Happy weekend, and why I bring work home
It's Sunday, and it took me 4 hours today to go through the morning procedures in the way that makes you enjoy your life and not just race to a place or people or activity the potential of which to make you happy is approaching nil.
4 hours, instead of the usual 30 minutes on a weekday!!! At this point I might get overwhelmed with pity for myself but my inner child raised up her voice: "Come on, the world simply can't be so unfair. There's something you deliberately didn't mention." Thing is, the babe's right.
So let's take a better account of an ordinary workday.
Wake up 7.50 - 8am, take the bus at 8.30, at work at 9.30. Good girl!
What's next? Popping my eyes right into the screen doing the job till 6.30 pm with an hour's lunch break? Nah!
9.30 - 10am: making a coffee and a small chat with colleagues. Nothing about work at all. This actually is part of my job - team building with my team (which is, btw, building and building :)). But it's none like looking into Excel graphs to check sales fluctuations, editing a yet another landing page with a new feature announcement, verifying contract with the maker of a flash movie or making up the marketing calendar for the next three months, with options A, B, C further developing into A1 A2 A3, B1 B2... for that matter.
Yeah, it's just a chat and making jokes and at times, even a bit of flirting (try to invent a better way to motivate your system administrator to fix your laptop!). Smiling and laughing (which btw improves my complexion) - and I am getting paid for this! WHOA!
Okay, it's normal hard work then till about 12am. At 12am the flash-maker guys wake up and send in a draft of 3 Mexicans singing a serenade. Around this time, Philip the Columbian wakes up and sends in the mp3 for the Mexicans ad. Now you better come in and check what's going on as 15 people of the marketing dept, each one (but of course!) with their own right opinion start discussing the left Mexican's mustache and how the banjo should sound louder in the end. 30 minutes of going crazy, with, once again, complexion-improving exercises. In the end I have to decide who's right and who's wrong and what to do next. So after a while I pass my decision straight to the manager (not aloud but over Skype chat of course) saying to just leave things the way they are.
Cuuuuuuuuuute. And - again, I'm getting paid for that.
12.30 - a colleague wants to discuss a thing a two about the new release and we go outside for a smoke.
12.40 I'm back and a support guy is waiting for me to help with a customer complaining of a double charge. Of course I'll take 10 minutes to find the order, re-check the customers bank statement and figure out the statement is nothing but ambiguous and only one charge actually happened. Another 5 minutes go as I explain this to the support guy. And yeah, I get paid for this!
12.55 it is and I need bathroom :)
On the way back from the bathroom to my office I meet a business analysis girl who suddenly decides to play smartie and point out some (seemingly!) errors one of my team members made in the localization draft for a new product. Another 30 minutes pass as we discuss the whole matter, I'm explaining the basics of SEO and we finally come to an agreement. Which actually sounds as "let's leave things as is". And you already know what :) I just logged in another 30 minutes to get paid for!
It's 1.30 pm and I have 9 unread Skype messages. 6 come from colleagues with all kinds of questions, 2 come from friends who want to say hello. One is from an aquaintance of mine whom I'm helping SEO his website (right, I need experience in SEO so this is where I get practice)! Another 20 minutes I'm getting paid for.
Although nothing special has been done, my head feels like a wasp factory so I go for another smoke (which I'm still getting paid for as you can already guess).
2pm it is then and it's time for lunch which takes about 40 minutes altogether to come, order and consume food in a nearby caffee.
As I'm back there are 5 new messages from colleagues in Skype each of which requires 2 to 5 minutes to answer.
3pm it is, when a manager responsible for the nearest feature release complains that the in-house designer refuses to deliver 3 dosens of new screenshots on time because he's overworking. It takes me 5 minutes to actually find him in the building so in the end it's the sacred X-box room where he's overworking at the moment. The Barcelona - Manchester game is on so you can't talk to him right now as this is sacred. Oh-fucking-kay, I go back to my desk. Mad as you can imagine. Which is, as you can imagine, a bit counter-productive.
One of the brightest girls on the team, the community manager sends me some nice reads and ideas which she wants my opinion of, so I spend another hour or so to check today's blogosphere and then discuss ideas with Tanya and together with her create a new task in Jira for the web developers to add new social tweaks to the site.
After which, another business analysts comes up to my desk asking to explain what I've been explaining to his colleague 2 hours ago and what led to a powerful decision of leaving things intact. Param pam pam! This is, another half-hour I'm getting paid for!
4.30, I go make a tea and come back to see a pile of stuff I need to check and edit on my desk. I've trained myself to be fast at that so I'm done in 20 minutes or so.
In the meanwhile there are some 10 more Skype chats to discuss work-related stuff and a collective chat with the girls from the office to discuss the 23 Feb all-men's-day event and plans to congratulate the men in the office. This takes up another 30 minutes or so.
Now it's about 5.20pm and I can finally settle to do the analyzing, brainstorming and strategic things I'm actually being paid for to do.
But thing is, I have a piano class at 7 so I have to get off work at 6.30 at latest. Which means I have 1 hour 10 munites to actually do the job I am being paid for and I have actually showed up in the office today for.
Now ask me why I'm doing the most important things at home, and I'll make a voodoo doll for you which will make the Black Angel of Spam follow you till the end of days, filling your inbox with Viagra ads.
Stay cool!
4 hours, instead of the usual 30 minutes on a weekday!!! At this point I might get overwhelmed with pity for myself but my inner child raised up her voice: "Come on, the world simply can't be so unfair. There's something you deliberately didn't mention." Thing is, the babe's right.
So let's take a better account of an ordinary workday.
Wake up 7.50 - 8am, take the bus at 8.30, at work at 9.30. Good girl!
What's next? Popping my eyes right into the screen doing the job till 6.30 pm with an hour's lunch break? Nah!
9.30 - 10am: making a coffee and a small chat with colleagues. Nothing about work at all. This actually is part of my job - team building with my team (which is, btw, building and building :)). But it's none like looking into Excel graphs to check sales fluctuations, editing a yet another landing page with a new feature announcement, verifying contract with the maker of a flash movie or making up the marketing calendar for the next three months, with options A, B, C further developing into A1 A2 A3, B1 B2... for that matter.
Yeah, it's just a chat and making jokes and at times, even a bit of flirting (try to invent a better way to motivate your system administrator to fix your laptop!). Smiling and laughing (which btw improves my complexion) - and I am getting paid for this! WHOA!
Okay, it's normal hard work then till about 12am. At 12am the flash-maker guys wake up and send in a draft of 3 Mexicans singing a serenade. Around this time, Philip the Columbian wakes up and sends in the mp3 for the Mexicans ad. Now you better come in and check what's going on as 15 people of the marketing dept, each one (but of course!) with their own right opinion start discussing the left Mexican's mustache and how the banjo should sound louder in the end. 30 minutes of going crazy, with, once again, complexion-improving exercises. In the end I have to decide who's right and who's wrong and what to do next. So after a while I pass my decision straight to the manager (not aloud but over Skype chat of course) saying to just leave things the way they are.
Cuuuuuuuuuute. And - again, I'm getting paid for that.
12.30 - a colleague wants to discuss a thing a two about the new release and we go outside for a smoke.
12.40 I'm back and a support guy is waiting for me to help with a customer complaining of a double charge. Of course I'll take 10 minutes to find the order, re-check the customers bank statement and figure out the statement is nothing but ambiguous and only one charge actually happened. Another 5 minutes go as I explain this to the support guy. And yeah, I get paid for this!
12.55 it is and I need bathroom :)
On the way back from the bathroom to my office I meet a business analysis girl who suddenly decides to play smartie and point out some (seemingly!) errors one of my team members made in the localization draft for a new product. Another 30 minutes pass as we discuss the whole matter, I'm explaining the basics of SEO and we finally come to an agreement. Which actually sounds as "let's leave things as is". And you already know what :) I just logged in another 30 minutes to get paid for!
It's 1.30 pm and I have 9 unread Skype messages. 6 come from colleagues with all kinds of questions, 2 come from friends who want to say hello. One is from an aquaintance of mine whom I'm helping SEO his website (right, I need experience in SEO so this is where I get practice)! Another 20 minutes I'm getting paid for.
Although nothing special has been done, my head feels like a wasp factory so I go for another smoke (which I'm still getting paid for as you can already guess).
2pm it is then and it's time for lunch which takes about 40 minutes altogether to come, order and consume food in a nearby caffee.
As I'm back there are 5 new messages from colleagues in Skype each of which requires 2 to 5 minutes to answer.
3pm it is, when a manager responsible for the nearest feature release complains that the in-house designer refuses to deliver 3 dosens of new screenshots on time because he's overworking. It takes me 5 minutes to actually find him in the building so in the end it's the sacred X-box room where he's overworking at the moment. The Barcelona - Manchester game is on so you can't talk to him right now as this is sacred. Oh-fucking-kay, I go back to my desk. Mad as you can imagine. Which is, as you can imagine, a bit counter-productive.
One of the brightest girls on the team, the community manager sends me some nice reads and ideas which she wants my opinion of, so I spend another hour or so to check today's blogosphere and then discuss ideas with Tanya and together with her create a new task in Jira for the web developers to add new social tweaks to the site.
After which, another business analysts comes up to my desk asking to explain what I've been explaining to his colleague 2 hours ago and what led to a powerful decision of leaving things intact. Param pam pam! This is, another half-hour I'm getting paid for!
4.30, I go make a tea and come back to see a pile of stuff I need to check and edit on my desk. I've trained myself to be fast at that so I'm done in 20 minutes or so.
In the meanwhile there are some 10 more Skype chats to discuss work-related stuff and a collective chat with the girls from the office to discuss the 23 Feb all-men's-day event and plans to congratulate the men in the office. This takes up another 30 minutes or so.
Now it's about 5.20pm and I can finally settle to do the analyzing, brainstorming and strategic things I'm actually being paid for to do.
But thing is, I have a piano class at 7 so I have to get off work at 6.30 at latest. Which means I have 1 hour 10 munites to actually do the job I am being paid for and I have actually showed up in the office today for.
Now ask me why I'm doing the most important things at home, and I'll make a voodoo doll for you which will make the Black Angel of Spam follow you till the end of days, filling your inbox with Viagra ads.
Stay cool!