Unnecessities

As I believe I may have touched upon before with hummingbird-like lightness, my job is pretty slack. I take up space in the office primarily so that I can be on hand if any of the following things occur:

- One of our web database applications breaks
- Somebody comes up with an idea for an improvement for one of our web databases that I can implement
- Somebody who doesn’t really understand how the web database applications work needs me to explain to them whether or not they already do something, and if so, how to get it to do that something
- Somebody forgets their password

And maybe a couple other variants on those themes but you get the idea. But as much as I roll my eyes at the inherently inefficient ridiculousness of such a situation I don’t want to come across as complaining about it, per se, because as sweet gigs go this is right up there as long as I take full responsibility for managing my won boredom. And I like to think I do. I also take full responsibility for making myself generally available to help just about anyone with just about anything vaguely work-related, because, shoot, I got time.


What I need, when someone wants to give me more work to do, are two simple things: a reasonable explanation of what the work entails, and a time (or date) by which it should be completed.

What I don’t need, ever, really, but including when someone wants to give me more work to do, is a long complicated explanation of why exactly the person bringing me the work is too busy dealing with seven other different things that all amount to him or her being unable to do the work themselves. Seriously, I do not care, I do not feel ill-used, and if I were too busy myself or feeling ill-used I assure you I would say something. You had me when you asked if I could help and I said yes. Now just give me the assignment and get back to those seven other things demanding your attention. Furthermore, I really and truly do not in the slightest need a long and complicated explanation that is excruciatingly difficult to follow because the explainer insists on dropping their voice to a sub-audible whisper and/or replacing spoken English with inscrutably lunatic hand gestures to convey his or her frustration with the supervisor(s) who are insisting the other seven things be done all at once, said non-verbal communication attempts being made because we all work in CubicleLand and the consequences of being overheard trashing one’s supervisor(s) could be potentially dire. Seriously, let’s just skip all of that, and you can rant and rave and bitch and moan about your boss to your friends and family after work when you get home. (Or, hey, get a blog!)

Speaking of, if you’re guessing that today I had to sit and listen to (or try to interpret) the above kind of oversharing from a co-worker, you must read this blog fairly often. And if you’ve further guessed that, after all of that sympathetic listening and decoding, I ended up with some nebulous assignment which did NOT come with an explanation of exactly what was needed or expected NOR did it come with a deadline per se, then you clearly read this blog way too much. Get back to work!