The main reason I don’t blog about stuff that goes on at the office is I don’t ever want to be Dooced. I wasn’t worried much while on the road, because the cast of characters changed every week… but now I only have finite number of people to bitch and whine about.

Which leads me to the reason for this entry. I recently found the blog of a co-worker… and this co-worker rants on and on about the stupid people at the office. I actually find it quite funny and very true. This co-worker isn’t someone I’m really close to, but probably could be, based on how he thinks (and now that I know about it).

So, how do you approach that? “Dude, I found your blog… you’re funny”…. and then worry that he quickly shuts it down in fear that someone else finds it? It’d be nice to branch out my group of friends into departments other than my own and have more allies in the office. But how do you work your way into the good graces of someone who, by outward appearances, has no connection with you whatsoever?

Fuck… I hate office politics.

Today I was really tired at work and needed an energy boost (ie: anything with caffiene)…. so during a break I headed over to the employee break room. In the break room, there’s a soda machine, a snack machine, and the horrible liquid machine that dispenses “coffee”, which smells like rancid pee and doesn’t taste like coffee.

I honestly believe that Utopia’s cubicle ninjas have infiltrated my office and wreaked havoc upon the break room. First they pee in the coffee machine, then the snack machine is also missing anything remotely bad for me. If it looks healthy, it’s in the machine, but all the Twix, Snickers, Famous Amos Cookies, Hershey’s Bars, etc are completely gone.

So, avoiding the “coffee” machine, I head for the soda machine, where there is a sign that says “Bill changer broken - use snack machine!”. Well, it’s been a well known fact for a long time that the snack machine bill changer has always been the more “liberal” bill changer. So, I attempt to stick my dollar bill in the snack machine and it doesn’t even try to accept my bill. So, I try another bill, and then another, all with the same result. I decide to try the soda machine changer. It actually takes the bill, and then spits it right back out, no matter what bill I use. So, I head over to reception for change and mention it to the receptionist. She says “Yeah, it’s been broken for about a month now”.

So, what I what to know is, in a company that thrives on underpaying it’s employees and then working us 60+ hours each week, why can’t you spend a couple bucks to fix the damn coin changers so we can get our much needed caffiene injections?

Oh wait… I know why… the people who make the financial decisions drink from the rancid pee machine… and it only costs a quarter and there is no bill changer.

Ever notice how you can’t get anything done at work because you spend countless hours in meetings? And meetings about meetings? And pre-meetings for the meetings about meetings? Yeah… I have that trouble. I spend my entire day doing nothing but sit in meetings… or sit and wait for meetings to start because someone else is running late from a prior meeting. And then they wonder why I can’t get any work done!

DUH!

So, I’ve declared today NO MEETING WEDNESDAY. I am not participating in any meetings today. I am making myself very inconveniently unavailable. I’ll be hiding in the far corners where I can’t hear the overhead pages, or my phone. I may just lock myself in a conference room with my laptop. It would be nice to be able to spend eight hours actually working on stuff instead of having meetings.

Let’s see how long this lasts.

Well it was back to the daily grind for me today and let me tell you, my vacation was waaay too short. I spent the better part of today in meetings, accomplishing nothing. Oh, the joys of being in the office. Sometimes, it makes me long for the road again.

I am thoroughly disappointed with the bowl game season. So far every almost every team that I’ve wanted to win has lost: Auburn, Georgia, Notre Dame, Florida State, Louisville, Georgia Tech. All I can say is that streak had better end tomorrow night…. HOOK ‘EM HORNS! I’ve been saying that to all the obnoxious USC fans I’ve seen wearing their USC gear around town these past few days. I am so sick of anything USC, I hope they get their asses handed to them by Texas.

The one exception to my streak of rooting for the losers was the LSU/Miami game. Now, I realize that LSU beat Auburn this year and they didn’t deserve to go to SEC Championship, but Auburn got a better bowl game anyway (if only we had won the damn thing). But my longtime hatred for Miami far exceeds the amount of hate I have for LSU for beating us this year… so I’m glad they beat the everliving shit out of Miami. At least someone in Louisiana was able the beat the Hurricanes this year.

As often as I disagree with the things Bob Parsons of Godaddy says and does, the other day, he posted a message on his blog about he saves some time by not being so “polite”.

For the past few months I’ve been saving time and headaches by managing my email box. I divided my inbox into “Action”, “Hold”, “Projects”, “Waiting”. I read each email as I get it and either reply to it right away, or copy it into one of those four folders. Action - Things I need to take physical action on; Hold - Things are not of major importance and can wait until the end of the day; Projects - Emails related to projects I’m working on right now and I’ll need quick access to this information shortly; Waiting - Emails where I am waiting for someone else to get their butt in gear and do something before I can respond. All other emails are responded to immediately or stored in my Archive, where I have a folder for each employee in my workgroup.

Every day I go through the four folders in my inbox first thing in the morning, right after lunch, and just before I leave for the day. I don’t set my email program to automatically check for email. I manually check it at the same time I’m checking my folders. This way I’m not constantly distracted by email coming in over the course of the day.

I think I’m going to incorporate Bob’s take on the voicemails and phone calls the same way. I have a couple of people at the office who always ask for me, even though there are other employees that work for me who are fully capable of answering the questions (maybe not as quick as me, but they are capable). These people are the largest waste of my time over the course of the day, which adds to my stress level. My hope is that I can train them not to rely on me all the time, and allow my employees to answer their questions.

I also have the constant “stranger” caller problem… I’m definitely looking forward to using the “Get to the point” message…

Today, I had HR come and ask me to confirm my hours for last week. It seems that I worked 74.5 hours last week (we swipe in and out of our building)… she wanted to make sure that it was correct. Apparently, it is. I couldn’t believe I spent so many hours in the office. I never worked this much on the road. No wonder I’ve been so tired lately.

On the business side of things, I still have some discount-for-life slots available for some TheBisch readers. If you pay for any hosting or domain registrations, check out my earlier post on BischSlap.com. Save yourself some money and register your domains with BischSlap.com.

I can’t believe another week is gone already. Time flies when I’m in the office. One thing that amazes me is how much work I can get done when other people aren’t there. If I (god forbid) come in early, or stay late, I get so much more work done then when I’m there.

It’s like other people don’t want you to get any work done. It’s frustrating. What’s most frustrating is the damn meetings we have all the time. I try to get the others to meet in places like the conference room, or our training room, where there are no phones or computers. But then you get the rise of complaints from those who “need” their computer to enter notes about the meeting. (We have a propriatery database system in which customer notes and status is kept). The problem is, those same people chat on their IM and answer phone calls during the meeting, slowing the meeting down and wasting my time. I hate that.

Last week I had a six hour meeting due to this and on top of that, the meeting had to be stopped and then started again the next day because we still were not finished. How productive is that?

Ugh, I even hate the word meeting right now. It sends shivers down my spine.

The Mega Millions Jackpot is estimated to be $225 million dollars on Tuesday night. I am buying tickets.

If I win, I have already informed my co-workers that they will not see or hear from me. I will send them all postcars from Hawaii. My boss will receive a special postcard, informing them that I quit.

I need to win. Anyone have any lucky numbers they want me to play for them? I’ll share, I promise.