Sequestions.

[Flack]

(Continued from previous message)

So, anyway, the two teams got all 65 machines delivered on time. John and I configured 60 of them. Every single one went out to the customers perfectly; we got one (1) machine returned because the customer screwed something up.

Milo and the other guy, in the same period of time, configured 5 machines, and every single one of them came back with something wrong with them when they were sent to the customers.

So, just because you have non-government employees doing a job does not mean the job is going to be done competently, since Milo and the other guy were also contractor employees.

This is not a question. Fail.

CLS

[Flack]

I can't tell if that worked or not. It's still showing the quotes on my side. Can you try removing your quotes from my posts and then I will try again.

[Flack]

Am I even letting people delete messages?

Good question! No you are not!

My comment is that I think this is a really shitty thing to do when people booked flights months ago. But that's me looking at things through my personal prism.

We signed Mason up to visit Washington D.C. this summer. The trip is $1,700. Mason is working a fund raiser every month this year to raise the money. We're also having at least two giant garage sales. One of the things Mason is looking forward to is seeing the White House. Last week, due to the sequester, the White House cancelled all public tours.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/ ... 4U20130309

So yeah, expect government agencies to become dicks. If you have a trip planned during that time, fully expect TSA agents to handle everyone's "junk" roughly.

At jobs I have had, there are the workers who will tirelessly "get shit done," going above and beyond the call of duty. There are the dependable workers who will work tirelessly when needed. And then there are the guys who can only focus on one thing, very slowly.

(There's a fourth category, "the fuck up," but those don't last too long.)

When cuts to hours happen, is there a sort of feeling that maybe the slow workers need to get their ass in gear? Slow workers love to talk and chat, usually. Is there a sort of unspoken thing that maybe these guys ought to get their ass in gear?

What I *suspect*, and this is based on nothing, is that the guys who can't get shit done don't know what operating at superhuman efficiency is like. So they are oblivious to how long it takes them to do things. If they COULD buckle down and be more efficient, they would. More, because there is a desire for the public to see the cuts hurting, I can totally see this kind of worker thinking, "Well, I had better slow down, too."

To be clear, I am not saying that this kind of worker is exclusively in the government. In fact, I have never encountered one such worker in the government, just IT. But it drives me crazy in times of crisis for these guys to not step it up.

Good question!

Here are my opinions.

First of all, almost everybody I work with is located in another state. My direct supervisor -- the guy that approves my time sheet and does my reviews and stuff -- works in Washington D.C. I talk to him a couple times a week over the phone but haven't physically seen him in 2013 and probably saw him less than half a dozen times in 2012. My wife has 30 or so people in her branch, 2 of which also work in Oklahoma. This style of organization makes it very easy to "fly under the radar" and not do much. It's very easy to avoid e-mail or not answer your phone or turn off IM and just avoid contact and come up with an excuse later. In addition to this, we have also embraced teleworking to the point where every employee (with manager approval) can work from home up to 3 days a week. For people who are disciplined or who have work to do that goes well with teleworking, this is great. Then there are those who abuse it. ADDITIONALLY, there are a LOT of us that work on multiple projects for multiple people. When manager A asks what an employee was doing, they'll say they were doing something for manager B -- and they do the same thing when manager B asks what they've been up to (working for manager A). And when manager A and B both work in different states than the employee and don't know one another, it's pretty easy to pull off.

Where I work, it seems (to me, my opinion) that managers assign tasks and work that needs to be done to the people that get things done, and things that aren't urgent or critical to the people that they expect not to do them. So as new high priority tasks come in, they tend to end in the same people's laps over and over because those are the people that can handle it. And when busy work comes in it gets shuffled off to people that will never do it.

It is very, very difficult to fire government workers. It has happened, sure, but you pretty much have to get caught lying on your time sheet, stealing, or doing something like that. I have never seen anyone get fired for non-performing. Those people just end up being sent off to training or assigned to indefinite busy work. You can't even demote somebody. The way we move people along is to promote them "up and out" -- give them a raise and move them somewhere else. That's how you end up with guys making six figures who sit in basements doing nothing. If you ever want to see one, we have basements full of them.

To write somebody up for non-performance in the government, they have to be verbally warned the first time, then notified on paper the second time, and then they'll get written up the third time. This rarely happens, but if it did, the person would call the union and complain about unfair treatment by the manager. I just heard about a guy who was complaining because another employee was harassing him because he was sleeping at his desk. The solution was to move the employee who keeps sleeping and put privacy glass doors around his cube so nobody can see him. Seriously. I could tell you a million stories, but probably shouldn't.

Anyway, back to your question. I have tried offloading tasks to those people that "aren't doing as much" (putting it politely) and every time I do the result is that those people ask so many questions and do things so wrong that it's never worth the effort. It's easier for me to do the work once than have someone else do it wrong and then have to figure out what they did wrong and have to fix it. It's also easier to do it myself than to have someone call or IM me every 5 minutes asking the same things over and over or asking questions on how to do something when I just tasked them to come up with the solution on how to do something.

So while it's a great question and a great idea, the reality is, no -- those lazy, non-producing employees will continue to be lazy, non-producing employees while the rest of the good apples (and fortunately, there are a few good apples) continue to pull most of the weight. The good news is most of the good apples tend to band together, so when we really get in a tough spot, we call on one another for help.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Anyway, back to your question. I have tried offloading tasks to those people that "aren't doing as much" (putting it politely) and every time I do the result is that those people ask so many questions and do things so wrong that it's never worth the effort.

It's easier for me to do the work once than have someone else do it wrong and then have to figure out what they did wrong and have to fix it. It's also easier to do it myself than to have someone call or IM me every 5 minutes asking the same things over and over or asking questions on how to do something when I just tasked them to come up with the solution on how to do something.

Ah, yes! That's the part where a lousy co-worker goes from annoying to "needs to get shit-canned." (And in case anyone from where I work reads this, no, this is not a situation happening where I work now.)

It's fucking frustrating. You've got someone who can't do things because they lack drive. You're juggling a lot of different things, and *sure* you should probably be better at saying "no" to people, but that's how it goes. So you ask the co-worker to do a simple thing.

And then come the questions.

To them, this task is the most complicated thing anyone has ever done. They have no ability to figure things out, so why not ask?? Asking questions is great! After all, it's better to ask a question and not get stuck than to sit and spin around on it for a while, right? Right??

What they don't get is that the whole point of handing the task off is to make for progress on one task while the other guy works on something else. The whole point is for the person being given the task to NOT interrupt the other dude.

When that starts happening, I definitely want that person gone, because they can't do anything and can't be given anything. Why is it so hard to fire people who work for the government, anyway? Why is it different than any other business?

[Tdarcos]

I will again ask this as a question to determine whether you agree or disagree:

It is a standard practice in government that you want to make things look worse when there are cuts so you always want to cut the most obvious and clearly visible things, and anything the public has to deal with because those make it obvious that cuts "hurt," since there's no incentive not to make things hurt and lots of incentive to do so (if your agency looks like it can't do its job if you lose so much as the cost of the loss of one paperclip then it makes it less likely your agency will get budget cuts.)

I mentioned one here about 18 months ago, how the Welfare Office is supposed to handle all claims within 30 days, including my re-application for medical assistance (a subsidy program covering the $100 a month Medicare insurance premium) but because they were so overloaded with otherwise non-needy people filing for assistance that they couldn't comply with the 30-day time limit.

Now, do you agree or disagree with my claim that cuts are generally done to make them noticeable by the publie?

[Tdarcos]

So while it's a great question and a great idea, the reality is, no -- those lazy, non-producing employees will continue to be lazy, non-producing employees while the rest of the good apples (and fortunately, there are a few good apples) continue to pull most of the weight. The good news is most of the good apples tend to band together, so when we really get in a tough spot, we call on one another for help.

So I have a question, when you get a bunch of people who are either regular to mediocre performers, they get the job done but it takes them a while, and you get some superstar that comes in and makes them all look like they're sleeping by comparison, does there tend to be resentment toward the one who is supercompetent, or do they just tend to say, "thank you for someone who can take a lot of the load off me"?

[Flack]

So while it's a great question and a great idea, the reality is, no -- those lazy, non-producing employees will continue to be lazy, non-producing employees while the rest of the good apples (and fortunately, there are a few good apples) continue to pull most of the weight. The good news is most of the good apples tend to band together, so when we really get in a tough spot, we call on one another for help.

So I have a question, when you get a bunch of people who are either regular to mediocre performers, they get the job done but it takes them a while, and you get some superstar that comes in and makes them all look like they're sleeping by comparison, does there tend to be resentment toward the one who is supercompetent, or do they just tend to say, "thank you for someone who can take a lot of the load off me"?

Not really sure; I don't spend much time talking to the regular to mediocre employees. Since there's no real repercussions for doing less work than somebody else in the government, I'd guess they are glad when someone else comes along and does more work so they can do less.

[AArdvark]

At work, if you are not performing up to snuff, they lay you off siting that there's no work for you. It usually happens after ninety days (when your probation is up)

Then you are free to find employment opportunities at any fast food services in the area.


THE
ONE AND DONE
AARDVARK

[Flack]

By default we are bargaining unit members -- so, here's what would happen here.

Let's say Employee X is a non-performer. He doesn't deliver on his tasks and doesn't come to meetings and pretty much doesn't do anything. Right off the bat, you would have a hard time writing up X because you need specific things, like "X doesn't come to our mandatory meetings." Like I explained before, all X really has to say is that he had a conflicting meeting or something else and he'll weasel his way out of that one.

But let's say X hasn't done anything in months, and his co-workers complain to X's boss about it. When X's boss confronts X about this, X can go right to the union and complain because people other than his supervisor have been monitoring his time, which is a no-no. So X goes and files a grievance with the union over it and that's pretty much all X has to do to get people to leave him alone. Now he is branded as someone who will go to the union and nobody wants grievances filed against them.

Now let's say X's supervisor asks him to go do something like load a server. Well, X's supervisor had better hope that loading servers is in X's PD (position description), which is a set list of things that X's job entails. If it doesn't, X really doesn't have to do it. "It's not in my PD" and "that's above my pay grade" are two common phrases around here. Another thing X could say is that he hasn't been trained on loading servers.

Also this can reflect poorly on X's supervisor. Just wait until X complains that he is being tasked with jobs that X's supervisor hasn't provided training for! Ho ho! If X continues to fail then people will begin asking why X's supervisor is allowing him to fail and not creating an environment in which he can succeed!

There will come a day when X's supervisor is sick of dealing with X, and so he will get traded like an old, worthless playing card to some other supervisor, probably for some other worthless trading card of an employee, like Y. Now Y hates her supervisor and X hates his so maybe if we swap them around, they will move to areas in which they succeed! (They won't, X and Y are lazy pieces of crap who are playing the system.) Another thing that X can do is apply for a higher position somewhere else to get out of his job and get out from under his mean ol' supervisor who keeps giving him work. So when he does this, supervisor X will give X a GLOWING review to try and get rid of him. This is where that whole "promoting up and out" thing comes from.

[Tdarcos]

Now let's say X's supervisor asks him to go do something like load a server. Well, X's supervisor had better hope that loading servers is in X's PD (position description), which is a set list of things that X's job entails. If it doesn't, X really doesn't have to do it. "It's not in my PD" and "that's above my pay grade" are two common phrases around here. Another thing X could say is that he hasn't been trained on loading servers.

This sounds vaguely familiar. I have a quote and I'd like to see if it fits or is similar to what you described:

"You should see the kind of human driftwood we're getting to fill the vacancies. Some of them mean well, but they're scared of their own shadows. Others are the kind of scum I didn't think existed; they get the jobs and they know that we can't throw them out once they're in, so they make it clear that they don't intend to work for their pay and never did intend. They're the kind of men who like it; who like the way things are now. Can you imagine that there are human beings who like it? Well, there are. . . ."

[AArdvark]

Human driftwood...I like that. Very expressive and right to the point. I'm going to use that.



THE
SWIRLING IN THE TIDE
AARDVARK

[Turing testes]

This sounds vaguely familiar. I have a quote and I'd like to see if it fits or is similar to what you . ."

this is not a conversation, fail. Cls. Die. Go away. Fail. Fuck you.

[WILLIE TALK]

This sounds vaguely familiar. I have a quote and I'd like to see if it fits or is similar to what you . ."

this is not a conversation, fail. Cls. Die. Go away. Fail. Fuck you.

HA HAAA! TDRIFTWOOD, WUT WUUUUUUUT!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

So I have a question, when you get a bunch of people who are either regular to mediocre performers, they get the job done but it takes them a while, and you get some superstar that comes in and makes them all look like they're sleeping by comparison, does there tend to be resentment toward the one who is supercompetent, or do they just tend to say, "thank you for someone who can take a lot of the load off me"?

Well, what I find is that the superstar is usually someone who has been there a long time. So part of it is due to their drive and motivation, but a lot of it is due to their experience.

It takes a prime, grade-A asshole to get hired at a company and start and then say to yourself, "Man, this dude doing his job, who has been doing it just fine till I came along is a fucking cockdrip because he pushes himself." :)

Even the slower workers tend to appreciate the hard-working people. Flack's experience seems to be different, but in a lot of cases, the problem employee doesn't know he's a problem employee from what I've seen.

(And I should state that there's been plenty of times where my motivation was shit-zero at jobs.)

[Flack]

Here are some answers to questions no one asked.

Are they still going forward with the furloughs?

Good question -- the answer is YES! From April through September of this year I will be off every other Friday, without pay.

How does this affect the projects you are working on?

Good question -- the answer is, "nobody cares!" There are things that I and only I can do. If those things crop up on a day I am off, too bad -- it'll wait!

What are you allowed to do on your furlough day?

Good question -- the answer is, "nothing work related." I am not allowed to work or free. I am not allowed to use my work computer. I am not allowed to answer work-related phone calls. I am not allowed to do any work-related acticity, period.

But what if you are on travel?

Good question! The answer is, they will pay my per diem for that day (food and hotel) but I am not to work or do anything work related (see above).

Can you work more hours during the rest of the week to make up the hours?

Good question! The answer is no. All comp time and over time have been cut off. If something breaks after hours, it'll have to remain broken until the morning. if something breaks on the weekend, it'll have to stay broken until Monday.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Well that's not too bad. I mean, all of us could find cuts in two seconds elsewhere and losing money sucks (I don't want to be glib) but at least it seems like you will have same days to recover from the high-stress ones recently??

[Flack]

Well, yeah. It's not the end of the world. The 10% pay cut is mostly coming out of our "eating out" fund and my personal spending fund. We were eating out way, way too often, sometimes all three daily meals. We switched to making breakfast (and morning coffee) at home and taking our lunches on a daily basis and then eating out for dinner only a couple of times a week. So we're not in any danger of losing our house or cars or anything like that, but I may be in danger of tiring of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Other than the pay cut though, yeah, I'm actually looking forward to it. Like I said, along with these mandatory furlough days comes no comp time and no over time, so I just suddenly threw on the brakes and went from 50-60 hours a week back down to 40/32. I also have something like 100 hours of comp time banked, so I'm thinking about taking some Mondays or Thursdays off and turning those furlough days into four day weekends. I could do a lot of cool things with four days off.