There are no other dads at the elementary school drop-off corral, it’s a maze of mini-vans and stress-masks with encouraging signs near the choke point closest to the school reading “Synergize”: the sign says synergize. In other words, be nice… Read More ›
corporate america
The day I turned purple
It was a dark, moody sunrise from the top of our office building that day, No Roof Access. The kind of morning you can’t tell if the sun is really there, it’s just a band of white below the cloud… Read More ›
Part-time blogger, full-time ass
I started re-reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise in October, inspired by connections to how our media was handling the Ebola crisis. Ha, ha: look at me! Blogging about Don DeLillo and Ebola! I have a third of the book to… Read More ›
The 1,000th time
A part of me died that day in the conference room when I botched it with the process decomposition. I had a plan going in, aligned on it with my business owner, and the plan was to plot the as-is… Read More ›
Brandenburg in F-ing Flat
My boss and I have an 8 o’clock stand-up meeting every day. The stand-up is meant as a quick, informal check-in on your progress. What you got done yesterday, your priorities for today. The thought is if you’re standing, it shouldn’t… Read More ›
Standing under the shoulders of giants
A week spent with data, inside Excel: VLOOKUPS, pivot tables, four rewrites of a simple proposal drawn up for review by one guy, a 15 minute meeting. A five page deck with about 10 pages in the appendix. The appendix,… Read More ›
Quoting depressed comedians
We start the 9 o’clock meeting some time after 9 o’clock. I book one of the conference rooms on the north side of the building, the ninth floor, picturesque views of downtown bathed in blue: sky blue, water blue, railroad… Read More ›
Last Seen With
The cats spend the day outside killing, then come in for their canned food. I stood in the garden watering, having the sense something was wrong, and noticed a small rabbit on its side with a gash in its neck…. Read More ›
Confessions of an under-performing project manager
It’s mid-year review time, and this year they’ve renamed the levels and taken care to cascade training about it. It’s a “discussion” not a review, and that’s an important distinction. But still, there’s a diagram that looks like a dart-board… Read More ›
Arriving: mid 40s
We’re getting displaced at work, because they’re sub-dividing our cubes. It means we have to pack up our things and vacate for a month, and work from home. I don’t work from home well, because my home is my work,… Read More ›
