Still Undecided?

In the final week of the 2008 election season, politicians are stumping on the trail and granting interviews to media outlets aggressively courting the vote of the undecided voter. But, with only seven days to go before we decide who our president will be for the next four years, who are these undecided voters? I am not the most decisive person in the world, but I figured out a long time ago who I am voting for. I watched a lot of debates, read a lot of articles, listened to analysis from a variety of sources, thought through voting records, and came to a conclusion. I know that not everyone has either the time or inclination to dedicate to the political process, and I don’t claim to be a policy wonk, so there are subtleties to issues on which I don’t have a firm grasp, but I still have enough information to make a decision between the options. Some would say that there are no real differences between the major candidates, but I beg to differ! There are definite, crucial, and substantive differences, and unless your sole voting issue is a topic on which the candidates happen to actually agree, then I don’t understand what you’re trying to sort out. And even if you don’t like either major party candidate, it would seem that you have already decided to either not vote at all or to vote for/write in a third party option. I get that. What scares me is that there will be people on November 4th, whose vote counts just as much as mine, who are going to walk into the voting booth with no clue and will base their decision on … who knows? So, here is a question for anyone who reads my blog and is still undecided: I honestly want to know, what will help you decide at this stage of the game? And, do you think you could walk into the voting booth on November 4th and make a last-minute, possibly visceral decision?

The Office

Until just recently, I worked in a sitcom-like office situation. Of course, the premise of such a situation comedy is that the incompetent will succeed and be promoted to the highest levels and the doers are those at the bottom shouldering the work that upper management happily delegates to. The peons are smarter and see right through the nonsense and the bosses are happily clueless and self-important. Hilarity ensues. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as funny when it’s real, but my co-workers and I still were able to find some humor in it (laughing ironically). Some examples (this is only a small sampling):

• “We deliver … products.” —One of my co-workers “vandalized” the mission-value statement by taping over sections of the mission that were not true. For one of the statements, after deleting anything about reliability, quality, and getting accurate results, he was left with “We deliver products.” We all laughed heartily, but didn’t think the CEO would find it as amusing.

• During a meeting, my boss (and I’m talking the owner of the company) once asked me if the entire line of hair on the top of the eyelid was called an eyelash. In disbelief, I had to tell her it wasn’t one eyelash, but many eyelashes. Please note that the company I worked for caters to an educational market!

• “Too detail-oriented”—I’ve had many reviews in my day, but when the best they can come up with is that I tried too hard to make everything correct and I have to realize that we can’t be perfect, I knew I was in trouble. The whole essence of my job was to be detail-oriented, so that made it especially comedic. All I could do was essentially promise that I would do my best not to do my best.

• The CEO never returned his e-mails. He would barely read them. Especially when they were important and absolutely required an answer. Or when I would specifically ask for an answer, the response would invariably be a vague non sequitur. However, he certainly was on the ball for the real major stuff, like when he put out an all-points bulletin to the entire company upon misplacing his university coffee mug.

• My boss (the owner again) was recruiting for a highly skilled job and sent a list of qualifications to a potential candidate. The candidate, who the company already knew had not had much of the experience required for the job, honestly acknowledged in an e-mail that she was really not qualified to take it on. My boss wrote her back and said, “Yes, you are!” Moral of the story: If you’re not competent, don’t worry; you’ll fit right in here!

• The highly paid marketing firm to which we outsourced marketing collateral was unpleasant to work with and didn’t get the job done well, but that was okay with our company. Apparently, according to my boss, they “really like to work for us,” so that’s why they were still employed. I never knew that the philosophy a company should adopt for retention of contractors was whether or not they liked to work with the hiring company. Well, I guess competence was never really the issue.

• After hearing that our jobs are not rocket science (from the owner) and even that they “suck” (courtesy of the CEO), they’re surprised when people want to leave. Fascinating.

• One day the janitors left a bag of liquid soap on the counter (the plastic bag of soap you use in industrial soap dispensers). My boss, who never uses the restroom in our area, rushed into my co-workers office, worried, and asked if anybody in the office was hurt. My co-worker, puzzled, said no. My boss then asked why there was an IV in the bathroom. I guess we’re so dedicated to the job that we don’t even want to leave work to get to the hospital when we can administer our own IVs in the office restroom!

• My boss owns the company, so the CEO reports to her. But, she has also been acting VP of my department for over a year, so she reports to the CEO. This mixed-up twist of a reporting structure makes for some interesting results. It usually means that when my boss doesn’t want to deal with something, she suddenly says the CEO is in charge, but if she wants to interject in a decision, she becomes his boss.
  

I’m fairly certain that I lost brain cells, high work standards, creativity, and motivation on that job. I did gain friends from the pool of fellow misery-stricken worker bees trying to survive the daily grind.

So, here’s to freedom (I’ll drink to that)! I finally quit to pursue a life of sanity and a healthier job, hopefully one too normal to be the very stuff of sitcoms.

Valorio

I saw this painting, Valorio by James Stovall Morris, at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. Notice the women at the wake all in white gathered silently near the body while the men, dressed in head-to-toe black, are exclusively outside in the dark drinking and talking. Interesting image.

Christmas in Santa Fe

Moon-soaked landscapes and pueblo-style buildings, snow dancing in the air and then drifting down into perfect white piles, farolito-lined streets on Christmas Eve--some snapshots of a holiday in Santa Fe. More details to come. In the meantime, some literal snapshots:

A walk in the town before nightfall

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Santa Fe at sunset

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Snowy Christmas tree

outside the Hacienda Nicholas

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Icicles

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View from a window at La Casa Sena

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Moonlight and snow on Canyon Road

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View from the Pink Adobe

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Time Off for Good Behavior

Fourteen days off work in a row--can't wait to see how much good freedom will do me! I can already feel the stress melting away...

Tea Cozy

As a bona fide coffee addict who relies on the caffeine content in each cup for a morning or afternoon boost, I haven't often considered the rejuvenating properties of tea. I occasionally drink it when I feel a cold coming on and in the past have enjoyed a cup of Korean brown rice green tea, which has such body it's like drinking a meal. But, a new tea vista opened up to me last week when a co-worker brought in a chrysanthemum blossom tea called "Let It Snow" from teaposy.com. The first few cups had a distinctive jasmine scent; the mild white tea was flavorful but not overly sweet. Sipping it imparted a sense of well-being. An interesting fact that emerged in conversation during our social tea time at work, was how the body metabolizes the caffeine in tea differently than that of coffee: coffee caffeine is absorbed by the nerves and works quickly to awaken the senses but wares off quickly also; tea caffeine is absorbed by the muscles and gives a slower, but more sustained lift.

Apparently, a person can get "tea drunk"--a mellow feeling that is almost euphoric. You can get more chatty, more sociable, similar to being buzzed by an alcoholic beverage. I have never heard of this phenomenon before, but it seems to be a pretty well-known fact. Anyone familiar with this term or experience?

Peer Pressure

You would think that peer pressure would end in high school. Or in college at the latest. I didn't even succumb to much peer pressure when I was in school, except for the pressure inflicted upon nerds like myself by other nerds to compare SAT scores and above 4.0-average GPAs (no smoking behind the gym during class for us!).

So now peer pressure is coming from an unlikely source: work. And over an unlikely issue: holiday decorations. It's supposed to be "strictly voluntary," but I am feeling the pressure to be festive or else risk being thought of as a scrooge. I enjoy seeing Christmas lights and decorations, but not necessarily the act of decorating. There is an inter-building competition to see which group comes up with the best decorations theme, and the pressure is mounting. I can see that public opinion will turn on me, and perhaps the only other person who isn't exuberant about the whole competition, if we don't pony up and spend some cash on fake snowflakes and Christmas lights. Am I wrong to not be that into it? I guess it's to foster team-building and co-worker relationships, but I have deadlines. Can't I "just say 'No' "?