Kool-Aid, Office Space & Continuously Improving
“You see Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care…It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now…Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”
Sometimes I feel as if I am playing the part of Peter Gibbons in the movie, Office Space and Initech is actually the company I am currently employed at. While I don’t have eight bosses, I do have four, three of whom I directly report too and one who is the “Bill Lumbergh” of our company worried more about their god damned “TPS reports” (read statistics) then they are about their employees. There are many similarities between the movie and my job, I am sure other individuals can lay claim to these types of experiences.
Another favorite directly from Office Space the use of “consultants” or a third party that comes in to observe, note and report on what they see. “You see, what we’re trying to do is get a feeling for how people spend their time at work so if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?”
The newest flavor of Kool-Aid is called “continuous improvement” and all management types must sit through an 8-hour class. This is but one of many I have had to participate in.
The best one about 5 years ago was a 4 week course at a resort in the dead of winter in Chicago. That just happened to be the time I was scheduled to go. Lucky me. Supervisors from all stations and departments flew in for the week and flew home for the weekend. They put us up in rooms at the resort and we sat through 8 hours of what was termed as “hug a tree.” It was supposed to be some sort of team building experience or 4 weeks away from work, paid!
So this “continuous improvement” team wanted to see just how much paperwork, maybe that should read unnecessary paperwork we did during our shift. Now I must admit compared to when I first started, this process has been quite streamlined. But with that said, there is still so much redundancy because some manager is too lazy to pull it up for himself off the company intranet. Then again, that is why there are peons like me, to do their work.
“Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door – that way Lumbergh can’t see me, heh – after that I sorta space out for an hour…Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.”
As for total work, I have streamlined the actual process of work down to less than 1 hour. I even went so far a few years back to ask for more work on midnights. Why, I don’t know, but I did. They (managers) said they would oblige me, but the increase in work never materialized. Now much of the “extra” work consists of more redundancy for reasons that are beyond my comprehension. There is a spreadsheet for this manager and e-mails for that manager, gotta fax this report to someone else and another e-mail of an overview of the operation to all these people. *shakes head* It’s just plain crazy! Much of the shift consists of what Peter termed, “spacing out.”
I don’t suspect I will take anything out of this Kool-Aid meeting next week or will I “continuously improve.” Why? Because as quoted in the beginning, “it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.”
