So, what’s the etiquette for being given a card at work for someone you don’t know?

1. Grin, sign it in as nondescript way as possible

2. Enquire as to the person, go meet them, strike up as quick a friendship as possible, THEN sign it

3. Decline graciously while explaining the issue (they don’t know me, I don’t know them, etc)

4. Accept the card, wait til the person who handed it to you is gone, then discreetly hand it onto someone else.

I’m officially weird.

Being ADD, it means I spend much of my life totally bored off of my nut. It’s a bit of an issue when you’re being paid by the hour.

Then, when the pressure’s on, you can perform feats of productivity the likes of which even god has never seen (10 points for the first person to recognise where I got that quote).

Take today.

I spent the hours between 10 and 4 bored and doing odd bits of work, being just as productive as many… then I got a deadline… impossible actually. I had to document something I hadn’t even seen, on an application that didn’t work with the particular functionality. And I had to do it by 5.30 (when I wanted to leave for Bikram); they needed the material for training tomorrow.

“Leave it to me,” I said.

I zipped over to the appropriate people, asked nicely (but not too nicely) for help getting access to the functionality. A couple of mis-fires, and I had it on my desktop.

Then I clicked into high-gear, creating 5 Wiki pages in the space of an hour.

To put this into perspective, the generally accepted norm for documenting a piece of UI functionality is about an hour a window or function.

I actually missed my Bikram deadline, but only because I decided to document the last window while on the high. I can do a double tomorrow (I’ve got a stack of things I want to do tonight anyway).

And you know, I’ve been told in the past not to rush things. A former employer took me aside once and said “You know that job I gave you, it should have taken you the rest of the afternoon. You’ve got to slow down.”

I didn’t say anything to that, but felt oddly put-down. I can’t help the speed I can get things done, and when I go, I go properly. If I know how to do something, I can do it very, very efficiently.

Take my time at a former employer – the ex tech-writer took 18 months to create a manual. I wrote a manual on an application (albeit somewhat simpler, but nonetheless complex in what I laughingly call UI design) in 2 weeks; 3 with corrections and reviews.

They liked me, but not enough to pay me what I was worth. I left that job feeling totally unappreciated and — in some ways — betrayed.

And here I am again, getting-off (though not in a rude way) on the adrenaline of a deadline.

Potentially this is another reason why I felt so awful when I lost the job earlier in the month. I was gearing-up for the work, I’d worked-out how to do it, how long it would take and planned it out in my head (which I find interesting and engaging), then they started screwing around and eventually said they didn’t want to work with me.

I took it personally. Something I’ve really got to stop.

There was a point to this blog entry, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler’s mind.

Oh,  I’m a yellow apparently, and I rock and am amazing, or so say the two people who desparately needed the material. So that’s nice to know

So, to debrief…

Lost a job today.

Initially I felt like I’d been kicked… over time I constructed excuses, and finally I smiled, calmed myself and learned.

For all the excuses I have — that if they hadn’t started changing the job, we (no, I) wouldn’t have reacted by going all formal on them; that if they hadn’t taken something away, I wouldn’t have felt threatened enough to formalise every little thing — well, these don’t cut ice.

When I analyse this job with a clear mind, with calm thoughts, I find I have learned that:

1. I shouldn’t react so harshly when things are changed. For someone that has just reconstructed her life, this is a bizarre reaction to have.

2. Regardless of my writing background for formal documentation, honed over 10 years of writing dry, soulless computer manuals for IT companies, I should take things a little lighter when writing for clients.

3. I don’t know what I don’t know. Learning is a part of the great game of life…

A time will come when I laugh about this… just so long as the lessons have been learned.

The company M and I are creating have a basic belief structure: Clear, unambiguous and friendly. I think I was clear and unambiguous, but too late in the game, and friendly when things were going my way, but hostile when they weren’t.

The world turns, and I learn new things.

A message I just sent around work:

Greetings fellow level-2′ers,

I am writing today to decry the sad and sorry state of the kitchen with regard to the following ongoing issues:

• dirty dishes
• dirty dishes being left to pile up in both sinks (especially the one with the hot and cold running water)
• dirty cutlery
• dirty benches

You’ll note — perhaps with interest — that the operative word here is “dirty“.

Now, as far as I’m aware, the only people who get to leave dishes unwashed in kitchens are:

1. Royalty
2. Children
3. Those lacking appropriate motor-skills to manipulate dishes and washcloths.

Furthermore, there are several prominently positioned “kitchen etiquette” posters which actually ask nicely that people clean the hell up after themselves.

Howsabout it people? None of you are royalty (otherwise you wouldn’t be working), there aren’t any children on this level at this point, and you’ve all got the motor skills to operate computers and telephones, so you should all be able to clean up your dirty dishes.

Frankly, after 10 years working in IT and related environments with levels of cleanliness of varying degrees, I feel it’s a bit much to expect someone else to clean up after yourself. What’s next, the toilet?

Yours in extreme boredom,

your friendly neighbourhood writer.

Wonder if it’ll work?

Just worked out an economical alternative to a Swiss Ball, which is to find a chair at work that doesn’t have a back-rest.

Seems to be working so-far.

This means that I can maintain the core muscles which I sweated and agonised over while on Vipassana meditation, rather than losing them to flab. As long as I sit up straight that is.