successors are challenging the ruling which blocked Ashcroft's directive regarding prescribing drugs. This will be a nice test to see whether Roberts is a conservative flunky or a man worthy of his robes.

As a man who has admitted to assisting in the peticide of a beloved cat to end it's suffering, I think you know how I stand on this issue. In fact, I would gladly have authorized the forcible taking of John Ashcroft's kidneys if it would have kept my cat healthy.)

The grandkids haven't noticed yet that one of the cats is not among us. (It is not unusual for the cats to hide from the little boys for days on end). But one of these days one of them is going to ask. And, I suppose we will have to tell them the upsetting news: The Red Sox are losers!

Micromanagement 101

I get a lot of mail here at the old Hellhole asking me that age-old question: "Do you work at my company?"

The answer is blowin in the wind, my friends. The answer is blowin in the wind.

Many of you are experiencing the agony of employment under a "leadership" team composed of insecure, smart people. Being smart can be a huge liability to someone whose ambition is greater than their management skills. Strangely enough, smart people are not necessarily perceptive when it comes to human motivation. They believe that everyone is either ambitious like themselves OR they are dumb.

The best managers are not geniuses. They start out as ordinary folks who realize that you can get a lot of stuff done if you can articulate a goal and then get out of the way to let your team members do their jobs. They ask for a status report every two weeks. Their main form of questioning is "How can I help you?" instead of "How long is that gonna take?"

Good managers are organized; and they are able to show other how to be organized. (For the record, this was my biggest personal flaw as a manager. I am congenitally disorganized and like it that way.)

Good managers have a sense of urgency plus a personal style that gets others to share the desire to get things done on time. (Another failing of mine. I was born without a sense of urgency, and deadline is a word that I find annoying rather than challenging)

Good managers recognize that not everyone is motivated by the same things. Most of us are still emotionally retarded and desperately seek some evidence that someone somewhere appreciates what we are doing. However, a lot of us are perfectly happy with the anonymity of a large bureaucracy and can reamain happy malingering indefinitely while waiting for our pensions to kick-in.

I recall a quote from WWII General George S. Patton, which distills all relevent management theory in a single sentence. Patton said "Every man needs a pat on the back every now and then; some men need it high, other men need it low." He was a genius.

Unfortunately, those smart, insecure people that have risen to "leadership" positions in your company are just victims of the Peter Principle. This means that they probably got promoted from a job where they really were competent into a job where they suck. They are trapped.

In their hearts, they may suspect that they suck in the new job , but cannot accept the possibility that everyone else might share that opinion - especially those higher up in the food chain. So, they work harder. Hard work always made them successful in the past, before they got into management.

So, they become hapless workaholics. Micromanagers delude themselves into the belief that they must be the best brave to earn the title of Chief. They need to know more than everyone else. Everything that happens must be their idea. They come to assume that everyone on their team is sitting around, waiting to be told what to do next.

For those of us who are mature, competent workers, micromanagers suck all the joy and sense of accomplishment out of working. We become seduced into following the easy path of going along, letting the boss have his way without resistance. We end-up as mere followers-of-orders, eroding our own self-esteem, doing exactly what we are told, assuming no ownership, no sense of responsibility and no loyalty to the job at hand.

Eventually, most Micromanagers will burn themselves out, or - if they are lucky - smarten up before they crash and burn. However that damage they do to their organizations and subordinates echoes for a long time.

Like A Box of Chocolates

One of the wags on our team has characterized the new system as "Gumped." He says that the database is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you are gonna get (when you compose an sql query).

Clearly, the architects of this database were recruited from a madhouse. Virtually none of the database design team speaks English without a pronounced accent. If you talk about business rules, they adopt an expressionless demeaner and firmly insist on telling you how the system process the data with a strong implication that you are wasting their time with your silly questions. Eventually, they give in and research your question. At least half the time they end-up changing something in the code. Hah.

I am reading a lot of copy that sings praises to Oracle for trying to consolidate all the competition by buying them. Smart move, I guess. The pundits must know.

All I know is that the Oracle ERP applications are a rat's nest of 5th normal form database design. Theoretically elegant; yet it practice - unusable. The relationships in this database are a puzzle that no one I know has solved. No one can produce an up-to-date Data model that shows how things actually work together. We actually have to reverse engineer the data to come up with a working data dictionary.

I am convinced that the whole ERP industry is nothing more than a huge lobby. They don't manufacture software, they bribe, then intimidate CIO's to get on board with these expensive systems that don't do half of what the systems they are replacing do. How do they get away with it? These young folks seem smart, but unfortunately they have never seen how efficient and usable the pre-ERP world was.

So what if I sound like an old fart. No one listened to me when I was a young fart either. No one wants to hear that the Emperor is wearing only a smile, and lordy no one wants to be the one to tell him.

Talk About Hellholes

Our project has solidly entered the phase of the SDLC that I call "finger-pointing." This is more-or-less a sophisticated variant of musical chairs. Some poor sucker who failed to protect their nether regions from culpability with wads of CYA documentation is usually attacked at one of the daily status/issues meeting.

Here are some of the phrases that signal the advent of you being selected as the cause of all problems:
"How come this issue was not raised before?"
"When did you get in this morning?
"This is all your fault!"
Your phone rings. Caller ID reads Conference Room 3344 -where they are having a perpetual status meeting. Your boss says, "Got a minute?"

No Worries - No one is bothering me these days. Perhaps I have learned something from my tedious career in IT. My actions and intentions have all been documented and recorded in the master documentation portal. I am able to anticipate every micromanaging inquiry (or accusation) and spend the first working hour of each day documenting my status. It does not matter that progress is glacial as long as you can identify the real culprit (generally the hapless user who did not return your phone call.) My daily memoes are like a porcupine's quills, or a skunk's sphincter - the micromanaging nitpickers move on to more unprotected flesh.

The real suffering is experienced by less mature team members who think that they can actually make a difference by working harder. In their zeal to show how dedicated they are, these poor sukkas stay late, come-in early and offer to give up their weekends to "make it happen."
The good news for all of us is that it is almost over. Most of the senior IT management is resigned to the net disappointment of yet another puzzling failed opus. They have started to plan the victory celebration or perhaps they are distracted by thoughts that maybe their next gig will be successful. Most of them will be moving on to other locations and clients instead of being fired (as they would if there was any justice). It is only the micro managing ankle biters are still working 12 hours a day trying to assess which of the victims of supervisory incompetence is to blame. The client project team is either clueless or cleverly taking the stance that everything is super freaking great. Perception is reality, they say.

Sooner or later some one is going to ask a critical business question and then the sky will fall. Hard. Category five. Hey, I am just thankful that my project is not in New Orleans.

Harvest Lessons

What the heck happened to Summer?

Just a few weeks ago we were pining for Autumn, wondering when the monotonous sweltering, muggy weather would end. Now, in the mornings there is a crisp cool breeze and the distant scent of apples and squash ripening in the fields and orchards. And the echo of a bucket of golf balls being thwacked out at the driving range.

On TV guys in football helmets and shirts are performing the exhibition thay call pre-season. Viewers call it "Where the hell is the remote?" No sane person has the time or inclination to waste watching practice games with no meaning or importance except to the purveyers of automobiles, beer and boner juice.

The tomato garden is lush with healthy greenery and pinkish promise. I pick anything that shows any signs of ripening (in my ongoing competition with the squirrels, who have such a keen taste for the ripe Jet Star tomatoes, that they will climb the vines to get the high-hanging ripe fruit.) I planted extra vines this year, to allow for the inevitable shrinkage. Still, I pick anything that is blushing and let them ripen on the counter. It only takes three days from pink to slicing in the salad, which is why you cannot get this variety in the supermarkets.

The cooler nights are nature's signal to vegetation that Winter is nigh, and so the tomatoes and the marilgolds get very busy with seed production and less busy with stem growth. Tomatoes turn red and the flowers rush to bloom. I keep the Marigolds blooming until frost by deadheading the faded blooms which encourages them to produce more flower heads.

I have been forced to hand-water the garden nearly all Summer. We are as dry as a Jack Benny Martini here. We have had virtually no useful rain for most of the Summer. The muggy weather usually generates thunderstoms, but this year, the storms have been scattered and drenching. Most of the heavy rainwater has run-off to lower ground. We have had precious few gentle soaking rainshowers in the past 3-4 months. One of the weather gals says we are 6 inches below normal. Good news for gardeners, the forecast is for rain every day next week. We need it. Gentle soaking rain, unstrained, like the quality of mercy.

I have been pretty busy lately. Apologies to those of you who count upon this journal to provide a perspective on your working lives. But, my own paid labors have been occupying an inordinate amount of my time. You understand.

In the next entry I shall bring you up to date with the current hellhole project and the unpredictable events that occure, like lightning and thunder, not out of the blue, but out of the gray.

What goes up comes around

While most people were hoping to see another spectacular video clip of disintegrating astronauts, I was glad to see them get back safely. Thanks to our crack news organizations, the possibility of disaster was explored, in depth, live and in color by vitually all the news media except those devoted to the riviting coverage of a missing white girl in Aruba.

In the end it seems like the billions spent for this ten day ride are a success. Strangely enough that is how my current project is being hailed.
What, you ask, the famous fubar project from hell? A success, you say?

Yes, that is what I said. Moreover, we had a wine and cheese party to celebrate it. I went, of course. Pappy told me "Son, if someone offers you free food and drink don't spoil the party by not showing up." This has been the guiding strategy of my entire career.

And there is a hint of a bigger more lavish celebration in the works. You can imagine that I felt like some one who has accidentilly stumbled into The Mad Hatter's tea party. The users were smiling and drinking heavily. No one talked about "The Emperor's New Clothes" nor did I hear any references to Titanic or other disaster metaphors.

It sounded like everyone was happy about the new implementation. No mention of the unix os running out of process agents. Or views that taking two hours of running time. Some of the actual operational users were screaming about how the system was interfering with their productivity. These cretins were not present at the party - perhaps they were still catching up on their work. Whatever. None of us who were there, sucking down the free food and drinks, really wanted those nattering naybobs ruining the positive aura that had been so carefully architected.

I decided that my previous judgements were in error. This truly was the best project implementation ever! It was in a flash of insight that I realized how faulty my definition of success had beem in the past. I had thought that there must be an absolute measure of success.
But the scales dropped from my eyes.
I now saw that success is nothing more than the shared perception of the people with the budget to throw celebration parties. I can live with that.

Airborne

I have to tell you that I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that the Discovery launch went smoothly. Whenever I talk about my project I have been using disaster metaphors .

Titanic was once my favorite because you could talk about management re-arranging deck chairs, while icy ocean poured into the gaping holes in the hull of the ship..

Then it was Challenger - the doomed space launch where the Managers got everyone focused on Launch and not enough people focused on Stay-in-the-air.

So it was good to think that a project did not necessarily have to be doomed. I was beginning to wonder...

Things are going well at the current hellhole - for me at least. By the way, did I mention that this outfit has not been recognized as one of the 100 best places to work in America? Yah, they barely missed getting on the list - probably because of the physical and emotional abuse which the Managers call "Leadership."
The onus is on the venerable development group to put some lipstick on this pig and try to fool the users with blinking message boxes and quixotic error messages. It will probably work, since the users are dolts of the first order. Otherwise they would have yanked the feeding tube on this pigarama years ago. By the way, remember the old Business School saw about teaching a pig to sing? I heard a new one the other day that resonates: "Do not wrestle with a pig. You will get covered in shit; and the pig Likes it."

How to tell if your Project is FUBAR

Many readers write to the HH mailbag asking how to tell when the project you are working on is FUBAR. We at the Hellhole Center for Project Recognition have done some pretty f-ing amazing research. We looked at some notes we had copied a few years ago and came up with this list.

1. The database is either PeopleSoft or Oracle.

2. The green-card DBA's keep looking at you like you are some senile old bastard who doesn't get database structure.

3. Your Blog begins to hint that the project may be headed for a big granite wall called reality.

4. The users agree with everything you say, but you can tell that they are hiding something important.

5. There is a wine and cheese party scheduled for the week after "go Live".

6. The Project leadership hires a new analyst nine (9) work days before "Go Live" to replace the Analyst nwho started 3 weeks after you and then quit, citing "too much chaos." The replacement was supposed to start this morning, but called in with "car trouble."

7 There were two (false) fire alarms pulled in the building today. (No, it was not me)

8. Micro-Management complains that team members do not escalate issues soon enough. When you raise an issue that seems like a management concern, they call for marathon meetings to assess who knew what and when did they know it. You are eventually scolded for not raising the issue last year - even though you only started 2 months ago.

9. You personally could give a fiddlers fart whether the project succeeds or not. You have no ego-involvement in the outcome. (The weekly paychecks have cleared amiably.) The work is interesting even though the project has as much chance at success as a band of nude gay jugglers in Pakistan.

10. Everyone you need to talk to is on vacation, or too busy to talk to you. You find yourself documenting every elevator conversation and phone call, just in case you need to show how busy you have been.

11. You longingly remember how nice the garden looked before you went back to this dumb job.

Get the succa off the ground

OK. Some of you have guessed it . I have found yet another Hellhole to add to my resume. Sometimes I wonder: are they all hellholes? Is there any successful organization that is run by smart leaders implementing intelligent policies? Is there any enterprise anywhere that is not characterized by the military acronym FUBAR*?
I certainly have not met such a place if there is one.

This time, however, it is different for me. In the old days, when I was an employee, I was what they call invested in the success of my organization. The more invested I was, the more unbearable it was to work for an outfit where the ego-centric bloviation from upper management hung in the air like acrid cordite just after a July 4th fireworks finale.
Nowadays, I just shake my head and think about how glad I am to be getting paid for half of what I would be accomplishing if I was not being micromanaged or being constantly harangued about status.
Today, I was told by said MM that he needed to go to a daily status report on status to some status review committee every morning until go live. Was anything new? I had to chuckle (to myself)
"You had a status meeting yesterday at 4pm."
"Yes, So have you got any updates?"
"Yeah, I had a great bowel movement today, and three cups of coffee."
"Haven't you got something I can tell the committee?"
"Yes, Tell them we are doomed."
"Cut the crap, I need some progress!"
"OK" I gave in and told him what I was working on. Finally he left - looking harried and frightened.

How come there are so few workers and so many management types? They outnumber us. It would not be so bad if they would just leave you alone, and take credit for your work, but they are so out of touch that they would schedule all day meetings to determine if anything is slipping through the cracks. They definitely are not planning to take blame for your failure. They are very good at the CYA game. That is why you are not one of them.
Status meetings are a "must attend" priority. No thought is given to the fact that the thing that is slipping is real work. And it isn't a crack, it is a chasm which was created by management keeping people locked-up in meetings instead of letting them get the work done.

I am reminded of what it must have been like to be on the launch team just before the doomed Challenger space shuttle launch. No one wanted to tell the Launch manager about the O-ring flaw.
Everyone was focused on launch. No one on the launch team had the job of keeping it in the air.

HHU Exams

A lot of fans have been writing to the Hellhole mailbox asking to know how they can identify when their own workplace is a hellhole or how they can identify the signs of an impending hellhole. As usual, I have figured all this stuff out and have devised a nifty test to assist my loyal hellhole readers and others who may crave guidance.
The answers are Multiple Choice
Q: How can you tell that you work at a Hellhole?

1) At Lunch, you say to your coworkers, "This is an interesting project." They look at each other knowingly and start to laugh, like you are the most naïve shit who ever showed up at this fucked-up organization.

2) Within a few weeks of starting work, your boss's boss calls you confidentially to offer you your boss's job. He is looking for a micromanager to be more of a hardass with the other team members; you decline, citing your incompetence as a supervisor, but privately you wonder why he just will not get out of the way and let the guys do their jobs.

3) At meetings, you hear Management types talk about people as if they were lawnmowers. Start em up and start cutting the grass. Cripes, How hard can iot be o develop a working business application on the web?

4) None of the smart babes wear make-up, because they know this intimidates men. (Or maybe they are lesbians. Who can tell?)

5) All the green card contractors call you "Sir." Even though you insist that you are lowly pond scum, just like they are.

6) The commute typically robs between 1 and 2 hours of your day (and life) roundtrip. Not to mention the gas. Plus the costs of automotive fuel. :)

3) The deadline for "go-live" is less than 30 days away and management is occupying important conference room space in heavy-duty meetings devising a project plan.

7) Your management hierarchy becomes very visible as they attend every piddling issue meeting but spend most of the time in the hall on their cell phone just outside of the conference room ensuring that you cannot escape. Their message: How can I help you? Why can't you handle it? Faster,

8) The meetings become so intense that there is not time to take a lunch break, so you have to grab a sandwich and eat it during the meeting and go to the bathroom only if you must.

9) You cannot help thinking about the Challenger Disaster where the only goal for the project team was launch. (The successful return of the crew was another team's responsibility. ) You probably thought that everyone knew this was a bad way to manage projects that could be unstable after they "get off the ground".
10) You start having those Titanic dreams again.

11) All of the above.

Ok Turn in your Blue Books Now

Heat Wave

I am beginning to realize why there is so much social unrest in hot climates. The heat and humidity gnaws at your equanimity. After a few days of unremitting 90 degree temperatures during the days and nights of sleep depriving discomfort, the usual insulating layer of patience and understanding is worn away, exposing a raw irritated nub of anger which spews out in all directions. This is why places like Haiti and Iran, Florida and Mexico are dysfunctional - especially in the summer.

I have taken to getting up before 6am and getting all my activities in while the air is still relatively cool. Then like an ant, at mid-day, I withdraw to the coolest corners of the nest to nap or read. I don't write much anymore. In fact if it was not for updates to this blog, my writing output would be nil.

I guess I have given up the fantasy that some day my extraordiary talents would be discovered by some rich editorial syndicate and that I would become the next Andy Rooney or Dave Barry. No, this is not to be. And I am ok with that. Fame is a sharp two-edged sword. I had enough celebrity back in the 90's when I was writing small vignettes for the local newspaper on a regular basis as a "Guest Columnist". People seemed to like my light humorous pieces lampooning the foibles of my fellow citizens. People would stop me in the supermarket to express agreement with a pithy point I had made. They would print almost anything I submitted, virtually un-edited. But when I suggested that I would be more prolific if I was getting Paid, they were decidedly uninterested in such an arrangement. I eventually decided to stop writing for free and went back to work as a systems analyst - which no one would expect you to do and not get charged for your time.

I am less than a week away from my 63rd birthday. ( Please, no presents - I already have pretty much everything I want or need that costs less than $10,000. ) I only mention it because my age has a lot to do with the attenuation of my writing ambitions these days.

My father died when he was age 65. None of his four brothers made it to their 66th year either. So, you can imagine that I have lived most of my life, thinking that men in my family die at around age 65 - except for the ones who got hanged for stealing horses.

Now that I am approaching that age, I am trying hard to revise my fatalistic thinking. Several males of my generation (older cousins) have successfully reached the 70 year mark in relatively good health. ( although full disclosure requires that I mention that cousin Barry suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack at 65 a few years ago.)

All my life, I have had a feeling that I was charmed in some way. You know, I was meant for something big and important. Call it ego or hubris, you are probably right. The point is that I have passed a lot of time (and Gas!) waiting for something to happen. Not making things happen. I always thought that if there was a Creator then he probably had some special purpose for me. Now, after six decades, I have concluded that if there is a Creator then he must like assholes, because he sure made a lot of them.
My goals for the rest of this life is not to be included in that count.

The Commute must be getting to me

As I have mentioned - however briefly - the worst thing about going back to a full-time gig is the commute. I am way beyond my comfort zone, driving 20 miles twice a day, It would be OK if I could count on a half-hour or less in traffic. But, it typically takes 45 to 60 minutes. depending on the density of the traffic for me to make the trek home? . It can be maddening.
So I have started passing the time by thinking about important issues:
What would I do if I was diagnosed with ALS?
What if I won $200 Million in the megabucks lottery.
What ever happened to Gary Larson - the Far side guy?

Tonight as I was dirving home I started wondering what preceded tha big bang. I mean what was it like? And why did it go Bang? I am unencumbered by a rigorous scientific education, so it is very easy for me to dismiss the Big Bang theory as pure unproven speculation. Scienctific explanatoin has been off-the-mark for most of the entirety of history of science, so we need not fret too much if we find a theory far-fetched. The future will prove current scientific prounouncements the same way we denigrate the superstitions and beliefs of primitive cultures.

So, What os on the other side of the end of the unverse? Huh?

Lessons

There was an article in the Globe today, purporting to advise people who were contemplating returning to work after a long layoff. Clearly, it was an article written by a journalist, not someone who actually had the experience.
It gave "helpful" suggestions for people who have been on the beach maybe a bit too long - like "Don't wear flip-flops to work" and "You can't burp any time you feel like it anymore" and "Don't nap during staff meetings."

I learned that lesson the hard way, at one of my jobs. The CIO was annoyed with me dropping off during his impassioned quarterly motivational monologue that he moved my name to the top of the deadwood layoff list. It wasn't really fair. I had come into the office uncharacteristically early that morning to test some software modifications; I had not had any coffee yet, and the CIO was mouthing the same old inanitites. Yes, I dozed off.
A polite CIO would have simply let the thing go, but this guy had an ego bigger than Nebraska.
So, when the layoff came, I surfed-out of there on the first wave.

This time I am smarter. Now I am a contractor, so I don't have to go to staff meetings.
These days, the trick to not get caught dozing at my desk. I am working on that. Honestly.

If I was writing a piece about going back to work after a long layoff it would offer some really helpful tips:

1) Do not assume that the person you are talking to knows more than you do, even though you are new and don't know anything about the organization or the application. Many of the people I have been referred to for answers know next to nothing., but are apparently unaware of that fact. I have spent a lot of time chasing the elusive butterfly of fact. And, I might add, getting paid for every fruitless minute of the quest. No one else seems to mind, and I don't either.

2) Do not eat at your desk. This is tempting, since many of the geeks with whom you work do not like to sit in the cafeteria with other human beings and have a conversation about anything other than the multi- dimensional array problem in module 3445a.

They sneak down to the lunchroom and get high carb food from the express line and take it back to their cubes without speaking to anyone. Or, worse, they bring last night's Kung Pow chicken from home in a rubbermade container and heat it in the microwave. They like it that way. But studies show that their is more bacteria on the average programmer's keyboard than on the average toilet seat. (I do not know who did the study, but it is intuitively believable.) Personally, I find the odor of reheated leftovers to be nauseating.

Assuming that you are not a geek, you must flee from the noisome miasma of re-heated Asian and Mongolian cuisine that drifts over cube city at lunch time. You have two choices: Go to the Mall or seek-out and cultivate a group of interesting people to go to lunch with. At the cafeteria, do not sit with anyone who is alone at a big table. Research studies show that people who are eating alone have severe personality disorders, which is why no one sits with them. Don't get sucked in by their apparent friendly and inviting demeanor. They are a sink hole of human sadness. Better to go pretend to go back to your cube (but then take your lunch to your car and eat it in the way to the Mall.)
On this topic, you should also not ask the cross-eyed maintenance guy who has only one tooth, "How's it going?" Or he may deftly block your escape with his push broom and wheeled barrel, while telling you about his recent kidney transplant operation. This actually happened to me one morning. Now I use a different route to get to the coffee area.

3. You should prepare for drive time traffic. Commuting is the bane of an otherwise tolerable job. That painful thirty or forty minutes spent in sluggish, if not stopped, traffic sows the seed of frustration and despair in even the most stalwart among us. Now, I am not a good commuter. I hate traffic, waiting and everything associated with sitting in my car trying to be somewhere at the ungodly hour of 9am. Getting home before 6:30 pm is even worse.
My advise here is to find something to entertain yourself while passing the time. Books on CD or tape, favorite tunes, memorize epic poems, checking yourself for ticks, that sort of thing. Some people knit, or learn to play the harmonica, or practice asking the boss for a raise. (These days, the stigma of apparently talking to yourself in the car has been ameliorated by the existence of mobile phones.)
The other thing that helps me during the heavy traffic nightmare is thinking about the things I can buy - now that I have an income again.

Week 3

My, how the time passes. I know you are wondering - "How is it, back in the grind [of working full time]?" At least that seems to be the main question posed in the thousands of messages posted in the old Hellhole Mailbox. In the interests of full disclosure, the second most pressing question is "Do you want to buy drugs online without a prescription?" Funny, you would think the courts might chase after those internet drug peddlers insteads of trying to refuse dubies to severely sick people who only want a few tokes to releive their chronic pain.
But I digress.
The job is going well, thanks for your interest. So far, there is no evidence of hell-holish conditions: ie, when managers are clueless, micromanaging nitpickers. My role and all aspects of the job are loosly overseen by a blurry team of management specialists - all of whom are way too busy to spend a lot of time worrying about where I am and what I am doing every minute. I got some pretty clear directions and have a reasonable amount of time to deliver results. Can't ask for a better situation and still call it going to work.
The nagging problem (other than the rectal itch thing) is the commute. The location of my office is in a bad place to get to during rush hour. I have been experimenting with staggered hours. So far the schedule I like best is going in arounf 9:30 and coming home around four.
Unfortunately, this is not considered a full time schedule by my peer group. Glad I don't work for them!

The Tomatoes are In

This is the weekend when many Americans do something to remember their lost love ones. A visit to the cemetery, looking through a scrapbook or just sitting on the newly completed screen porch drinking cold Sierra Nevada's thinking about the dearly departed.

Actually, this is my first one (holds up an empty.) Excuse me a second. I'll be right back.
(time passes. He returns with a fresh frosty, and continues typing)
Most of the day was spent in the garden. It was a perfect day. 70 degrees, mostly sunny skies, no wind. I planted two Rhododendron bushes and two dozen tomato plants. And, assorted marigolds.

According to the old Farmers Almanac this is the first planting day of the season for vegetables and flowers that are not "hardy." People who do not garden seem to have a warped sense of how May weather is supposed to be. They complain, "Where is Spring?"

Just because April is a cruel temptress with those lovely warm days, a lot of people are seduced into thinking that Spring will come early this year. Then comes May - the Evil bitch goddess of frigid rains and unending dankness. We, who plant tomatoes, know these harridans well. We know that killer frost can come anytime in May. So, we wait until Memorial day to plant our tomatoes, and we hope to start picking the Early Girls around the third week in July. Then for a glorious month or so, we have fresh homegrown tomatoes for our salads, sauces, salsa, sliced, or just to eat out of your hand, like an apple.

This year, I planted an extra 6 plants. Last year the rodent population squirrels, rabbit and chipmunks was out of control. They nibbled at everything in the garden. More than once I saw squirrels making off with tennis ball sized tomatoes. This year, I will not have the time to guard my little patch with the trusty BB gun, so I just planted more, hoping to offset the losses from varmints. I do not invest all this labor and effort to save money. I is all done in anticipation of the incomparable flavor of home grown tomatoes over store bought.

My mother used to call me "Farmer Brown." I miss her sarcasm and sense of humor. Here's to you, Mom, wherever you are. (Guzzles down the last of the Sierra, then goes inside for a nap.)

Week One

OK. I made it through the first week of full-time employment without any major issues. Ok, maybe a few, but they are mainly associated with the commuting distance - 20 miles - and , of course the chief complaint is how much this work thing eats into my free time.

Here it is Saturday and I am forced - like so many other working stiffs - to cram all my chores into the Saturday-Sunday routine. I have been accustomed to leisurely doing my dump run on weekday mornings when there is no line, then picking stuff up at the laundry whenever I felt like it. Maybe a stop at the beer store, supermarket and hardware store. All these tasks were done on off-hours. Now, I am not only stuck in the daily commuting grind, but also stuck in the weekend crush to get the chores done. At least I do not have young kids to take to soccer games...

The bright gem in all this is the work itself. Some of you may find enjoyment in doing crossword puzzles or refurbishing old houses,. I suck at these types of activities. But give me a complex data model to figure out, and I am in hog heaven. All week I have been studying Oracle 11 e-Business data models. Next week I will be writing database queries. This is better than being Pope. OK I exaggerate. But honestly, I am happy with the situation. I like the people I am working with, The boss is not a micromanager - in fact, he is very busy and commutes from Arizona or someplace like that. He's only going to be around four days a week and too busy to be delving into my underwear. They actually told me that they wanted experienced people on the project because there is no time to train them how to do things or even to check up on them. :-) . Even the young bright designer boys are glad to have someone there who is willing to go out and find out what the business users are thinking.

Retirement was great, but there is a depressing reality looks back at you from every mirror. You are getting old, it says. I think the reason I feel happy, despite having given-up much of my freedom, is that it makes me feel younger. And now, I can afford Single Malt Scotch. Life is good. And I can do anything for four months.

Doing It For Money

The headline for the feature story in the Business section of the paper today reads "Mass Unemployment Lowest in three Years." There is an accompanying graphic to prove it. I wonder just how they are counting the "unemployed". Once you fall off the unemployment benefit payroll, you are no longer counted in the stats since no one really knows what has become of you. Can't tell if you died or moved away, stopped looking, started your own unsuccessful consulting business, took a part time job, or just started collecting retirement benefits. None of the foregoing activities would include you in the unemployed number. I think they are really reporting that less people are collecting unemployment benefits these days because companies have started hiring back to fill slots that were shed over the past several years.

I can agree that there has been a definite increase in the number of posted jobs with the words "Business" +"Analyst" in the title.

That reminds me, A number of you have asked for more details about the new job. Now, I have started more than a dozen new jobs in my career. Not one of them proved to be the job I expected based upon the interview and discussions that occurred pre-day one. It's not that the hiring parties lied purposefully. No, the fact is, stuff happens that changes everything. I know this. I expect to be surprised. (But, you are saying, How the bleep can you expect to be surprised? Isn't that an Oxymoron?)

Well, let me tell you what I know: I will be working full-time on a four-month contract job as a business systems analyst for a big company that is implementing a new CRM system for a local HMO.
Note that I do not use names in this medium for reasons that are pretty easy to figure out - at least not until they prove themselves to be a hellhole.)
My job is to act as liaison between business users and the technical team, to ensure that the users get the info they want/need out of the new system. Same stuff I have been doing most of my career.
People have said, Hey I thought you're retired. So was George Foreman.

The details of the job will be revealed in due time, as I start the journey at 9am on Monday morning. I'm sure there will be moments of entertainment, pathos, stress and uncertainty - and that's just the commute. The job itself should be an easy thing. And even if it's a Hellhole, it is only for four months. You can put up with anything for 4 months.

The End Is Near

The builder just dropped by. He apologized for not returning my numerous voice messages and threatening e-mails, but he has been away on vacation and then jammed with work. He promises him that the screens will be up by Memorial Day.

Breaking News

Ok, this may sound crazy - and, you cannot tell anyone about it: I have a new job.

You are probably thinking: " Huh"?

That is my sentiment exactly. I was minding my own business, planning a less-than-heavy schedule of working 10-15hrs at the Part-time job on Mon and Fri mornings - balanced by aimless puttering around the premises during the rest of the week, Lawn and gardening, shopping for dinner, whipping -up delicious feasts, grilling meat on the Bar-B, swilling frosty brewskies with my pals, spending inordinate amounts of time hanging around the periodical room at the library, leisurely reading the WSJ down at Starbucks, taking long walks on the beach, painting the front hall, pruning the crabapple trees in front, fishing for stripped bass - that sort of stuff.
Maybe afternoon naps on the new screen porch (which has yet to be graced by any [bleeping] screens; my [bleeping] builder seems to have "runaway" probably to get away from the stress of actually finishing a project!)

He will come back eventually. I know it. (I still owe him a lot of money. )

Yes, it was indeed shaping-up to be another pleasant year of marginal employment - blogging about the hellaceous things that I recall from my working life and shooting at trespassing squirrels with the BB gun, to keep them away from my tomato garden. To me, this seemed like a full schedule of activity.

Now all that is ruined by this new job thing. Now, my thoughts are dominated by angst and trepidation. I need to venture into the dark, unmapped recesses of my closet to see if any of my good shirts still fit me...and I will probably need to be at the office at an ungodly hour and there will be a commute.

Voices rage in my head and images of past clueless management and back-biting co-workers play like a B movie in my dreams.

Against this tide of disappointment and fear of the future is a tiny, but strong current of Hope. My wife is thrilled that I am "back in the game", earning money to help fund her opulant Hiltonesque lifestyle.

And a small part of me admits to being glad to get back to the world of work and ideas. The prospect of making good money appeals to the streak of greed that runs thick in my soul.

Besides, there are servants to pay, horses to stable, pools that need to be maintained. In a word, we have Standards that must be kept. Ok, this part is sort of a lie, but it could happen. As Bloody Mary sings (in South Pacific) "If you no have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?" That's why I keep buying lottery tickets.

Mother's Day as an Orphan

Weather forecasts are gloomy for the next few days, ruining what should be a great spring planting weekend. And, of course, Mother's Day. I have seeds sprouting under lights in the basement - my rite of spring. The supreme annual expression of hope and expectation. Cell packs of Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, marigolds, Mom's favorite morning glories, cucumbers and lettuce. 

 As the season matures, the inevitable occurs. Too much rain, not enough rain, too many varmints and bugs chomping on my garden. Thus are the hopes for a bountiful harvest and a luxuriant flower garden pared-down to hopes of a few pounds of ripe tomatoes and a handful of blooms for cutting. It always makes me wonder what people did for salad before refrigeration and rapid transportation. Here in the northeast, lettuce is gone to seed by the time cucumbers and tomatoes are ripening. 

 Speaking of things ripening, the expiration date of my shelf life as a retail employee is rapidly approaching. I have informed my wife that the store employee discount only lasts as long as the tenure of the employee, and therefore one should hurry if one has things on her list that must be acquired. Let me be clear: the store experience has been great. It happened at a time when I needed some structure in my life. The part-time job has given me that structure, and the excitement of helping to open-up a new store was both unique and satisfying. Meeting the physical challenge of manual labor has been the most satisfying thing I have done at work in a long time. 

 But there are two aspects of this level of work that are beginning to bother me. First is the problem of supervision. Any one who has ever been my manager can tell you that I do not respond well to detailed instruction. As I have often said, if you need to tell me how to do my job then maybe you should get someone else. My best most productive mode is in environments where no one knows what to do. The only direction I want from management is to identify the problem and the ultimate goal. To me the satisfaction of working is to figure-out how to solve the problem, to define and implement the solution. I want management to give me the resources and authority to get it done. This level of autonomy does not exist in retail. Retail is run like the military. Brass at the top, scum sucking privates at the bottom of a multi-level command and control organizational structure. There is no level of decision-making expected of the dolts at the lowest levels. There is a book to define conduct, rules, and ways of doing things. The most elementary activity or process is detailed and prescribed. 

 For someone whose career has basically been process improvement, it is difficult to carry-out orders to do labor-intensive things routinely, mindlessly and often inefficiently. Worse, sometimes a person wants to do things differently just for kicks. This sort of radicalism is discouraged. Secondly, there is another spookier aspect of this environment. Relentless cheer-leading. Now, I have spent six decades upon this earth. Most of the time life has been good, but there are times when things go wrong. Many times. Any residual degree of cynicism or pessimism has been earned honestly and painfully. Further, my sense of humor seems to feed upon anger and rage at this screwed-up world. Thus, my characteristic expressions of humorously decidedly negative observations (eg, the other morning, the driver took 15 minutes just trying to back the semi trailer square into the loading dock. My query, "Where the heck did he get his truck driver's license - Sears?" was met with steely looks and taut jaws of the supervisory crew leaders who will not tolerate anything but positivity. There is a palpable effort to control the thoughts of employees by constant (mindless) repetition of uplifting, seemingly harmless tenets of being flexible, working quickly, and smiling a lot. If your not having fun, something must be wrong with you. Well, perhaps something is wrong with me. I am not having fun. Fun is drinking beer and fishing. Playing poker. Watching a great game or movie. Reading a great book. Dancing naked in the moonlight on the front lawn. Writing crap in your blog. You know, that kind of stuff. Fun is not being micromanaged by emptyheaded supervisors who were hired mainly because they like to bust other people's chops. Besides that, I know something else that you don't about my future in the professional workforce. Hint: it is not working at a prison in Baghdad. Stay Tuned. And if you are lucky enough to have a living mother, be nice to her tomorrow.

Job Description

Last night on PBS I was watching highlights of the Crossroads Guitar Festival that was held last summer in Dallas (or maybe it was Austin - whatever.).

Eric Clapton was the celebrity host. It was a fund-raiser. He managed to get a huge array of talent to appear over the three day concert. B.B King, Albert King, ZZ-Top, Joe Walsh, James Taylor and a bunch of others - all who knew how to play dat thing. It was very entertaining and I stayed up until past midnight to watch all of it.

But, the most memorable moment for me was just before his appearance, they had a short interview with Carlos Santana. He was reflecting on what his work meant to him. He described playing the guitar as "the giving and receiving of spiritual orgasm."

I thought that sounded like the best damned job description in the world. It takes "customer service" to a new dimension. It implies a level of worker satisfaction unparalleled in any industry I have worked in.

Just before I dozed-off on the couch, for just a nanosecond, I held a shimmering thought: Maybe I should take guitar lessons.
Then, I fell into a deep sleep and dreamed about corrugated cardboard.

Roots

About 20 years ago, the country-western singer, Johnny Paycheck, had a hit song titled, "Take This Job and Shove It." David Allen Coe wrote the lyrics. His genius was to capture and articulate the dominant sentiment of most of the US workforce in a short catchy phrase.

This song became the anthem of disaffected workers everywhere regardless of the color of their collars or skin. Who among us has not been driving home from the local watering hole in our beat up Chevy pick-ups, with a six-pack on the seat and an open can in our lap, with the local Country station turned-up real loud and hearing this song on the radio, who among us has not joined loudly in the refrain?

Ostensibly, the chief reason for the passionate expression of desire to ram the figurative 'job' up management's collective rectum was the fact that the singer's woman had walked out on him, thus taking with her "… all the reasons I was working for." In other words, the main reason a man or woman keeps going in to work at a lousy job is because they need the money to support a sex partner. Now that he is alone (and there is no tax on masturbating in the shower), who needs money - ergo: who needs a job? Deep philosophical existential thinking expressed in simple terms.

Now, the true, core reason for the mantra is found in this verse:

"...Well, that foreman, he's a regular dog,

The line boss is a fool.

Got a brand new flat-top haircut;

Lord, he thinks he's cool.

One of these days, I'm gonna blow my top,

And sucker, he's gonna pay

Lord, I can't wait to see their faces,

When I get the nerve to say:
Take this job and shove it,

I ain't workin' here no more.

My woman done left,

An' took all the reasons I was workin' for.

You better not to try to stand in my way,

As I'm a walkin' out the door.

Take this job and shove it,

I ain't workin' here no more. "

Note that the complaint is not about the work itself, the workplace or the commute. The problem (once again) is clueless management - bad supervisors and directors who infest the factories, fields, retail stores and offices of this great land, making the workers (and by extension - their women) miserable.
So you see that I have not invented the concept of Hellhole; I am merely the lens through which the reader focuses upon the root of all evil.

Thinking Inside the (Empty) Box

Now, I understand that the decision to take a job at a retail store may be met with horror and disbelief by well-meaning friends who suspect that we have 'fallen upon hard times'. Let me assure you that this is not the case. My wife is quite secure in her well-paid position, and I am receiving monthly checks from Unka Sam (to pay me back for 45 years of grinding employment). Occasionally, I work on independent consulting or writing jobs which pay pretty well on the infrequent occasions when they come-up. Ends are being met. Bar bills are getting covered. There is no fiscal crisis.

More than a paycheck, what I was looking for is structure: A regular schedule that does not involve nights or weekends. In addition, as you all know, I have a lifelong dream of working at one of the "100 Best Places to Work in America." When I saw the ad in the paper for a new store for one of the companies on the list, within ten minutes traveling distance from home, I applied.

In her book "Nickel and Dimed" the author, who took a year off to work at various minimum wage jobs (eg, Associate at Wal-mart, Waitress at a Restaurant, Hotel Maid), noted that despite the fact that she had several academic degrees, none of those curricula prepared her in any way for the "unskilled" work she was doing. She discovered that she found the "menial" jobs difficult to master. She asserted that there is no such thing as "unskilled labor." Each task involved learning a specific process and sometimes the demands of a job were complex.

When I think back to my "Professional" career, I recall that many of the people I worked with (especially business users- were talented, but not particularly skilled. In fact, I now realize that managers are truly the unskilled labor force. Managers and used-car salesmen are the same type of people at different points on a continuum of Responsibility. I see management as a habit of mind, rather than a skill to be learned or taught. Leadership is an even more abstract personality trait that cannot be taught to others, any more than you can train someone to have a sense of humor.

I must confess that my work experience in the store, which have been physically gruelling, have given me a renewed sense of appreciation for some of those easy, high paying Hellhole jobs that I have been disparaging since I started this blog. (Remember, the definition of Hellhole is determined less by the nature of the work and the environment as by the Clue Quotient of management. As an overweight 62 year old, working on the receiving dock for a busy retailer is challenging, There is heavy lifting. Each man-jack has to pull his or her weight, which for me is considerable. There is a lot of corrugated cardboard packaging to be man-handled. Boxcutters are a standard tool. In the beginning, after my 5 hour shifts (which begin at 6am), I would come home, shower and then nap for several hours to recover. But now that I am in better condition, I am delighted to be out at 11am, free to go fishing or drink beer or both.

Strangely, I actually haven't minded getting up at the crack of dawn, working my ass off for what my old peers would call "short money", but learning things about merchandising and distribution that are not taught in any university. But, I admit that I am beginning to feel less enthusiastic about the job. The bloom is off the rose, as Pappy used to say.

During the first few weeks - before the store opened - the best and brightest mentors in the company have been on site. These folks were knowledgable, personable and confident. They were continually positive, encouraging and interesting. Now that the store is open, the B&B went back to their normal duties. Suddenly, the local management is pretty much on their own. They are a bit scared; and scared management tends to become micromanaging nitpickers. Needless to say, this is not an attractive leadership characteristic, in my opinion.

I've never been very good at following orders, I am reminded by those who know me. Micromanagers make me want to run for the hills. We are not talking Hellhole, yet. But the seeds are there.

I have lost 5 pounds, and I am quite pleased about that. The enforced exercise is great for my sense of well-being and other vital signs. But lately, I find myself day dreaming of a nice cubicle in a well-lit office, normal hours, no heavy lifting and the company cafeteria, and lunch.

I must go now and check my Careerbuilder job search.

Hey, a 78 year old guy who probably doesn't even speak English just got a job as CEO of the Catholic Church.
I guess it is news for the billion or so practicing Catholics, but why do the news guys think the rest of us give a crap? We don't.

Re-invention

Recently, I have been seriously contemplating the idea of getting a part-time job. Faithful readers will recall that the corporate world has deemed that my experience and knowledge are of zero value. Budget-conscious managers have determined that the ideal employee is thin and has 3-5 years of experience. This pretty much leaves fat old white guys like me out in the cold.

I guess the purveyers of current hiring philosophies have not read the same articles I have been reading lately - which predict a rash of business failures mainly because of a lack of wisdom in the workforce. The traditional mentor level in business organizations is disappearing. Older, experienced workers have been deliberately downsized, outsourced and put out to pasture. The goal of this exodus has been cost containment, but the business press is loaded with stories about companies that unexpectedly found themselves lacking the expertise that had previously been taken for granted. Having promoted the worst and most dishonest people, corporate boards are now wringing their hands because they discover that the current crop of leaders are corrupt, short-sighted and self-serving. The net cost of failure is many times greater than the savings enjoyed by employing younger cheaper workers.

I am not going to hang around waiting for Corporate America to come to its senses. I am moving forward. I have signed up for a job working at a local retail store which is opening soon.

I earned my retail nameplate back in the last big recession when (now defunct) Highland Superstores successfully wooed me away from unemployment, following the layoff from Prime Computer. As the new guy in the Highland white goods (appliances: stoves, washers, refrigerators were mostly painted with white enamel in those days) department, I was soon known around the store as "The new guy over in the white goods department."

My silver locks and inate understanding of the need for white goods in our society plus a willingness (at the manager's insistence) to negotiate price with the sagacious customers quickly resulted in a successful record of sales. The only downside, of course, was the fact that most of the discounts came from my commission. Thus, after several months it seemed that I was virtually working for minimum wage, which was $5.20 in 1990. I lived in constant fear that customers would return their purchase, thus charging back the pittance that I had earned in commission.
Whenever I look back and complain about that experience, my wide remembers the plus side: Standing for those 12 hour shifts, with minimal time allotted for breaks and lunch, caused me to lose weight. 20 pounds in four months.

My autobiographical account of that time in my life might even be available on bookstores, where it not for my unfortunate condition. You see I was born with MPP syndrome ( Marked Propensity for Procrastination). The draft has a working title, "The Retail Employee Diet - How I Lost 20 pounds in just 4 Months!"