Putting The "Con" in Conference Call

I "rushed" into work this morning because, like a lot of days, I had a conference call. The factors of timeliness and building-presence don't affect me emotionally. If I could do my job from home, I wouldn't; I don't want any of these people to know where I live, not to mention that I'd be waist-up naked and likely wine-drunk most of the work day. My focus wanes from moment to moment after the badge scan, even more-so when I know I don't have to be back here for 16 hours.

My "team" is based in California. Perfect. My original boss in this organization is about 12 feet away. The manager I had following her is about a quarter-mile down the road in another building. My current manager is in Calafournee. My next manager will be a naked mole-rat/human hybrid who lives near the center of Sugarloaf Mountain in South America. It helps save $$$ in facilities when the middle-managers are middle-crust dwellers with daylight problems. No cubes, no offices, no badges.

Thanks to technology, I am brought together (interlocking fingers, head tilt, slight smile) with my teammates in California. This conference call is the work-a-day equivalent of a car-wash hangar: Follow the instructions and you can do it yourself! No, now, don't try and throw a curveball, just get it done with and look back at it later to see how many spots you missed. Oh crap, and you've scratched living hell outch-yer protective coat. Wow... was this necessary?

It's the ever-necessary Preview Of The Year's Goals Call. It is vital to have a call of this nature so that we can each look back and say "It was horsesh*t at the beginning, too." As we cover these goals and platitudes to be worked towards, it was made clear to me that the "Scoring" system that a lot of teams are on is based on the work I produce.
And all this time I thought I was powerless.

The work I produce measures workload, efficiency, and trends of each. I pull, format, and produce these reports, or "metrics" if you wanna be corporate about it, for Four teams. I fell into this job as a back-up to the previous guy. The database he built was a house of cards, and one day someone walked by too quickly and it came a-tumbling down. Too bad, because it automated the work I have to do now, with keyboards and mouse-clicks, teeth grinding so hard they barely let any Jameson pass. The work is entered from a raw format into a... hey, wake-up... into a spreadsheet that I have created with formu... hey... are you snoring? Forget this part.

So now here I am. Rock you like a hurricane. My work will affect the scores (imagine grades, but with a mortgage payment attached) attained by many a co-worker. The technician's scores will roll up to the scores hanged by the names of their managers. These are the same managers who, when asked for a list of people they manage, sent me a 3MB org. chart so that my mailbox would be clogged for a week while I found that they manage 2 of 743 people in their regional office. And I get to decide how it all goes!

I have to go now. I am going to send a note to managers to alert them that the scores their salaries and therefore their self-worth are fed from the system that they never use, by people they have minimal communication with, by a guy who is unaffected by how well... or how pathetic... it appears their team is doing. And these folks haven't clued in yet that I can, if necessary, and with fully ethical practices, make it appear that of their 5 direct reports, only 2 of them even work for the company, and that 3 paychecks are all going to an offshore account in the Sugarloaf Savings & Loan Bank for a Mrs. Chandira Rolemat. I found the Golden Ticket, Gobstoppers. Willy Wonka's power is no match for somebody willing to float a Baby Ruth down the chocolate river.

Gotta roll, phone's ringing. Oh look, it's a manager! Unless the first two words uttered are "FREE LUNCH," I see someone with a long Q2 ahead of them.

===========

I will be headlining the Wednesday Show at Pegasus Pizza in Kirkland, 9:30pm, as well as the entire weekend at Laughs in Bellevue. Shows Friday and Saturday night, 9pm, and one Brunch Showcase Sunday morning, 10-10:30am. Enjoy a blintz!

===========
Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad